Keith and Tina's Build

Bedtime ( part 2 )

2011-12-23T13:58:00.005Z

The next step was to get the wardrobes in. We bought them in IKEA in the UK and had them shipped out to France, as this worked out much cheaper than buying them in Bordeaux.

Being IKEA, they are pretty solid, and easy to put together, but not that easy to manoeuvre. Levelling them all out took a bit of doing as well, even though we had tried to level the floor as best as possible.

The floor needed a bit more sanding, as it was impossible to move the cupboard into place without the odd scuff mark. 3 coats of varnish later, and we were ready to paper the wall.

Tina had chosen a bold paper for the wall above the bed. As neither of us had done any wallpapering for years, and the walls were 3 meters high in places, we got our friend Pete over to hang the paper, after we had sized the walls.

The first three rolls went up well, but then we noticed that the next roll looked slightly different. We checked the labels, and although all the batch numbers were the same, there were different letters on the rolls.

It turns out that the french use a letter as well as a string of numbers to identify the batch number, and we had bought two different batches.

We went back to Leroys where we had bought it, but they didn't have our batch left. They rung around all of the stores in the Charente, with no luck. In the end, we had to drive all the way down to Bordeaux. They didn't have the batch either, but they did at least have 5 rolls from another batch.

This meant we had to strip of the 3 rolls on the wall and start again.

It was all worth it though, as you can see.

Bedtime

2011-12-23T13:12:00.004Z

The more alert readers may well have read the last two posts about the en-suite and thought,
"hang on, you can't call it an en-suite as you haven't finished the bedroom yet".

To avoid a nasty visit from the grammar police, we thought it best to press on with the bedroom, to correct this anomaly.

The chipboard floor in the bedroom had been screwed onto oak beams years ago, but over the years the beams had shrunk and twisted in places, particularly after the underfloor heating had been switched on. This lead to dips in some parts of the floor, and peaks in others, sometimes up to 2cm. This needed to be levelled out before we could start to fix the parquet.

After a lot of thought, I came up with a solution. The dips could be packed out, but the peaks would need something more radical. I decided to cut the chipboard either side of the offending beam, and then to fix the flooring onto battens screwed onto the sides of the beam.

Cutting them out wasn't too tricky, using a multi-master and a circular saw. After this I removed the chipboard from the top of the beam. Tina then stood on the now bouncy sheets of chipboard, checking a spirit level until the floor was level ( a fairly responsible job to give to a girl ) while I screwed the battens on downstairs.

Now we were ready to fit the parquet, using my friend Pete's nail gun.

It took a few days, as the room is so long. So long in fact, that I it was too long for my sash clamps. and I had to come up with other methods of closing the gaps. It turned out that whacking the back of the giant nail gun worked a treat.

Although the room is big, I still didn't trust myself with a giant belt sander, so I finished it of with a 1/2 sheet sander and a lot of patience.

En-Suite tout de suite ( part2 )

2011-12-14T13:22:00.003Z

We were now ready to hand over to Mr H to do the plumbing. There are lots of skills that Tina and I have picked up over the last 5 years, but plumbing a bathroom isn't one of them.

We went for twin sinks, so we could see which of us makes the most mess ( me obviously).

I built up a wooden frame under the bath to support it, and covered it with chipboard ready to tile. This took ages, as I had to keep adjusting the levels, making sure the bath was level, that the u-bend was not too close to the ground and that the panels were deep enough for me to be able to tile on top.

I then tiled it, and fitted an inspection hatch for the u-bend, using some new magnetic clips. Unfortunately, the clips weren't strong enough, and the inspection hatch kept popping off every time you had a bath. This new-fangled invention has now been replaced with an old fashioned piano hinge and a hatch, which seems to work fine.

Here's one I prepared earlier.

With a few more finishing touches, we were ready to go.

En-Suite tout de suite ( part 1 )

2011-12-14T10:45:00.007Z

With the floor finished, we were ready to press on with the tiling.

Last time I tried to tile a bath, the batten slipped on the wall, and the tiles sloped gracefully into one corner, so I took extra care this time.

The shower was tanked out, as an extra layer of waterproofing.

Before the rest of the plumbing could start, we then had to fit the shower cabinet.

This was a bit scary, as it had two big glass screens. To help matters, we didn't have any instructions, as it was an ex display model.

Adding to the confusion. it came with a bag of nuts and bolts that were nothing to do with it and one of the seals for the bottom of the glass screens was missing as well. It turned out that seals like that are no standard, and the shower screen manufactorer no longer existed, so we had to improvise that bit with silicone.

It took four of us all afternoon to get the glass into its supporting frame, as the rubber seals had gone so hard in the five years that it had been in storage . Not much fun, as we were all afraid that the glass might shatter if we pushed down on it too much.

Getting it vertical, and screwing it together was a comparative doddle after that.

But it does look good, now that it's in

Parquet

2011-07-24T11:11:00.005+01:00

Cast your mind back to last February. Saints were still in league 1, Clegg and Cameron had just come back from honeymoon, and the only worry people had about Greece was broken crockery.

About this time, we were putting down the new floor in the Bathroom. We decided on Chestnut parquet. Research on the web suggested that it was a bad idea to use hardwood in a bathroom, but on further research, none of the people saying this had ever tried it. Also, our old house in Salisbury had pine floor boards, since the 1930's and that was still standing.

I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a nail gun from my friend Pete ( the orange thing through the door).

This made it very quick to fix the boards, and had lots of safety features, so that you couldn't go all Mel Gibson on any unexpected visitors.

The shower tray was a bit of a challenge.

I was lucky enough that the long board fitted round it with no cutting but, after that you couldn't get the clamps under it to tighten the boards.

Out of necessity, I learnt a few new tricks about rasping out the grooves to make a snugger fit.

Getting the last boards down next to the wall required a bit more fiddling and ingenuity.

After that there was the small matter of filling small gaps and sanding it all down. I used a 1/2 plate sander and took my time. I had tried using one of those large belt sanders that you can hire once before , and it left so many grooves at the edges that I had to hire a carpenter to come in and sand it all down ( with his 1/2 plate sander).

To finish it off, Tina applied 4 layers of varnish.

We were finally ready to fit the bathroom.

January 2011 - Plastered !

2011-07-03T13:21:00.004+01:00

At the start of the year we were finally ready to start plastering the bedroom.

This was a big challenge, due to the size of room, the sloping ceiling and more importantly, the fact that neither of us are plasters.

We learned a few lessons from the bathroom, washing the walls down before we plastered to stop it from bubbling up, and also make sure you use the french 2000 plaster, as it is best fro skimming.

I also made sure to leave the last section I did each day for 20 minutes or so before I went back and polished it.

This cross beam was a nightmare, as you couldn't get the float behind them to spread the plaster evenly, so I had to improvise with jointing knives.

It took an bit of sanding down, to get a good finish, but not as much as the bathroom had. It took almost as long to get all of the dropped plaster and dust off of the beams, the floor and me.

I also managed to fill in round the window, covering all of the mortar and getting a decent finish, for an amateur.

.....

2011-03-27T10:46:00.006Z

Before we could start to plaster the bedroom, Mr H advised us that it would be best to plaster board the other side of the walls. Otherwise you might find that your new plaster cracks while you are busy hammering something on the other side of the wall. First up, we had to finalise were all of the wiring and light circuits needed to go and wire it all up.

Then Tina had to but all of the insulation in for soundproofing. We just used rock wool for this, but you can spend £40 or more per metre on specialist soundproofing,if you are worried that someone is going to set up a recording studio in the spare room.

As you can see, this work involved standing on a wobbly ladder next to the abyss. Not pleasant, but we are hardy souls and are used to it.

The bottom layer of plasterboard was quite straight forward.

The top of the wall needed scaffolding to reach.

Now it is starting to look more like a house in there, not just a barn.

Bathroom update

2011-02-19T16:36:00.010Z

We have been working very hard these last few months , and are starting to make great strides in the barn.

The bathroom is starting to look like a proper room now. I have plastered all of the walls and ceiling. This was the first time that I had attempted a whole room, and it was quite a challenge. The more I did, the more I got used to it, getting a more polished finish as I went along. It did take a lot of sanding down and re-filling, but we got there in the end.

Tina then took over, cleaning all of the plaster spillage of of the beams, and then re varnishing them. Then she applied two coats of undercoat, as plaster drinks up paint, and can change the colour. This did mean that we got away with only one coat of the actual paint for to finish it off.

We did have some fun and games with plaster bubbling up when it was painted. We think this was caused by patches of plaster dust on the boards, where they had been gut, or stepped on. Sometimes it took 2 or 3 attempts to fill them back in, so now we are a bit more careful about washing the boards down before I start plastering.

The next job was to raise the floor level, so that we could hide the shower pipe. This was quite good fun, as the existing floor was not quite level, and the 10 cm joists that I bought were actually between 9.5cm and 10.2. I bet you don't have that problem with German timber.

I had to use lots of different size bits of wood to wedge it all level, but luckily I have hoarded a pile of crap just for these eventualities.

A couple of the joists were so wet that they were twice as heavy as the others, so I used a lot of noggins, to stop the wood from twisting when it dries.

Now we were ready to fit the shower tray. It took three of us to shift it upstairs, as it was so heavy.

It has now been connected up, and tested for leaks, so soon we will be ready to put the floor down, once we have done all the mucky plastering and painting in the bedroom.

If you want to get ahead, get a hat

2010-11-14T12:21:00.003Z

With all the snow last year, we found that the fins on the back of the compressor for the heat pump cot covered with thick ice, which bend some of them out of shape.

As extreme weather seems to be the norm these days, Tina thought it was best to build something to protect the compressor from whatever weather gets thrown at it, so we decided to build a roof over it. This is normal practice in Scandinavia, but didn't used to be necessary in South West France.

We bought the framework from Leroy Merlin, and fixed it to wall with chemical fixings, as the wall is a bit to crumbly for raw plugs, and the canopy will be a bit heavy once all the tiles are on.

I managed to re-cycle some old pallets to make the voliges that support the tiles.

We also had enough left over tiles to cover it all, so in a couple of days the whole thing was done.

Now we just need some snow to see if it works.

Progress

2010-11-13T13:36:00.005Z

We have been cracking on with the new bedroom and en-suite bathroom this year.

In the winter, Robert installed all the pipework, so we were then able to start insulating the walls, chip boarding and then plaster boarding them.

It was a bit tricky, fitting everything round the pipework, as we tried to get as close as possible to the pipes, for a better finish.

Tina then varnished all of the beams, before I started jointing the walls, as this made it easier to get all of the spilt plaster of of the wood.

We decided to skim the walls, rather than dry lining them, as it took ages to do the joints in the living room, and when the sun hits the wall from a certain angle, you can see all of the joints perfectly.

The french plaster has taken a bit of getting used to, and I will try a different brand for the bedroom, as recommended by Robert, but as I had already bought the cheap stuff from BricoDepot, I am going to uses it up, rather than bin it ( tight/echo warrior ) .

The window has been plastered, and a concrete sill has put in. and Tina has now undercoated the hole room, and painted the ceiling as well.

The paint for the walls arrives next week, and when that is done, we will be ready to start fitting the floor.

Departures and Arrivals

2010-10-24T09:56:00.002Z

Sadly, our eldest cat Niemi is no longer with us. She was t'ignorait with F.I.V two years ago, a disease that attacks the immune system, which left her with a sore mouth and throat. As long as her food was minced up, she was fine.

However, this year she developed mouth cancer, which is very aggressive in cats, and eventually, we had to take the difficult decision to have her put down, as her quality of life was just not there anymore.

Henri was a bit freaked out by it all, and was obviously missing her, so we asked some friends to let us know if anyone had any kittens that they wanted a new home for. We expected it to take months, but within days, Peter and Wendy told us that friends of theirs had found a kitten that was trying to live in their barn, but needed a new home, as they had three dogs.

So the next day we collected the kitten and got her checked over by the vet, to make sure that she didn't belong to anyone.

She is called Daisey, and after a bit of hissing, she gets on very well with Henri, apart from when she attacks him when he is trying to sleep. She is very possessive of the cat baskets, no matter how much Henri whacks her, and has even moved onto the log basket.

No kittens were burnt in the taking if this photo.

Prime Porkie Workie

2010-05-30T15:21:00.006+01:00

Last summer, we agreed to have a half share in a pig, with our Dutch friends Joop and Cathelijne.

The pigs had a free range life for 6 months, and we were able to contribute to their diet, with some surplus apples and courgettes from the garden.

In February, the gig was up for the pigs, and it was time for the pot. Joop hired a butcher from the abattoir at Confolens. Farmers in France are allowed to slaughter 2 animals a year, for there own consumption, provided it is performed by a qualified slaughter-man.

The butcher arrived a bit early, so by the time we got there, the sow had already been killed. The male pig, by this time, had an idea what was coming and put up a bit of a struggle, as the butcher and Joop tried to tie his back leg to a tractor, so that he could be hung and so that the blood can be collected for black pudding. It took a few attempts, and a lot of squealing but finally he was tied on, and could be dispatched with a bolt to the head.

That was a bit unpleasant, as was the drawing out of the intestines, but if you eat meat, then I suppose you should be aware of the consequences.

The carcases were left hanging overnight, to drain, and it was back the next day for the butchery.

The butcher was very quick. So fast in fact that he finished our half and moved on to the next half before we had even noticed, making it a bit tricky to sort out who's pork was which.

In the afternoon he chopped all the mince for pate, rillettes and for sausages. We then mixed up spices for a few different flavours, french style, as Cathelijne had done the year before, and some Spanish, Italian and Cumberland recipes, from a book on sausages that i had been given as a present a few years ago.

Day 3 was spent mixing the pate and rillettes. The pate is cooked in jars in a big vat, overnight, while the rillettes are cooked on a stove, jarred up and then boiled for a while more, to sterilize and seal the jars.

I think we ended up with over 30 jars in all, of different flavours. We have tried some out on friends and visitors, with very good reviews.

Finally, it was time for the ham. Joop and Cathelijne had made one last year, and it was delicious, so we thought that we would give it a try as well.

First, you rub a mixture of eaux de vie and spices on the outside of the ham. Next, you soak some cloth in the same mixture, and wrap in around the bone endings. to protect them. Now cover the ham in salt, and keep it in a box for 2 to 3 weeks, depending on the weight of the ham.

Finally, remove the ham from the salt, and hang the ham in a ham sack, in a room with a constant cool temperature for about six months.

Hopefully, it will taste like Serrano or Bayonne ham when it is ready. It is hanging in the corner of the study and it smells good already.

Living on the Ceiling

2010-05-29T10:48:00.007+01:00

We decided that we didn't want a cathedral ceiling in our new bedroom, as it would take too much heating up, and leave too many beams showing for spiders too hide behind.

To achieve this, we had to put in a false ceiling. I had done this before, in the cellar, but this would be much trickier, as I had to fit the joists as well. Neither of the beams that I had to work from were level, or square for that matter, so it was not possible to get the joists in nice straight lines, like you would find in a typical UK loft.

To get a level ceiling below that, I then used steel rails, suspended on adjustable brackets., with a lot re-adjusting afterwards to ensure that the rails were all horizontal , and in the same plain.

The lower part of the roof was more straight forward, although it was harder to get the rails in on flat plain because the slope meant that you couldn't use a spirit level.

Tina then fitted all of the insulation on top of the rails, a horrible job unless you like finding loads of glass wool fibres down your top and in your hair.

To fit the plasterboard, we were fortunate to be able to borrow 'Mr Orange', a board lift that belonged to our builder friend Mr H. This is a fantastic machine that means to you only have to lift a sheet 5 foot up in the air onto the top of the lift, and then you can crank it right up to the ceiling.

This then allows you to secure the board at you leisure, rather than trying desperately to find a railing to screw into while Tina holds one end of the board, and the other end rests on my head.

I Love Pavement in the Springtime

2010-05-29T10:41:00.017+01:00

In fact, I love Pavement all year round, as Tina can testify.

For those of you who have never heard of them, Pavement were an influential 'Slacker' band from Northern California, who made 5 albums before calling it a day in 1999. I, like many others, only discovered them after they split up, so I was very exited to find that they were re-uniting for a tour in 2010. As the tour was gradually announced, the one and only French date was announced, in Paris.

Their London Shows were selling out quickly, so we got 4 tickets as soon as they went on sale, as our friends Jane and Pete fancied it too, as long as we had an extra night in Paris ( Tina's condition).

We found a great Ibis Hotel near the Bastille, and managed to get TGV tickets to Paris for €100 return for the pair of us. Jane and Pete wanted to get the Eurostar over, but it cost so much to get to St Pancras from Salisbury that it worked out much cheaper to fly straight to Paris.

So, come May 7th, all four of us were up before dawn and heading for Paris, arriving at the hotel just in time for lunch. After lunch, we walked it off along the river to Notre Dame.

Then we took the Metro up to Montmarte, which was nearer the concert hall. The tube station near Sacre Couer was a lot rougher than I remember it, with crowds of North Africans selling anything from fags to mobile phones, but once you fought your way through the crowds, and up to the top of the hill, it was still worth it for the views alone.

The concert was in a venue called Zenith, in a science park built on the site of the Paris Slaughterhouse, next to the Periphique. After our experiences near Montmarte, we were a bit anxious as to what the area would be like, but need not of worried, as it was all very civilised.

The Zenith holds about 6,000 people, and was fairly full, with a good mix of ages. It wasn't all 40 somethings, there were a lot of people who must have been in nappies when the first Pavement album was released. Being in the over 40's age bracket, we forgo crowd surfing for seats next to the sound desk.

The support band were The National, a Brooklyn band who have been around for years , but are finally getting some attention. They did a very good set, similar to the one they did at Glastonbury, including one song that the lead singer performed from the middle of the crowd while he went on a walkabout.

Now for the main event.

Pavement did a fantastic 2 hour set, including most of their almost hits, and a few rarities as well. I'd seen some old clips on YouTube before, and they were a bit hit and miss, but tonight they were on top form. They played 27 songs, including most of my favorites ( no Hex though), but the highlight for me was an amazing 8 minute version of 'Fight This Generation", where Stephen Malkmus really showed why he is such a highly rated guitarist.

This is a YouTube link of Pavement performing Grounded that night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dilPvr2_pM&feature=related

And this is a great site I've found that lists and plays back complete sets of concerts.

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/pavement/2010/le-zenith-paris-france-1bd4e14c.html

It was one of, if not the best concert I have ever been to. The metro ride back into town was very civilized, so much better than London, now queues, no pushing, no hassle. We even had the energy left for a couple of nightcaps on the walk back to the hotel. Not bad considering the 5am start.

On Saturday, we walked through the Marias ....

Up past the Pompidou centre to the Louvre ...

And on to the Eiffel Tower, where the latest Paris fashion was on show (my T shirt).

For Saturday night, we tried to get into a bar that was in Jane's guidebook, but ended up finding a brilliant wine bar just round the corner instead. Then we tried a restaurant that was in the book, and that was fully booked, but we found a great bistro just round the corner instead, with some really good home cooked fresh food. A far cry from the more touristy places in the centre of town.

By the end of the evening, I was so 'relaxed' that I was speaking french to everyone, including a french guy on a scooter, who stopped us and asked for directions, and cut my attempts off with a french accented "you are not from round here, apparently" which had the girls in hysterics.

On Sunday morning, we had time for a cruise along the river before lunch on the left bank .

It was a great weekend. We got the train back, and were home by 9pm. Unfortunately Jane and Pete got Volcano-ed, so the had to spend a night at the airport Ibis, not nearly as nice as the one near the Bastille.

Pete and Jane did get home the next day, but not before the dog sitter had filled their dog with digestive biscuits.

I Know What I Did Last Summer

2010-04-18T11:51:00.010Z

There has been some, warranted, criticism for our readership that the blog hasn't been updated for a few months now. I will try to make more effort to keep you all up to date on our progress.

Anyhow, last autumn we decided that we couldn't put off replacing the pigsty roof any longer, as one more winter could see it collapsing in on the mower. I got a few hints and tips from Robert, our friend the builder, and got to work stripping the old roof off.

Robert came up with the idea of clearing a few holes and then putting a stepladder on the gallery floor so that I could strip the roof of without having to clamber all over the top of it.

This worked quite well, although I did have to lean right out a few times, which was a bit scary.

We manage to save most of the tiles to reuse and as you can see, there were a hell of a lot of tiles to shift, for such a tiny roof.

Now I had to replace a few rotten joists, at the weather end of the pigsty before we could start re-roofing.

The plan was to work from the inside, building the back of the roof up from the bottom up to the ridge. This involved nailing voliges (strips of wood) onto the joists and then laying the tiles on top, two rows of unders topped by a row of uppers, none of which are fixed down but are just held in place by the weight of the tiles. This worked well to start with, but as we got further up the roof I found that every time I nailed on a new volige the tiles all started to slide down the roof towards the lane.

I tried to drill holes in the unders, so I could nail them down, but the other tiles still slid. We even tried putting props under the roof joists to soften the hammer blows a bit, but it still didn't work.

We went to see our dutch friends Joop and Cathelijne to see if they had any tips that they had picked up from doing their own roof. Joop said that the only way was to lay all of the voliges before you climbed onto the roof and laid the tiles. No more safe working from the inside.

Luckily for me, Joop offered to come over and help us lay the tiles on the back of the pigsty, facing into the road. This was a great boost, as there was nowhere that we could build a scaffold on that side.

So, that Saturday, Joop clambered up a ladder, and Tina, Cath and myself worked as a chain gang, lifting all the tiles up onto the roof. It was all finished by lunchtime, and Joop didn't fall off once.

Following on from his fine example, I started the front myself, but found it difficult to get straight parallel rows of tiles, as nothing else on the roof was square. Joop came over to get me started, and finally I was ready to finish.

I managed to lay the rest of the tiles on my own, with Tina doing all the lifting.

Above - Suris Historical Society Re-enacts the Strangeways Riots

That's me on the roof, cementing down the ridge tiles. The hardest thing about being up there, apart from trying not to look down, was getting back on the ladder to get down again. Sitting up there was also a good way to spot a big dip in the gutter that I had replaced a few weeks before.

It all looks good now it is finished, and it has survived the winter and some big storms.

Joop's help was invaluable, and last week I was able to repay the favour as he needed some help stripping one of his roofs.

Pintxos,Pintxos,Pintxos

2009-12-10T15:46:00.007Z

We had wanted to go to Spain for some time now, Tina had never been and I had only been on my brothers stag tour so the only Spanish culture I had seen was the Real Madrid museum.

We had seen San Sebastian featured on some TV travel shows, and it looked like the sort of place for us, nice old buildings and loads of tapas bars. What's more it is only just across the French border, so last month we did a bit more research, found a nice hotel in the centre of town and off we went.

It only took us about 4 hours to get to the Spanish Border, and another half hour to get to San Sebastian, or Donostia as it is called locally. Donostia is the basque name for the city, and the basque influence extends both sides of the border. The French region approaching the border is known as PaysBasque and the even the road signs are in the basque language as well as French.

The first impression as you cross the border is that it is very built up along the coast, as there is very little space between where the Pyrenees end and the sea begins, so building land is at a premium. Parking is very limited, and expensive in the city centre, so we left our car up by the University and caught a bus into town. It was pouring down with rain, so we couldn't see much of the city.

Our hotel was on the edge of the town centre, only ten minutes walk from the old town, and the owners were very friendly and helpful, giving us loads of information on sights to see and some of their favourite pintxos bars.

http://www.pension-bellasartes.com/ingles.html

Pintxos are the basque version of tapas, and San Sebastian/Donostia is famous for some of the best bars in the world. It has more Michelin stars per head of population than any other city in the world, where you can eat for €140 a head, or like us, you can have a pintxos suprise ( glass of Cava and fresh crab and prawn on a slice of baguette) for €2.50.

We were a bit unsure of how everything worked, so we just watched in the first bar, before we got brave enough to copy the locals.

In every bar the bar tops are covered in plates of delicious looking morsels, anchovies, breaded sardines, hams, black pudding ..... the list is endless. Then there are other dishes listed on a blackboard, that are cooked to order. You just point at what you want and then when you finish, just tell the barman what you have eaten.

There are well over 100 pintxos bars in Donostia, if you went to 10 different bars each night you still wouldn't run out of bars in two weeks! The website below has a list of most of them, and even pictures and recipes of some of the best dishes(best to use the Spanish pages as not all of the English pages work).

http://www.todopintxos.com/recetas/recetas.php

The next day we woke up to bright sunshine, and set of to explore the town. There are two large hills that frame the bay, one of which has a funicular railway that goes to the top of it. Not on Wednesdays in November though. We had to climb it ourselves, hard work , but worth it for the views.

View from the top

Wind Combs sculptures

One of the three beaches in Donostia San Sebastian

Theatre

Old town

Conference Centre

The old town lies at the heart of San Sebastian, with bays on either side. Although it is only a few miles from France, the building stiles are very different, as you can probably see in the pictures. It is nice and compact, so you can see walk to most of the sights quite easily, even better if the funicular is working so you don't knacker yourself out in the morning. We never sat down for a meal the whole time we were there, preferring to snack out on pintxos instead, and we even managed the odd word of Spanish, although we did get some replies in French, as we must have slipped the odd French word in instead.

We had a fantastic time, and we will definitely go back in the future.

Let there be heat

2009-11-29T10:45:00.007Z

A big job this year has been to get the central heating installed.

Being so remote, we don't have mains gas so we had the option's of a gas tank, heating oil, wood or electricity. With an eye for the future, we have gone electric. Oil and gas process are only going to go up over the next few years, where as most electricity in France is nuclear or hydro -electric, which should keep prices a bit lower and is a lot better for your carbon footprint.

After a lot of research, we opted for an air source heat pump, which extracts heat from the air, and uses that to heat up water for the house. This is very efficient and should produce 3 or 4 Kilowatts of heat for each KW of electricity that you put into it.

Robert had already laid underfloor heating pipes in the downstairs floors, but before we could install the heating, we needed to weather proof the old dustbin shed, which was to become the new boiler room.

First of all, we had to fill in the gaps between the top of the stone walls, and the roof. I built some stud work and fixed chipboard on the inside, insulation in the middle and tongue and groove on the outside to make it look better.

We filled the open window in with glass bricks, and to keep the room weather proof, I built a new door, to replace the one with holes in, recycling some old beams to make the new door frame.

Finally, I connected the cupboard up to the mains and we were ready to go.

The French heating guys were very efficient, fitting the whole system in three days.

The biggest piece is the compressor, that sucks in air and takes the heat out of it. This sits on the back of the boiler room. It looks huge, but it is incredibly quiet.

This sends the heat inside into the heat exchanger, and then on to the underfloor heating. The tanks also lets us power some radiators , which are still on order.

The pump is not power enough to heat the whole house, but we should have enough power for radiators in all of the upstairs rooms.

The underfloor heating seems to be working well at the moment, and it doesn't seem to be using too much electricity at the moment, but it will be interesting to see how it reacts when it gets really cold.

This Little Piggy

2009-11-01T12:28:00.004Z

Back in the summer, we decided to go take up an offer of a half share in a pig, with our Dutch friends, Joop and Cathelijne who have a small campsite and small holding.

They had kept two pigs the year before, but found that they had too much meat at the end of it. They still wanted two pigs, to keep each other company, so we offered to buy a half share in one of the pigs.

I went with Joop in his van, to collect the pigs from a farm near St Junien. The farm had deer as well as pigs, with some enormous sows, and the piglets were in a pen in a barn, with a radio on to keep them company. I didn't realise that we would have to catch the pigs ourselves, a tricky business as piglets are quite nippy, with a low centre of gravity. Joop managed to grab a brown and black male, but I found it hard to get hold of one, and the farmer spared me the trouble, plucking a pink sow up as I chased it past the gates. Joop wanted one of each, as it makes a good pairing, but the male has been neutered, as a male pig tastes disgusting once it's bits drop.

I had to keep the window wound down on the way home, as one of the pigs was a nervous passenger.

When we got back to Joop's we grabbed the pigs out of the back of the van, and headed over to the enclosure that he had built. I thought the single wire fence was a bit tall for the pigs, but I thought it must be OK, as they had kept pigs the year before. We set the pigs down, and left them to settle in.

Within a minute, they had a quick look around and scarpered straight under the wire fence and into a maize field. It looked like the quickest €25 I had ever spent. We enlisted the help of some of the families staying on the camp site, and spread ourselves out in the maize to drive the pigs back out.

This seemed to work fine, and the pigs were soon in Joop's field, with his horses. Unfortunately, the horses thought that the pigs were great fun, and promptly chased the pigs back into the maize field.

On the second attempt, we managed to catch the brown one, but the pink sow proved to be more elusive.

Next up, I went to see our neighbour Thierry, to see if one of his sheepdogs might do the trick. The dog did get the pig out, and drove it away from the horses, but it couldn't get it into a little pen, like on 'One man and his pig-dog '.

My next thought was that we needed a crop dusting plane to chase the pig out, as this had worked with Cary Grant in 'North by Northwest', but we didn't have one handy.

Finally, we decided to lure it out. We put a radio on, to make it seem like home, tied the brown pig to a post near the pigsty, and put some food out. A little pink nose kept peaking out of the maize.

We left them to it , and after an hour or so, both pigs were re-united in the sty, this time with a bigger fence.

This was not the end of the pig fun though. A few weeks ago, Joop and Cathelijne decided to go to the coast for a few days. They couldn't get hold of their neighbour, who usually looks after their animals, so we volunteered.

Joop gave us instructions for all of the animals, horses, goats, chickens and pigs. We had to visit twice a day, to let them out in the morning, and to get them in at night. The chickens are a bit like teenagers, and would go to bed until they are good an ready, at sundown each night ( obviously the similarity with teenagers stops there). The pigs were left to roam their enclosure, and we just had to feed them dried feed in the morning, and swill at night.

This all seemed to go OK, and we didn't loose any animals. However, Joop's neighbor had been keeping an eye on the animals as well, as he had heard the pigs being a bit noisy. It turns out that we had been feeding the pigs sawdust every morning, which Joop had left in a pig feed sack, next to the swill! Luckily the neighbour gave them some non-wooden elevenses each day to keep them going. Still, a bit of roughage is supposed to be good for you.

Are you Wolves ?

2009-10-14T13:54:00.005Z

Over the summer, we have managed to get out and about a bit (it's not all work,work,work you know).

For our wedding anniversary, we had a night out in Bordeaux, and a trip to the coast the next day. We never realised that it was such a surfers paradise on the Atlantic coast, so were a bit surprised at all the surfing schools and oxbow shops.

The surf was much better than we had seen when we went to California, and they say that it is even better if you go down to Biarritz.

When Tina's sister Helen was over, we went off into the hills to see a wolf sanctuary.

Wolves used to be native in the hills of the Limousin, but over time they were hunted to extinction. Now they have been re-introduced, in a purpose built sanctuary in the hills above Guerret. In fact, it is so isolated that you have to drive through the woods for miles up a single lane track to find it.

The main enclosure is next to the visitor centre, with an elevated viewing platform.

As you can see, it is a very natural enclosure and the wolves look like they have stepped right out of the forest.

There were about a dozen other enclosures, most of which were so big that it was sometimes hard to see the wolves at all. One had a pack with two new cubs, but they were so small that you couldn't get a picture, and you could hardly even see them through binoculars, they looked like a big pair of fluffy slippers left in the middle of a wood.

The cutest pair was in the last pen, a pair of Canadian wolves, much lighter than the grey European ones. I would definatley recommend a visit, but maybe not to our neighbour Thiery, the sheep farmer.

Allez les Girondins

2009-08-24T12:35:00.007Z

For a birthday treat, I went to my first French League game with my mate John who was over on his holidays ( Tina would have come, but she thought it would be a good boys outing and that if John went instead, she wouldn't have to watch and talk football all day with me).

Girondins Bordeaux were at home to Nice on the Sunday after my birthday, ( the French FA refused to move it to coincide) . I brought and printed the tickets on-line 10 days before the match, all for the princely some of €16 each. Not a bad price to see the current French champions, compared with £24 to watch Saints play Brentford, or £50 to see Arsenal give the skates a good hiding.

The game was a 5 o'clock kick-off, but we decided to get down to Bordeaux in time for lunch. We had a very civilized pre-match tapas, and had plenty of time for a few beers before kick-off. We stopped of for a couple in a bar that was owned by La Tupina, one of the top restaurants in the world according to surveys. While we were in there, a old boy came in with his dog, ordered a glass of wine, pointed at a large piece of left over steak on a plate, and asked if he could have it for the dog. We thought they might just put it in a napkin for him, but the chef promptly chopped it all into bite sized pieces, and served to the dog on a plate. Can't imagine Gordon Ramsey doing the same.

We set of for the ground an hour before kick-off, which should have been plenty of time, as the ground is about a mile out of the city centre. It is in quiet a nice residential area, no Kingsland estate or Dickensian Fratton slums, and there was a decent bar right within 100 metres of the turnstile which was heaving, so it is not just the British who like a bit of lubrication before the footie.

The turnstiles weren't very well sign posted, so we ended up going to the wrong end at first and then marching all the way back to where we started in 30 degree heat. We then got passed from queue to queue as our E-Tickets wouldn't work on the bar code readers until finally we were referred to a steward, who sent us round to the only side of the Stade that we hadn't walked round yet to where the special E-Ticket turnstile was located. All of which meant that we didn't get to our seats until 5 minutes after the kick-off.

As you can see, Nice didn't bring much of a crew with them, not surprising as Nice is 800 km away from Bordeaux, but there were probably more than the Skates took to Bolton last year. The main home support, with all of the flags, banners and fireworks, was at the other end. Our end was a mixture of all ages, with a group of about fifty nippers gathered around a bloke with a megaphone, stood right behind the goal. With no roof, and the full sun on us, it must have been nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit in there, like watching a match, sat in a sauna.

Onto the game itself.

The first half was quite even, with Bordeaux attacking the home end. Both teams played to fee, and defenders all tried to play there way out of trouble, so much so that the first an only corner of the match didn't arrive until the 78th minute.

Nice's main threat was their number 7 Remy, who was very mobile, good at taking on his defender, and had a decent cross as well. I doubt if he would be interested in swapping the South of France for Southampton though. The crosses were often wasted, as Nice seemed to be playing with just two wide plays up front, so there were never enough bodies in the box to get on the

Bordeaux's played two at the back, with wing-backs pushing up all the time. Diarra, the

ex-Liverpool player, was the anchor man in the midfield, which allowed Jussie and Gourcuff to play the attacking roles. Jussie scored the first goal, in the 42nd minute with a bullet header, from some good overlapping on the left.

At half -time, John and I headed for the shade, under the stand. I checked out the catering. There were no pies, but you could get chicken and chips, and the only beer was Amstal Libre with no alcohol, but in that heat it tasted great, better than the Carlsberg at St Mary's.

The second half was a lot more one sided, with Gourcuff running the show with the sort of touch, power and movement that has seen him called the new Zidane. He was on loan from Milan last year, and this season he has signed for €15 million. Why Milan let him go at the same time as selling Kaka, god only knows. He scored two very similar goals, shooting home from either side of the box after good one touch passing moves.

Diarra netted the fourth with a firm header ( coup de tranche) from a free kick with 15 minutes left, and we thought we might be in for a cricket score, but the game eased off a little, not surprising really as it was so hot.

So it finished 4.o to Bordeaux. It was a great atmosphere throughout the match. We didn't understand most of the songs, but they had borrowed an Italian favourite 'Niceois, Niceois, va fan...... ' which we got the drift off. After every goal, you all have to chant 'buteur' when the announcer reads out the name of the scorer, and at the end of the game, they all sang 'Merci Bordeaux' with typical French politeness.

It was a long day out as it is a 2 and a half hour trip each way, but it was well worth it. The football was of a much higher standard than the West Ham v Spurs match that we had watched beforehand, but it did lack the tension of watching Saints, a bit like a nicotine patch instead of full tar St Mary's.

Green fingers

2009-08-15T12:05:00.005+01:00

We have joined the growing trend for self sufficiency be growing a bit more of our own food this year, something of a challenge as I don't like much veg in the first place.

We dug a new vegetable patch, where we used to have the bonfire, and set to work filling it with natures goodies. It took a bit of work to clear it, as it was full of charcoal and bits of metal from old doors that we had burnt, but it does seem to have left us with decent soil.

We planted spring onions, aubergines, tomatoes, broccoli, courgettes and squash.

We also planted some more broccoli and some red onions in our old veg patch, and put some potatoes in an old dustbin full of compost.

The broccoli in the old bed all got eaten by something, and no amount of slug pellets or traps would stop it. The red onions started well, but started to go sideways, and then stop growing all together, so they have had do be dug up and dried, to try again next year, and the spuds were nice, but we only got enough for a couple of meals. We think that the old patch is too much in the shade, and so next year we will just use it for courgettes ans squashes, which seem to grow anywhere.

The new bed is a different story. The spring onions were great, and the broccoli heads have been huge, although they all matured at the same time ( we planted F1 broccoli which apparently is not some new motor racing offshoot but is in fact a hybrid grown to be picked at the same time).
The aubergines are looking good, and we have had so many tomatoes for the last month that I am in danger of hitting my five a day target on a regular basis, as opposed to my normal 5 a week.

The colours and flavours have been much better than anything you could buy at a supermarket, so we will definitely be planting even more next year.

On the landscaping front, dad cleared back the old conifers, which were still dying, and showing no signs of forming an orderly hedge.

While I was getting round to chopping down the stumps, they made a great hunting stool for Henry.

Pool Finished Shock

2009-07-17T14:34:00.007+01:00

After only 3 years we have finally been able to finish the terrace around the swimming pool. More slacking I hear you say, but nay, nay and thrice nay. There were sound geological reasons for leaving the end for another year, as we had to allow the ground to settle after we put in the extra drainage last year.

Bob and Sue gave us some help digging out the ground, and putting the gravel footings down. Bob and I also fitted a pipe loop from the filter to the edge of the patio, so that we didn't have to dig everything up again if we ever decide to get some heating for the pool. Bob was very helpful with this, as he sells pumps for a living. Sue also sells pumps for a living, and she helped us by interrupting Bob in the middle of a tricky bit, to show him a plant that she had just potted( the plant does look nice though).

It was then time for Tina to get her favorite toy, the cement mixer out so we could build the
concrete base.

We had some fun and games laying the slabs, as the patio on one side of the pool was longer than the other. Bob thought it would be best to lay the outer edges first and then fit a line of slabs to get the ends to meet up.

.

As you can see in the photo, we tried to do this, but when we got half way across it became clear that the slabs were going to miss by about 5cm. It is very difficult to build things from two different ends. They managed it with the Channel Tunnel, and that big viaduct near Montpelier was within 1 mm. Our gap was a bit worse than that, so we had to lift some slabs up and cut 2 of them short so it all fitted.

Now it is all grouted and finished, it all looks good.

We even bought ourselves a labour saving roller for our pool cover, to make things easier in our old age.

We've been busy

2009-07-04T14:50:00.004+01:00

As the title suggests, we have been quite busy over the last few months, as the visitor season gets into full swing. So far we have had both sets of parents, Tina's sister, Tina's old boss, my Auntie Sue and her boyfriend Bob and some old friends Sue and Richard along with their kids.

All of this has been very nice, but it does tend to interrupt the building work.

We have boarded up all of the walls for the new bedroom and bathroom, so that we will be able to attach cupboards and bathroom fittings etc. According to some American websites, this is also good protection against earthquakes, not likely in France I know, but it is reassuring to think that if the village is ever flattened by an earthquake, our bedroom wall will be the only thing left standing!

The chipboard was all put up at the same time that all the windows in the City were being boarded up for the G20 summit in London. It gave us a bit of extra security in case some protesters thought, mistakenly, that I got a pay off like Fred Goodwyn's and decided to come after me.

We've put up plasterboard on one side of the walls, but we have to leave the other side of the walls open for the moment, until we can get all the wiring and plumbing in.

2009-05-04T15:07:00.007Z

With the outside wall framed and lined, it was time for the trickier task of building the main bedroom wall. As it was so tall ( 4.5 metres in the middle ) it had to be built out of timber, pine chevrons that are slightly bigger than a UK 2 by 4.

All the dry lining examples in my D.I.Y book are for standard height ceilings, like you'd find in a 2 bed semi, but we had height . sloping ceilings and large ceiling joists to navigate.

Luckily for us our friend peter volunteered to help us out, as he is quite handy with a saw, but he is more used to making furniture than building walls. This gave us someone to bounce ideas off of, when we were trying to work out how we could fit each section. Crucially, he could saw straighter than me, and make rebate joints as well.

Tina and I had a lot of fun manoeuvring it into position as it was long and heavy, and kept getting stuck on different joists and bits of ceiling. It took a lot of effort, with plumb lines and lasers, to ensure that the wall was straight and hopefully vertical as well.

It looks OK at the moment, but we the test will come when we try to hang a picture on it.

Onwards and Upwards

2009-04-25T13:01:00.004Z

We have now started to build our new bedroom, before we finish the ceiling off, as building wisdom is to build your walls first, before you try to join the ceiling to them.

First up is the outside wall. We opted for the lafarge metal railing system, as it is quicker and cheaper than the UK method of building wooden stud work.

We didn't need any scaffolding this time, as we were only going up 4 metres, so we could just use ladders. The railings are joined together by crimping them with a specially designed tool. It is very quick, but hard work if have a girly handshake like I do.

The insulation is a by product of the NASA space program, and it turns out that something that stops Astronauts from cooking is also good for keeping your bedroom warm. It does also look a bit like a set from the old sci-fi series "Blakes 7" although it is a lot more sturdy.

It only took a few days to build the whole wall. The trickiest bit was fixing brackets on the wall, halfway up the railings, as the railings can twang a bit, if you use long lengths, and a twangy wall is no good to no-one ( apart from Blakes 7 that is).

More Death Defying Stunts

2009-04-08T09:28:00.007Z

Not content with making the extractor fan duct disappear, as if by magic, our next trick involved feats of daring unseen since Blondel walked across Niagara Falls.

Not really, but it did involve working up a very tall scaffold.

We had a load of insulated plasterboard left over from last years work that had started to bend a bit, so the best way to straighten it out seemed to be screwing onto the ceiling. That's all well and good, but to get to the ceiling it meant that I had to build the scaffold really high.

To get to the highest bit, the scaffold had to go right to the edge of the landing, leaving me staring at a 6 metre drop.

When it came to the front part of the barn, we had to put the scaffold up yet another layer, making it extra wobbly. Extra care had to be taken when any Queens of the Stone Age or Undertones was played on the radio, in case I pogo-ed my way to an early grave.

Luckily, this was all done a couple of months ago, before Saints went into administration, or else the local pompieres (fire brigade) might been needed to talk me down from the edge. It is comforting to know that apparently it is not Rupert Lowe's fault, according to ......... uhm Rupert Lowe . Perhaps now that he has a bit more time on his hands he can pop round to Fred Goodwins house, and they can swap notes .

Hello again readers

2009-03-21T10:48:00.004Z

Yes I know that this hasn't been updated for months, but I do have a good excuse, as our PC broke down, so I had no Internet for a couple of weeks while we waited for a part to arrive.

I'm not saying that I use the PC too much, but using Teletext instead just wasn't the same, a bit like methadone ( for any smack-heads out there).

Anyway, we have been busy working again, and have finally finished the kitchen, making the ducting disappear.

We had to sort through the last of our stack of old wood from the barn, a clean it all up and treat it which to a while, as it was all covered in whitewash and 50 years of farm waste.

But after a couple of weeks work, hey presto ........

... it's vanished .

As if by magic !

Cabin Fever

2009-01-07T13:30:00.005Z

We have been snowed in for almost 24 hours now. The snow fell on Monday night, and we managed to get out on Tuesday for a bit of shopping, but since then we haven't left the house.

The road's are frozen, the bins haven't been collected, and the post lady has abandoned us. Today our post was delivered by the mayor. Can't imagine Boris Johnson doing that, but if he did, I would move to London and buy a mad dog just to chase him.

We had about 3 inches of snow in all, and this morning it was minus 10 C at 9:30 am.

Niemi has been out for a look around, but not for too long but Henri loves it. He is out hunting all the time, and runs in and out of the cat-flap like he is on speed. He has caught a couple of birds, the first of which he ate, but we did manage to rescue the festive Robin.

Festival time

2008-12-24T12:30:00.009Z

We've just returned from England and we have had a few complaints, all justified, that the blog has not been updated in a while.

A lot of this is due to the fact that Saints have been so bad this year that I can't type and listen to the commentary at the same time, or if I did it might read something like this "Tina and I have just finished GET SOMEONE ON THE NEAR POST FOR F SAKE" .

Anyway, I will start with an account of our Summer Holiday this year.

We have both been fans of Radiohead for a while, but had never had the chance to see them live as tickets in the UK were almost impossible to get hold of, given the anorak wearing reputation of their fans. With the new album out, we new that they would be touring, and kept an anxious eye on the web to see if they would come to France. We hoped that they might come to Angouleme, as it was a fairly Eco friendly Festival, but the closest that they came to us was Arras, up near the Belgian border. We looked into hotels near the site, no tents for us, and found that special trains had been laid on from Lille for only €5 return. My brother and Tina's sister were also able to come over for the weekend, on a ridiculously cheap Eurostar deal.

As Lille was such a long way from our house, we stopped for a night in the Champagne area to break the journey. We had a nice hotel, in a small village outside Epernay, but is must have been the only village in the region without it's own Champagne house, so we couldn't nip out for a tasting, although they did have a good choice of Champagnes in the hotel bar.

The next day we took the scenic route through the spectacular hills and vineyards of the Champagne, some of which were so steep that they would be mountains in the UK.

We arrived in Lille around lunchtime, parked up at a Park and Ride at the edge of the city and caught the metro into the centre, none of that city driving for us country folk. We had a good hotel, in the historic centre of Lille, close to lots of bars, shops and restaurants. Tina and I had a couple of hours to find our way around before Terry and Helen arrived, and we found one quiet street that was full of all sorts of bistro's and restaurants.

That evening, the four of us went for a few drinks before we headed of for something to eat. The quiet street had changed completely. The pavements were now covered in tables, and there were tow trucks hauling cars away so that more tables could be set up in the road. The bistro that we had our eye was overflowing by 7:30 but we managed to get into another one for some typical Flemish cuisine, beouf carbonade etc. The food was great, not expensive and that atmosphere in the street was so busy. I can't think of many countries where they shut down a road every evening just to eat.

The next morning, we had time for a bit of sight seeing, before getting the train to Arras. Lille is very Flemish in it's architecture, as you can see in the picture above, with cobbled streets and grand squares and is definitely worth a weekend trip.

The 'Main Square Festival' as the name suggests is in the main square of Arras. It is good spot for an urban festival, as the square is long and slopping, so that you can see the stage from anywhere. All around the square were galleried walkways with bars and cafes that had set up counter serving food and drink. The only beer on offer was Heineken ( much better than Carling in the UK) but we couldn't see any wine for sale anywhere. In the end I asked at one of the bars, and they went inside and got Tina a nice glass of rose for €2.50. As the evening wore on, the measures got bigger and she was getting a full half pint! We could see lots of people thinking, where did she get that from, which just goes to show, if you don't ask you don't get.

Anyone that lived on the square seemed to have have security bracelets on, so that they could sit in their windows and watch the bands for free. Not so good the night before when Mika was the headline act.

On the minus side, there weren't nearly enough loos, and no hedges for us blokes. Also, all the alleyways around were guarded by bouncers, so you couldn't nip off for a wee. In the end, all of the men were weeing on the walls of the toilet block leaving a river of wee flowing past the portaloos. Added to that, everyone seemed to get hungry at the same time, and so we ended up in a long panicky queue for burgers for about an hour, only to find out that our favorite bar was still serving merguez baguettes late into the night.

Onto the music.

The first band up were New York indie kids Vampire Weekend followed by Wombats, from Liverpool, as you can probably tell from the lead singers perm.

Wombats were very lively, and the drummer had taken the effort to learn some French so that he could engage the crowd, only to run out of steam mid sentence "Bonjour, nous sommes Wombats et nous sommes de Liverpool. Le prochaine, er , ah .... oh bollocks". Tina and I enjoyed both bands, but I think they found a Radiohead audience hard to warm up.

A French ,The Do's, were next up, and they were OK, better than most stuff on French radio, then it was on to the main acts.

We hadn't really heard of Sigur Ros before we booked the tickets. They're from Iceland, and are a bit unique musically, a four piece but with a string and brass section as well. You might know the music from BBC's Blue Planet series. They started their set of quietly but then, like a lot of their songs, the sound builds up into a crescendo. We were all just stood there with our mouths open, what an incredible sound/row.

We couldn't understand a word of it, as it was all in Icelandic, and some of it was in a language the lead singer has made up, but it was brilliant.

The link has a recording on someones phone, that gives you a bit of an idea, but it is much better with your own ears.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qCD4P8A7JS8

When Radiohead came onstage the crowd suddenly seemed to get taller, and we had to move further back to be able to see.

They had an amazing light show, with these long tubes full of little lights that seemed to move in time to the music. A few of those tubes would look great in our barn, if they have finished with them now.

They did a full 2 hour set, with the whole of In Rainbows and lots of old favorites, but not Creep (sorry Helen).

The link below has a high quality video of one of the songs, from the French TV.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=h0bhQaPU08U

At 12:00 it was a mad dash back to the train station to get the indie-kid special back to Lille and a well earned rest.

It was a long trip back home for all of us the next day, but we all agreed that it had been worth it, to see such a great chin rubbing double bill.

Dream Kitchen - Finishing touches

2008-10-23T11:17:00.003Z

The kitchen is now finished, more or less. We found some tiles we liked after looking everywhere for green tiles, we found some nice grey ones in Leroy Merlin at Bordeaux ( as a bloke, I know nothing about colours, so it was down to Tina).

With all the tile factories of Spain and Italy so close across the border, we where a bit surprised when the ones we bought were by a British company. We think that they match the cooker and the units quite well.

The lights above the island unit where a bit of a pain to fit, as we had lost the instructions, but we managed to work it all out in the end. It took us all day, with the worst bit trying to fix the transformer to the ceiling and the wooden ceiling turning out not to be flat!.

The walk in larder is now all kitted out as well. Tina has been through all of the boxes in the barn and found all sorts of bits and pieces that no kitchen should be without ( although we did alright for two years while the stuff was in boxes) and we still have some space left in the new units.

The cooker cable is now well camouflaged in a false beam, conjured up by my friend Peter, who is very handy with wood. He knocked it all up in an hour, when it would have taken me a day at least.

The utility room has been tiled as well, so both rooms are now more or less finished.

We are still debating whether or not to try and hide to extractor fan duct under some wood, or to leave it as some sort of post modern industrial minimalist statement. Who knows ?

Dream Kitchen - Part Two

2008-10-06T10:43:00.006Z

Now for the refit.

The first task was to put in the units around the source for the new cooker, so that Mr H could switch the gas supply over.

I managed to get all of the wall units, and the cooker hood up on the wall beforehand and so we soon had a bigger kitchen than we started with, although we didn't have a sink.

As the cooker was on an internal wall, we had to run a duct across the ceiling and through to the outside. This was a hell of a job, as the walls are over 2 foot thick, and there always seemed to be a large rock in the wrong place. It took me the best part of a day, and we ended up with 3 buckets full of stone and an enormous hole, compared to the size of the duct.

We did a test run of the extractor, and the exhaust parted your hair, but luckily I hadn't glued it on so we were able to switch it round.

Now it was full on to finish the units.

The sink was a bit tricky, as it is a bit nerve wracking cutting holes in an expensive worktop, and the island took a bit of construction. Ikea units ( other brands are available) are very good, and quite easy to put together. They have guide holes for fitting the legs and for fitting the cupboards from side to side, but nothing for building a back to back island unit. We had to drill lots of holes, and screw planks underneath to hold it together, but it hasn't imploded yet.

Dream Kitchen Part1

2008-09-13T09:01:00.006Z

Hello again.

I know that the updates to the blog have been few and far between, but we have been very busy lately, working 7 days a week some times.

We have been fitting our new kitchen and, as you can imagine, life without a kitchen is pretty tricky, hence all the unpaid overtime.

Anyway, before we could start, we had to redecorate the old living room and move the table and dresser out of the kitchen, to turn it into a breakfast room.

This only took us a couple of days, as opposed to the 9 months it took to build the living room.

Now it was the turn of the kitchen.

First we ripped out the sink and worktops and stripped all the old tiles off the walls.

This left us with an emergency kitchen like this, no worktop and no sink.

Now I had to re-arrange all of the electrics to fit the new kitchen units. This meant cutting lots of holes in the walls, and running cables all over the place. We had an added complication when I checked out Tina's new cooker, and found that it was so powerful that it would blow the cable for the existing cooker socket, so I had to run a thick 6mm cable through the back of the house to the new consumer unit I put in last year.

We built a stud wall under the stairs, where the cooker used to be, to turn it into a larder, and then came the fun job of filling in all of the holes that I had just cut for the wiring, and plastering the walls where the tiles used to be. (step one, skim the walls , step two sand them down again, step three try another skim ......)

Finally, Tina was able to paint the wall, and we were ready to start fitting the kitchen.

The in between bit

2008-07-30T13:19:00.004+01:00

The wasteland between our new living room and the rest of the house is finally taking shape.

After the loo was knocked out and the pipes removed, it looked like this.

With a lot of hard graft, it has now been transformed to a working utility room and a cellar ( OK, I know it's not under ground, but it has no windows and a wine rack, so we call it the cellar).

The floor is Vietnamese marble, which was a nice price, and looks right for the age of the house, but it was a sod to grout, as little tiles means lots of joints. Tina was well 'grouted out' by the end of it.

We were uming and ahing about what door to put on the cellar. A hand built one by Mr Chattilon would run to about €600, so we looked at getting a shop built pine door, which would have cost about €100. Mr H, our builder friend, persuaded me that I could build one myself, so I gave it a go. It was tricky to rebate the door frame, and the gaps where the boards meet are a bit more visible than on Mr Chatilons doors, but then he has been making them for 40 years. For a first attempt, we were very pleased.

The only other problem was getting door furniture, as my timber yard could only supply boards that were 22mm thick, and most doors are 30mm, so no locks would fit, but we got one in the end. When I make the doors for the rest of the house I will have to get hold of some thicker timber so they look the same as the others.

The units all went together OK with no bits missing, which is good for IKEA, but we will have to see how lucky we are with the kitchen. I had a bit of fun with the plumbing, as one of the flexible pipes that they use to connect the taps was nice and waterproof when it was straight, but not so good when you tried to do the flexible bit.

We've also got the washing machine installed now, with no leaks (touch wood) although there was some fun in the bathroom, where I cut down the old waste pipe for the washing machine, but decided to have a shave before I went to get the plastic cap to block it off. When I emptied the sink, a fountain of stubbly water shot out of the old pipe. Never interrupt plumbing for personal hygiene!

What we've been up to while we haven't updated the blog

2008-07-26T12:45:00.005+01:00

Once again it has been a long time since we updated this, as we have been working hard and not got round to typing.

We've extended the patio around both sides of the pool now, which make it look even bigger. Mum and dad helped to prepare the ground work while they were over, and Tina and I did all the concreting and slabbing. This time I tried laying the slabs directly onto concrete, rather than concrete with a mortar layer on top.

This radical new method is popular in Italy, where they will lay tiles directly onto a wet concrete floor, but that wasn't why I chose this method, I just bought the wrong type of sand at the builders merchants ( problems in translation).

It proved to be a bit faster, in some ways, as you only have to mix one layer, but it is also more difficult to get level, due to the big bits of gravel in the concrete mix. I think next year, when we do the bottom end of the pool, I will go back to the traditional way, and leave the new method to the Italians.

It looks like it's finished in this picture, but you can't see the mud at the other end. We will have to wait until next year until it settles down, so that it is stable enough to build on. Last week, as it has been so dry over here this month, we had big cracks appear along all of the trenches that we had filled in, a bit like a 1970's Charlton Heston movie. No other seismic activity to report.

Pool Problems

2008-06-01T11:26:00.008+01:00

We have had a few problems with the swimming pool over the winter. "Tough" I hear you say, "serves you right for having a pool in the first place".

What happened? Over the winter, the pool was covered with the security cover, and part time cat trampoline.

When we first took the cover off, we found that the liner was all wrinkled up, like on of my T-shirts in the back of the wardrobe. Even stranger, when I tried to clean the bottom of the pool, the whole liner moved, like there was a giant bubble under it. Also, the filter box was full of water, so much so that the pump was submerged.

We got straight on the phone to the pool company and e-mailed some pictures to see what they thought. We thought that the liner might have a leak, but it turns out that the problem was caused by groundwater getting underneath the liner. They said that we would have to wait until the water level dropped, then they could come and inspect the liner, but that they would probably have to empty the pool and refit the liner.

I flunked out of geography when I was about 13, so I didn't know much about water-tables, but after a bit of research on the interweb, we found that this was not unusual and that in some cases the water-table is so forceful that it can lift a pool out of the ground, like a cork out of a bottle.

We waited for it to stop raining, then waited some more, but after a few weeks it still hadn't stopped raining, so we decided to take action ourselves. Under the filter box, there was a bed of sand that was supposed to drain away any excess water when the pump gets disconnected for the winter. This was surrounded by a bank of earth when the pool was landscaped.

If we had the same soil as Wiltshire, this would have been fine, but as our soil over here is full of clay, we decided that we might have accidentally built a dyke to hold up all the water. I dug a trench down as deep as the top of the sand bed, and as I dug out the last bit of dirt, by the filter. there was a glugging sound and the earth wall cracked, just like the Dam busters. The water rushed out like I had hit the mains.

The water drained for a good week or so and we didn't notice that the liner had dropped back into position. It was only when we got a digger man round to quote for some proper drainage that we realised that the pool was OK again. I went to show the digger man the liner to explain the problem and it was perfectly straight. Yippee. We had lucked out. The pool had fixed itself without us having to empty it and then wait for the pool company to fix it.

Now it was time to get the pool working again. I connected the pump back up, primed it an switch it on. Nothing. I checked the electricity supply to the pool, and that was all fine, so it had to be a knackered pump. We got back on the phone to the pool company, and they talked me through how to strip the pump down, and get it working again. First we tried cleaning it up, as it had spent the winter immersed in sandy water. Then downloaded the instructions of of the Internet and tried to turn the shaft with a screwdriver but it wouldn't move . Next of was the fan cover, but it still wouldn't budge. Finally, I took the impeller off and managed to turn the shaft using a giant pump spanner. That did the trick.

Excited, we put the pump back into the filter box, connected it up turned the switch and nothing happened. It was buggered, but but a least I now know a lot about pumps The pool people sent us a replacement, and the pool is working fine. Tina has been in a few times, but it is still too cold for me.

The digger man came round the other week and worked the pair of us into exhaustion. He dug out a soak-away next to the filter box, but the earth started to collapse into it, so Tina and I had to quickly fill it up with a tonne of rocks. This is now connected up to another soak-away (tonne of rocks) by a pipe surrounded by gravel. We also have a long drain, running past the pool, to take water away from the pool and out into the ditch.

In one day we managed to fill a lot of the drains back in. Richard Grant, the digger man, even helped us load up wheelbarrows when we started to fall behind his pace and he had nothing left to dig. He was really good, hard working and he knew his stuff. If anything, he was too hard working, as we could hardly move when he had finished.

It took us a couple of days to fill it all back in( six tonnes of gravel). The drain seems to work OK, but I suppose we won't know properly until next winter. Now we just have to landscape in all the left over dirt.

So there you have it, owning a pool is not as easy as you think.

Normal Service Is Resumed

2008-05-18T09:21:00.011Z

Sorry, you readers out there, but we have been a bit busy lately and so the blog hasn't been updated for a while. Also, with the stress of Saints relegation struggle, I was spending my time on-line searching the web for any news to cheer me up, like a new loan signing for Saints or a plaque of boils for the Leicester squad. I think a few Leicester fans would to a plague of boils over Ian Holloway any day.

Anyway, the blog is now back, with more news of our building work.

Since we finished the new living room, we have been concentrating all of our efforts on the utility room, or as it is at the moment, the dusty corridor between the kitchen and the living room. We had already knocked the old toilet out, along with most of the wall that was behind it too, but there was a lot more work needed to turn the space into something usable.

The first thing was to sort the plumbing out. We had lots of pipes that were attached to the old wall, and now hung in mid air, like some sort of still. To get them seamlessly across the new room, I carefully dug out a channel the width of the room, at his suggestion, for Mr H the plumber to bury the pipes in.

When Mr H arrived to move the pipes, he did another survey of all the pipes and remembered that he had already laid some pipes under the concrete, and so we didn't need the channel after all. We managed to move the rest of the pipes under the bath into another hole that I had cut in the bathroom wall, and suddenly you could walk through the room without risking tripping over a mass of copper pipes, although you could still fall down the unused channel that I had dug.

Now the floor needed to be sorted. First we had to take up the old blue tiles that were in the old loo. These were laid on a thin concrete screed, which was on top of the main concrete base of the house. We took a long time to decide how much of the tiles that we needed to remove, as we needed to get a good straight line to finish on. We thought about going right up to the bathroom door, but it would be very tricky to cut a straight line in such a confined space, and there would have been more fun and games with the step at the other side of the room, which is also covered in the blue tiles.

In the end our mind was made up for us, as we had decided to use the stone left over from the living room in the utility room and there wasn't enough to cover the whole space. I worked out the different sizes we would need to cover the whole room and we went to order them, only to find that you can't order just 1 stone of a particular size, but that you have to buy it in linear metres, which would be far more than we needed. So now we have a blue corridor at the end of the room, which avoids a lot of problems.

Next up we filled the empty channel back up, and put down some levelling compound to tie the floors in, either side of the old wall. This was a lot more successful than when I tried it in our first house, and ended up with a little mound of leveling compound in the middle of the kitchen.

The last wall now needed to be studded out, and as it needed to be able to support cupboards, it had to be studded in wood, with an extra layer of chipboard for strength.

Before we could plaster, I had to remodel the cellar doorway, as I hadn't allowed for the width of a door frame, as well as the door, and we would have ended up with a door so thin that only size zeros could get through it. It might have been handy for incarcerating Victoria Beckham, but not much good for the pair of us.

Finally, the room was ready to skim, or in my case skim and sand all the bumps out. Skimming the plasterboard was not too bad , and even the ceilings were OK. I was expecting to come out looking like a wedding cake, but managed to get a lot more on the ceiling than I did on myself.

So this is how it looks at the moment.

BREAKTHROUGH!

2008-03-02T13:06:00.005Z

The time has finally come to break through into the new rooms. The flooring has all been finished and grouted, although we did have to spend a long time getting grout stains off of the stone work. Limestone tends to be hard to clean, as it is so porous.

We hired a large polisher for a day, which was so powerful that it slid me across the room into a wall, like Wile E Coyote.

It did clean up a lot of the grout, but it wouldn't clear up the edges of the slabs, so we had to scrub it all of by hand. We tried scourers and different cleaning products, but in the end the most effective thing was Wet and Dry paper. Tina did most of the cleaning, I helped out for the last couple of days as she got RSI, and she did so much scrubbing that she lost all her finger prints. It would have been a good time to go out on a burglary spree, if we were scouses.

While all this was going on, we started to knock out the old toilet, and the wall behind it, so that we could open up the utility room. The block wall was rock solid. In one week, we managed to knock out two blocks. The original builder must have come straight from building the Maginot Line.

The next week was more productive. After Saints non performance against Bristol Rovers. I knocked out a quarter of the wall in one day, and another quarter came down after the home defeat by Plymouth. The top of the wall proved most difficult, as the concrete of the lintel was poured into the hollows of all the breeze blocks, making a super hard pain in the arse concrete slab. We tried to get the blocks of, and leave the lintel, but the first block to a big chunk of lintel with it, at which point I made a quick trip to Robert's house to borrow some Ac-row props.

A few days more drilling, hammering and angle-grinding, and we were ready to put a beam up in it's place. Tina was let loose on the power tools to clean the beam up, and Robert popped in for an hour on Saturday morning so that we could lift the beam into place and prop it up, then I cemented it in at both ends.

We still have to cut more of the wall away at the bottom, and this is quite a delicate operation, as there are a lot of pipes there, but we now felt ready to move the furniture into the new living room.

So we are finally in. There are still a few bits to do, and we can't seal the floor yet, so we have to be careful not to spill anything, but it is nice to be in the room at long last. Only another 8 rooms to go!

Almost finished

2008-02-10T11:45:00.000Z

After only 18 months effort, we are nearly ready to move in to our new living room.

Laying the flooring took us a long time, about three weeks in all, including 4 days grouting. We have even been working on Sundays, which is why this blog hasn't been updated for a while.

Laying the stone was a bit of a challenge, as the concrete base was not as flat as it looked. It was only a few millimetres in most places, so you only really noticed it once you were on your knees trying to lay a stone. It took a lot of filling with extra glue, or scrapping all the glue out to get it level. I looked for help in our Collins DIY book, but all it said was that natural stone was very expensive, so get an expert in!

I think we will put a levelling compound down in the dinning room when we come to do that, but I will probably need some help with that, as when I tried to use it in our first house, I ended up with a nice smooth mound in the middle of the kitchen.

Cutting the stone was fairly easy, as I had a new wet-saw that a friend had acquired for me. It was easy to use, but you had to keep unplugging it as you get a slight electric shock if you touched the water in the tray. Not too serious, but don't be tempted to put your goldfish in there for a change of scenery. We only broke one stone during all the cutting, so we've almost got enough left to do the utility room.

We've now built a bookcase to fit into the old doorway, and re-hung the main door into room, as it needed a bit shaving off the bottom, but we are ready now to start knocking through. After that, we just need to clean up the floor, and we can move in.

XMAS and Beyond

2008-01-17T17:10:00.000Z

Soon after we came back to France, it was the national Telephon weekend, a national televised Charity event.

In our area there was a 30 kilometer walk to raise money. Our friend's Robert and Rosie were going along, so we said we would join in too. This involved getting up at 6am on a Saturday morning ! I think the last time I was up that early on a Saturday was an away trip to Barnsley.

The walk was very well organised, starting in Chirac and going all the way round to Chabanais, stopping in every village along the way for coffee and cakes, and including a lunch of French Onion Soup ( or Onion soup as it is known over here) and home made pates at St Quentin, the village not the US prison.

All we had to do for all this hospitality, was make a donation of some euros and 30km of shoe leather. It was hard work, and we were a bit achy by the end of it, but it was nice to do something for the local community. Also, Saints won 4.0 that day, so I told Robert and Rosie that we would have to walk 30 K's every Saturday from now on, for superstitious reasons. Strangely, they weren't up for it next week, and Saints were held to a draw at Coventry.
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After treating ourselves to Indian ( 2 curries ), Asian (Wagamamma's) , Spanish (Morro's), German ( Birmingham Xmas Market), KFC and Italian while we were back in the UK, we thought we would try a French take-away. Living out in the sticks, there is only one take-away near us, the Pizza and Kebab shop in Roumazieres, but for Christmas and New year the charcuterie counters at the supermarkets all produce brochures full of fancy stews, little starters, bigger starters and all sorts of goodies.

With so much to choose from it took us days to make our mind up, eventually settling for the Super-U's selection, including foie-gras bruille, red mullet kebabs, langoustine cassollet, goose in perigord sauce all finished of with a chocolate pyramid. 5 courses for 40 Euros. You have to order it all in advance and go back and collect it on the day you want it.

We chose Christmas Eve, which looked like a mistake when we arrived at the supermarket to find the car park packed. All the normal French good manners go out the window in situations like this. I was doing the polite thing of spotting someone about to pull out and waiting patiently until the had left the space to park up. I did this twice, and each time a French driver shot into the space from the other direction. I was on the point of driving pack home to get tooled up and sort it out the British way when we spotted a space before any of the locals. Hurrah, although technically still 2.1 to France.

Inside the shop was busy, but no worse than Waitrose on a Friday night. I waited patiently at the charcuterie counter to pick up our order, while Tina did a bit of last minute shopping. It took less than half an hour to get it sorted, waiting in line and then checking through the box of goodies to make sure it was all there. When it was all ready, we were whisked off to the main desk and passed all the queues at the check-outs. The sort of first class treatment Louis Hamilton used to get at Asda.

It was all very efficient, and even had heating instructions for each dish, and it tasted lovely.

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Now onto work. We have finally got the back room ready to tile, cleaning and re-cleaning the floor and then Uni-Bonding it ready to lay.

We have now been hard at it for two weeks, and this is how it looks so far.

XMAS Broadcast to the Nation

2007-12-26T12:28:00.000Z

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

2007-11-17T14:46:00.000Z

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 !

2007-11-04T12:37:00.000Z

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

2007-10-24T15:24:00.000Z

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

2007-09-21T07:29:00.000Z

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

2007-09-09T15:50:00.000Z

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

2007-08-26T10:45:00.000Z

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

2007-08-15T12:00:00.000Z

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

2007-08-15T11:09:00.000Z

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

2007-07-28T10:29:00.001Z

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

2007-07-03T15:12:00.000Z

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

2007-06-25T12:31:00.000Z

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!

Time Off

2007-06-10T11:40:00.000Z

It's not all work,work, work over here. As the 3 day week has been wearing us out a bit, we have had a few days out lately.

Last month, we had a day out at the races, in Limoges, with our friends Jane and Pete. The course is quite small, with one sand, and it only costs 6 Euros to get in. We followed the French, and stood in the middle of the course, where there was a temporary bar, a food tent and the PMU bookmakers hut. A lot of people had their dogs with them, something you are not allowed to do in the UK, so Jane and Pete could have brought Archie their Border terrier, which would have provided entertainment between races, as he picked a fight with the biggest French dog he could find.

The racing was a mixture of flat racing and trotting ( with the jockey sitting on a buggy). The races all started late, in the French style, and you could tell when each race was getting ready to start when the stewards got on their cherry picker, and were sent skywards.

It took a while to work out the betting, as we thought that you could only do forecasts, but we found that you could also do wins and places as well. I actually had 3 winners in the end, so I was up on the day, even allowing for beer money and sausage and chips.

We left with 3 races still to go, as by this stage the races were 30 minutes late, so at that rate the meeting wouldn't finish until about 9 o'clock at night. They only have two meetings a year at Limoges, but we will definitely go back again.

We've also been to the Cinema for the first time in ages. We went up to Poitiers, where one of the Cinemas was showing the new Spiderman in English (Version Originale) . Strangely, we were the only English people there, but maybe some people prefer to hear the proper voices, rather than the same voice being dubbed over. It's an hour and a half each way to Poitiers, so it's another good excuse for a day off.

A few weeks later friends John and Sue were over with their kids for half term, and we ended up having a couple of late nights, with the girls keeping us up, playing cards all night, so we ended up having days of the next day to recover.

This week was Tina's birthday, so on Thursday we drove down to Bordeaux to watch the latest Pirates of the Caribbean. Its 2 and a bit hours each way to Bordeaux from our house, so it was yet another day off.

We parked up in the centre of town, as it happens quite close to La Tupina. This is a restaurant that was featured on Rick Steins French Oddessy, and has been voted one of the top 50 restaurants in the world . We went along for a look, and it although it was a bit smart and intimidating on the outside, we gave it a go.

It was excellent. We had the menu du jour, which was a cheese salad starter. followed by beef carpacio as a main course, and coffee and petit four to finish, all for 16 euros a head ( Just over a tenner) . The food is all cooked on an open fire, which you pass as you walk in, and Rick Stein waxed lyrical about the chips, which are cooked above the fire, in a bowl of duck fat. Yum. My brother went to Padstow last year, and it turns out that take away fish and chips from Rick Steins chippy cost about the same as our sit down meal in La Tupina. Go figure.

Check out the web link, as it has a good tour, and some menus. They have a 3 course menus for 33 euros, which includes 3 glasses of wine. We will be up for that next time we are in town.

http://www.latupina.com/

We were a bit late getting to the cinema after our unplanned lunch and missed the start of the film, but luckily we knew a bit about the plot (Johnny Depp is a pirate etc etc ) so it didn't matter to much.

The next day, Tina's birthday, we went to Limoges to her some presents. Limoges was packed out, as there was some sort of parade on. It took ages to find a parking space, then our favorite restaurant was all reserved. We ended up in the restaurant next door, which was nice, but not in the same class as the one next door. It did though, serve up comedy deserts in a gallon brandy glass, with a ladle. Luckily they don't make you eat it all, as a gallon of chocolate mouse could probably kill you.

Shopping and birthday are over now, so it's back to the grindstone.

Henri the Building Inspector

2007-06-03T15:50:00.000Z

Henri, our French kitten has always had a penchant for hide and seek, mostly hiding, but lately he has been taking this to a new level.

He likes to climb trees, and had found a way to get into the top of the pump house by climbing up on a laburnum, then onto the pump house roof, and finally into the attic through a hole in the roof where some tiles had slipped. This reminded me that I needed to fix the roof, which I duly did, much to Henri's disgust.

That stopped him for a while, but he still kept disappearing. Then one day Tina spotted him, climbing up the tree, then shuffling out on two tiny branches ( two paws on each branch) till he was opposite an open attic window, and finally leaping into the open window. On the way out it is even scarier, as he leaps into space, grabs one of the branches and wraps himself around it like a monkey. It's only 10 foot off the ground, but is still a bit scary.

Luckily, he has now found a safer alternative, and has found a way of climbing up the back wall of the study, and climbing in to the attic space there. He does pop his head out occasionally, only to drop down with a loud thud on the ceiling below.

Niemi is not far behind him in the explorer stakes, but being more lady-like, she waits until our bedroom window is open and then climbs out onto the roof from there.

She has also taken to exploring Thiery's field, again taking the lazy option of squeezing through the mesh on the fence, like it was a cat flap.

Henry has also started to dig around the lawn, but for mole crickets, rather than proper moles. The moles have been quiet for a couple of days now.

My friend John has had a bad reaction in his own garden when he put a couple of smoke bombs down. It seemed to make the moles angry, and dig up everywhere at once. This could explain why they have been quiet in our garden, as Charlie may not yet have the resources to fight on two fronts at once. However it may just be a coincidence, as Johns house is half an hour away, so it may not be the same moles.

On the house front, all of the plasterboard is up in the back room, and I have started jointing up the walls and ceiling, while Tina has started pointing the walls.

The pointing seems to bring out the stonework really well. The colour was a bit strange at first, as it looked a lot darker than we imagined, but it tones down nicely when it eventually dries out.

HERE'S MOLEY

2007-05-28T10:17:00.000Z

The little man in black is back!

We have had a few months with no incursions from our furry friends, but now he is well and truly back. I think he took advantage of the fact that I was distracted by the play offs to move in.

Since we have been over here permanently, I have kept an eye on any mole activity, clearing the hills away as soon as they appear, so that we can see where the mole is active. I have tried a number of different ways to get rid of him, mole traps, mole replant, smoke bombs and even bakers yeast ( expands in the moles stomach and ..... yuch!) but to no avail.

Finally I bought some Canadian poison. I'm not sure why the Canadians are such expert mole poisoners, I would have thought they have enough problems with bears, but there you go.

Applying the poison is a bit grizzly. You have to dig up worms from your garden. Then you have to cut both ends off of the worms, put all the bits in a jar with the poison, and shake it all around till the worms have a good coating. Now you have to try to find the mole runs, as this is more effective than sticking the poisoned worms under a mole hill. Drop some worms into the mole run, and hope for the best.

As you can see, there is a lot of bad karma in the whole poisoning process. Some much so, that I had to watch a couple of episodes of 'My Name Is Earl' to redress my karmic balance.

Check out the link below, to see what the hell I am on about.

http://www.nbc.com/My_Name_Is_Earl/about.shtml

The poison did the job, and we had a few months with no moles at all, until I foolishly boasted to my mate Pete that the moles had all gone. The very next day Moley was back.

I have tried to poison him again, this time using some shop bought worms, from Psycho Bunnies hunting and fishing emporium, but with no results. It seems that Moley likes his worms free range, none of this factory farming for him!

I HAD A WHEELBARROW, THE WHEEL FELL OFF ..

2007-05-17T11:40:00.000Z

It is a bank holiday over here today, so we have downed tools, as we can't afford to pay ourselves double time, and day in lieu.

I have been turning my hand to things mechanical lately, starting with the wheelbarrow. When we were building up the vegetable patch, it ran over a nail and got a puncture. I managed to get the wheel off, and then got the tube out, using a crowbar as a tyre lever, and found the hole OK.

I managed to patch it using a boat repair kit that we had left over from repairing our old paddling pool. Then I tested it again, and found another smaller puncture close to the first. I patched this one as well and the next day, after the patches had dried, the wheelbarrow was up and running again.

A few days later, I noticed that the tyre had gone down again. It must have had a slow puncture, so I grabbed my crow bar, and levered the tube out again. Sure enough, one of the patches was not quite suck down at the sides. I re-glued it and the next morning put it back on the wheel and tried to blow it up. Nothing doing, so I levered the tyre off yet again, and retested the the tube once more. There were two more holes this time. I must have torn the tube with the end on the crowbar when I was levering the tyre back on.

Two more patches ( the ratio of tube to patch is about 50-50 now) and 24 hours later, the tube was finally OK and the wheel is back on.

I'm getting quite fast at getting the wheel on and off now. If the Renault F1 team need someone to look after their wheelbarrow, I could be their man!

With the wheelbarrow finally fixed, I turned my attention back to mowing. I opened up the shed, turned 'Hank Hill' the mower on and tried to reverse it out of the shed. No movement. For some reason, the drive belt had slipped off of a pulley. Five minutes off groping around later, the belt was back on I was ready to go.

I did the front patch quickly, but then I had to go and get some more petrol, as the Jerry can was empty. Twenty minutes later, I had refueled, and I started on the main patch. I had gone barely 50 yards when the blades stopped going round. I stopped it straight away and had a look under the hood. A large bolt that acts a spindle for one of the blade-drive pulleys had decided to give up the ghost after eight years, and it had sheered off.

Although I bought the mower in France, it is an American make ( Murray) and so all of it's bolts are imperial ( 5/8 th 's etc) . This makes it hard to get spares, as everything over here is metric, and 5/8th of an inch is between 8 and 9 mm. So, I took the broken bolt off to Chabanais, were I last got the mower repaired, and waited in line, as they were very busy. After a while, they took the bolt, but after much searching, they came back with a slightly bigger bolt, asked me to try it, but didn't charge me for it.

I drove back home and tried the bolt. but it was too big to go in the centre of the pulley. I then drove of, in a different direction to Chasseneiul, to the shop that sold me the mower years ago.

I explained to the mower counter that it was an American mower, and that the bolt was not metric, but was imperial ( as best as I could ) but they could not help me, so the sent me across the road to a different part of the shop. The guy there got out his gauge, measured it up and said that he didn't have anything, as it was not a metric bolt. I then went through the whole story of the mower being American, and the fact that I had bought it there in the first place. He then phoned up the mower counter and explained it to the once again. Back across the road, they did have one the right width, but it was longer. Knowing from past experience how long it takes to order anything. I took a chance.

Back home, I got the pulley back together and threaded it up, The long bolt fitted with a few millimetres to spare. Drama over.

It only took me an hour and a half to mow the hole garden, as dad had done such a good job on it when he was over, but it took an extra 3 hours getting petrol, fixing belts, getting bolts and making repairs.

So remember, a tractor mower is NOT A TOY! ( It is really) .

Nature Watch

2007-05-08T14:41:00.000Z

The weather has been good lately, up to the last few days ( Bank Holidays mean rain, in any country) , so we have been out in the garden a bit more.

My parents were over for a week, and Dad is on a personal mission to turn an acre of French woodland into a suburban English garden, so work on the interior ground to a halt for a week.

We all built up a raised bed for our vegetable patch, but it was hard work filling it in. It looked much easier in "The Great Escape", when all you had to do was get a load of middle aged, middle class Englishmen called Roger to empty the contents of their trouser legs.

It is ready for planting now, although it may look a bit small to some, it is fine be me as I don't eat much veg anyway. We had thought about getting some chickens as well, but I don't think I would be able to slaughter one, unless it was called Harry, or Thatcher.

Henry, our kitten, has had his bits removed, and not before time, as he got chased by something big the week before ( cat/sheep/bear ? ) and he flew in the cat flap, spraying a lovely 'eau de Tom-Cat' as he went.

He seems OK after his op, as you can see above, he is enjoying the benefits of clean laundry.

Things are starting to blossom in the garden. We have a lot of grapes, some cherries and even some olives on Tina's potted tree ( none on me big tree in the garden) . We think that the walnut crop will be bad this year though, as the tree got a bit scorched when we did our latest bonfire.

The bonfire was a bit huge, what with the dead conifers that Tina had chopped down, and dad's hedge work. It was so tall that I thought I saw Edward Woodward on top when it went up.

Our summer visitors, the Hoo-poes are back. They nest every year in the back of the study, but this year some Starlings had got there first. However, they seem to have found somewhere else close by, close enough so they can wake us up every morning with their extra loud 'hoo-poe' bird call.

DIRTY LEEDS

2007-04-23T09:37:00.000Z

Things were getting very twitchy in the Fuhrer Bunker this weekend, listening to 'Dirty' Leeds hold out with 10 men for 85 minutes, until BWP found the onion bag. Now Saints still have an outside chance of going up and now Leeds look odds on for the drop. I try not to put football references in the blog, but I just can't stand Leeds, ever since the 70's and outraged my brother by cheering on Munich to win the European cup against them!

On the building front, things are starting to take shape, and I got to use a new power tool! When the windows were replaced, a couple of tiles had to be removed by the front door, so I finally got to use my new electric tile saw. It's a small table saw, with a disk cutter and a water tray to cool it down. It can even be set at an angle for mitre cuts. When I think of the hours I've spent doing this in the past with a handsaw. This did two tiles in two minutes.

Once I'd finished playing with my new toy, it was back to the plasterboard, finishing off the back wall. This required lots and lots of cutting, to get round the roof joists, and a lot of battening out at the top of the walls, as there was a deep recess where the stonework finished. Tina came up with a top idea for this, to use the steel rails that you would use to make a partition wall, instead of wood, and this was a lot quicker than trying to put wood up there.

The wall is now boarded up from end to end, cutting it out as much as possible around the stone features on the windows, and the old beam on top of the french windows ( or doors as they are known over here. I have even done a little bit of stone masonry, cutting and fitting some limestone on the ends of the window sill to fill in a gap.

It's not easy trying to keep some of the original features, but hopefully we will be able to mix the new insulated walls with some of the old , to retain a bit of character.

I've also done a succesful continuity test on the earth for the sockets in this room, using my training at last.

Sandblast-it!

2007-04-14T14:50:00.000Z

We had a delivery from E-Bay this week, our long awaited Sandblaster. It is a small pistol with a plastic tank that you put the sand in. You then have to put it in the end of an air-compressor, to push the sand out. That's where the fun started.

Not knowing a lot about compressors, we had a look on-line and asked around to try and see what we needed. The box with the compressor said it needed 90-115 PSI (pounds per square inch) and 3 horsepower, but the French people we spoke to spoke a lot about the number of litres of air that it put through each hour and that it must have a 100 litre tank.

We made up our mind that a 200 Euro 3CV compressor in Castorama would be OK for us, although it only had a 50 litre tank. However , when we got there they had an offer on a 2CV compressor (that could produce the right pressure) that was on offer for 84 Euros, so we to a chance, and bought the bargain. We also picked up some safety gear, a face mask and a respirator, along with a connecting hose, we picked up a sack of sand and we thought that we were ready to go.

When we got home, I put the compressor together, but couldn't work out where to connect the hose. I went to the local builders merchants with the instructions to get some help. I managed to get an adaptor for the end of the hose, but not before getting the piss ripped out of me by the lad in the shop, for buying a crappy castorama compressor in the first place.

Armed with the new adaptor, I put on my safety gear and started work. It started of OK, and cleaned up some of the stones, but soon seemed to struggle. As it was getting dark, we decided to stop, and try again in daylight.

The next morning, I had another go and it soon became clear that the bloke in the builders merchant was right, the compressor wasn't up to the job. I rang up castorama to see if I we could swap the compressor for a bigger one, even though I had tested it. They said yes, so I took it apart, cleaned it up, put it back in it's box, and headed off back to Limoges.

This time, I took the advice of the the bloke in the shop who pointed out that the only compressor that was up to it was 500 Euros, way out of our price range. Armed with a refund, I was now off to the local hire shop, to try one out for the day.

At the hire shop, the owner showed me how to operate the compressor and helped me load it into the car. When I was writing out the deposit cheque, I asked the owner the date. 'Vendredi 13eme, le meme en Angleterre ? ' . I told him that it was the same in England. I also thought that maybe it was not the best day to use some industrial kit for the first time.

So, I got the compressor home, connected it all up, and turned it on. After two seconds it stopped. I checked the fuses, and found that it had blown a 10 amp one. Next I connected it up to a socket on a 16 Amp fuse, but it wouldn't go. I checked the socket and extension lead out. Everything was OK bar the compressor so , in desperation I phoned the shop. The owner said that he would come out and have a look, and luckily, I didn't get him lost with my French directions.

He played around with it for five minutes, but it did nothing. He had a look at the blurb which he had brought with him, but it held no clues. All the time, I'm thinking 'Friday 13th'. Finally, he fiddled around with the machine, and found a tiny black button, on a black background, which turned out to be the reset button. Success!

Sand came out for a while, but then stopped. We had some more fun and games, while he drained the water that had built up in the bottom of the tank, but when he left, it all seemed to work OK. He had a look at the area that I wanted to clean that day, wished me 'bon courage' and left me to it.

The sand flow was a bit intermittent, but it did work most of the time, once I had blown any remaining air out of the compressor tank, but it the effect wasn't quite as good as we had hoped.

We had hoped it would be like a pressure washer, cleaning the moss of of a patio, but it proved a lot harder to clean the stones, as you had to hold the pistol a few inches away from the stones. It didn't come up like Salisbury Cathedral, but it did clean out all of the joints around the stones, so we are almost ready to start re-pointing.

As for next time, a proper sized sandblaster costs £1,500 and then needs a compressor the size of the ones that BT uses to did up roads, so we will see.

THE VAN FROM HELL

2007-04-08T12:20:00.000Z

It's been a busy week. We started with a trip to a new builders merchants on Monday, as they had a lot of special offers on, and we've ordered the slabs for the poolside, as they were half price. It will be a few months before I can use them, as the pool isn't due until June, but they were a bargain. It just means the garden will even look more like a building site for a while.

In the barn, we needed some more plasterboard, so it was time to borrow the scary van again from the local 3MMM.

It doesn't look that big in the picture, but to me it feels like driving a bus. The last time I hired it, I nearly took out half the warehouse, trying to corner. The gearbox seems upside down, (although they have now got a sticker on the dashboard with where the gears are, rather than it being scrawled in marker pen) and the gear lever is now stuck on with gaffer tape. It scares the hell out of me, driving it, but it only costs 9 Euros to hire, so needs must.

Before we could start hanging the boards, we had to bind the walls to give the boards something to grip. In England, you would water down some PVA and paint the walls with it. Over here you use a fixateur which is like PVA, but two or three times more expensive. Might be a business opportunity there, setting up a PVA website?

Hanging the boards has proved a lot more difficult than on the breeze block walls. Even though we had bound the walls with the fixateur, the first piece of plasterboard had trouble sticking to the mortar on the walls, and added to that the stone walls are very uneven. I had to take the first piece down again, and add a lot more plaster dabs to the wall before it would stick. I have also had to cut round the window, as it had some nice stonework that we wanted to keep, and cut round the roofing joists at the top as well. On top of that, we could barely get a sheet up the scaffold between us, so we had to take it down and cut it in half before I could hang it, as there was no way that I would have been able to dangle over the edge of the scaffold with it.

You can probably see in the picture that the joints are a bit uneven, due to the wall behind them being all over the place, so we think that we will have to use my agricultural skimming to finish the wall off, rather than dry lining it, but that is probably more in keeping with the rest of the room anyway.

We have also fitted six replacement windows as well. An impressive weeks work you might say. Not really though. It was Monseur Chatillon. All we did was make him cups of chocolate chaud as he doesn't drink coffee or alcohol (not typically French) .

The doors look good, but now we have to wait for him to replace the shutters, as they look crap by comparison.

March Madness

2007-03-30T15:20:00.000Z

I borrowed the title from the Saints web-site. They used it to publicise the new Season Ticket offer. Unfortunately it has been proven to be true in more senses, as Saints have lost their Chairman, lost the plot on the pitch (blowing their promotion chances) and erected a statue of Jimmy Crankie instead of Ted Bates ( I always thought that Strachan was the Crankie look-a-like). Still it could be worse, I could be an England fan as well (DOH!) .

On the home front, we have made more progress, working round interruptions for visitors. My brother was the latest. He kindly treated me to a round of golf. We both went round in about 150, but he managed to get a par on the 18th (the b#st#rd) which is the only hole I've ever managed a par on. 150 is a lot, but the course was very wet and so my scuff shots didn't trundle as far as normal.

In the garden, the rockery is finished and has the first lot of plants in. We used some of the rubble left over from the roofing as a base, and then built it up with rocks that came from the new window openings. It was hard work, and in hindsight, it would have been easier to pile the rocks on top of the rubble heap and call that the rockery, but I think it was worth it.

Tina has now finished pulling out the brambles in all the hedges, ready for them to start growing again, and we have another heap ready to burn. Having a large garden is very nice, but it is a hell of a lot of work. Hopefully, now that we are here full time, it might be a bit easier to keep up with it.

In the house, I have got the third lot of plasterboard on the ceiling at the back, and Tina has scrubbed down the outside facing walls, ready for plaster boarding.

It's getting to the stage now where we need to sandblast the walls before we can do anything else. We got a quote over the phone from someone who wanted 700 Euros a day ( I don't think Matt Le Tiss was on that much) so now we have bought a small sandblaster on E-Bay for £50.00. Hopefully it will work OK, and if so we can undercut the other guy and still make a mint!

We're now on the look out for a diving suit to act as safety gear, as the sand gets everywhere.

a bientot

Productivity

2007-03-16T10:15:00.000Z

I saw somewhere that the French have the highest productivity in Western Europe at the moment, which goes against the shoulder shrugging stereotypes. Perhaps it is because they haven't outsourced all their manufacturing to India and China, rather than the UK model of keeping all the management and getting rid of anyone who actually produces anything!

If the stats are true, then someone in France must be working very hard, 'cause we haven't done much for the past few weeks, as we have had an attack of visitors, so we were forced to down tools for a while.

One visitor, Phil, did help me start putting an extractor fan in the bathroom, and Tina's Mum did help out with planting the seeds for our vegetable patch, but otherwise that was it for a fortnight.

The fan is now in and working, but it took a full day to install it and wire up, which is a bit scary for when it comes to doing estimates for other people. I have seen figures that you should allow up to one day to install a new socket, but I had thought that that was allowing for cups of tea, reading the Sun and testing the new socket by plugging in a tele and watching the racing ( not me of course, I am a professional).

Motivation has never been my strong point, at the Banque de Cheval Noir where I used to work, they relied on threats of reprisals as a motivational tool.

However this week the weather has been good , so we have been hard at it in the garden ( ooh er ! ) . I have been out on Hank Hill, the mower, Tina has been stripping loads of brambles out of the hedge and I have been stripping the ivy of the dutch barn. The hedge is so bare now that you can see for miles and we've got a huge bonfire ready to go.

It's supposed to turn cold next week, so it'll be back to some proper building work.

Future Proofing

2007-02-26T12:35:00.001Z

Another week goes by without much progress. No change there, I hear you say, but we did have a friend Anna come to stay for a few days, and so we tried to keep her entertained. We went walking most days she was here, and one went to Mont Dore for lunch one day, after we saw that they had some snow there. Mont Dore is about 2 and a half hours away, and is the highest peak in the Massif Centrale. The snow has been poor this year, like most of Europe, but is is still nice to visit.

Henry, our kitten disgraced himself when Anna was here. One evening, we could hear a lot of banging coming from Anna's room, and I said, joking, "If you go up there and find your underwear all over the room, it's not me, it's the cat".

Ten minutes later, Anna went upstairs and found one of her bra's on the landing, and with a trail of underwear across the bedroom. We now have a panty raider in the house!

On the house front I have run the TV cables through to the new living room, which is where the idea of future proofing comes in. One TV cable just doesn't do it these days.

I have put in two cables for satellite, in case we ever get a system like SkyPlus, with another co-axial cable for ordinary French TV. French TV is going digital in the next few years, and there are a lot of companies offering TV via your telephone, so I also put in an extra telephone cable as well. I think we will also need a distribution box in the loft to network all of this together. I have seen a few Grand Designs where the houses have more cables than the IT department at the Banque de Cheval Noir where I used to work, but we're not going that mad. It will just be good to have the house wired up so that we can have music piped through the house, or so that I can drive Tina mad by watching Match of the Day in bed on a Sunday morning.

Back to repointing this morning, and I have knackered my shoulder digging out some concrete with my SDS drill, while Tina is now fearlessly going up and down the scaffold, finishing off the rest of the wall.

A bientot

More Stuff About Moles !

2007-02-21T11:34:00.000Z

When 'Diggers' failed to produce the goods in our battle against the short sighted beasties, we took the matter into our own hands.

We tried setting the traps at various points of the garden, but to no avail. On our next visit, we tried a new strategy of deterrent, and bought an ultra-high frequency spike, which was supposed to blast them out with white noise. However, when we returned one month later it was worse than ever.

I had a chat with our neighbour Thiery, a sheep farmer who knows all. When I showed him the spike he said ' Pour le taupe, c'est comme le musique' ( it's like music to the moles) and he then proceeded to disco dance in our garden, by way of a demonstration. He then explained how moles are normally active between 7 and 8 am, noon till one and 5 till 6 at night ( although I'm not sure what they do when the clocks go back) .

When we returned a few months later in the new year, the moles had mysteriously gone. We thought perhaps they were hibernating, or gone on holiday, but either way, they were gone!
The next day, the mystery was solved. Thiery popped over and told us what had actually happened. When he had a bit of time on his hands, when his sheep were penned up for the winter, he had sat in our garden with his shotgun, waited for a molehill to start, and then blasted it!

If in doubt, Nuke 'em!

This kept them under control for a while, but this year they have returned "DIG HARD WITH A VENGANCE"!

I have seen the future - Dry Lining

2007-02-16T15:44:00.000Z

We have made better progress this week, and I have reached the length of the room with the new, dry lined ceiling.

Although the roof has been insulated already, with a multi layered foil, we decided that you can never have enough insulation ( saving the planet) so we have opted for insulated plasterboard for the ceiling. This is formed of a slightly thinner plasterboard sheet ( 10mm) with a slab of polystyrene( 40mm ) on the back. It is no heavier than ordinary plasterboard, and is easier to work with as the insulation gives it more strength. It even bounces if you drop it off the top of a ladder !

It takes a while to fit , as none of the joists are straight, so you have to take a lot of measurements, and then take it up the ladder to try and squeeze it in. Typically I've had to do this five our six times for each sheet. Some of the older joists are round, so you have to try to remember to measure the gap 50 mm out, where the surface of the plasterboard will be rather than measuring the roof slats.

Another complication, is that you can only get 70mm screws, which are hard to screw into the roof slats, so you have to screw a few in to hold the sheet, then take them all out one by one, drill a guide hole and screw them back again.

The shorter sheets in the back of this photo are the result of a top tip from my friendly builder Mr H, who always fits the sheets a width at a time, rather than trying to go from perlin to perlin like I was doing. This method ensures that you have a bevelled edge on each side of a joint which should, in theory, give you a smoother, and invisible joint. We will see!

A Bit of a Mistake

2007-02-12T12:14:00.000Z

Since we got Fabrice, we have both been under the weather, very stressed out and ill. Tina hasn't had a good nights kip in a week, worrying about the dog.

We have tried, but it really does seem that we are not dog people after all. Tina is better than I am, I get nervous when he gets nibbely, but we just can't relax with him around. People say that a young dog is like looking after a child, and you all know what we think about kids!

The sad thing is that Fabrice is a very good natured dog. He gets a bit excited some times, and jumps up at you and can nip, but I'm sure that you could quickly train him out of that. Other than that, he has his bed under the table on the patio, and sleeps there quite happily through the night. That's why we're sure that it's not him, it's us (me in particular).

Luckily for us, some new friends lost one of their dogs to cancer last year, and after a lot of thought, have decided to take on Fabrice as company for Hatti, their Labrador bitch.

I know it must seem like a bit of a cop out, but we think he will be much better off, as they have had dogs for years, and will be able to train him properly, and he will have Hatti to play with.

Fabrice will be moving on on Wednesday, but he will only be a few miles away, so we can see how he is getting on.

UPDATE !

We took Fabrice of to his new home on Wednesday, and he settled in straight away. He was soon playing with Hatti, running off into the garden with either end of a plastic bag in their mouths, like Lady and the Tramp but with rubbish!

He settled in well, and that night he slept on his blanket in Andrew and Suzie's bedroom. Much nicer than under our table, but hard on Andrew and Suzie, 'cause he snores!

PS He is not called Fabrice anymore, as Andrew prefers the name Boogey, although I think they should call him Eric, as he is sharing a house with Hatti. Also , if they got another dog, they could call it PC Corkey! Younger readers check out the link below.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/s/sykes_7776125.shtml

Planning Permission for a Dog!

2007-02-06T10:02:00.000Z

We went to the Marie's (Mayor) office last week to ask about the paperwork to get planning permission for a swimming pool in the garden. Fairly straightforward you might think, but not so.

The last time we had been into see the Marie, we were trying to trace the owner of a stray dog that we had managed to get hold of. He was a hunting dog and looked as if he had been lost for a few weeks. He was very thin and mangy but he was good tempered, probably just because we were feeding him. The mayor took him away, and tried ringing round the local hunts, but had no luck, and the dog was sent to the local refuge. We uhmed and ahhed about whether or not to keep him, but decided in the end that his was a bit to old for us.

(Stray dog number one)

So this time, no sooner had we been given the planning form when the Marie asked if we still wanted a dog, as he had another lost dog for us to look at. We went to see him that afternoon and he was a bit of a cutey, and had Tina won over straight away, so said we would wait for a few days, in case someone claimed him. Before you get the wrong idea about the French, I checked with the Marie, and it's not normal for him to find abandoned dogs, let alone two in a month!

(Stray dog number two)

We picked him up yesterday.

His name is Fabrice, and the Marie's daughter thinks he might be a 'Chien Allemande' cross (German Pincer) . We think he is about six months old, but we are taking him to the vets today to see what they think, and to hand over another large cheque!

Update

He was very well behaved in the vets, until they called us into the surgery room, when he wouldn't move and had to be dragged in. Once inside he was fine.

He didn't have a chip, so we he is now ours! He has been chipped, and started his jabs with no complaints, although we did fear that he had had a dump in the boot on the way home. Luckily it was jus our first 'in car dog fart'.

Mole diaries

2007-01-31T19:44:00.000Z

I'd never had a problem with moles before, living in town but, out here in the sticks, things are a bit different.

The first year that we had the house, we had mole hills everywhere and didn't know what to do about it. I didn't think that it would be too much of a problem, I just thought that I could clear away the molehills and that would be that. What I didn't realise was that the moles kill all of the grass roots under the molehills, leading to loads of round bald patches all over the lawn.

A bloke I worked ( codename Diggers) with used to be a gamekeeper and he volunteered to sort it out in exchange for some free accommodation. I bought some traps, and sent him on his way. His controversial diaries about his failure read like the 'Heart of Darkness' of gardening. Here are some horrifying extracts.

"Monday

0800 hrs Monday - an inspection of the ground & hinterland revealed evidence of a mole infestation of epidemic proportions.

The last time I saw anything like this was in the 'Nam' - and I don't need to remind you that Charlie won that one!

I needed to get on a level playing field to make a true appraisal of the situation so, after a trip to Angouleme for some R&R, me and the family flattened all of the molehills in the garden. At least then I could see where Charlie was active. Oh yeah, I also needed Napalm, but there was none in the shed, so the next best thing was 'Hank Hills Mower'.

I concentrated efforts on the area south of the copse, setting all 3 traps. Don't worry, Charlie hasn't learnt how to use these yet, so you should be quite safe.

Tuesday

Tuesday morning revealed that two of the three traps had been disturbed- Charlie had back filled earth into one end of the trap. I am uncertain if this is his way of taking the piss or whether the digging leaves loose soil in the run that needs to be moved.

No moles caught on Tuesday - although it is evident that Charlie is present in area Z - some molehills have been resurrected - I have even stood and watched Charlie digging out - It's strange but you can't actually see him, just the earth moving.

Wed morning

As I walked through area Z I noticed some movement, and a little nose peeking out - it was Charlie . I went for the fork, but by the time I got back, he had gone!

Observation

My advice to you Keith is this

1 - Stamp molehills down daily. This allows you to observe areas of activity accurately
2 - Always carry the garden fork, you might catch Charlie on spec, and be able to 'fork him'.
3 - Check traps at either end of the day
4 - Experiment - Charlie can be beaten - dig a few holes yourself

I think the next thing is poison - I haven't a clue how many moles you have but, judging by the activity, it's between 3 and 1 million.

5 - Get the airforce to Napalm the garden ( first thing in the morning cos I love the smell, etc, etc ) "

The horror, the horror!

The Story So Far

2007-01-25T15:55:00.000Z

I thought that it would be good to give some more details of what we have actually been up to in the last five months, before we started the blog.

When we moved out in August, the shutters and new doors had all been fitted on the barn, so the outside was more or less up together, although they all needed a few coats of varnish.

On the inside , our builder ( Mr H) had moved the pain du bois (an arrangement of wooden bars used to tether cattle) around 90 degrees, and was about to fit the joists for upstairs. He did this with the help of three lads, while Tina and I had the demanding work of making them tea.

With the professionals off site, it was our turn to fit upstairs floor. We decided to fit waterproof chipboard as a base, and then we can tile or parquet it when we ( one day) get to the decorating phase upstairs.

This was all done in time for our furniture to be delivered from the UK, as the front of the barn is going to act as storage for a while.

In the meantime, we were also having to tame the garden, as we had not had the chance to visit the house since April so the 'grass was as high as an elephants eye' ( name that tune?). The garden is almost an acre, and it takes a lot of work to keep up together. The vines on the front of the house had almost covered the doorway, the garden path had almost disappeared, and the tree that I use as shade for the car in the summer had grown so much that it would have taken the windscreen out.

And then there we're the mole hills .........

( to be continued )

Snow Day

2007-01-24T13:01:00.000Z

After our good start to the week, we had 15 cm of snow on tuesday, so we have downed tools again.

We managed to get out to the shops when it started, so we've got plenty of food, although I am thinking that maybe I should have got an extra crate of Heiniken, as there is more snow forecast for tomorrow.

It is very quiet today. The roads are all iced over, so even the maddest Frenchman is taking it steady. The dustmen didn't make it through, and we haven't seen a single truck go past.

We went for a six mile walk round the village today, and it looks like most people have just stayed at home.

I might try to get motivated tommorow, and put up some more plasterboard, but is soooo cold in the barn, I'm afraid the plaster might freeze before we get it on the wall!

Progress

2007-01-23T17:13:00.000Z

We've now done as much as we can in the cellar, until we can knock through, and we're not going to do that until the winters over!

So this week we are both working in the new living room. Tina is still repointing(scraping out), although the scaffolding is up a stage, which makes it very scary to get down from. ( It took half an hour the last time!)

We have also managed to get the first bits of plasterboard onto the ceiling. This is really tricky, as the joists are really old, and very few of them are straight, but at least we don't need the scaffold for it yet. That will come later.

It takes a lot of getting up and down the ladder, measuring cutting and measuring again to try and get them to fit, and then a bit of filling in the bits that you have over cut, but hopefully we will get the hang of it. That's two down, and another 34 to go for this room!

Getting my rse in gear

2007-01-17T16:48:00.000Z

Well after only 6 months, I have finally got of my rse and register for a blog.

We will try and keep it updated with our, slow, progress with the barn conversion.

The utility room and cellar are about us up together as they can be, without knocking through, but we are saving that for the spring, when the weather is a bit warmer.

All of the plasterboard for the next room has been delivered, but looking at how (not) straight the rafters are, it is going to be a bit like the Sistine Chapel, but in dulux emulsion instead.