March Madness

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

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

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 !

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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!