Stone Again

The walls of our house are built from local stone. This is a good thing. It is just as good as stone from somewhere else, but closer. It also means that the barn looks right.

There is an adage in the stone wall building game that once you pick a stone up, you put it in its final place. Handling a stone more than once is a waste of time and should be avoided. Hah! You try it.

 

This pile was labouriously carried from the collapsed back half of the barn and stored under the hangar by Jamie and his pals.

The sea islanders off the coast of Geogia may have an old saying: Stone don’t care about rain. Firewood do - and we needed somewhere to store firewood.  So I moved the pile to the other side of the yard using a wheelbarrow and several days. A year or so later I decided to build a workshop. No prizes for guessing where.

This peripatetic stone pile has now been cornered, trapped between the road and the steep bank down to the pottager. It cannot escape and will remain where it is until I am ready to use it. Well, that is my fervent wish. But this is only one of two substantial piles we have.

This is a section of manger that ran the length of what is now our kitchen. The stone which forms the base of the manager weighs more tonnes than I care to think about. Most of it was taken out and piled up outside the small barn.

This, it transpired, was just were we wanted to have the afternoon terrace (a terrace which is in shade in the afternoon, the morning terrace at the other end of the house is usually steaming by 3pm). So when we levelled the ground for the terrace we had to move the stone pile. We didn’t want to move it very far, so it just got pushed it across the path some three or four metres.

Time passes… about two years actually… the sound of terrace building is drowned out by the sound of drumming fingers. 

I have been working on a theory that when people ‘drum’ their fingers, they start with the little finger and work towards the index finger, try it and let me know – but I digress.

One day I decide I am fed up with looking at this pile of stone and decide to do something with it. So I cart loads of it down the hill and build a wall. It takes three days, but at least I won’t have to move the stuff again.

Looking at the stone which is left I realise how little I have used. So I cart loads of it up the hill and build another wall.

Returning to the pile it definitely looks smaller but still substantial. So I look around for something else to do with it. This is killing me. I think a mausoleum might be appropriate…

and it doubles as a disguise for the fosse spetique... 

 

Then I start on a lighthouse to disguise our telephone post…

 

...but do not have enough to build a full-height lighthouse.

However there is a great pile cornered up by the road…

There's Poêles and Poles

I popped into Monatuban today to buy some cement from Brico Depot. I was also on a mission to look for a new wood burner (poêle à bois) for the Small Barn while I was there.

Selection of wood burning stove from Brico Depot
(the builder's equivalent of Lidl)

The Small Barn is the biggest room in the house but was named when the other barn was an undivided space, and it just stuck. I suppose for those of you who do not have even one barn, this all sounds a little barn-ist, but that's just the way it is, so get over it.

The Small Barn and Lucien's tractor. This six-part  photo
was taken through a very small hole in the door on the
day we decided to buy Poulet. Unfortunately, by the
time we took posession, the tractor had gone.

There are loads of poêles to choose from and I find it hard to believe a metal box with a door and a couple of holes can cost so much. And then there is the cost of the stove pipe and the bit on the top that looks like a small concrete snooker table which is there to stop the wind blowing the door off the poêle and filling the house with glowing embers which are likely to set fire to something and burn the place down. It is also supposed to stop rain getting in and running down the inside of the stove pipe.


There is a dilemma with stove pipes. They are made in one metre sections joined together. One end of each section is male the other female (in the plug and socket sense, not the rumpy-pumpy mucky-fun sense). The idea is that the lengths of stove pipe are put together with the male bit at the top and the female bit straddling it in a snug fit. This will help the smoke make a clean emission and not leak out of the joints. Unfortunately, any rain that gets into the pipe is travelling in the other direction and can leak out of the joint causing brown stains to run down the pipe and make equally brown puddles on the floor. So the quandry is which way up should you fit your pipe?

And then there is the cost of the metal plate that stops the stovepipe from touching the wooden roof (the last one cost sixty five sodding Euros...) and the flashing to seal the hole and the labour to cut the hole and fit the damn thing.

I decided to stop thinking about poêles, and drove back to Lauzerte. The road takes me through a number of villages most of which are approached through avenues of plane trees like this.
 

In what appears to be a staggeringly shallow link, but is in fact a rather fine description of my intricately structured mental processes, I pass the site of the world's shortest telegraph pole:

It reminds me of the two blokes trying out for a job with British Telecom (thought it could be any telecoms company anywhere). They are each given a truck full of poles and told to plant as many as possible before close of business. They come back at the end of the day and are asked how many poles they managed to plant. The first bloke says twenty, the second says two. The BT boss says to the second bloke  "How'd you only manage two? The other guy did twenty." The second bloke says "Yeah, but you should see how much he left sticking out..."


So, anyway, I was thinking about poêles and poles as I drove home... The French have a casual attitude to telegraph poles which I thought I'd share with you, and thought I'd take a few photos to demonstrate the point.

They start out thinking "upright would be good"...

But after lunch they seem happy if they have managed to make the things stand up at all. Vertical is not a high priority.

Indeed they have a special accomodation for poles that want to stand up straight, but have to be restrained at an angle. I tiried to find a good example (of which there are many) on the way home this afternoon, but this is all I could find. It is not a partciularly good one but illustrates the point to the willing observer.

So what conclusion can we draw from all this? Not much really,apart from a vague linguistic similarity, the main things poêles and poles have in common is that one can be cut up and fed into the other. I will leave it you to decide which is which. When you are done, just put your feet up in front of the warmer of the two and reach for a beer.

Mmmm, toasty.

Blog-O-Matic

While I am all for saving the rain forest, woodland stewardship and planting trees to ensure the survival of the planet an' all that, there is a strong case for cutting the buggers down as well. It’s called the wood-burning stove.

 

It is the domestic version of ‘blokes setting fire to stuff in the garden’

(It's just the angle that makes it look like a trailer full of flame)

We have a wood burner which we borrowed from our friend Angie about five years ago. We offered to buy it from her a few times but she kept saying “No” so we stopped asking – but carried on using it.

It is made of cast iron and fire-brick and when we first got it I loaded it up outside to check that I had put it together properly and that the door seal was OK. Then I sat around enjoying the balmy September evening and wondered how long it would be before we had a chimney in the house, which I had been led to believe was an essential element in the satisfactory use of a burning wood stove in the home.

It is rated at about 8kW. I have only the vaguest idea of how you convert logs per hour into kilowatts – probably something to do with how many calories it takes to raise a horse through one degree Celsius – but it does the job. Mind you, the under-floor heating gives it a head start. So it does not have a massive job to do.

The underfloor heating matrix, long since buried
under several thousand tonnes of flooring.

‘Our’ stove is made in Belgium, sold in France and has instructions in English cast into the door. These include advice on suitable fuels (wood and coal) over-firing (don’t) and safety for chattels (if your furniture starts smouldering it is too close).

We get our wood from a number of sources. The easiest is to buy it from a reputable dealer.

Our neighbour, and former owner of our property, Juliette, says that oak is best. Difficult to argue with that as oak is a dense hardwood, plentiful and cheap. She adds that it should be dried for two years, which again makes sense as:

a) it burns better when dry and valuable heat is not used to turn water into steam

b) it shrinks slightly so, as it is sold by volume, e.g. a cubic metre, the ‘cube’ will contain more wood and less water.

c) it is lighter to move around – and one thing you learn is that wood is NEVER put in the right place first time – and sure as oeufs is oeufs it will need moving.

Then it gets a bit weird as Juliette goes on to add that you should only burn oak which is grown on the south side of a hill. Hmmm. But as Juliette has often expressed bizarre opinions as fact, and they have turned out to have merit, we take this seriously too. Unfortunately most fuel dealers do not include that particular piece of intelligence in their marketing material (usually consisting of a road side sign saying ‘A Vendre - Bois de Chauffage’)  and those I have asked look at me as if I am mad. This is a common reaction during my forays into French France, and I have become quite used to it - water off a duck’s back. Bof!

Incidentally ‘A Vendre’ which means For Sale (OK smarty pants, you knew that but this is also for those that may not, so bear with me…) is commonly abbreviated by combining the A and the V thus:

Considering that much typography in common usage is BLOODY DREADFUL AND MAKES ME WANT TO SCREAM, this is both elegant and economical – marvellous!

The other principal source of firewood is our own trees which occasionally fall over or need trimming. One of the mature oaks had the misfortune to be struck by lightning twice. The first time was many years ago and the tree was pronounced ‘nearly, mostly dead’.  The second time was last year and a VERY LARGE branch fell into our pond. We felt that without this counterbalance the rest of the tree was in danger of falling the other way into the road some 10 metres below and something had to be done. It was way past my modest lumberjacking skills so we got John and Kate Harlow to come and decapitate it and then log it into chunks.

John not falling

Top of tree falling

Other sources of firewood include accumulated scraps, palettes, off-cuts, bits of old shuttering and stuff which is just too beaten up to be any use for anything else. Many a happy hour is spent chopping small bits into smaller bits for kindling.

We haven’t needed to buy any wood for a year or so, but the ‘lightning’ oak is just about finished and we bought a couple of steres last month. The bois de chauffage dealers charge what they think they can get away with, starting at around €50 per cubic metre (stere). The final price will depend on a number of things, supply and demand, time of year, type of wood, how long it has been drying, delivered or collected - and length. Short lengths take more cuts and therefore more work and the price goes up. We usually get it either in 1m lengths or 50cm. The most recent is lot is 50cm. 

This is a nuisance as ‘our’ stove  can only accommodate very thin branches at 50cm length, as soon as they have any substance they can only be a maximum of about 45cm (life’s a bitch). So I have to chop them up a little bit more. This is made considerably easier by the deft application of a chainsaw. I have amassed three of the things and they are very lovely, but still hard work after a few hours.

 

Chopping 5cm off each log is not only annoying but it sounds daft, after all what am I supposed to do with a great pile of 5cm thick coasters? Nevertheless it must be done (but I cut the things in half to prevent coaster overload). In addition to being annoying, it is labour intensive as each piece has to be lifted onto the saw horse, cut, the saw put down and the two piece stacked somewhere else. Believe me the novelty wears off pretty quickly.

The really thick logs need splitting and I bought a log splitter on ‘special’. Every time I see my neighbour and part-time bois de chauffage dealer Alain (think Eddie Grundy) and his mate smashing their ancient cast iron wedge into tree trunks the size of 45 gallon oil drums with a sledge hammer, I think ‘good move’.

One sleepless night I was thinking this through and an idea started to form. Next day I skipped merrily to the wood shed [You don't have a wood shed. Ed.] and with the aid of some sturdy planks and four masonry clamps knocked up the prototype of the Log-O-Matic.

This reduced the repetitive bending and lifting and placing of logs on the saw horse. With a couple of deft strokes a whole stack of logs are cleft in twain.

 

It was then that the versatility of this device really stuck home and I used it to massacre a great pile of skinny branches donated by our wedge-weilding neighbour Alain…and the Twig-O-Matic came into existence.

Everyone who saw it said ‘You ought to patent that…’ in the way people do. There is a reflex action which occurs immediately after these words have been uttered. The lungs and vocal chords continue to function without the further input from the brain and an additional sound is emitted by the speaker. It is it complete bollocks of course but it always sounds like ‘… you’ll make a fortune.” 

Of course, I can’t be arsed and the prototype becomes the production model in a production run of one.

Two years later, sitting with feet up in front of ‘our’ wood burner idly leafing through the ‘pub’ (publicity material kindly dumped by the barrow-load at our house by the post-person) I see the very same device in the French woodchopper’s version of the Innovations catalogue retailing for just €99.99.

And so the world turns. Somewhere, some poor bugger is frantically marketing the Log-O-Matic and making a few quid on each sale and I am reaching for another beer by my fireside... and wondering how I got to be such a lucky sod.

Follow the Bear...

Ahh! Remember the heady days of Hoffmeister? Yellow tin, lad-bear with a Rude Boy trilby, shitty beer, the stunningly effective strap line 'Follow the Bear' and only 59p (or 65p) a tin?

Well this has nothing to do with that.

This is about following this blog. Signing up to follow the blog will not do anything really useful other than make it look like I have lots of followers. It's not like facebook where you have LOADS of REALLY GOOD friends WHO LOVE YOU and can prove what a DEVASTATINGLY POPULAR person you are. It will not even email you to tell you there is a new blog for your delight. It just says 'I follow this blog'.

NO! It's true, I looked it up on the Blogger help page. It just lets other people know that the blogger has some readers. How crap is that?

But it's the best they can offer. So go on, hit the Follow button and let me know I am not blogging into the unknown.

[Yes, please do, if only to keep him off my back. He's stuck it to the top of the page by lying about the date it was posted and says he won't take it away until there are enough followers. Personally I think is a Messianic delusion. Ed.]

Shopping - You Want It, We Got It

I promised to do a little more on shopping, can't remember where but I know I did and it's easier to do it than look for the source of the promise and quietly delete it.

One thing that is apparent is that in Oman independent shops flourish alongside the supermarket chains, and even the small shops offer an astounding amount of choice. Say you want some nail clippers, you go into an appropriate shop (the enourmous, illuminated sign over the entrance and visible from Mars, will say something like 'Sale of General Goods' see blog: Fun with Words - Signs of Oman) and there are so many to choose from that your nails will by visibly longer by the time you have made a considered decision. Well you wouldn't just take the first pair you saw. Would you...?

You want nail clippers?
We got nail clippers.

You want more nail clippers?
We got more nail clippers.

If you want plastic household goods you will find them under a 'Sale of Plastic Items' sign, or it may say 'Sale of Household Goods', but whatever it says you will be in little doubt about what is on offer. 

You want colourful Plastic Items?
We got colourful Plastic Items.

Other things are sold in many different colours and sizes.

You want about 5 metres of cord?
We got about 500 metres of cord.

(UK string dealers take note)

You want light switches?
Go to a Supplier of Electrical Items and Fitting Thereof shop
These are for turning our lights on (and off)

You got roaches? We got Pif Paf.

You want Pif Paf?
We got it.

They are not free of course and must be paid for. In the larger shops you will be guided to the tills by the 'Pay Here' sign.

 In the REALLY big shops there is the additional sign:

You have to admire a shop that has a 'Pay There' sign...
(well, I do)

Bling should have its own section but there is only so much you say about it (see also blog: Mosque for Sale) . It is a case there a thousand pictures say about the same as a single word.

The wonderful thing about bling
Is that bling is a wonderful thing...
(with acknowledgement to AA Milne)

The wonderful thing about bling is that it doesn't mind what you do with it, it is always bling. The picture above is a random collection of pictures mashed together, this would not work with many things, the picture would always look wrong, but 'bling don't care'. You want Bling? We got Bling.

You want kiddie rides? We got kiddie rides...

And they are all fenced in.

We got kiddies too. Here is Master (only slightly) Creepy

 You want pretty lady? Well, we got Mrs Grim.

You wanna nice frock? We gotta lotta frocks.

[Yeah, yeah, I know - any colour you want as long as it's black. Ed.]

You wanna pink wheel barrow? We got one.

But it's not all glamour... We got shelves of useful stuff (Supplier of Building Materials)

Or tools (also Supplier of Building Materials)

 Talking of useful things... You wanna religion?

Christmas cards alongside
a quote from the Holy Koran

We do all the major brands...

So next time you are in Carrefour, Tesco or K-Mart (and derivatives) see how many nail clippers they have, or extracts from the Holy Koran in the Christmas card section, or lengths of rope in a dozen colours, or little boys with vacant stares (not including customers).

If you are disappointed at the lack of choice remember your local independent and support them before the multinationals put them all out of business for ever. [OK that will do. Remember, Asda has a superb range of plastic boxes, some with lids - and Poundland still stocks a wide selection of Hannah Montana items. - Ed.].

Who is Hannah Montana? Who cares.