It's an ill wind ...

The week and the year started cold, and we finally had the snow we should have had for Christmas. As you can see, it was a pretty weak effort - the four to five centimetres paling into insignificance beside the heavier fall, that resulted in us spending seven hours in an electricity free zone, earlier in December.


Nonetheless, it was snow, it was pretty, and our Sky dish was specially modified to pick up Channel 5 in its native mode!


As well as that, it has been cold enough to keep that snow around all week and, this morning, the remaining snow was still very crunchy underfoot with ambient temperatures at 7am of -7°C. Do you think winter is on the way?

Nice for the skiers and hence for tourism in the region, which is, in turn, good for the region's economy. As the old saying goes, "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good" or, in the words of John Heywood's A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, 1546 - "An yll wynde that blowth no man to good, men say."

On the subject of things historical (or should that be hysterical?) - Researching the history of the house is something we may or may not get into later. In the meantime, we do have a stone lintel bearing the date 1879, which was discovered during renovation by the previous owner, and which we thought would indicate the date the house was built.

That was until, during the course of the St George's Day celebration in St Maigner in 2007 (yes, we do celebrate St George as the patron saint of St Maigner), we saw the official plan of the commune of St Maigner on display. This plan was marked as 'completed in 1830'. Extracting the area of Beaugut (then spelled Bogut), and overlaying part of it on a current Google Earth image shows how accurately it was drawn, and that this hamlet was well established in 1830. It is safe to assume that communities shown on it pre-date it by some time, suggesting that our house could have been completed either late in the 18th century or very early in the 19th.
Click on the image to see it enlarged.


Notice that the two buildings at the top of the plan are no longer in existence, and that the ruined building at the bottom of the Google Earth image did not exist 180 years ago.

During the week the new Trust site went live at www.hawk-conservancy.org [link] and seems to be fairly well received so far. There is still a lot of detailed work to be done to ensure the content is current and accurate. Some of the content has been around, in one form or another, for over twelve years, so the exercise bears doing. This work is being done by the Trust's Chief Scientific Officer in whatever time he can spare between his other activities.

As is to be expected, when I spend a lot of time developing on a technology on one of my sites, it becomes available to the others and so, having worked on the new menu, breadcrumb and navigation systems for the Trust site, it is being adapted and used for the others, starting (surprise, surprise) with www.beaugut.com [link]. All the sites are listed at this link, if anyone is interested.

The first of January having been achieved, I have completed my registration forms for auto-entrepreneur status which, if granted, will allow me to accept paid work from others. The way the pound is being hammered at the moment, any extra income is welcome.

The forms are not difficult or complex in themselves, but are rendered so by being (again surpise, surprise) in French. The complexity comes not from the language, because it is pretty straightforward, but from my difficulty in understanding the nuances and subtleties of the semi-legal language used. There were a number of areas where it was not 100% clear to me what was being asked - again, not because of the difficulty of the language but because, in my translation of it, there were potential ambiguities. However, the forms were completed, submitted, and have been passed through to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Riom for action. We shall wait and see what transpires. Unlike stubborn grass stains, it will all come out in the wash.

On Friday morning, less than an hour into my morning's work, my computer, without any warning, went into a coma - just as if there were a power cut, except there wasn't! The PC was off, and wouldn't turn back on - but plugging the scanner into the USB port initialised the scanner, the lights on the network card are on, and the small power on lamp on the motherboard is on. All this suggests a problem in the main interrupter switch on the front panel, or somewhere in the PSU's switching; but that isn't my area of expertise. Additionally, as the PC was rebuilt only a couple of months ago, I thought the guy who rebuilt it should have a look at it in case it is a failure in one of the new units he installed. I have therefore asked Christophe to take a look at it, hoping that he can come quite soon, as I don't like trying to do everything on the laptop, with an external disk holding all the data. Thank goodness I took a full backup of my data on Wednesday!

Early start this morning. Carin arrived from Holland on Wednesday afternoon for a few days, and her train back leaves Montluçon before 9am, which means we need to leave here around 8am. On Sunday. Just goes to prove one thing - you can't trust the Dutch!

Have a good week.

À la prochaine

2009 approaches

Not the happiest Christmas we can remember but, given the circumstances, not too bad.

It really started on the previous Monday. Hobie's rally that I mentioned last week didn't last beyond Saturday evening and, by Monday morning, he was in a very poor state. We decided to get him to the vet who gave him a thorough check-over, agreed that he was very uncomfortable and had an elevated temperature. This was the same vet who gave him the steroid injection that helped him so much before. It came as something of a surprise to us to learn that the injection was almost six months ago!

We discussed with the vet in great detail the options that were open to us. Basically, these consisted of another injection and reducing tablets, which could give him a few days' relief (although the risk of collateral damage to his internal organs had already been pointed out at the last visit), or more permanent relief.

It seemed to us that a few days' relief could leave him back where he then was, at a time when we couldn't get him to a vet and so, with a very heavy heart, we gave the answer that it turned out the vet was hoping for, that we should give him permanent release.

We both stayed with Hobie during the procedure which, as those who have been through it before will attest, is sad and upsetting, but not distressing. I like to think that the last thought to go through Hobie's mind was, "Thank God - the pain has stopped!"

That then, is the end of eleven and a half years sharing our lives with Hobie. He was said to be two and a half years old when he came to us, which means he had a life of fourteen years. Not bad for a labrador!

Flash seems to be coping very well so far. Whether he is expecting Hobie to come back or whether he is enjoying the promotion to only child, we can't tell yet.

Our monthly transfer of cash from UK generally arrives on 21st and we can see it in the account on 22nd. Because of the timing of the weekend, it arrived this month on 23rd and we couldn't see it until 24th. That meant that Christmas Eve was our regular shopping day. Had it not arrived on 23rd we might have had an even leaner Christmas - as it is we are hoping against hope that the pound will rally before too long (it touched 1.038 this morning, which means our monthly transfer in January is likely to be at, or close to 1 - a far cry from the 1.46 we were enjoying a couple of years ago). Nonetheless, we did treat ourselves to a couple of small luxuries.

The weather forecast told us to expect a light sprinkling of snow on the afternoon of Christmas Day - it arrived on Boxing day and lasted for about an hour. Didn't really count.

On other matters, the work on the new web site for the Trust is continuing, and we are definitely set to go live on 1st January. Some of the articles from the Accipiter are being incorporated - Meadow Muses, Hospital Diary, Trust Diary and Research articles - and the on-line quiz was also asked for. I took the opportunity to update the quiz and, in case anyone wants to have a go, I have incorporated it here.

The Hawk Conservancy Trust Birds of Prey Quiz » Fun Trivia Maker

I think that's probably about it for this week. Carin will be with us from Holland for a few days from 31st, Tania is now in Peru for a couple of weeks adventure trek through montane cloud forest at altitudes of up to and beyond 14,000 feet. I should have so loved to have done that at her age - I think now, without a lot of serious preparation, my body would object to the altitude and to the trekking. We hope she enjoys the experience. It certainly started well - she texted me from her aircraft yesterday to say she and her friend had been upgraded to Business Class for the transatlantic flight!

Meanwhile, we have to start thinking about the garden for 2009.

Have a good week.

À la prochaine

'Twas a week before Christmas

I'm going to start with a few snowy pictures. The week started very cold, the snow hanging around until Friday.
The thaw actually started on Thursday but there was still quite a lot of snow around - on Thursday morning it was still crisp underfoot - rather like stepping on stiff meringue. Flash hated it - in truth, he was scared of it; afraid to walk on an unpredictable surface. At one point he had made his way to the wall of Pierre's woodshed in our front garden, where the heavy ivy growth gave shelter and left the ground clear. Having made it there, Flash was then afraid to walk across the snow and we had to clear a path for him!
The birds made good use of the food we put out, although the latest batch of mixed seed we bought from Gam' Vert for half what we pay in the supermarkets seems not to be as much to their liking as the stuff we had been giving them.
Hobie had another nasty turn in the week, serious weakness and obvious pain in his hips. We were keeping a close eye on him and doing everything we could to make him comfortable but, at the French class on Thursday afternoon, I told teach (in my very best French, of course) that if he had another bad night, we would take him to see the vet on Friday morning and there was a strong possibility we would be coming back without him. This has been a very difficult time for Clare, whose empathy with the animals is of a different kind than mine. I tend to look at these situations relatively dispassionately and look for best outcomes, my main interest being to ensure that the animals don't suffer anything if we are able to prevent it. Clare feels their pain with them. That is a lot harder.

When I got back from French class on Thursday, Clare had already left for hers. There was a nice fire in the wood burner, and Hobie seemed to be improved. He is now about the same as he has been for some months - old, weak, blind and deaf but, as far as I can tell, relatively pain-free.

This week saw our last French classes and our last Dance class of the year. We are now off classes until 8th January (the day before Tania's birthday). I am still pushing on, albeit gently, with the TESOL stuff and, when my elbow stops hurting (probably from too much tennis on the Wii) I shall pick up my fiddle again. Sadly it is out of the question just at the moment - if it hurts me to play, I shall not want to try and the fiddle will spend the rest of its days shut in its case. Not the plan at all!

I know I said it on Facebook, but it bears saying again. RACHEL WAS ROBBED! We started watching Strictly Come Dancing half way through, mostly as a motivational thing in relation to the dance classes we are taking, but we soon found ourselves sucked in to it and choosing favourites. The language used by the judges was somewhat strange to us, and bears little relationship to the stock phrases we hear from our teacher - phrases such as "petit pas; pas chassé; longue, vite, vite, longue and cavaliers à gauche, cavalières à droit". Mind you, what the Strictly stars have been doing bears little relationship to what we have been doing, neither do their 40+ hours of training per week bear any relation ship to our 75 minutes! Even so, Rachel is a better dancer than Tom, and it is a pity that the result reflected more the relative popularity of Holby City and S Club 7 than the skill of the dancers. Rant over.

As part of the drive to modernise the economy, the French Government is introducing a new scheme that will make it easier for people to work on their own account. So far the administration has been quite onerous and the costs quite high. I know of a number of people who would prefer to be employed rather than run their own small businesses. From January 1st 2009 a new category of auto-entrepreneur will be available for people who wish to be self-employed, including those who already have a full-time job, are students, retired or otherwise economically inactive. It addresses a number of needs, including people who have a job - let's say an employed builder who wants to do some work on the side - people at school who may be making money on eBay, or people who are retired and doing some web work on the side. It will allow this to happen within the framework of the law, and taxes and social charges can be paid. More than that, they can be paid monthly, based on a simple declaration of the previous month's income. No income in any month results in a nil declaration and no taxes or social charges. The upper turnover limits for this status are the same as for a micro-entreprise and are, essentially, the VAT threshold.

I am geared up to make my application on the first. I shall apply as an IT/Internet Consultant and, subject to successful completion of the course, add English Teacher later.

Speaking of work - the people for whom I am doing web sites in France are suffering at present - Kim's estate agency business has the same issues as estate agents throughout western Europe and Annie's B&B business is not enjoying the effect the exchange rate is having on her bookings! The new site for the Réseau Rural will step up a gear after the beginning of January but, in the meantime, the Trust is keeping me busy with the reworking of their site. We are aiming to go live on 1st January, and I think most people will like it. Check it out at http://www.hawk-conservancy.org. In the meantime, we are still tracking the vultures - follow the link from the front page of the Trust site.

A very Merry Christmas to you all

À la prochaine

Snow, snow, thick thick snow!

Clare has apparently seen a Barn Owl on our terrace twice. I say apparently because each time I have looked, it has not been there. There was a light sprinkling of snow early in the week which, at the cusp of the day, made a very nice image. A Hawk Conservancy Trust visitor named Iain Fuller sent in an image of a Barn Owl (which can be seen at http://www.hawk-conservancy.org/weeklypic.shtml or from next week at http://weeklypic.hawk-conservancy.org/) I decided to superimpose it on the scene to see what a Barn Owl would look like landing on our terrace; and here it is.
We woke up this morning to snow. Not the light cover we had at the beginning of last week but a good three inches - and still coming down as I write this at 11:30am.

I have checked the forecast for the next few days and it looks like it should clear up by mid-week. I hope so, as the road from here to the French lessons can be a little, shall we say, exciting in slip-slidey conditions, possibly moreso in the MX5 which, in these conditions, develops a tail that wags more than a labrador's in a butcher's shop.

I didn't make it to French class this week, as my little green monster refused to start - I think the engine is too heavy to turn over when the oil is really cold and thick (mind you, I have the same problem!). The lessons are about twenty minutes' drive away, so if I were to leave mine immediately it finishes at 3pm, Clare couldn't get there until 3:40pm - ten minutes after the start of the lesson. We shall try this week using one car, but it means that Clare will need to find something to do for ninety minutes whilst I do my lesson, and I should need to find something to do for ninety minutes whilst Clare does hers. We'll see how we get on.

This kind of weather, apart from keeping me indoors in the warm (I never have been a lover of cold), provides good picture opportunities - generally through two layers of far from optically perfect glass - particularly around the bird feeders, where large numbers of tits and sparrows gather to feed. The back of the house tends, at this time of year, to be populated mostly with Great Tits, Blue Tits, House Sparrows, Dunnocks, the occasional Yellowhammer, the semi-feral cats and the odd rat. The front of the house also attracts House Sparrows, along with Blackbirds, Chaffinches and the odd Greenfinch.

And to quote Jimmie Rodgers from his 1962 recording of An English Country Garden:"Robin, Don't forget the robin!". So here we are, not forgetting the robin
twice

Whilst I was in the middle of writing this, just before 12 noon, the power went off! Three hours later we saw an EDF van drive past and thought it would soon be fixed. Ha!

Shortly after that, a friend called to say she was stuck in her boyfriend's house by reason of the snow - any excuse is better than none - and could we record Strictly Come Dancing for her. We explained that we probably couldn't for two reasons (which eventually became three).

1. We haven't yet worked out how to drive the DVD recorder
2. We have no electricity
3. It's not on tonight

As it was approaching 5pm, the light was going and there was no sign of power returning. At that stage we had expected that they would give up for the night, and so we set ourselves up for a night without electricity. The first thing was to break out all the LED lamps. We found that the headlamp that I had bought to take to South Africa back in 2005 was superb. It switches between a standard torch bulb (waste of time), two LEDs and three LEDs. Two is enough to read by comfortably and three had a usable reach of over five metres in near total darkness!

The next thought was dinner. Not true. The next thought was a glass of wine - then we thought about dinner. The wood burner was already on for heat, and we decided to wrap some potatoes in foil, wrap some steak in foil, and bung the lot in. We were also able to put a saucepan in to boil some water for coffee and, later, to warm through some good old English Baked Beans to go with the steak and jacket potatoes. The whole lot was ready together at 6:30pm and, just after Clare had taken it all out of the fire and was setting it out on plates ...

you guessed it ...

the lights came back on!

Never mind - it was quite a nice change of pace, we coped, we had a good time, and we know that we can deal with an extended power cut. I am told the record in this area is more days than we suffered hours, at which stage we would have to say that, even if we couldn't cook in the oven, the stuff in the freezer wouldn't be too cold to eat!

Incidentally, by evening the snow had thickened to almost five inches!

I am very happy to report that the dogs are pretty much back to normal. Hobie suffered most, and Clare spent three nights on a camp bed on the lounge floor, as Hobie needed to go out several times each night to evacuate both ends in a most undignified manner. I had Flash with me, and he was not quite as bad, but needed to be let out before 4am each night.

Flash becomes very distressed if he is not with us at night. Although he can cope alone with Hobie, and does so frequently for eight hours or more when we go to the airport, he does not like doing it overnight. I think that he is OK if we are not there but, if he knows we are there, he needs to be with us. We could probably train it out of him but, in human terms, he is almost 95 years old - do we really want to be changing his lifetime's behaviour at this late stage?

The trouble is, like humans, the older he becomes, the more he loses confidence. Currently, he will climb the stairs to the first floor about one day in three. The other two days he has to be carried up. Going back down the stairs is a similar story. He has never ventured up to the second floor study.

Flash weighs 25Kg. Sometimes he is a dead weight, sometimes he wriggles like a worm on the end of a fishing line. Either way, it isn't like carrying a 25Kg carton of anything.

I keep telling myself it is good exercise.

Are we all happy with the result of the X-Factor? We in Beaugut certainly are. It is true to say that all three finalists were very good, although there were, in my view, a couple of acts that deserved to be there more. It is also true to say that, even before Saturday's final, one act clearly stood out a country mile in front of the others. The result was correct, and well deserved. Meanwhile, Strictly Come Dancing turned into a bit of a fiasco when it was obvious that there were two pairs who were set to go through and one who was set to go home. The result of the combined phone vote and judges' scoring was a foregone conclusion. So why, instead of saying there was no need for a dance-off and declaring the result, did they decide to put all three pairs through and have to do it all again next week.

It seems that the concept of appearing not to think things through is not limited to current governments and previous employers.

Have a good week.

À la prochaine

Two large dogs with major stomach upsets in one house is not recommended!

This week's pearl of wisdom comes from the heart.

We had a note from the vet last week to let us know that it is time for the dogs to have their annual anti-rabies jabs. We took them on Wednesday afternoon. Whilst we were there, the vet gave us some worming tablets for them, as it was about time that was done again, too.

Generally, we use a twin wormer. Hobie, the larger of the two in terms of body weight, generally has eight pink tablets followed a week later by four white ones then, a week after that, eight pink ones again. This time it was two tablets each, once only, with no recommendation as to timing - whether before, after or even instead of food. They had them on Thursday evening with their dinner.

Friday morning I went downstairs to the most awful stench I have ever known from a live animal. Nothing should be able to make that kind of smell and live. There were piles of vomit that I would estimate to be the equivalent of at least twice the maximum possible contents of Hobie's stomach and, from the other end - well, let us just say there was lots, but nothing solid. Thank goodness we have tiles, not carpet! Flash had been with us overnight, as always. Apart from a rather noisy tummy he seemed to be OK.

It is now mid-day Sunday. Hobie was not well last night, and Clare stayed downstairs with him. Flash needed to evacuate at about 3am so he went down as well. They are both still very loose and their tummies are still noisy. We are hoping they will settle down today - Hobie had no food yesterday to give his stomach a chance to settle. If they don't improve, it will mean another trip to the vet, which neither of them enjoys, and I am dreading Hobie needing to evacuate in the back of a moving car!

To happier stuff. Things are moving forward in most areas - the TESOL and fiddle are both showing some progress. Nothing dramatic, just slow and steady. The reworking of the Trust web site is in an advanced state and I have relocated it to the public staging server, releasing my server for the RREC project. For some reason the folk at the Trust are having difficulty accessing the staging server, so I think I shall have a conversation with the hosts tomorrow to clear that up. The staging server is a permanent thing, so needs to be done right.

A new venture in the Trust site is the addition of tracking data for four of the African White-backed Vultures that were ringed as nestlings in the autumn. There is a nice bit of video footage here about the Trust's work in South Africa. The birds are wearing small backpacks in which are located GPS receivers coupled to devices that send the GPS data by SMS. To be of real value in tracking the movements of the birds, the devices need to be collecting and transmitting data for as long as possible. To this end, they transmit just one signal daily, at 10am local time in South Africa. This information is generally available to me before noon CET (11am UK time) and it is updated to this web page. 10am is a good time, as they will generally be active by then. They are still quite young, so there may not be too much movement yet. One of them was over 7Km from its roost a couple of days ago but generally, so far, they have been at or within a couple of hundred metres of their roost trees. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing how far they range during the course of the next few months.

The lady who leads our dancing lessons (which, incidentally, like the French lessons, are progressing well) also has a group in St Eloy on Mondays. On Monday 15th December their lesson will be a Christmas social event, a bit of a party, and the Pionsat group is invited as well. That should be fun. I have to say, though, that the couples in Strictly Come Dancing do not do the waltz the way we are being taught!

Speaking of which, I should like to see Rachel win Strictly, and Alex X-factor!

Have a good week.

À la prochaine