12h00 – Fixed the gutters as the sun was shining.
15h00 – we went for a short walk in the snow to start to aclimatise for Stockholm.
09h00 – (Christmas Eve) Well we are back on the air again. Sadly today is the funeral of my first mother-in-law Violet Ferries nee Emslie. Violet had been in a care home in Abyone, Aberdeenshire, Grampian, Scotland for several years and she died at the weekend. I was unable to get to her funeral due to severe winter weather conditions affecting air, rail and road transport in the UK. Additionally the timing of the funeral, unavoidably on Christmas Eve, would mean me having more difficulty despite the weather with effectively a 4 day public holiday. I eventually decided regretably not to go when Charles de Gaulle airport at Paris, my home airort, began to experience delays due to weather conditions at the airport and not just the UK end.
The Kilted Reeder. Click to enlarge.
11h00 – I have on my new kilt which had arrived this week from Chisholm’s of Inverness. Ancient Ferguson in 13oz weight wool Worstead (there’s another Norfolk connection). I wore this in respect for Violet, I followed this by a midday lunch of mince (very well cooked) and tatties with skirlie, neeps and beetroot, all washed down by a healthy glass of Laphroaig whisky, I did look for my bottle of Glen Garioch but it was not to hand. I tried to phone my brother and sister-in-law Peter and Alison before the service but mobile phone contact was not to be.
I shall miss her greatly.
11h00 – Spent the day erecting a gatepost and fence at Béon. It was a cloudy but hot day, I was just glad the sun was not shining.
19h00 – Roger, Veronica, Frances, Beverley, Emily and Izzy all over for dinner. Beverley fell in love with the hammocks on the mezzanine. P had prepared a great meal which we ate on the terrace then indoors on the mezzanine for coffee and music.
09h45 – No Jeton at breakfast, Calico and Cressida had a mouse in the bedroom last night and the liver was found this morning.
07h00 – A wakened by a terrific thunderstorm, wind, rain, thunder and lightning, went on for about 1 hour, P slept through it.
09h00 – Coming home from the Historic Tour of Joingy last night we were stopped, as were all motorists, in a breathalyser check. Pauline hardly drinks at all and in fact she had had no alcohol at all that day, so it was blow in the bag ‘le ballon‘ and we were waved on and wished goodnight. I had taken a few pictures and did some sound recordings on the Zoom H2, a nice little device at a a reasonable price.
11h30 – Off to Béon to get the new cooker working. I have a solution to the problem of not big enough cable. There are two individual sockets behind the cooker so I decided to wire the cables in parallel to one socket and one trip, thus giving us a nominal 32 a capacity. All went well apart from one cable being a bit short and a joint had to be made in the consumer unit all for the lack of about 2″ of cable. It all worked when connected to a 20A trip so I turned everything on and the main trip tripped out. It turns out the main trip is rated at 30A maxn so a 32A trip for the individual cooker circuit is uneccessary so I left it with a 20. New cooker, new washing machine and a potential electric kettle then occasional plunges into darkness could be a new feature at The Cottage.
17h00 – Vero came round and her and P went off to a clarinet concert at La Bussiere, near Gien. I tinkered around some more with Kubuntu Linux on an old PC now renamed Albert.
