La Darnoire

As a distraction from all the fun with telephones, I’ve started brewing another batch of beer; a wheat beer this time.

The redcurrant bush is laden with ripe fruit, so these were picked. We have over 600g of berries. No idea what we’re going to do with them; LSS is thinking of making a cordial. And her dire predictions about the potato crop have so far proved unfounded; she dug up two potato plants and they had each produced some good-sized potatoes.

The hens and chicks are doing fine; two days ago we separated the hen with the single chick from the rest because the poor little thing was being attacked by the other mother hen. Unfortunately the other little chicks are small enough to get through the plastic fencing separating their pen from the Big Wide World. And as we all know, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, so we need to keep an eye on the cat until such time as the chicks have grown too large to fit through the apertures in the fence.

The phone went dead again. LSS called Orange, and they looked at yesterday’s incident report and said they would be sending an engineer. “Oh, wait a minute,” said the Orange technician. “It just so happens that we have an engineer in your area already. They will be with you between 13:00 and 18:00 today.”
“Oh goody,” said LSS.

So.

Did an engineer visit between 13:00 and 18:00?

If you answered “No”, have a banana.

Oh – and do you want to hear something funny? I received an email from Bouygues regarding the order of my sim card for my mobile. They have cancelled my order due to an “unfavourable evaluation”. Whatever that means. So I don’t think the poor service from French telecommunications companies is limited to Orange. I’ve even been considering the UK’s Vodafone; but what’s stopping me is the monthly costs. All I can say is: if you’re thinking of moving to France, don’t.

The phone line went dead again. They have obviously read the previous blog entry. LSS called Orange from the Aged FIL and, for the first time ever, managed to speak to someone intelligent. They ran a test, and said that the line was “unbalanced”. Although as far as I can tell, the telephone poles look vertical enough.

A “stabilizing program” was then run. The technician said he would keep an eye on the line statistics over the next two days, and if the line became unbalanced again an engineer would be sent out.

The phone then came back on. It seems to be fine unless you actually use it.

Friend E came around in the afternoon, and we had our first barbecue of the year; some wild boar chops. And funnily enough, we realised that the food miles were zero for pretty much the entire barbecue. Charcoal: made on site. Wild boar: hunted on site. Lettuce, potatoes: grown on site. Beer and wine: brewed on site. The only exceptions were the seasonings and the dessert; a chocolate mousse-type thing brought by Friend E.

The satellite dish arrived yesterday. So today I had no end of fun pointing the dish. You see, the bearing had to be set to just a smidgeon* to the left of Alpha Centauri.

*smidgeon = half a parsec, or 29,000 light years give or take a kilometer

Then I had to set the elevation to 29.5 degrees Kelvin, assuming the complete verticality of the mounting pole, which I found to be just a whisker* out. The skew was minus 22 degrees, which is anti-clockwise in case you were wondering.

*whisker = 2.5 semi-inches

Fun fact: the statellite (to quote Delboy) is 38,633 km away. So it is very difficult to see, and impossible to center in the crosshairs of an optical viewfinder (if you happen to have one, which I don’t).

I’ve been up and down ladders all day so I’ll now be able to enter the Olympic ladder-climbing competition if there is one.

After all of that, I finally obtained a satellite lock. Then the fun really started; configuring my router to connect to the satellite modem. I won’t bore you with further details, but the end result is that we are now online via satellite. Oh, I see. You thought that because you were reading this post, our Orange internet connection was back? Shame on you.

So sucks to Orange; they can fiddle with the internet connection as much as they like now; we don’t care.
And if you’re in France, I can recommend this chap: http://steve-pritchard.fr/

Here’s our previous connection speed with Orange, on the rare occasion that we were actually connected:

And here’s a screen print of our current connection via satellite. Not done through the same website as above, because it’s not a DSL link. I think it may be a bit exaggerated, as the connection speed is advertised as being a maximum of 22Mbps. But it’s still faster than Orange:

And obviously the characteristics are different because of the latency (which could cause problems if I was into online gaming – I’m not – or if using VOIP – which I may want to set up later if I can ever find a USB handset which works with Windows 7). Using the web is slightly different; there is a slight delay in fetching web pages, but once they start loading it is fairly fast.

And whilst on the subject, in local news, our village is loudly proclaiming that fibre-optic connections are now available (in the village itself only, of course). Provided by Orange. With a photograph in the local paper showing the blistering results of the speed test from the same website as shown in the first photo above. Now bear in mind fibre-optic is capable of a gigabit speed i.e. 1000Mbps. So what speed do you think their test results were showing? Here’s the photo which appeared in the paper, which can be found online at http://pierrefitte-sur-sauldre.fr/sites/default/files/bulletin_ndeg46_0.pdf (just in case you thought I had used photoshop on the photo):

And now that we’re no longer using Orange for the internet connection, the phone line seems to be working again.

Oh yes – and LSS is now using Bouygues for her mobile. Reception seems a bit better; she can now even make telephone calls (although she does have to be in the garden, standing on a chair, with the phone held horizontally to do so). We have now ordered a Bouygues sim card for my mobile as well.

This morning we loaded up the trailer, and went to the déchèterie (municipal dump) in Lamotte Beuvron to get rid of the mouse-chewed mattress and the metal tub full of broken shower glass. We also collected an old chest freezer from LSS’s cousin. This was from the estate of the late Aged Aunt. We then had lunch with the cousin at the pancake restaurant.

The Orange internet and phone connection is still going up and down like a yo-yo, which makes for very interesting telephone conversations.

I had an email notification that the satellite dish is on its way to us from the UK. The company we’re going with is Europasat. It’s a British company with offices in several countries.

As it wasn’t actually raining, LSS cut some grass with the tractor, and I used the Stihl brushcutter to clear the waist-high weeds around the borehole and woodcutting area.

And regarding the greywater reedbed sump, I’ve decided to stay with the system we already have i.e. a 12V submersible bilge pump. I’ve ordered a spare via Ebay. However, once the water table has dropped a bit I intend encasing the plastic barrel in limecrete. This should eliminate the need for bricks to weigh it down.

Wildlife Diary: It seems that Mrs Duck has once again been unlucky. I found four empty eggshells in the reedbed; so some predator has scoffed this year’s brood again. They did not have the appearance of eggs which had hatched; and if they had hatched, where were the other six?

I spent the morning cutting up one of the fallen aspens which needs to be processed for the woodshed.

And guess what? The internet and telephone came back on. I thought that the “cease payments” instruction would have had an effect! I then received a text message from Orange saying service had been re-established.

Time to celebr… uh-oh. Guess what? Correct. It’s gone down again. Perhaps they’ve now disabled it on purpose because we haven’t paid them for the service they provided in June. Well, yes, we have. They’ve been paid the exact amount for the services they have provided; i.e. nothing.

The phone and internet did come back on again after a while. So far so good, although the connection is still dropping out fairly regularly. We’re still intending to get rid of Orange.

Yesterday the two smallest chicks died. So that brings the success rate down to 25%.

I swept the boiler stove chimney.

And was internet access restored yesterday as promised by Orange?
No. Of course it wasn’t.

The neighbours with the gîte came around yesterday to get some eggs, and mentioned they had a friend in Romorantin who was the manager of the Orange shop there. They had popped into the shop with the intention of seeing if the manager could do something about the fact that they had no internet access at the gîte, but were unable to do this. Apparently there was a queue of about twenty angry people in front of them; all with the same problem. One had been complaining vociferously that they had been without telephone or internet for THREE WEEKS!

Pah. A mere beginner. We’re in the middle of week five.

Today I had planned on splitting and cutting more wood. Owing to the cloudy conditions we’re experiencing this so-called Summer, we’re having to light the boiler stove frequently. And, of course, it’s raining. So instead I cleared the floor area in the remaining part of the barn, ready for digging up and laying limecrete. So despite this stuff being stored there for 4 years, it was all in good condition; with one exception. A mouse had decided that our spare mattress would make a very good nest. So we’ll take that one to the rubbish dump and buy a new one at some point.

LSS called Orange, and as usual, all will be repaired within 48 hours. Rather cunningly, she also called their accounts department and arranged that our account would be put on hold. Why should we pay for a service we’re not receiving?

We are now independent of the electricity grid as far as our water supply is concerned. In other words the borehole pump is now running off the batteries. I worked out that an inverter should not be connected to the “Load” terminals of a solar controller; it simply can’t handle the current draw even though the controller has a 30A capacity. When I connected the inverter directly to the batteries, everything worked as it should. Celebrations are in order; so we’ll head off to Salbris this evening with Friend E. It’s the annual “Bandas” competition – these are small brass bands who normally play rousing music at rugby matches. This is to be followed by the customary fireworks display.

The oldest broody hen has now decided broodiness is over, and has left the nest along with her 5 chicks. She had 6, but one seems to have gone missing. The youngest broody hen still has only 2 chicks. So that’s a total of 7 successes out of 20 eggs. I suppose a 35% success rate is not too bad for our first lot.

Oh, and we have now ordered a satellite dish for internet access, so I suspect one day next week will see me at the top of a ladder.

The solar panels were connected up, and the inverter was plugged in. However it seems to have a problem running the borehole pump, so I’ll need to investigate why. It could be a dodgy earth connection.

On the broody hens front, we now have 8 chicks.

And I did a quick inventory of the fruit trees in the garden. We have two gooseberries, two blueberries, and three cherries. I mean actual fruit, not bushes. The strawberries did produce a fairly decent crop though, although they’re not too happy with all the rain. And the raspberries haven’t started producing yet.

Oh, and I got a text message from Orange saying we’d be reconnected on the 27th. Which will be the start of week 5 without phone or internet. I must admit, for some unfathomable reason, I don’t believe them.