Wednesday, July 2, 2008

The renovation

As I listen to the traffic and weather reports on Arrow Classic Rock I look outside. No traffic jams and the sun shines. oh yaeh, it's true, I'm in France. The heat is heavy. The only place where you get some cool under your feet is in the basement. For two weeks in Espalion the temperatures have been more than 25 degrees. To keep the heat out we open all windows, doors and hatches early in the morning. After an hour we close the whole lot again and so we keep the coolness inside. I wish i could make our neighbors jealous with our bio pool which had arisen spontaneously in the garden made by the rains of recent months. But it dries slowly and insteqd we look jealous to the inflatable Leclerq pool with wooden casing of our neighbors. What in the Netherlands the car, the house or couch is from one to another neighbor, that is the pool in France. Who has a pool, has status, the bigger your pool, the more important you are.

Besides, we have 'n pool, just such a thing like the neighbor, with pump, filter, everything. We only have no straight piece of land to put it down. For now we have to do with the inflatable wading pool of 8.5 euros from the Netto, because who wants to rise up has to start from the bottom. A nice flat piece of ground, would be a great help too.

The djembe performance on 21 June was a great success. We were with 30 drummers and especially later in the evening when it got dark and the public massed around us, the atmosphere was magical. I can think of almost nothing else, but we now have a sabbatical of two months so that we can think about how to continue as a group, because before you know it you're artistically at a dead end, get to mistreat kids and husband abuse, you find yourself soon in a rehab or you do need a therapist to monitored your state of mind, so for now no more group djembe.

Four weeks ago I had our preliminary finalof our book handed and that meant for me a) finally time to jobs and b) even more worried about our income, because as I said earlier, if we work, we have no time for jobs on our house and if we work on our hous, we dont work.

At this moment I consider my odd jobs in the house, but it is like a indirect investment, whether it's washing, ironing, vacuuming, stripping paint, sanding, papering, tiling or painting is. We get up at seven o'clock and four days a week - when the children go to school - we have plenty of time to do what we want. Ruud climbs behind the computer to devote his time to web design, writing, bookkeeping, paying bills or downloading files.

And Ill do the odd jobs (bricoler). I have something against that word. It sounds so free, so hobby-ish, so therapeutic, while its plain hard physical labor. I can also say that I 'put to work' or that I get the job done "but then again nobody understands what I mean. The dictionary offers me no alternative, so I stick to 'odd jobs'.

A job that can change the appearance of our house quickly and without costing too much money is to refurbish the 't woodwork, so, since a few weeks I'm working the 30 doors, windows and shutters, which the previous occupant painted on an lazy Sunday afternoon in subtle combination of shades of muck over dirt and without sanding.

To remove the old paint (three layers in total) I use decapant (stripper). This I remove as much paint as possible from cracks and crevices until I have a clean wooden door.

	Step 1 - the door in the original colors		Step 2 - the décapant needs a little time to take effect		Step 3 - the first coat of paint is removed with a palette knife
	step 4 -, the following layers of paint are removed		Step 5 - after a few days to dry I sand away the last bits		Step 6 - the worst bit is sanding the seams

Step 7 - the last step is to paint

	I
	I		I I listen to the radio and hope for the song Take Me Out to the Scottish rock band Franz Ferdinand. I will not download it, I want it to be overtaken so I can just jump instead of sanding. Or jump and sand, then work progresses at least. Anyway, everything is good as long as I do not have to listen to Nirvana because then i turn of the sound. Such an art depression by Kurt Cobain with his voice imitation of someone with throat cancer, I cannot stand. I had still hoped that the music would also fade away after his death but it did not happen. What channel I turn, I always listen to the monotonous moaning of Come As You Are and that other song of which I refuse to pronounce the name. Anyway, when doing my odd job, there is one station where I am guaranteed not to be bothered with Nirvana and that is radio Totem, "tous les tempos de la radio" they say themselves, but they run primarily contemporary French music and English music from the seventies and eighties. For one thing, since our arrival here, they rotate Hotel California by The Eagles and Black Velvet by Allanah Myles and Everytime You Go Away from Paul Young as if it were the latest hits, and that every day, every month, every years of age. So, while I stick to radio Totem while working, I do not have to worry, because by the time they get to the era of Nirvana, the Nirvana generation has turned to dust and I will no longer be alive.  Poll : To which music do you like to listen when doing odd-jobs ? Selection   Votes    hotel california  49% 59  black velvet  8% 10  every time you go away  3% 4  smells like teen spirit  17% 21  birds  10% 12  breathing in my nosecap  12% 15    121 votes total  (results till 19-2-2012) posted by Maartje Heymans at 23:33  |  send a comment Next column ( aug 22 ) - Previous column ( jun 07 )		Columns March 2008 - French TV February 2009 January 2009 November 2008 October 2008 August 2008 June 2008 March 2008 February 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September July 2007 June 2007 April 2007 March 2007 January 2007 September 2006 Augustus 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006
	Advertising on RocheRouge? Yes, that's a novelty. After having kept the site advertising free for five years, we decided to temporarily permit advertising as a test. Only under the dotted line. Thus you will know up to where the real information goes and where advertising starts. Did you like your visit to Roche Rouge, and have you found the information te be useful? Maybe you will find additional information when following the ad-links down here. Thank you !