The Other Way

My friend Ian thought it would be a good idea to try and put on a benefit gig for me at his house. The reason being is that i am about three hundred euros short of finishing the new trike and although i have approached the local farms for work, they dont really need extra hands for a few months and it is generally a quiet time of year across the board around here. undeterred though i spent the last couple of weeks chopping up a rotting old freezer (for the aluminium lining )anne marie had in an outbuilding and an old fold up  steel campbed i found in the old derelict railway station house in Remalard.
Anyway to cut a long story short i designed and have built a powered trailer for busking or catering, as its modular. Anne marie is enquiring about the legal side of cooking on the markets and in the meantime i am going to busk with it at the vide greniers and the small towns to try and rustle up some cash.
so after talking with Ian the other day  he thought about the gig thing a bit more realistically and approached Bob  who owns the Jazz cafe in Reveillon,  with the idea, and Bob agreed to hold the night there.
The jazz cafe is famous in the locality for its music nights and the stage is mine next saturday night.
Ian is going to play  bass on a few, Anne Marie will play the banjo and sing with me on others and a guy Ian knows called francois will hopefully play percussion.
Although i could quite happily play all my own songs all night, i think it might be a good idea to play the old favourites as well. simon and garfunkel , the beatles etc, mixed in with some  good old rock'n' roll.
Still, first things first. Longny au Perche tomorrow for some busking and promoting. I intend to put a few posters up and hand out some flyers that Anne Marie has put together for me , and over the next week i hope to play in all the towns and villages in the area and try my best to to get as many people as i can to come along to the gig.
she has also contacted the press for me and so i should appear in the listings next week . All good stuff and very fast too, considering i only spoke with Bob the owner yesterday.
I  also intend(weather permitting) to prepare and cook spicy bean burgers with all the trimmings on the barbecue in the garden on the night.  well , maybe i wont cook them myself  on the night , but i will get them ready.
I've got to earn the money for ingredients first so i think i should get an early night, dust off the old axe and get back out there.
I am going to take my camera out with me and film the antics of the week leading up to the big night.
saturday 7 th april
the Jazz Cafe Reveillon
8pm
5 euros entrance fee

Réveillon Jazz Café

Samedi 07 avril à 20 h

Just built and installed a  piggy back wood burner in the workshop as it can get pretty cold in there. very happy with the result and i had fun building it.
excellent way of practicing my arc welding skills before i start building the  new trike. Bit of a blow this week though. everything was coming together quite nicely on the gathering of parts , planning and designing of the new trike, but not having a lathe yet i asked jeff , the engineer who helped build the first trike , if he could turn some pieces for me for my stub axles for the front wheels. he recieved my package the other day , but somewhere in transit between france and england the package had been opened or come open somehow and one of the axles and a tube and all the bearings were missing. they delivered the broken box in a plastic bag. i am now left with two obsolete wheels which without their splined axles arent much good to me. doubly gutted also as the hubs on the wheels had disc mounts. so swiftly moving on I am now going to use bmx wheels with a 14mm axle, [once ive found some work , saved up and bought them] and i will have to rethink the braking system. If only i had insisted on using my own box in the postoffice that i had carefully prepared the night before. Apparently it was too small to stick their label on it. and so they made me buy one of their boxes which turned out to be about as much use as a handbrake on a canoe, or an ashtray on a motorbike, chocolate fireguard.....teapot etc
still, i've got the front end of a quad that i found on ebay being sent over from england  , so i can start building the new frame soon. so on the whole i am quite excited.
anyway see what you think of the burner

Having arrived back in the uk with my mosquito net, a sleeping bag, my guitar and the clothes on my back i almost immediately went to work with my brother steve in some beautiful gardens in the countryside near Bath where he has and had some big landscaping projects.
He had also just met a very interesting guy called Pete who has done many things in his time, having been aprofessional scrambler in france for many years which led him onto Bristol's first and major importer of traditional artifacts from france. during the late seventies and through the eighties and nineties Pete started, grew and sustainaned what we now know as the reclamation business here in Bristol. He was the first and over the years it became big business and is now an established market place with many people now doing the same,  but having got out at what he considers to be just the right time he has has turned his focus onto other things.
For a start he is now designing and building wood burning heaters that can pretty much run off anything , however he is getting excellent results off burning sawdust. The main principal behind these burners is to capture and utilise the heat that is traditionally lost up the chimney flue of your standard burner, so instead of burning unnecessary fuel which just literally goes up the chimney, his burners give out tremendous heat into the areas you want to keep warm , i.e the room or space that you are trying to heat. Even when the heater is on full blast you can put your hand on the flue without it getting burnt. The next time you are standing next to a conventional burner, try touching the flue and you will see that you can't because it is too hot as the heat is escaping up through the tube/chimney and into the atmosphere. Pete calls his burners freet burners, as in 'free heat', as sawdust and rubbish costs next to nothing to acquire and burn. One full drum of sawdust will burn all evening and still be smouldering in the morning, literally pennies to run. Naturally they run off conventional wood , but as the popularity of wood burning and the cost of wood is on the rise he has found an efficient way of burning other combustibles. He sees great potential for this type of burner not only here but in the third world countries where this type of burner could really make a difference. He has and is also experimenting with copper coils wrapped round the exterior of the drum heaters which water can run through for  the purpose of heating it up. In his yard he has an old lifeboat which he is going to turn into a hot tub which will be heated by one of the burners which will be a nice little feauture on his forthcoming venture on his land.
Petes going Glamping.
Not pete himself as he doesnt need to, as he has already carved out and created for himself one of the coolest and interesting places i've come across in Bristol.
Having Built over the years his own cabin which he refers to as his shed, which to be frank is a liitle bit more than just a shed. He built on land he bought on what was just a quiet plot of land the otherside of the second railway bridge in st werburgs opposite the old city farm orchards, and he now has a twenty two seater conservatory restaurant, a full catering kitchen,  a bar and even a small dance floor and stage area. He has called it bocoso which stands for bring your own, cook your own and smoke your own. basically you and your friends can hire the place off pete for the night and literally do what it says on the tin.Its a brilliant night out for a fraction of the price of a night out on the town , and the word is spreading.
in the forseeable future he is bringing Glamping to bristol. very soon there will be eco efficient vintage caravans complete with their own burners and solar power supply too stay in, for breaks away in bristol, with all the facilities you would need for a relaxing comfortable stay whilst vising the city for a few days, a week or whatever takes your fancy.
In addition he is turning over part of the land to organic allotments, which will be tended by residents in the local community. That, with his workshop activities will add to what is already a positive hive of creativity.

a look at some of the burners

just cut the last of the grapes down that morning, during the summer they grow abundantly

I built a raised bed dry stone wall with stone he had stacked in the yard, but a standard wall was not what pete was looking for. He wanted something a little quirky and interesting , so I had ago. I'm looking forward to seeing it planted

How can a group of males not have fun with an electric go cart, a little competition and a big garden to razz around

quite possibly the coolest bike i've ever had

on starters orders