Monthly Archives: October 2022

Monday 31st October 2022 – I’M FED UP ….

… of being used as a pin cushion.

At the moment I have two catheters, one in the back of my hand, and I won’t tell you how many goes these two student nurse had trying to stick it in me because even I’ve lost count. Eventually they sent for an experienced nurse and she fixed it for them.

The catheter port in my chest was blocked after the other night’s excitement and that why they haven’t used it. However they sent a whole possee of people to fix it, one of whom was extremely rough and hurt me immeasurably. But now it works but they have still left the catheters in my hands.

So I’m all wired up to a large collection of tubes and pipes and that spells disaster.

Last night was another night where sleep was hard to come by. That sleeping pill that they gave me was a waste of time. Tossing and turning, crawling to the bathroom and so on

There was a few moments when I did go off to sleep and there’s even something on the dictaphone. I was doing something last night that involved a railway line but that’s all that I remember of this dream. Everything else went out of my head as soon as I awoke. (…this is when I was really ill and I couldn’t understand most of it …)

And then I was asked to go to make some sandwiches for a group of people. I took a tin of tuna, opened it, put the contents in a bowl and mashed it all up with a dollop of my vegan mayonnaise to add to it so that it would spread on these sandwiches. That’s all that I remember.

During the day I dozed in the morning in between all of the visits that I had from various departments. The general opinion is that I have a fever (38.8°C), that I’m very weak and that this virus is still raging.

There were even a couple of visits in the afternoon and at teatime j had an x-ray of my head. Presumably to make sure that I still have a brain, which is very doubtful.

But I do feel really bad, there’s no escaping that. If they were to throw me out I wouldn’t even make it to the bus stop outside.

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Sunday 30th October 2022 – I’VE LEFT MY BED …

… just half a dozen times today, each time just to visit the bathroom.

The reason why this virus is atypical is because it’s one that they have never seen before and don’t recognise.

That’s probably because I picked it up in Canada.

As a result I’m confined to my room and not allowed to mix with the other patients because they don’t want this spreading around the hospital and then the rest of Europe, which I understand.

In fact they had me locked in my bed by raising the bedrails and during the night I had to call them to lift me out. Sometimes they either took an age or didn’t even come at all and that let to a rather embarrassing and humiliating incident on one occasion.

Finally during the night I went to try to squeeze out of the gap at the end but my tubes were tangled up in the rails and I ended up pulling the pipes out. This led to something of an argument. They wanted me to use a bedpan but I flatly refused. In the end they let me go to the bathroom.

One of the nurses then put a catheter in my arm and coupled me up but my arm swelled up like a balloon She’d missed the vein and the stuff was just going into my arm. Another nurse put a catheter in the back of my hand and that seems to work.

With all of the excitement during the night, you’ll be surprised to learn that I’d taken a sleeping pill but that didn’t work at all. I’m coughing far too much and too loudly to sleep so I watched the clock go round and round.

However my little stand-off worked and they took down the railings so that I can leave my bed whenever I like.

The day was much quieter. The nurses washed me, changed my clothes and bedding and did all kinds of nurse things such as taking my temperature (it’s 38.8° right now), my blood pressure and my oxygen content.

As well as giving me pills, tablets, oxygen and so on.

A couple of doctors came to see me too. They examined me and one of them admitted that my condition is serious.

As for food I managed half a plate of pasta and salad and a couple of sandwiches so it seems that my appetite is slowly returning.

So tonight I have another sleeping pill and I hope that it works this time as apparently I’ll be having a busy day tomorrow when the specialists are back at work.

And I’m curious to see how things pan out.

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Saturday 29th October 2022 – NO ONE IS …

… more surprised than me to see the football results come scrolling along my newsfeed today.

It took quite a lot of convincing, and I’m still not sure, that it’s Saturday. Whatever happened to Friday? I know that I asked for one of Bill Oddie’s “powders that would paralyse a bear” but have I really slept for 29 hours instead of the 5 hours that I thought?

Today anyway, I haven’t undergone any tests, maybe because it really is Saturday, and in fact I only left my bed once for the usual reason and that was embarrassing and humiliating so we’ll pass over that.

There was no breakfast for me today but I managed some lunch, leaving aside the meat of course, and had decent tea.

However I have found my way into the kitchen menu and I’ve ordered my own meals as from tomorrow so maybe I’ll have some decent food. It’s quite good as bulk-cooked food goes except of course the vegan options are few and far between.

At some point during the afternoon I’d been off on my travels. I’m not sure if this counts as a dream or not but I was certainly well away with the fairies. I was carving graffiti into the walls of this underground railway station. I’d been with my elder sister for a walk but separated. I found myself facing this wall so I carved a couple of really long entries about two different people and their entourage. My sister came back and told me that I really ought to put my finger in the sea, the sea there where we were staying. I could go up to the coast and cut a hole in the ice to push my finger through and that would probably do it good. In the end I found myself by this block of ice working on these two pieces of graffiti (…this is when I was really ill and I couldn’t understand most of it …)

So I’m going to ask for another one of these sleeping pills and see what happens next. But it’s totally worrying me that I’ve missed a while day somewhere.

What on earth is happening to me?

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Thursday 27th October 2022 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow but lying in a hospital bed. They took one look at me during my second examination and that was that;

But anyway, the hotel was nice and comfortable and I actually managed a couple of hours sleep at some point. During the night I dreamt that my missing parcel had turned up last night. There was a note on it “delayed due to suspicious contents”. I was wondering whether it was the nutmeg in it that had attracted their attention or not.

At about 07:00 I set out for the station, hobbling all the way down there to the ticket machine where I bought my ticket for the 07:24 express to Leuven.

Although the train was on time it was held up on a couple of occasions and ran at a snail’s pace all the way Consequently we were 15 minutes late arriving.

Added to that the buses were all in chaos and the one that I wanted didn’t arrive. I had to wait 10 minutes for the next and as a result I was very late arriving at the check-in.

The first test was a breathing exercise which I failed miserably, coughing everywhere. In the end she didn’t bother with the final test.

The second exam was my nephrology test. There I poured out all my woes, not just about this illness but about everything that is affecting me too. They gave me several tests of all kinds of things, including a balance test where I had to walk by putting one foot in front of the other. And I forget how many times they had to grab me to stop me falling over.

That was enough for them. They telephoned to arrange a room for me. And here I am.

The rest of the day was spent being pushed around in my bed for a pile of examinations.

One of then was to push a camera down my throat to check my lungs. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that’s the kind of thing that will happen over my dead body, as I explained. Despite their assurances, I was still unwilling so they gave me a pill to “relax” me.

Three hours later I regained consciousness with the examination completed. They told me that I have an atypical viral pneumonia.

This kind of thing they tell me usually clears itself after a week or so but with me having no immune system it’s anyone’s guess when it will clear. Consequently I’m here for a while being pumped full of antibiotics in the hope that something might work

So right now here I am. I’ve asked for and been given a sleeping pill and I’m hoping for a really good sleep.

And I might even have one too.

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Wednesday 26th October 2022 – STRAWBERRY MOOSE …

…. is missing!

He and the rest of my luggage failed to meet up with me in the baggage claim area of the airport this morning.

The fact is that he’s probably aware of the fact that this was our last great adventure together and seeing that Canada has always been a happy hunting ground for him, he’s stolen all of my equipment, made good his escape and gone off adventuring on his own account.

Anyway, even as we speak, enquiries are being made.

Mind you, strange as it might seem, in the peculiar circumstances of the moment my luggage not arriving at the airport is something positive. It means that I don’t have to maul that huge suitcase around with me for the final stages of my journey.

To be honest, I’m totally done in. This was one journey too many and one journey too far in my state of health right now.

It was another night when I had had no sleep whatsoever. How many is this now over the last week? I coughed and spluttered through every minute of the long flight, and it was long too because despite leaving only a handful of minutes late, we were 1:20 late landing in Paris.

And shame on Air Canada who wouldn’t pay for a proper terminal but wanted to decant us in the middle of the runway. And on a greasy, slippery set of metal stairs too.

There was no chance whatever of my making that with my backpack full of heavy electrical equipment. I sat inside with the other disabled people (this is how I’m seeing myself now) waiting for the wheelchair lift.

That promptly broke down so in the end I was helped down by one assistant while another carried my bag.

My helper passed me through the express route into France, where presenting my carte de séjour at the same time as presenting my passport means that I don’t need my passport to be stamped. And then the eternal waiting in vain for STRAWBERRY MOOSE

Eventually I filed a lost luggage complaint and then crawled wearily the entire length of the airport (and you’ve no idea how long the airport is) to the railway station.

Here was just about my only bit of luck for today. The TGV from Rennes to Brussels was running over an hour late which meant that it would be here in 7 minutes. Just time enough for me to buy a ticket and get to the platform.

And here on board, I had a beautiful, blissful sleep of all of about 5 minutes.

At Brussels-Midi I bought some banana-fjavoured soya milk, a couple of bricks, and then walked to my hotel. It’s 400 metres from the railway station yet it took me 20 minutes and I almost fell over twice.

It’s a different hotel than usual. Slightly more expensive but much more luxurious and better finished. I stayed here one a good few years ago. And I’m not disappointed either. Luckily even though I was early, my room was ready for me, and it’s a nice room.

First thing was to have a shower and wash my clothes. The only clothes that I have with me are the ones in which I’ve been travelling and I’m very mindful of something Rosemary once said to me. After I’d been on the road for a couple of days once she told me that I looked like a tramp. And to be honest, today I knew that I did. With my hospital visits tomorrow I have at least to make a pretence of civilisation.

Having done that I came in here, crashed out on the bed and went away with the fairies for three hours.

When I awoke, I had a packet of crisps and then got into bed ready to wait until tomorrow morning.

Talking of eating, do you want to know what I’ve eaten since Thursday lunchtime last week? well, 2 bananas, half a baguette, 2 slices of pizza, one airline meal and a packet of crisps

My appetite has gone completely, and so will I if this carries on much longer.

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Tuesday 25th October 2022 – MY WELSH LESSON …

… this morning was a disaster.

At least though I was there. And in spades too. When the alarm went off at 04:45 I was actually up and about. With having had no sleep the night before, I made sure that I was in bed early last night but even so I didn’t have much sleep. I was awake by 02:30 and had given up trying to go back to sleep round about 04:00 I hauled myself out of bed.

At one point I had been on my travels. There had been some kind of visit. We had a friend staying with us so I wasn’t working on the coaches that night. I was taking him and Nerina around showing him the town. Some girl had driven the coach that I should have been driving and she had STRAWBERRY MOOSE with her. It was late at night and we were on our way home and were discussing going down to the end of Beachey Head to show the guy the view from there night when we met the girl coming the other way in a kind-of Mini Moke machine. She flagged us down so we stopped. She gave Strawberry Moose back and said that she’d see us back home in a minute. After she left Nerina said “if we’re going there it’ll take us longer than a minute”. I replied “she was the one who made the arrangements. She’ll have to wait for us” and something about a song. There was a coach that had a certain song to perform so its registration number needed to be changed. Two of the coaches were identical but Nerina changed the number of the wrong one. I pointed it out to her but instead of changing it back and then changing the second coach’s number she went to change the number of the second coach first. That way she’d end up with two identical numbers and she wouldn’t know which one had been the original one which had been changed back. I could see that this was going to be extremely confusing but wit the woman turning up in this car she’d interrupted our train of thought in mid-action. This was bound now to lead to all kinds of confusion that we didn’t want to have and never be able to sort out.

With steam-driven internet, my loss of voice and all of that I couldn’t concentrate on anything so I just sat there and observed without contributing anything.

When the lesson finally finished I had my leftover slice of cold pizza and with checkout being at 11:00, I set the alarm for 10:00 and went back to bed. I didn’t sleep but just relaxed ready for the corvée that is to follow.

At 11:00 I went down to reception, stored my luggage in the still-incomplete after all these years annexe and went for a walk in the sunshine.

In the Rue St Catherine I stocked up with medication. And then sat for a couple of hours in the glorious weather. In fact I shall be sorry to say goodbye, maybe for ever, to Montreal. Sitting here in the Place Gamelin in short shirt sleeves in Summer temperatures with not a cloud in the sky watching the leaves falling at my feet.

At 14:00 I went back to the hotel, picked up my possessions and began the long, slow crawl to the bus stop The bus was actually there but the driver was having a break so we has to sit around and wait for him to finish.

Driving down the Boulevard René Levesque we hit every traffic light on red and then at our final pick-up we had to retrace our steps somewhat because of the roadworks and deviations.

Apart from the heavy traffic on the highway it was an uneventful drive and we were there by 15:20. By now I was pretty much played out so I staggered off to the check-in. Having checked in on-line last night my aisle seat was already reserved. I handed over my suitcase and drank my last can of energy drink

While finishing my drink I noticed that there was only a handful of people waiting in the queue for Security so I thought “sod it – I may as well go now while it’s not busy. Better sooner than later”.

And I don’t know what has happened here, but I have made many remarks about how the Dorval Airport – called these days the Pierre Trudeau Airport – has the rudest, most uncivil staff in the world but today I was impressed by their politeness and amiability. Times are certainly changing.

There was several hours to wait but a radio thriller of 150 minutes passed the time quite nicely. I’ve downloaded tons of old radio plays and shows to which I wan listen. It help pass the time

The plane had several empty seats but I was on the end of a row of three. And we were crammed in too because I had a lot of stuff with me. There are new rules on aeroplanes that you have to carry on board with you all of the electronic items that you have. And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have plenty of that.

Our take-off was about 10 minutes late and everyone settled down to sleep except me because I couldn’t sleep with all this coughing that I’m doing.

We were served our evening meal in the dark – probably a cunning plan so that we don’t get to know what we are eating. I was assured that my meal was vegan but I remain unconvinced.

And then we hurtled off into the night

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Monday 24th October 2022 – TODAY WAS ABSOLUTELY …

… awful.

It started with me struggling to fall asleep on board this train and finished with me having yet another spectacular fall, this time on the platform of the “Berri-UQAM” Metro Station. It doesn’t get any worse than this.

Last night I mentioned that the carriage in which I was travelling was more modern and luxurious than the one on which I travelled down to Moncton. That much was true but that was all that could be said for it. The seats didn’t recline at all and I just couldn’t make myself comfortable.

Nevertheless, I did manage to go to sleep for about three hours and there is even something on the dictaphone to prove it. I fell asleep listening to “Murder on the Orient Express”. The train pulled into a station in a big city. I alighted and went through a door, down some stairs and found myself in the cellar of this railway station where there was a ticket booth or similar with 3 clerks sitting in it. I turned round to retrace my steps but couldn’t recognise the route that I’d taken. I was sitting there scratching my head thinking “how am I going to find my train?” when I heard it start up and pull out of the railway station.

Later on we were on the train with a pile of stuff. We weren’t supposed to let it congeal together. I had this cough that was keeping me awake and annoying all the other people too. I must have fallen asleep because I didn’t remember anything after that. Then an alarm went off. I thought that it was mine so I sat bolt upright. My eyes were stuck together with this liquid stuff that is coming out of my eyes. I couldn’t see anything and I didn’t know how to separate them either.

And finally we were going somewhere as a family. I don’t know who was with us but someone was coming to pick us up. It was a long way and we had to be ready by 04:00. I heard that person coming while I was asleep and I awoke to find them coming to the door. Pretending that I was wide awake I said something in a very cheerful voice that we were all ready and raring to go. Then I found that I’d gone back to sleep again and none of the rest of my family had got up yet either

The rest of the journey was spent coughing all the way to Montreal, nibbling on a bit more baguette and eating a banana. No coffee though. There was a tea-trolley service on the train down but not on the way back. Luckily I’d stocked up with liquids. As I’m not eating, I still have to keep myself hydrated.

In the morning I awoke to find us pulling into the railway station at Ste-Foy on the outskirts of Québec. And having done what we wanted to do there, we reversed back out of there and carried on

victoria bridge st lambert lock observation deck st lawrence seaway Montreal Canada Eric Hall photo October 2022So here’s our fist view of Montreal

We’re actually following the sough bank of the St Lawrence River here, coming up to the little office building and observation deck of the St Lambert Lock at the entrance to the St Lawrence Seaway

That’s the canal that by-passes the rapids at Lachine and enables ocean-going ships to sail up the Great Lakes to places like Chicago and Detroit. There’s a rise here of 15 feet and there are other locks further on.

Montreal from victoria bridge Canada Eric Hall photo October 2022The bridge in the background of the previous photo was called the Victoria Bridge, opened in 1859 and rebuilt subsequently on a couple of occasions.

We’re crossing the bridge but actually using the diversion lines built in 1958 and I’ve no idea why that would be. These lines are only usually used when a ship is passing through the canal at this point but I can’t see one.

As for the bridge, it cost $6,600,000 and when it was completed it was, at almost 3 kilometres, the longest bridge in the World

city centre Montreal Canada Eric Hall photo October 2022We’ve crossed over the river now and are coming into the city centre and the railway station.

It’s a bizarre railway station, lost in the middle of a large shopping precinct, the “Place Bonaventure” part of the Underground City and the Halles de la Gare

It’s also quite modern, being built in the 1930s and opened in 1943 to consolidate all of the railway services in one place, and in the past we’ve visited some of the abandoned ones. But they needn’t have bothered because rail services in Canada are “sketchy” to say the least.

The agonising journey (which I would have enjoyed in other circumstances) drew to a halt about 15 minutes late (which was a surprise for everyone, a mere 15 minutes) and I staggered onto the platform.

I could feel that there was something not quite correct but I pressed on. And I was glad that there was an escalator up to the upper floor because I would never have made it up the stairs.

Having collected my suitcase with HIS NIBS I set off on the marathon crawl to the Metro Station.

Any disabled person thinking of wandering around the subterranean labyrinth of the centre of Montreal needs to think again. They have some escalators here and there that take to mezzanine floors where you have steps to take you the rest of the way.

And some of the escalators don’t work and you have to walk down and had not a friendly, helpful youth not carried my suitcase down to the bottom of one of them I’d still be there now.

And then some of the corridors are carpeted which means that your rolling suitcase comes to a dead stop with a velcro-like effect.

The metro ride to “Berri-UQAM” was uneventful but at the station itself I encountered some of the worst of humanity. There I was, collapsed on the platform and I asked some man if her could help me to my feet. He just looked away and walked straight past. A couple of young girls came to my rescue and with a great effort helped me to my feet while several other people just stood around.

In absolute agony I crawled to my hotel. Of course the room wasn’t ready but I know the people here and they soon had it ready which was nice of them. There’s no lift here though and I had to crawl up the steps to the first floor.

Luckily I was able to leave my luggage downstairs. The chambermaid brought up my backpack and the manager brought up my suitcase later.

By this time I was flat-out on the bed asleep. And I managed a couple of hours of, for once, blissful sleep.

A little later I had a nice hot shower and washed my clothes, and then got back into bed. Not that I slept but it was simply to rest my leg and take it easy.

In the early evening I tempted fate and went out again. I think that I’m keeping alive the entire Canadian pharmaceutical industry right now because with the stuff that I bought in Moncton not having any particular effect, I went to the chemist’s down the road and received different advice.

On the way back I went to try a slice of pizza but I could only eat half of it. This complete loss of appetite isn’t a fiction at all. So guess what I’m having for breakfast.

Back here I went straight to bed. I have a Welsh lesson in the morning at … errr … 05:00, not that I’m feeling in the least like it, but I have to push myself on.

But honestly, I’ve never felt as bad as this and I’m worried about the next couple of stages of this journey

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Sunday 23rd October 2022 – DAY FOUR …

… of my enforced hibernation and I’ve actually made it out of the house.

And even as we speak, I am hurtling through the night and the Canadian Maritime Forest somewhere in between Miramichi and Bathurst. Well, not exactly “hurtling” because the speed of this train is, shall we say, “disappointing”.

Last night I went to bed early with the idea of having a decent 10-hour sleep but in actual fact I didn’t sleep at all. Not for a minute. I saw every minute of that ten hours and probably much more besides.

When the alarm went off I arose from the bed, did some paperwork and then packed everything ready to go. We had a hot drink and then headed to the bus stop in Florenceville. We arrived early for the bus too – regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on one occasion it came early and left me behind.

The drive down to Moncton in the frost was quite uneventful.

coach atlantic prevost 1921 maritime bus fredericton new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo October 2022There was also quite a lot of fog everywhere this morning as you can tell in this photo taken at the company’s offices in Fredericton.

We stopped there to pick up passengers and the wait meant that we could nip to the bathroom at the petrol station next door.

As it happens, I’m a big fan of these Prevost coaches. They are nice and big and comfortable. Although this one is registered in Nova Scotia you’ll notice that the licence plate says “apportioned”. What that apparently means is that the road tax is shared between Nova Scotia and the other Provinces in which the vehicle operates.

You’ll see that it carries passenger authorisation plates for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Our bus was not actually all that late, which makes a change. But now there’s a four-hour wait for the train, always assuming that it’s on time of course, which is unlikely.

When they opened the check-in, I deposited my suitcase and staggered over to the chemist’s for some medication, and then across the road to Sobey’s for some supplies for the journey. I suppose that I’m going to start eating and I want to have some food when I’m ready.

general electric GE ES44AC 2754 canadian national EMD SD60F 5551 moncton railway station moncton new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo October 2022Waiting here in the waiting room at Moncton station a train suddenly appeared, so I photographed it thinking that it was mine.

However it turned out to be a passing freight train, double-headed with a Canadian National locomotive that I couldn’t identify at the front. If it’s 9551, it’s a GP40-2LW built in 1975.

The second locomotive is 2754 and is in the livery of Citibank’s “Citicorps Railmark Incorporated”, a company that leases railway equipment to various railways, but she was apparently actually purchased by Canadian National earlier this year.

She’s a model ES44AC built by my former employers, General Electric, and a similar locomotive carrying that number was built for the Union Pacific Railroad.

viarail train moncton railway station moncton new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo October 2022My train pulled up a short time later, double-headed by two locomotives that I was not able to identify. She was only 20 minutes late, which is something of a record,

As you can see, the train went past the station and then reversed in to the platform which seemed to me like a strange way to do things but it obviously works for them.

Once it was in at the platform we had to walk almost the whole length of the train to the carriage that was apparently allocated to us

For a change, I’m in the modern part of the train. It might be much better fitted out but it’s not as comfortable which is rather bizarre.

So off we went with me coughing all the way, and I’ve eaten a banana and a lump of baguette, the first food that I’ve had for 72 hours. So now I’m going to settle down and try to sleep. Surely I can’t go 48 hours without any sleep at all?

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Saturday 22nd October 2022 – DAY THREE …

… of my enforced isolation saw me have very little sleep as this ‘flu raged away, and even Cujo the Killer Cat could do little to comfort me.

Before going to work Rachel made me a mug of hot lemon and honey and then I went and had a shower and a clothes-washing session.

There were three trips outside today too – the first to hang up the washing, the second to rescue some possessions from Strider and the third to rescue the washing later.

The first trip out was the most exiting. As I went outside Gilligan, the young long-haired cat came scampering down the bank to show me the mouse that he had caught. Very proud of himself, he was. And after I’d congratulated him he took it off to play with it.

When Rachel came back she plied me with medication and we had a long chat about our plans for tomorrow before I went off to bed, ready for my 27-hour marathon.

Well, I’m not actually ready for it. This has been one trip too many.

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Friday 21st October 2022 – DAY TWO …

… of my enforced isolation while I try to shake off this ‘flu. I’ve probably been out of my room half a dozen times at most, mainly for the bathroom and to find water.

So far I’ve been 36 hours without food because the whole back of my throat seems as if it’s on fire.

None of the foregoing has prevented me from wandering off during the night. There was something like an old abandoned gas terminal on the border somewhere in Jersey that was being offered for sale as a private mooring and was being offered for sale for £30,000 but I can’t remember anything more about it.

And later we were at a National Express turn-round spot. A coach had just come up from Abingdon with the southern part. Someone had come down from the northern part and swapped over ready to go back. We talked about a white coach that the company down south had bought. Then it came round to being in the hospital. I was in hospital and one woman asked the doctor “does it really matter what I wear if I come to visit him?”. The doctor said “to me, no but other people might find it quite disturbing if you were to wear something that would display more than it ought etc”.

Let’s see how Day Three unfolds

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Thursday 20th October 2022 – JUST IN CASE …

… you’re wondering what is going on, I’ve caught the ‘flu. And this is the ‘flu to end all ‘flus. I’ve never felt as bad as this.

Normal service will be resumed when I’m feeling better.

For a while I was actually not too bad and even managed to run down to Fredericton in Strider to deliver some feed from the mill and to do a little shopping ready for going home, but things just went slowly worse throughout the day.

But in the meantime, I’ve been going off on quite a few voyages. I was moving into my house in Winsford. I was talking to someone on the internet. They were also planning on moving in to a new house so we were just basically chatting about that. My father and his second wife were around. Suddenly a vehicle identical to the one to which I was just talking pulled up in the drive of the house and all these people got out. They began to move suitcases etc about. I could see that they were to people to whom I’d just been talking. It looked as if they were going to be my neighbours just across the road. We began to chat a little then we moved out of their way to give them room to manoeuvre their suitcases.

And later we were going somewhere. I can’t remember who was with me now. We were in Caliburn. We came to a set of road works controlled by traffic lights. We were let through when they changed to green but had to wait a moment while a tarmacking machine went past. Then we had to set out to climb this steep hill to a road junction. They had really freshly tarred it so trying to find a grip on it was pretty much impossible. There was a great danger that we would slide everywhere. By now, instead of being in Caliburn I was on a bike. That made things a hundred times worse. There were people coming from all kinds of directions. I didn’t want to have to swerve around too much in case I’d fall over with there not being any grip on this road as yet with the hot tar.

My friend from near Ellesmere was going to come over so I had to make all kinds of arrangements with her. I had to speak to a pub landlord about making sure that she was welcomed etc so I had to fill in a questionnaire. I was in this pub with someone else while the pub landlord was reviewing the questionnaire. It was also the birthday of one of the daughters of my niece so I found an envelope and had to write a little message to her but I kept on confusing the names and was writing this message to my friend but of course it was to my niece’s daughter to whom I wanted to leave it. On the way out of the pub I had to pick up the questionnaire that I’d filled in. I saw that he’d given me 11 out of 11. He said in some rudimentary and basic French that my friend would be welcomed over there when she passed through so I picked up the paperwork and began to walk out.

At another moment I was with my friend from South Carolina. We’d been in a chemist’s shop and asked if he had a box. A chemist’s shop in a shopping precinct. he thought that he’d thrown out all of his boxes but in the end he found a box that he gave to us for which we were grateful. Then we were wandering around this shopping mall. Next morning we had to leave quite quickly. I was chatting to a Welsh tutor about some kind of problem that had arisen that had had him talking to his students for hours during the night. We were wondering how many other tutors had been disturbed by this and their families upset at ridiculous hours. My friend stopped to have a cup of tea. I didn’t think that we had time but he did anyway. He took the tea and someone asked me if they’d made it properly. I said “as long as the water is poured when it’s absolutely boiling that’s absolutely great”.

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Wednesday 19th October 2022 – I’VE BEEN DISPLAYING …

… my culinary prowess today. And considering that I have been doing it in the house of someone who is a fully-qualified chef with years of commercial experience and who actually ate what I prepared, then that’s something of a feather in my cap and no mistake.

This morning Rachel sent me a message from work to the effect of “why don’t we have a curry for tea?” and I took that as a hint.

There was plenty of time to make one too because there wasn’t a great deal on the dictaphone and I’ll attend to that in due course.

So once I’d raised myself from the dead, had my medication and checked my mails and messages I set to work.

Yesterday I’d been thinking that I ought to stir my stumps and head out earlier, but when I saw the rain cascading down in sheets, I was glad that there was something to do.

It’s difficult cooking in someone else’s house because you don’t know where everything is, and Rachel doesn’t have the types of spices that I use but I managed to make something quite respectable in the end.

Not too spicy though because Darren’s palette isn’t the same as ours. It reminds me of another time and place when we used to have these communal meals. I’d take a lentil and pepper “curry”. All of the French people would be gasping for breath and fanning their mouths while the British people would be going “what’s this insipid nonsense?”.

When it was ready I heaved the cats out, much to their disappointment, and then headed for the mill.

First task there was to find enough cardboard to wrap an amplifier. Three years ago in Ottawa I’d bought one of the best bass amps ever made but I hadn’t sent it to Europe, planning to do it the next year. But Covid had put paid to that idea. So hopefully, this year it’s going back with the sunroof that I have ordered for that Ford.

Eventually we headed for home where everyone enjoyed my curry. And then I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I had to catch a train so I ran. We were on a railway station. It said that there was an additional train running and would be in the station in a couple of minutes. I had to run down the platform, run across the bridge, run down the other side and jump aboard. Whoever I was with, I remember saying that I couldn’t have done that a year ago. The train was one of these multiple units, the type that plied between Stoke on Trent and Manchester in the 70s. It was pretty crowded but I found a place to sit by the door so that I could say goodbye to whoever I was with and the train pulled off. Somewhere along the line there was a girl who had some kind of connection with me, whether she was an adopted daughter or cousin or something I dunno but she was big for her age. We’d left her somewhere; When we returned on this train she’d dyed her hair. We made a few comments about her hair, that kind of thing. She was wearing these jeans with holes in the legs. I was talking to some Indian guy. He was wondering why I seemed to have had preferential treatment about seats and so on on this aeroplane. I showed him a voucher that I had which showed that I was a member of some kind of flight plan with this airline. He rummaged through his papers and found that he had one as well. I asked him why he never said anything. He replied that it was all too late by now to do anything.

And now I’m off to bed. Early as it may be, I’m busy tomorrow. The feed truck missed a customer today so they need several sacks of grain delivering to somewhere around Fredericton. it’ll be a good run-out again.

However there’s been a heavy cold going round the mill and the tyre depot and it’s my turn to come down with it. I hope that it’s just a 24-hour thing and I can shake it off tonight. But having no immune system, it’s not so easy.

We’ll see how things develop.

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Tuesday 18th October 2022 – A FUNNY THING …

… happened this morning. But anyone who knows anything about cats will know that there is nothing whatever strange about it.

The alarm went off as planned at 05:45 ready for my Welsh lesson but immediately (and I DO mean “immediately”) Cujo the Killer Cat jumped on me and trapped me in bed.

She refused to move until she’s had a good 20 minutes of strokes and consequently I was late for my lesson.

Once the lesson began she came and sat on my knee for an hour or so, hogging the camera while the lesson continued.

At last I think that I’ve sorted out the best way to deal with the Zoom meetings on this computer.

A year or so ago I upgraded it by swapping the hard drive for a solid-state drive but the processor is still quite slow. Zoom uses up all of the resources which means that when I open the course book *.pdf the Zoom window stutters. However if I minimise the Zoom window so that it shows “active speaker only” then it doesn’t work too badly.

As for the lesson itself it passed quite quickly and it wasn’t too bad. In fact I did rather well in what I was asked to do. But I really need to work on my vocabulary. Well, more than that actually. I’m feeling that I’m falling way behind.

After the lesson finished I … errr … relaxed for a while and then had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. We were at an archaeological dig last night having to clean some of the artefacts. There were quite a few of us there. I found some kind of switch made from bakelite from the 1950s. It was extremely delicate and took me ages to get into all the nooks and crevices etc to scrape away years years of dust. Then I had to go to work on some kind of miniature man, wrap him in ivy seeds and ivy runners. It was called a “gorseinon” whatever that might be. I didn’t have a clue how to do this but there was some young girl there who was making one who gave me some instruction as to how to do it, hanging part of it around his neck and twisting it round so that the whole length of whatever it is that you had was covering his whole length to varying degrees.

Then I was out with Rachel. We were shopping somewhere. She was telling us about all the chaos there had been over the Christmas shopping. She had a list of shops that she wanted to visit but there was so much chaos on the roundabout and traffic junctions that she never actually managed to make it to one particular shop which was a pretty important one on the list. She was describing to me how people just take so much time doing their shopping because they would want to talk to the counter clerk, inane, banal things. She was imitating some of their conversation in this perfect Canadian accent while everyone in the queue with us was listening and smiling. We’d already had some kind of chaos on the roundabout with telling some stories to my brother who was in the car behind and was so intent on listening that he ended up being in the wrong lane coming into this roundabout and caused an almighty snarl-up of his own while he tried to sort himself out and get him on the right track

There was also something that I vaguely remember about a gold BMC1800 “ADO17” being parked up at a house in Canada. And that’s a surprise because the car was never available in North America as far as I can tell.

After lunch I headed off down to the mill again. It was quite busy there these days especially as they are loading up the feed truck to go on a delivery round. But these days I’m in no condition to help out as I used to.

But at least I think that I’ve worked out why the transmission in Strider might be slipping occasionally. There wasn’t a drop of oil in the gearbox so I topped it up – with about a litre of hypoid.

Strider has been stood for three years, I know, but I didn’t think that the oil would leak out over time. I shall have to put him up on a ramp and see of there’s a leak. Gone are the days when I could crawl underneath.

We were there until quite late this evening and when we came home, we were in no mood to cook. Consequently we ended up with leftovers. I had what I had yesterday except with a baked potato instead of the spaghetti squash.

Rachel and I chatted for a couple of hours and made plans for the future, and now I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’m going to start to pack as I ought to be thinking about going home.

Not that I want to, but I can’t stay here for ever. Apart from anything else, I have no fewer than 6 hospital appointments in Leuven a week on Thursday. Things are hotting up.

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Monday 17th October 2022 – HAVING GONE TO ..

… bed quite early last night, I ended up not going to sleep for quite a while. In fact, it was almost midnight when I finally went to sleep – at least as far as I can remember.

With no-one coming to see me during the night, there was plenty of time for me to go off for a wander or two. I went to Spain last night, a small town just over the border. what had happened was that again I was having loads of problems and issues etc in work (and isn’t this a regular occurrence?). As I was well-past retirement age I didn’t really care much so one morning I just didn’t go in. I had a piece of music from a rock group on an old LP that was actually the National Anthem of a group of revolutionaries somewhere. They had borrowed my LP because at 07:00 every morning they played the National Anthem on their radio station and had a little speech. They asked me if I wanted to join them so with nothing better to do I decided that maybe I would. I turned up there at 07:00 and they kitted me out with some equipment but no arms and they sent me off on a foot patrol around Shavington. That’s how I ended up on this foot patrol in Spain. I walked around the outskirts of this town a little, and then I found the town centre. It was full of all dubious characters and old British cars as well, and old cars that I didn’t know what they were. I was in a real paradise looking at these Reliants and Ford Anglias, all sorts of stuff. As I was walking down this alleyway I went past a house where a woman looked at me, noticed that I was British. She tidied up her cat out of the way and asked me if I wanted some Coca-Cola. I said “no” but we started to chat.

Later in I was back in Spain again, back in this dream and wandering around the town trying to find a place to hang my towel rail. In the end I found some kind of shop where there were crowds of people who might have had some screws but he told me that there was some kind of communal field on the edge of town where everyone took their clothes to hang up and dry. He pointed it out to me and said that that was where I had to go.

Finally I was in the Welsh Premier League headquarters. There had been a complaint than a Welsh club had entered the English FA Cup and was therefore ineligible to enter the Welsh Cup. It seemed that the Welsh FA had missed it so I went down to Premier League headquarters to lodge a complaint on behalf of the fans. I met someone there, some woman, and we had the same acquaintances in Welsh football. We were discussing things but she wouldn’t keep to the point. She kept on going off on a tangent and it was very difficult to haul her back into the matter that we were discussing. She sent all of her colleagues out for a tea break for half an hour while she talked to me as well. I’d no idea what her intention was at that particular moment. As I’d set out, I’d left the apartment with my partner and her child. I had to go back for something but found that she hadn’t locked the apartment door. I sent her a message but because I didn’t have anything to write I used my thumbnail to make an impression of the letters on some obje0ct or other and left it so that she could see it.

Interestingly, back in 2006 when there was talk in the Welsh FA headquarters about reorganising the league competitions, I was chosen by a group of fans to be their representative to go down to headquarters to meet the Competitions Secretary to discuss the concerns that the fans had.

Once everyone had gone off to work I dragged myself out of my bed and had my medication. And then I sat down to transcribe the notes from the dictaphone.

In the middle of all of it, Cujo the Killer Cat came to sit on my knee. In fact she didn’t sit but turned round and round, climbed up and over me and then once she had attracted my full attention she ran to the front door and asked to be let out. She knows the score well enough.

When I’d finished the dictaphone notes I went and had a shower and a clothes-washing session to pretty myself up, and then had lunch. Toasted cheese with tomato.

Once I was ready I went up to the mill to chat to Rachel and Zoe until throwing-out time. And that was rather later than usual too. Back here I had to wait for everyone else to turn up and to talk to a couple of guys who needed roadside assistance.

Tea was a vegan burger with onion, garlic and tomato and, totally new for me, spaghetti squash. Not my favourite but it’s nice to try something new.

Back in here I had to write out the dictaphone notes again because for some unknown reason I seemed to have wiped out the file but I really don’t know how or why, and then I wrote out the notes for today.

And early though it might be, I’m off to bed. I have a Welsh lesson in the morning so it’s another 05:45 start. But I’m more interested in what time it will finish.

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