Author Archives: Epichall

Monday 20th March 2023 – IT DIDN’T TAKE …

… me long to finish off the radio programme this morning.

Had I been more motivated I could have finished it even quicker but I had a leisurely stroll through what I needed to do and it was all done and up and running by 09:30. I don’t suppose that I can complain too much about that.

On the other hand, there was plenty to complain about last night, if I were the complaining type … “perish the thought” – ed. Going to bed quite early was one thing, but going off to sleep was something else completely.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I crawled out of bed wishing that I could stay in bed for another 12 hours because I felt absolutely awful and I couldn’t see how I would keep going for the rest of the day.

But kept going I did, and I bet that you are surprised. I know that I was.

First thing was to go for my medication and then to check my mails and messages. And then to attack the radio programme. Luckily I’d done most of it, including dictating the notes for it. It was just a case of editing the notes, assembling the sound files, selecting a final track, dictating the notes for the final track, editing them and finishing off the assembly.

The programme ended up being 5 seconds over so I had them to find some text that I had included that I could go back and edit out

While I assembled my thoughts I had a listen to what I’d done and then had a listen to the programme that I’ll be sending off to be broadcasted this weekend.

That took me up to a rather late breakfast and the fruit buns that I made yesterday are the best that I have ever made.

The next step was to listen to the dictaphone notes from the night, for I had been off on my travels. There was some kind of strange dream about a couple. I can’t remember anything about it except the boss of this woman’s husband telling her to go home and wait for her husband to arrive and she’d send him on home and the husband would know about what happened to the cousin. That’s all that I remember about this.

But really I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m forgetting all my dreams at the moment. There was another one where I was working in an office (this is something of a recurring dream, isn’t it?). I had a file out before me belonging to someone. I was going through it and noticed that all the details in this person’s file had changed. Even the file number was no longer correct. Looking through the file it seemed that he had actually been to prison for killing someone. I made sure that the front of the file was prominently marked “murderer” or whatever then referred it to whoever I should have referred it to, to make sure that they were aware. At some point I was talking to Rosemary. We were discussing a few things about this and that, I can’t remember what. I was on my way to see her. I was speaking to her on the ‘phone while I was driving. She was saying that when I slowed down or stopped she could hear all the animals in the background. As I went round the side of a mountain she suddenly said “I can hear you so much clearer now”. I replied “that’s because I’m in Shavington”. We continued our chat and she said “one thing’s for sure that if ever I’m made redundant I think that the two of us would get on very well”.

A little later on I stepped back into that dream again about the guy but this time I was looking at another file about a guy who had been under some kind of enquiry since 1927 when he’d been the heritee in a Will but there had never been any trace of him. People now started to enquire about his antecedents but he’d chased off everyone who had come to visit him on his farm and shop. He’d died and his estate had been wound up because of all these issues that he’d had. His daughter was a dancer and she was in all kinds of issues. I was on the verge of retiring and only had this one file left that I needed to sort out. I was sitting at a desk by my Irish friend. There was all kinds of stuff coming up on my computer on a big overhead screen above my desk and I’d be much happier if she didn’t see it, although how she could avoid doing so I really don’t know. It was then time for me to leave. At lunchtime I’d been getting in my car, going for a little drive and sitting somewhere quietly in a lane. Then I was on my way home. To go into this lane I had to stop at a T junction. There was nothing coming so I just pulled out into the lane and drove. Then I was overtaken by a whole stream of motorcyclists who came to the next junction and were turning left. One of thes emotorcyclists had stopped to act as a marshal to show all his friends which way to go

At lunchtime I had some fruit and then I had to ring up the solicitor. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been sending money in dribs and drabs to this solicitor for the purchase of this apartment. All of the money has now been sent and I had a pile of receipts sent to me in the post.

As I checked them over, I found that there was a payment that I had made that hadn’t been receipted so I phoned them up. The accountant there acknowledged that they had received it, but the missing payment had arrived the day after they had sent out the receipts and I should receive a receipt at some time in early course.

That was something that cheered me up. I wasn’t at all happy about this money aimlessly ambling around in cyberspace.

Also in the post was a summons to the hospital in Leuven on 4th May. I’ve heard on the ‘phone that I’ll also have an appointment in another department there on the 11th but the confirmation for that hasn’t arrived. When it finally turns up, I’m going to have to ring up to try to swap things around so that all my appointments are on the same day.

If it’s not possible, then I might have a little think about a few days at the seaside in Oostende in between, but that’s not going to be much fun on crutches. Let’s hope that this little improvement that I’m noticing keeps on going.

Something else that I did was to choose some more music for another radio programme in the future. I need to keep on going with these for as long as I can.

There was still plenty of time left so I’ve been tidying up the databases for the music that I use for broadcasting. I’m trying to make things much easier for myself as I go along and I keep on having these little ideas about how things can be improved.

There’s also a little plan in the pipeline to change things around somewhat but more of that anon

Tea was another delicious stuffed pepper with plenty of stuffing left over for a taco roll tomorrow and to go into a curry on Wednesday. We’ll slowly have everything sorted out.

Now I’m off to bed. Hoping for a good night but doubting very much whether I’ll have one. I’m not doing too well with that right now. But I’ll have to try nevertheless. I have a Welsh lesson tomorrow and I need to be on form.

Sunday 19th March 2023 – WELL THAT WAS A …

… total waste of time.

It was a beautiful afternoon today, so much so that I had turned off the heating for a while and had the window open, so I reckoned that I’d go out to this Home Exhibition that was taking place this weekend.

It was a long walk – the longest that I’ve done since I’ve been back from Canada – and quite uncomfortable on my crutches, but I made it there all the way without too many problems.

But as I said, I needn’t have bothered. Of all the stalls that were there in this big marquee, there was only one that made any reference to bathrooms. And when I finally managed to speak to the guy in charge, he told me that he had no means of assisting with the installation.

And that’s no good for me.

So anyway, I just came back home. I didn’t even stop for an ice cream.

It was a tough climb back up to here and I had to make more pauses than I otherwise would have done, but I made it back and then collapsed on a chair.

It’s no surprise that I was tired though because apart from the walk into town and back, I’d also had another miserable night, following on the usual pattern just recently.

And despite it being a Sunday I was wide awake at 08:45 and out of bed by 09:30, and it’s not something that happens every Sunday. There have been Sundays when I’ve been lucky to see midday.

After the medication, the first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone. There were tons of stuff on it from the night. We were having a big argument. I can’t remember very much about it except that it was with some people who were not very well-educated. I had to write out an essay. It was to do with some kind of subject but my life story seemed to fit in there so I was in order of writing my life story. For some reason it had taken me so much time to make a start that I didn’t have much time left so I was doing it as a kind of “cut and paste” but with real paper, a pen and a pair of scissors trying to write it out so I could then cut everything around and fit it into the exam paper in the right kind of order. It was really quite a complicated thing. Then I had to write out the word “seizure” but I couldn’t remember how it was spelt. I asked someone who you spell it. Then I realised that instead I could just say the word “sizes” so I said that there’s no need to bother – I’ll use that instead. Off course “sizes” wasn’t the right word. That was one thing that while I was dictating this I couldn’t think of what words I was supposed to be using in this dream.

And then I was round at someone’s house. They were proudly showing me their anemometer that they had attached to the eaves of the roof of their house. I remembered the one that I used to have at Virlet. I was quite admiring it. They had some kind of set-up in the back, a framework with solar panels etc. I took advantage by fastening a pole to this gantry and putting a wind turbine on it. We went into the house. It was bedtime. I went to bed. All of a sudden this whole framework collapsed. My brother was actually standing next to it outside but he didn’t notice for some reason. I got up to go to see what had happened but immediately fell over because my right knee gave way. Eventually I managed to drag myself off out. They were busy trying to prop it up by driving wooden stakes into the ground with a hammer. I didn’t think that that would do the stakes much good but it was all they had. I had a sledgehammer but it was in the back of Caliburn. Every time this guy had it in the correct kind of place to hold up, my brother would try to adjust it just that little bit more and it would all collapse again. We were fed up of this and shouted at him to leave it alone. There were all kinds of things like bricks there that were separated by little bits of foam to stop the bricks knocking against each other. They had percentages written on them. I worked out that it was some kind of calculator that calculated the percentages for numbers of days in the year. I thought that the only way that this is going to work now is that if they put it back in the right order. But apart from the writing on it there was no way to determine which was the correct order and which wasn’t.

Later on we were on a bus trip in a white Van Hool Alizee taking us all around. I was a passenger. A lot of my family was on it. My mother was there and she was keeping everyone waiting because she always seemed to be the last to turn up. I said to my youngest sister “that will teach you to be born so late in life. If you’d been born before, you wouldn’t have had to wait for so long”. We were all waiting in this park by these iron gates for the bus to appear. While we were waiting there someone who was the guardian of the gates was asleep on the gate. Someone wanted to go out for a minute but they couldn’t awaken him so they just opened the gate anyway and dashed out after their 2 children who’d got out somehow. We all wondered what was going on because no-one had given us any explanation when we saw the woman suddenly dash out of the gates of this park.

Finally, a lot of turmeric had been used in flavouring some green beans that were cooking on the stove in a big pot. So much so that they had gone a greeny-yellow. We were trying to find people who had eaten from here to see whether in fact they’d turned yellow, there was so much turmeric in this cooking pot.

The morning was very quiet. I didn’t really do all that much at all. After all, it is a Sunday and I’m entitled to have a day off once a week.

Lunch was early today and then I nipped out to the Exhibition to make the most of the glorious weather.

Back here, once I’d recovered, I made a pile of dough for the fruit buns. Lots of dried fruit and the like to give it some ooomph. And I made enough dough for a dozen, with the idea that I won’t have to make any for a while. I’ll be just a couple of days short of Easter then when I run out and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I now have some hot cross buns in the freezer for Easter.

But while we’re on the subject of the freezer … “well, one of us is” – ed … I don’t know where I’m going to put the fruit buns that I won’t be eating this week. The freezer is jam-pack full with the couple of bags of carrots in there and I had a real struggle to open the drawers today.

There’s a bit more space in there now though because after lunch I took out the last ball of frozen dough for the pizza and it had been defrosting all afternoon. While my fruit buns were busy proofing, I kneaded the defrosted dough and rolled it out onto the pizza tray.

Rosemary rang up for a lengthy chat about an issue that is ongoing involving one of her friends in the UK. And while we were chatting I baked my fruit buns and assembled my pizza. And when the buns were baked (to perfection) I put the pizza in to cook.

With the oven being stinking hot the pizza was cooked to perfection too and it was delicious. I’ll make some more like that!

With a spare half-hour I dictated the notes for the radio programme so (in theory) it shouldn’t take too long to do the radio programme. “In Theory” because we all know about “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men” that often “gang aft agley” when you are trying to do something.

We’ll have to see how it all pans out.

Saturday 18th March 2023 – AFTER THE EFFORTS …

… of the last few days, everything finally caught up with me today.

Again, it wasn’t helped by having another miserable, depressing night when I had a real struggle to go to sleep and when I finally did, I had a real wander around in the ether all the way through the night.

Mind you, not that I’m complaining about that because first of all TOTGA and then Zero came to see me during the night and that’s something about which I can feel quite content. They (and Castor too, who has been disappointingly absent for some considerable time) can come to visit me any time they like.

Once again, I was out of bed and up and about before the alarm went off. I had my medication followed by a shower and then I headed for the shops.

First port of call was a bathroom shop called “Aubade”. They sell all kinds of bathroom equipment and fittings, like showers for example, and seem to be quite an upmarket kind of establishment. Although they don’t do installations themselves, they have a couple of teams of approved contractors and the assistant gave me their ‘phone numbers.

She also gave me a catalogue of their products, and that was rather a shame for the poor rain forest that had to be sacrificed. One more page in it and I would have had to have borrowed a fork-lift truck to bring it to Caliburn.

Noz had nothing at all of any interest and LeClerc didn’t come up with anything special. They had some grated vegan cheese on special offer so I bought a couple of packs. I have to encourage their vegan range of products.

When I returned I brought up a few of the things that I’d bought and the rest can wait for later. I had to think about some food though, and there was a stray leek hanging around in the vegetable rack that needed to be used.

First of all I fried a small onion in a saucepan with some olive oil until it was browned.

Then I added the chopped leek and a pile of garlic

Half a teaspoon of cumin, half a teaspoon of nutmeg, half a teaspoon of tarragon and a pile of fresh ground black pepper went in next.

Two small potatoes were washed and cubed and then added into the saucepan. It was all stirred around in the pan.

Then I covered the food with enough water and added a stock cube and a helping of soya cream, and let it simmer for 15 minutes while I put away the food that I’d bought.

Then I whizzed up what was in the saucepan, added a little more water until it had a nice consistency and then sat down to eat the most delicious soup that I’ve ever made, along with some nice crusty bread that I’d bought.

While I was at LeClerc I’d bought a bargain pack of 2kg of carrots. Next task was to wash, dice and blanch them. When they were ready I put them in the sink in sieves to drain so that I could put them in the freezer later.

Back in here I sat down in my chair and promptly fell asleep. So much so that in the end I struggled into bed where I stayed until I awoke – at 18:00. That was some crashing out.

And while I was away I went off on a little voyage too. I was doing a coach trip. We ended up in Germany. I dropped the passengers at the coach park and they all disappeared with their suitcases. I sorted out the coach etc. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t have anywhere to stay. I thought that I’d better go along to look for a hotel. I’d seen a hotel on the way in that looked nice. It was a 5-minute walk away so I set out to walk. As I walked up the back of this car park there was the back of a big hotel-type place there but it looked dirty and scruffy, not very niceat all so I ignored it. As I waslked up to the main road I looked behind me. I could see that the hotel was called the Hotel Adler. It was a huge place. I seemed to remember that it was something that all the passengers had talked about so I wondered if it was actually the tour hotel and where I was supposed to be staying. I had better turn round and retrace my steps to the hotel to have a look.

Once I’d finally recovered I decided that I’d finally make a start on some work but as luck would have it, Rosemary called me for one of our chats. I’m convinced that she set up a camera in here when she came to visit because she always seems to call me at exactly the right moment.

After we’d finished I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was something last night about me having a cat. Also, there was a radio presenter who was presenting some stuff. He was quite well-known for certain reasons. But ass I was dictating it I awoke instead and at that moment it all disappeared.

This was another one of these dreams where I had to visit South London, where I seem to visit quite often. We were all at the Underground station picking up the tickets etc. When we had the tickets everyone left. Of course, I couldn’t run – I could only hobble. I shouted at someone to hold the lift for me but he didn’t hear. he went in and went on down. When I reached the lift I couldn’t remember to which floor I was supposed to be going. I always end up on the wrong level at this station and on the wrong train so always end up with an enormous walk at the end because the Underground in South London is pretty poor. I was there scratching my head trying to think which would be the best platform for me in order for me to go where I needed

And then I had TOTGA round last night. She was here at the same time that the physiotherapist was here. As well as giving me plans for the physiotherapy he was giving me plans for counselling. He was trying to have me agree to do 3 things differently and gave me a list. I had to choose 3. But I was trying to talk to TOTGA as well because she was having to leave at 15:30 because her plane back home was at 18:30. I was trying to have this 3-way conversation talking to these 2 different people about 2 different things and nothing seemed to be resolved. I could see that in the end TOTGA was going to go and the 2 of us had never resolved anything that needed to be resolved between us and I doubted that I’d ever have the chance to see her again, which is probably true. He was babbling on all the time about me making pizzas.

Next I was with a couple of people, man and wife. I’ve no idea who they were. We were in Stoke on Trent. They were a couple much older than me. I was round at their house preparing some food but they had no mushrooms. We were down at the Fenton area somewhere so they suggested going to the market in Stoke. The husband and I set off on foot. It was quite a trudge. We went through one set of market stalls, out into the street and reached the main road. He stuck his head in a shop and said that they had none. We wandered round a few market stalls outside that were closed up. They had things like meat out in the open air etc that can’t have been hygenic. By now the wife was with us. We came to a cheese stall where they had some cheese samples. They kept on trying to offer me cheese samples but I told them that I couldn’t take it. In the end we went back to the shop where we were first because we had seen someone coming down the street carrying giant-sized mushrooms. We could see through the window that we had some that were individually priced. We thought that we’d go in. By now the woman had selected some fish from one of the outside stalls. We were about to go in to pay. To go in you had to climb up this rickety wooded ladder and somehow slide in between the rungs into the shop. I thought “I’ll take the stuff and go in to pay because I’m staying with them”. Because of my disability I couldn’t bend my leg enough to enter through the ladder. After trying for a couple of minutes and holding up everyone I gave it up in the end and one of them went in with the stuff. Eventually I managed to enter. There were some people in bed like a geriatric ward or hospital, all this stuff on sale. The woman there was making some drinks, a kind of cocktail. She passed one to me and said “this is for my husband”. Then she passed another one to me and said “this is for the baby. Whatever you do, don’t get them confused”. I had to take them out to the door and pass them to the husband and try to remember whose was what and to make sure that he kept them the way that this woman wanted them keeping so there would be no confusion as to who had the alcoholic drink and who had the soft one.

There was another one about a bunch of people including me getting a round of drinks and something to do with a large box or packet full of butter but I can’t remember anything at all of this.

Finally I was round at Zero’s parents. I hadn’t seen her father for ages and we weren’t on particularly good terms but I had to go round there for something. I was having a chat to Zero etc when he came round. He was surprised to see me but anyway we had a vague little chat. I don’t think that he was very happy but suddenly it started to rain and we all had to go indoors. There was another little girl there and she was out on a bike. Zero ran down to the end of the garden to look to see if she could see her. She shouted that she was on her way back. They started to ask me about my house. He said that I had 2 properties. I replied that in fact I had 3. His wife asked if I’d signed for my house. I replied “not exactly but it’s all paid for etc”. She asked if I’d used the money in that Santander account. I replied “no. I managed to keep away from there and 1 or 2 other accounts. I had no idea how many other accounts I had in total”.

With all of that it’s hardly any surprise that I was totally wasted this afternoon.

Tea was a delicious breaded quorn fillet with baked potato and salad. What with my leek and potato soup at lunchtime I’ve had some really excellent meals today. I’m really doing well with this cooking at the moment.

Tomorrow I have to make some fruit bread again and also go into town for this Home Renovations Fair thing for a few tips about my new bathroom. So it’s going to be a busy day tomorrow.

It’ll be pouring down with rain probably and that would be enough to dampen my enthusiasm but if I do make it into town I might stop and have my first ice cream of the year. I’m not even sure if I had one last year.

Friday 17th March 2023 – WHAT HAPPENED …

… during the night tells its own story about how things went .

That long sleep in the afternoon was clearly the wrong thing to do because when I went to bed last night it took hours (and I do mean hours) to go off to sleep.

And add to that the fact that when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already up and about, that will tell you even more.

As well as that, during the brief moments when I must have gone to sleep, I travelled miles. And I DO mean miles. I started off washing the crockery in the sink. There were tons of it. Some of it had dried plaster on it but because it had been soaking for so long the plaster had gone soft. Like a fool I drained my carrots and peas into it without noticing so I had to fish those out one by one from all of the mess as well. Washing up all this was really pretty dismal. I didn’t enjoy it for a single minute with all the stuff that was in there and the sink was absolutely overflowing.

And then we’d gone somewhere to play a game of football. When we arrived there had been a little bit of snow. Someone had drawn out the lines of a pitch in the snow on the carpet. It was tiny. You couldn’t have more than four people standing on this carpet never mind playing the game. In the end we just wiped the line markings off, cleaned the carpet and went round looking for other bits of carpet that we could butt up to the first one to make some kind of circuit. It was still quite small but we found all that we could. There was a lot of argument about some carpet that we were using because some people used them as cushions to sit on. We said that that’s just too bad because they’ve come here to see the game and if we don’t have these bits of carpet to make the pitch larger there won’t be a game of football to watch etc.

There was some kind of advert for a jazz group to form in London. I’d turned up. We were going to set up to have a jam. I’d brought my drum kit along and was in the middle of setting it up when the drummer appeared. he started to assemble his. We chatted about drum kits etc. I explained that I’d bought mine to learn but I wasn’t any good. I started to get the guitar and amp ready. While I was doing a couple of things he picked up my bass and started to try to play it. We had a little chat about that as well for some unknown reason the lead between the bass guitar and amp was very short. Trying to untangle ourselves to walk around was something quite a nightmare.

Did I dictate that dream about travelling to the office on the train and then on the Underground going with an old friend of mine from my school days? “No, you didn’t” – ed …. so we arrived at out building but the building wasn’t going to be hours for much longer because we were moving 2 streets away to another building. I went back into this dream and went off to post some letters. I couldn’t find my British stamps so I bought some more. I wanted some stamps to go to Canada that cost me 24 cents. I opened a letter. It was a letter about a loan that someone had had to take out for some reason or other that required a loan. It was to do with a political campaign where someone had been wrongly accused of hiring a black car in an ice storm in Montreal. I had to write to this person so I wrote a letter. While I was ferreting around in my wallet for the stamps that I’d just bought I came across the original ones. Eventually I managed to find the 24 cents stamp. I went to put it on my letter but the guy next to me started talking. He asked about the letters that I was writing. I said “I’m writing to North America”. He replied “it’s only 16 cents to North America”. I said “I’m writing to Canada and it’s 24 cents” but he didn’t really believe me. I put the stamp on the envelope then went to fetch some airmail stamps out of my wallet to put on it. He was admiring the perforated security holes in these airmail stamps. he asked if I was going back to the USA on business shortly. I replied “no. I’d only just come from there and wasn’t planning on going back for a bit”.

Later on we were all on a coaching holiday. I said that I liked going away on these holidays because I’d meet new people and I’d have to write to them rather than send e-mails. I’d been writing a couple of letters to a couple of girls whom I’d met on a previous coach trip. I was addressing the envelopes. One envelope I made a right mess of, a spelling mistake in the address with big felt-pen letters etc. Eventually I finished them but we were going out soon so I had to go upstairs to change. For some reason I kept on putting it off and putting it off until in the end there was only about 20 minutes. I had to dash upstairs. I thought that I’d better put the camera on charge. I remembered that the battery for the camera hadn’t charged last time I’d tried it so I ended up having to put my credit card into the slot in the camera charger so that it might work. It did this time but I had my bank card that needed charging as well. I thought that with the credit card in the charger the bank card wouldn’t charge up now. It was one of those panicky dreams where nothing goes right, everything goes wrong and I end up running around in circles for no good reason.

And then did I dictate the next dream about going on another camping holiday? “No you didn’t dictate this one either” – ed … so this time I wasn’t going on it but Terry was. He wanted some bread so I said that i’d contact the organiser of this in the USA and have her have the bread ready and Terry would pay her when he arrived with these people. There was much more to it than that but I can’t remember it. That’s all that I can remember.

As you can see, I’m surprised that I managed to find any time at all to go to sleep with all of that going on.

After the medications and checking the mails and messages I had a long chat with Liz on the internet. She wanted to know how I got on at the hospital so we spent a lot of time talking about that and our new premises – because she has recently moved house too.

Most of the rest of the day has been spent sorting out 4GB of music. Over the last year or so this programme of digitalising my record collection has continued into the more obscure realms as I’ve tracked down more and more of the digital sound-files to the albums that I own.

Anyway, over the last year, I’ve prepared another 4GB of tracks that I’ve now recorded, split, edited and remixed so I could merge them into the runs of playlists and copy them onto a USB key that I can play on the hi-fi in the living room to pick out music ready to broadcast.

All of that took until teatime tonight. I had salad and chips with veggie balls and as usual it really was nice. I’ve definitely got the hang of this air fryer now, especially when it comes to frying potatoes. In fact one might say that once the potatoes get close to my air fryer, they’ve had their chips.

Afterwards there was football. Connah’s Quay Nomads v TNS. TNS just needed a point to win the title and they duly won it with a 0-0 draw, thanks to the heroics in the Nomads goal by ex-Glasgow Rangers keeper Andy Firth. It really was all one-way traffic towards the Nomads goal.

Strangely enough, all thhee ex-TNS players in the Nomads team who have been almost ever-present this season failed to make it onto the pitch. Cue some kind of conspiracy theory somewhere sometime.

Tomorrow I’m shopping. For bathrooms as well as the usual stuff. Time I pushed on and organised myself about this apartment. I want to have everythign in place for whenever the solicitor decides to contact me about the place.

Thursday 16th March 2023 – DO YOU HAVE …

… any idea just how painful it is to have a needle stuck in your central nervous system in your spinal column?

I do!

And you don’t want to know either. Just sit and hope that it’s something that never ever happens to you.

In fact I must have expected something along these lines because I had another miserable night tossing and turning around in bed not being able to go to sleep. And when the alarm went off at 07:00 this morning I was already up and about.

It didn’t take me long to prepare myself and by 07:30 I was on the road to Avranches. It’s a good job that I was early too because in a daze I missed the by-pass around Sartilly and ended up being stuck in the roadworks in the town centre.

There was plenty of space in the car park at the hospital but there’s quite a long way to walk. It’s uphill too and that’s not ideal for someone on crutches to negotiate.

When I went to check in I found that I had forgotten to bring my wallet with my money and my personal papers with me. However, I’d remembered to bring everything else but surprisingly they didn’t ask me to produce any of it – not even the medication that they had told me to buy for the appointment.

After wandering around the hospital for quite some time trying to find my way I ended up in the Day Hospital where they found me a bed. First thing that they did once I was settled down was to send me off for one of these scans in one of these Stargate time-travelling portals.

It was a Siemens machine so I told them that I’d worked in the past for General Electric but they told me that they had tried those but preferred Siemens.

Back in the ward the nerve specialist came to see me to try to tell me what she was going to do but, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I told her that I wasn’t interested in knowing. I just signed the “consent” forms and told them to get on with it.

They put some kind of numbing plaster on my lower back, brought me a coffee and then left me to it for an hour or so while the numbing liquid did its work. And then they came back for the real business.

They drew off a couple of CCs of clear liquid which they said they would send away for an analysis and then communicate with the specialist in Granville whom I saw a few weeks ago. He’ll be in touch with me and let me know how we’ll proceed.

They wouldn’t let me go home straight away but insisted that I stay for a while to recover. They sent a choice of food to me and I settled for bread and lentils.

Surprisingly, I’m sure that what they did has done me some good because I seem to be moving a little easier and I could climb into Caliburn’s cab a little better. I’m sure that I’m not imagining this.

On the way home I called at Brico Cash in St Pair. I went to look at the showers that were on offer and ended up having a lengthy chat with one of the guys in the warehouse who gave me the phone number of someone he knows who installs showers. I also called somewhere else to look at showers and they gave me a helpful lead too that I shall be following up at the weekend.

By the time that I arrived home I was feeling rather feak and weeble so having fallen asleep on my chair in here, I ended up going to bed where I crashed out for three hours in a really deep sleep. At the hospital they warned me about this.

Once I’d awoken I had a listen to the dictaphone to discover the night’s activities. I was arguing with my family and friends last night. I had a record player that I hadn’t seen for ages because I’d lent it to some member of my family. It turned up at this family party. I noticed the number of LPs that it had played because there was a counter on it that had reached over 2000. I was horrified by this because I’d hardly ever used it. Bt it was borrowed out of my apartment not long after it was new. Then it was food time – burger and chips. Someone pushed my plate into my stomach. I ended up with all these boiling hot chips stuck to my clothes. I was busy trying to sort myself out but everyone just carried on eating and totally ignored it. I picked up the plate again and half the salad fell off the burger. I made some kind of remark about how I was pleased to see how interested my family was in looking after me, taking notice of how things were going on here. Again they all totally ignored me. Someone else passed me a burger but it was an ordinary one not a vegan one so I couldn’t eat it. Generally I was in an absolutely foul mood in this party.

And then there was something else to do with groups and music, about recording 2 extra tracks for some reason but I can’t remember very much about this because I was in the middle of starting to dictate it when I had a bad pain in my right knee again that totaly distracted me.

Finally I’d been away somewhere for a while and was slowly heading home. I called in at a library, a big modern building for a look round and browse through their second-hand books. I ended up with 3 or 4 books. I thought “should I stay or should I go” but was wondering about how long the parking ticket would last on the car. I decided to go anyway but I had to be home as they’d asked me to cover to drive the taxis the following day. When I walked out of the library I found that the car park was probably about 20 feet below where I was standing and it would be quite a jump down to road level. I wasn’t sure whether I could manage it but I couldn’t see any steps anywhere to take me down so I wondered how I was going to manage now to reach the car park with all the stuff that I was carrying and no way down this 20-foot drop.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta, veg and spicy tomato sauce. And that went down quite nicely too. I was good and ready for that. Rather a banal meal but I have tons of burgers to deal with following the spate of recent offers at LeClerc.

Tomorrow I have nothing much to do so I might have a relaxing day. I can’t have a day off on Sunday because there will be some fruit bread to bake and some carrots to peel dice and freeze because I’m running out.

There’s also the annual Home Renovation Fair in Granville at the weekend and I’m intending to visit because I want to see what else I can do about showers. I’m determined to find a few more quotations for the shower because, much as the work done by that company whose representative came to see me yesterday is of excellent quality, their price is way out of my pocket.

Wednesday 15th March 2023 – I’VE HAD ONE …

… of those days when I haven’t seemed to have done very much today.

Hardly a surpruise because it was another dismal night when I seemed to have taken hours to drop off to sleep. And when the alarm went off I had another fight to raise myself from the dead before the second alarm went off because I really didn’t feel like it.

It took an age to bring myself round into the Land of the Living after I’d had the medication and checked the mails and messages. And once I’d organised myself I set about writing a pile of notes for the music that I chose a week or so ago for one of my radio programmes in the future.

That wasn’t easy either because there was a period when I was drifting in and out of sleep, and even dropped off for half an hour or so. It’s not very easy to concentrate in moments like that.

Later on I spent some time hacking up a few soundfiles into individual tracks. After my efforts the other day there are quite a few in the pipeline. That kept me out of the way while the cleaner did her stuff in the rest of the house. I don’t want to get in her way.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too from the night, even though it hardly felt as if I’d slept at all. We were all on a bus going through a town. We happened to turn into a street the name of which was a well-known rock guitarist like Richie Blackmore. We drove past an industrial estate where this guy actually had a unit. Of course everyone was at the window clamouring for a really good look round to see if they could see anything as the bus drove past. Later on there was a bassist who put in an appearance. He said that he’d been for 4 auditions with 4 different rock bands and failed them all.

And then I was playing bass in a rock band at some point. I was singing as well. I had the computer out. It was on my desk. I had it in various stages of dismantling while I was repairing something but I had to go away. When I returned a little later my brother had some stuff out all over the desk. Of course I couldn’t find half the stuff of my computer. I asked him what he was playing at. He gave me a nebulous answer so I quite literally attacked him. It was all extremely violent

Later on The Ukrainians had just risen up and driven out the Russians from their city (although it was the Nazis during this dream). They’d raided all the stores and were busy distributing the hoarded food out amongst each other when another Russian Army appeared on the horizon (of course it was a German Army). There were frantic talks about whether we ought to stand and fight or simply surrender. The idea was that if we surrendered they would wreak their revenge on the entire city and probably kill almost everyone. It didn’t look very much as if surrender was going to be much of a viable alternative.

That’s a similar situation to what happened IN TULLE in 1944 when the locals rose up and overwhelmed the German garrison about an hour before an SS Panzer Division arrived on the scene

There was something else that happened last night about some girl being given a slice of a fraudulent cup of coffee. As she went to move away she had this incredible pain in her leg. At that point I awoke with this really stabbing pain in my right knee from somewhere so it’s obviously communicating with me somehow.

Tea tonight was another delicious leftover curry although some of the leftovers in the fridge failed the nostril test and were filed under CS. Consequently there wasn’t as much as there might have been but an added potato resolved that issue.

So having checked everything that I need to take with me tomorrow on my early-morning trip to Avranches, I’m now off to bed.

For the last hour or so I’ve been editing and cropping the soundtrack that has come my way of a concert that took place in 1974, only t find that the reason why it would fit into one of my radio programmes is because there’s a big hole full of silence in the middle, and when I edit it out and edit out the damaged tracks I don’t have enough.

It’s not my day, is it?

Tuesday 14th March 2023 – IT’S ALL VERY WELL …

… going to bed early, but it counts for nothing if you can’t go to sleep. It was another one of these miserable, depressing nights when I’m tossing and turning to no good purpose.

To make matters even worse, when I finally did go off to sleep at one point, something awoke me quite dramatically and I sat bolt-upright wide awake.

And then even though I must have gone back to sleep at some point I awoke again just after 07:00 and when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already up and about.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I prepared for my Welsh class – interrupted by the local nurse calling round to take a blood sample. For some reason, that was extremely painful. So was my injection yesterday, thinking on. I must be quite sensitive these days, in more ways than one.

The Welsh class passed off quite quickly. Some of it was surprisingly good, which took me by surprise, but some other of it was not so good. Rather patchy, all told

At 14:00 the guy came round so see me about having a shower installed in my new property, whenever it might be that I finally complete the purchase. He was actually a guitarist himself with a Rickenbacker 12-string so we spent more time talking about guitars and music than showers.

However he finally bashed out some kind of quote but I doubt that I’ll be proceeding with it. It’s way out of my pocket, even the “economy” version. It works, I suppose, if you qualify for a French Government grant but I pay my Income Tax in Belgium and the UK and so that is that.

And that reminds me – I should be due for my quarterly Belgian Old-Age Pension payments some time soon. That should be exciting. Whatever can I do with the €97 that I’ll receive?

Once he’d gone, I had a shower and then had a good listen to the stuff on the dictaphone. To my surprise I’d been on quite a few travels during the night. I’d gone somewhere to pick up a pile of clothes. It was something to do with the Avengers and TV programmes from the 60s. I was in Caliburn. I reached where I was supposed to be. These coats were thrown to me and I threw them up onto the roof rack. I had to look around for a way to fasten them on. It was near Christmas by this time although it was sunny. Someone was coming round from this place handing out boxes of chocolates etc to all the employees. Everywhere I turned, there was another piece of chocolate. Someone kept on sticking a box of chocolates in my hand. Every time I went to reach for something or other to tie these clothes onto the roof rack I ended up grabbing a piece of chocolate instead. It was really strange.

Then I was back in this apartment. I had Tuppence, my old black cat, here. I made myself a coffee but it wasn’t strong enough so I put another teaspoon of coffee into it even though it was already now in the pot having percolated. Tuppence was crying to go out so I went and opened the door for her even though it meant that she would just be running around inside the building. The next moment we were in Gainsborough Road. I had all my cats here but something – I don’t know what – awoke me dramatically as I mentioned earlier.

Later on we were at some kind of building in the countryside like a Social Club. Behind it was a car park that you had to access via an arch. Behind it was a building that was another type of Social Club. In the building where I was were all these rich people with Rolls-Royces, horse boxes and things. I was there talking to a lorry driver for some reason. A Rolls-Royce came in towing a horse box. It had been accident-damaged and hit all down the side, this Rolls-Royce dark red. We made a few remarks about it. Someone mentioned something about someone’s Rolls-Royce having broken down and they’d been quoted over £8000 for a new engine. I was thinking about the one that I knew IN A SCRAPYARD IN THE USA (and I was impressed that I could remember that in a dream) and what could be good would be if I could lay my hands on that engine and rebuild it. As I was leaving 2 more people turned up and asked about the Social Club. I told them where to go. They asked where they could park so I told them about the car park. They asked about the one in the rear. I said that the people in there were rather possessive. They had to be careful. Then I had an engine. I’d stripped it down, rebuilt it and had it running on a test bed. I’d put it back in a car and started it up with no water in it just to make sure that it would run. I was slowly filling it with water, talking to someone. All the time there was a stream of water coming out. I could see in the end that one of the hoses for the windscreen washers underneath the bonnet had decayed or broken. The stream of water was coming from there. Trying to remove it to replace it was a nightmare.

I was next living at Davenport Avenue with Nerina. Something happened so I decided that I’d go out for a change for the evening down to the swimming baths. I took a book with me and set off. When I arrived the first person whom I saw was TOTGA (so welcome back, TOTGA) and her daughter. I wasn’t sure if they saw me but they certainly didn’t come over to talk. I thought that I’d go and get ready. Then I started to worry about my catheter. I know that I can’t go swimming in salt water with it. What about chlorine? I thought that I’d relax and read my book for a while then summon up the courage to go to ask someone. There was a little room on a bench next to a little girl and her mother so I squeezed on and started to read. A couple of people whom I knew from work came over for a chat. I ended up with a drink and a packet of crisps. By the time all that finished it was really late. I thought that I’d better go home. I went to pay but they only charged me for the crisps so I paid for them and ran all the way back home. I arrived back. Nerina was sitting on the floor in apair of pyjamas, brand-new by the looks of things. She was surrounded by all kinds of rubbish as if she’d been unwrapping presents etc. She was rather grumpy because I’d been out but it turned out that some members of her family had come round. They had spent the evening talking about a holiday they’d had down in the South-West.

Finally I was back in this dream again with TOTGA and her daughter, staying at some kind of fitness place. It was the break so we all crowded into the break room. There were so many of us that we had to jostle for a place and a place to put our bags down. When we did, someone would move it somewhere else. We helped ourselves to hot water. When I’d done that TOTGA’s daughter made some room for me on a chair next to her. It was beginning to become really chaotic. Everyone complained about the crush and the arrangements in this room. No-one was happy but that was just how it was.

Sitting down here waiting for things to happen I crashed out again. That’s quite disappointing because I ought to be doing so much better than this. Gone are the days where I could work 30 or 40 hours non-stop after just 4 hours of sleep. i’m not as young as I was.

The physiotherapist came round later and he had me walking up and down the stairs outside. He was impressed with the weights that I’d bought at the weekend.

While I was at my lesson earlier I’d worked out that my foot fits nicely into the handle of one of the weights so I’d been practising lifting it up and down with my foot while sitting down. The left leg is quite good but the right leg is struggling to even move with a weight of 2kgs attached to it. What kind of state am I in?

Tea tonight was a delicious taco roll with rice and veg. There’s plenty of stuffing left as well so I’ll have a good curry tomorrow night with what is left in the fridge

While I’m on the subject of tomorrow … “well, one of us is” – ed … the cleaner will be coming round tomorrow so I’ll have to have a whizz round to make the place look respectable. A well as that, I’ll have to check all of the paperwork to make sure that I have everything that I need to take with me on Thursday morning to the hospital at Avranches.

08:30 at Avranches on Thursday? Whose silly idea is that?

Monday 13th March 2023 – IT WAS HARD …

… this morning to get out of bed.

Despite going to bed at 22:00 last night as is usual on a Sunday, I couldn’t go off to sleep. That’s astonishing really because I’d had an early start (for a Sunday anyway) and gone all day without falling asleep as well. Anyone (including me) would have expected me to have been stark out by bed time.

But anyway I did actually drop off to sleep at some point because there was a note on my dictaphone about my travels during the night. I was fighting with an overflowing toilet at someone’s house at some point. It left a trail all the way out of the toilet down the hall to the living room. As soon as I’d finished I had to dash off and find a mop, a bucket and a few things. I could find a bucket but not a mop. I was hunting around for everything. The owner of the house started to make some kind of sarcastic comments. That really wasn’t what I needed at that moment so we ended up having a verbal slanging match while I was still trying to find the stuff to clean up.

And when the alarm went off I was actually wandering around somewhere on a different plane but the moment that I awoke it all completely evaporated and I remember nothing whatever about it.

That isn’t actually all that went on during the night but you really don’t want to know the rest, especially if you are eating a meal.

First job, once I’d checked my mails and messages, was to finish off the radio programme.

And that took much longer than it ought to have because what was going to be the final track was actually a track in the middle of the recording instead of right at the end. The musician whom I had in mind didn’t actually have a track of a realistic size and I had to trawl all over my “usual sources” to find one because the artists that I’m using for this week’s radio programme are not exactly thick on the ground.

And then it ended up 10 seconds or so short so I had to be imaginative to make it one hour long. But eventually it was finished and I could send it off for broadcast on Friday.

One thing that interrupted me was the nurse coming to give me my injection. He should also have taken a blood test but he forgot and didn’t bring his equipment so he’s going to come by tomorrow morning. I hope that i’ll have the results for my hospital visit on Thursday.

And while we’re on the subject of hospitals … “well, one of us is” – ed … I had to ring up the hospital at Leuven and tell them that I wasn’t coming today. As I said the other day, I can’t keep on going there and back again for no good reason. I have asked them to try to combine my appointments because I can cope with that, but going there for one thing, coming home and then going back a few days later to carry out some meaningless tests is pointless.

Alison was on line too so we had a little chat. It’s been month since we’ve seen each other.

The rest of the day has been spent on the radio stuff.

First thing was to choose the music for another radio programme in the future and that took a while because I’m slowly revising the databases that I keep as I come to them. There are ways to make things easier and I need to develop it.

And while I was wandering around I came across another couple of digital soundtracks for albums that I own. These are ones that I have long-since given up hope of finding, not the least because the fire at Universal Studios was devastating, but every now and again something else is rescued.

And then I came across another interesting database that was previously unknown as far as I was aware. It lists the publishing dates of several thousand of the more popular rock albums. That should be of a great deal of use as far as I’m concerned because it fits in nicely with another idea that I have about my radio programmes.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper. And it looks as if I’ll be OK for a while for peppers because with having bought a bag of 4 small ones on Saturday, I stuck two in the freezer to see how they would work. I gave them a quick check while i was taking stuff out of the freezer and they looked OK.

There’s another fresh one for next week and then I’ll try one of the frozen ones to see if it works. And I hope that it does because small peppers don’t seem to be available individually. There are just the monster-sized ones and not even I could polish one of those off.

So tomorrow I have the nurse coming and then I need to revise for my Welsh lesson. There’s someone coming to talk to me about showers in the afternoon and then I have the physiotherapist. It’s going to be “all go” tomorrow so I need to be on form.

That calls for an early night.

Sunday 12th March 2023 – SO MUCH FOR …

… my nice long lie-in this morning. I was wide-awake at 08:20 and by 09:50 I’d long-given up any thought of going back to sleep and so in a fit of resignation I raised myself from the dead and went for a ride on the porcelain horse instead.

After the medication I checked my mails and messages and then had a look at the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at some place where you would mix and match your servers. It would be like 4-piece jigsaws with feet, a head, legs and body. The idea was that game that you play where you have to match them all up together. For some reason, one waiter who had been made like this but wasn’t correct was nevertheless working quite hard. A certain female customer objected and made quite a scene to being served by him

Then later on I was in a hotel on some kind of tour. There was a woman who had a daughter who was about 11. They were both blondes. I wasn’t able really to strike up much of a conversation with them except on one day when we started to talk. I ended up back in her hotel room (for purely innocent purposes). There was another man there as well. He was monoploising the conversation and discussion. In the end the little girl got up and went out. I was stuck here listening to this man going on with this woman. There was another woman in there, a black South African woman. It turned out that this blonde woman and her daughter, they were South African. I said “it must be awful to be a South African, particularly at this moment with all of the issues of prejudice and discrimination etc that’s happening, and feeling guilty about it. Unfortunately it’s your Government and there’s nothing you can do about it”. Somehow I couldn’t assert myself, I suppose. I hadn’t any idea about what I wanted to do or going to do anyway but whatever it was, I was unable to do it. It was extremely disappointing for me

That wasn’t all that went on either but you really don’t want to know about anything else, especially if you are eating your meal right now.

For the rest of the day I’ve been finishing off the music for the radio programme that I need to prepare on Monday. And when I’d done that I wrote out all of the notes for the music that I’d chosen, recorded them and even edited about half of it.

Rosemary rang me up as well for a chat after her little journey to Vietnam but we weren’t on the ‘phone for long.

Tea tonight was a pizza. And if you thought that last week’s was good, tonight’s was even better. I’m not sure why but I reckon that the flour that I used might have something to do with it. It’s an expensive flour but it seems to work quite well.

So now I’m off to bed. I’m starting tomorrow at 06:00 as is usual on a Monday and I want to finish this programme fairly early so I can relax for the rest of the day. It’s going to be the only time that i’ll have to myself until at least Friday so I want to make the most of it.

Saturday 11th March 2023 – THIS AFTERNOON I …

… had a go at manipulating the shopping trolley that I bought a few months ago on my return from hospital.

When I was at the shops this morning I bought quite a bit of stuff and although I managed to bring some stuff (the important, cool and frozen stuff) up with me, the rest was left behind for another time.

But feeling the need for a little exercise I went downstairs with the shopping trolley, loaded it up and brought it all back upstairs. It wasn’t as easy as it ought to have been, particularly the final couple of steps up to my front door, but probably a little easier than making two or three trips up and down stairs. It’s something that I’ll have to develop for the next time.

The next time that I go to bed, I’ll be spending much more time in there because it’s Sunday. I would have been happy to have spent much more time in bed this morning because when the alarm went off at 07:30 I was stark out.

Not exactly stark out because I was off on my travels. I was busy coming round to the conclusion that I had to sell off my taxi business and empty my storage lockers of car bits etc and make a start on making an inventory. There was so much stuff that it would take for ever. The idea was that I’d go up to the storage unit every day, bring home some stuff that I’d put on an on-line auction somewhere and move the stuff on like that. I was just getting into it when the alarm went off and awoke me.

After the medication and organising myself I bunged a load of washing into the machine and then headed out for the shops.

And at Noz I had a little bit of luck. The physiotherapist had told me that I need to invent some weights, like plastic bags with sand in, to use as an exercise barbell on my foot to practise raising my legs when I’m sitting down. And there at Noz was a shelf full of proper 2kg weights at €3:50 each. A bit of string and I’m a la maison et sec as they say around here.

There were a couple of extra things in LeClerc that I bought over and above the usual stuff. Sean had suggested (thank you, Sean) that a pyrex bowl would work nicely in my air fryer so I had a rummage around in the kitchenware department and managed to find one that would fit.

It’s a good job that I went over there too because I managed to pick up something else important. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a year or so ago I managed to find a real and proper cake tin for baking. While I was there today they had some half-size ones that would be ideal for making smaller cakes.

Cake tins are, for some reason that I haven’t understood, extremely rare in France. They don’t seem to use them as often as they might do anywhere else, so grabbing one while the grabbing was good was a good plan.

So what with the silicon mould that I bought the other week I’m slowly getting myself organised ready for when I once finally have a decent kitchen and oven to go with it.

Back here I put away the food that i’d brought up, hung up the washing and then made myself some toast and coffee and had a nice relaxing breakfast. And then, rather regrettably, I crashed out. And for an hour too. It really was quite awkward.

First thing this afternoon (after I’d eaten a plate of fruit) was to listen to the dictaphone because there was some stuff on it from the night. There was a group of us studying some subject or other, 8 in total, and we were going to take an exam. We all met up at our tutor’s apartment in the morning to make sure that we had anything. She gave us a quick test and although I was feeling pretty depressed about this particular exam I found to my surprise that in this quick oral test I seemed to do ok at it. We set out and came eventually to the building where we should be, up several flights of steps. 6 of the people disappeared. Whether they went in a lift or something I don’t know but I went with someone else up the stairs. The other guy with me ran out of steam halfway through and had to stop. He told me to go on to say that I was there. I entered the teacher’s apartment and said “hello! We’re the Jackson 5, or Jackson 8 in reality!”. Everyone else turned up at this point. We started to take our place at the table. I could see in the distance some kind of dog. I made a nice friendly gesture to it so it came over to sit by me. I began to talk to it and it began to do little tricks with its paws like if I asked it to do something it would hold up a paw.

And then there was a programme on the radio (which of course there wasn’t). After it finished (which of course it didn’t) I ended up dreaming about it in my dream. It concerned a drug-smuggling ring of quite ordinary people led by some woman who was no-one in particular, an old poor type of working class woman from the East End of London who was in fact a tie salesman and who kept a Public Convenience clean. There was a false panel in this Convenience where drugs were deposited. People would come along and remove drugs for their own use if they knew the secret. There were these 2 people hot on the trail of this. This radio programme went on for hours just like a Paul Temple series until right at the end when all the pieces fell into place and this secret panel with the drugs was found.

All exciting stuff again.

The rest of the day has been spent working on the radio stuff. I was making ready to dictate the stuff that I’d already written but then I had a different idea. I ought to be shuffling the pack and changing things around so that they don’t sound all the same.

Every now and again I do something special depending on whatever falls on a Friday and so far we’ve had a Brexit programme, an Armistice Day programme and a Jeff Beck tribute programme to name but three, and there’s another special day coming up on a Friday quite soon. That’s another cue to do something special so I had to sort out a pile of music.

That meant tracking down the soundtrack archives for a certain album that can’t be any more obscure than it is. One that not only did Jimi Hendrix play on but one that he produced as well, and there aren’t many of those.

It took some tracking down as well but I finally managed to find a decent copy. And then I had to cut it and edit it.

When I went down to Caliburn for the rest of the shopping, as I mentioned earlier, I bumped into one of my neighbours and we had a good chat. It seems that I’m flavour of the month around here right now.

For tea tonight I put Sean’s idea to work and tried the pyrex bowl with some diced potatoes, a sprinkling of olive oil and some mint and rosemary in the air fryer. It worked to perfection and I’m really impressed with that idea so thanks again. They went down really well with a salad and one of those breadcrumbed quorn slices that I like very much.

So right now I’m still waiting for the music to finish off what it’s doing and then I’m going to bed. I’m going to have a lie-in tomorrow as usual but I want to break the back of this special radio programme so that I don’t have it all to do on Monday.

In fact on Monday I should be in Leuven at the hospital for these heart issues but there’s not much point in going and being passed around from pillar to post again. I wrote to them at the end of December, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, to complain about the situation and to ask them to get themselves together but they never replied to me. I’m not going all that way to undergo the same tests that I had a year ago and finish up with the same results.

Friday 10th March 2023 – AFTER ALL OF …

… my exertions yesterday and the day before, discretion was the better part of valour today and I didn’t set foor out of my apartment.

And when you see what THE WEATHER WAS DOING this morning it’s hardly any surprise. Whoever took that video is a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

Last night I was in bed at my usual time and once again I had a great deal of difficulty going off to sleep. However I must have done at some point because when the alarm went off at 07:30 it shattered my eardrums. I’d been dead to the world.

Tons of stuff on the dictaphone too, none of which I could actually remember so it must have been a really deep sleep throughout the night. It started off with my brother and me in a car or bus or something. We reached the destination where we were going to have to drop off my brother. As he left he was saying that he thought that a certain task of renovation or some chore or other should be done on whatever vehicle we were in. I didn’t particularly see the need for that. In any case I wasn’t going to do it. Basically I told him to clear off. At some point my mother said that I wasn’t nicer to my brother but I told her what I thought of the situation as well

And then we had another one of these dreams where I was working long past my retirement date – quite a regular feature these days. I was completely fed up so I decided that when I’d go back into work on Monday I’d hand in 2 weeks notice and finish at the end of the month whether they liked it or not. There was still plenty of holiday time accruing to me so it would probably make it up to the 4 weeks notice but I didn’t really care all that much. I decided that I was going to retire and that was that. Then I awoke – and I must have been dreaming within a dream because I was actually still asleep, if you see what I mean – and it was 03:15. I remembered that the previous evening I’d been fixing the internet. When I went to the bathroom there was a massage on my phone. It was Liz asking me if everything was working fine. I tried to send her a message back but the keypad on my watch was so small that no matter how I tried I ended up sending some kind of garbled message to her.

And that will come as a surprise to many people because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I can send garbled messages without making use of a small keypad.

And back in this dream later I was walking back up the Rue Paul Poirier back towards home. I heard someone whistle behind me so I turned round. It was one of my colleagues. He beckoned me to cross over the road to him for a chat. I went over the road but I actually awoke at that point and couldn’t remember what went on afterwards. And it’s very rare for me to dream about life in Granville, isn’t it?

Later on I’d had a message from my friend from Munich saying that he was on his way to visit me. It was quite late at night so I texted him to find out where he was. He said that he was just pulling into a fuel station 100 miles away for some fuel. I worked out that he would probably turn up at something like 03:00 or 04:00 and I’d be fast asleep in bed. He said that that’s not a problem. He’d be going to bed too as soon as he arrives

Finally I was bringing a girl back into Crewe from somewhere or other. I was in something of a rush but she said that she wanted to go back into Crewe so I said that I’d bring her. It ended up that she wanted to go up by Coppenhall, that area, which was well out of my way but I had her in the car now so I didn’t have much choice. On the way back we made a detour to go via Shavington because I had a notebook to drop off on someone on Park Estate. When we reached there, instea dof being the 3-bedroomed traditional semis that it is, it was all these horrible appalling dreadful high-rise buildings, the worst slums you’d see. We walked inside and they were dreadful. Everything was filthy and disgusting. We knocked on the apartment. Some woman answered the door. She was covered in cobwebs. There must have been 6 people sleeping in this room with clothes etc heaped up in a mess. The place was filthy. I’d never been in a place as disgusting as this. The person with me gave her the injection that she needed. Then we had to fight our way back out again. It really was the worst place in the world that I have ever visited in all my life and believe me – I’ve been in some places ….

Actually, I found that last episode to be extremely disturbing.

Today, I haven’t actually done all that much. I had a shower, and what was interesting about that was that I didn’t remember getting out of the bath afterwards. It must have been completely uneventful and that can only be good news. It must have been as close to normal as things can be right now.

The physiotherapist came rather later than planned too. We had a lengthy chat and decided that when I come back from the hospital with the report that they will probably give me, we’ll make plans. He’s going to try to get me in at this gym place where they do sports therapy. I had a consultation there last summer, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I was overtaken by events.

And then I wrote some more text for one of the radio programmes. I have quite a nice collection now that I need to start recording at some point in the near future.

Tea tonight was a burger with pasta and veg. There have been so many special offers on vegan burgers just recently that it seems like I have the European Vegan Burger Mountain in my fridge and a couple of them are starting to go out of date. Consequently some of them need polishing off rather quickly.

There’s stuff in the freezer than needs eating too and I’ll have to deal with some of that at some point. Not the least reason being that there’s other stuff in the fridge that needs using and I could make all kinds of stuff with that if only there was some space in the freezer to freeze it.

There was football on the internet tonight. It should have been TNS against Y Bala but apparently the pitch at Oswestry was under a foot of snow. Instead the cameras went down the road from the studio to Cyncoed to watch Cardiff Metro play Y Drenewydd.

That match finished 0-0 without a great deal of goalmouth action, but it wasn’t a boring match by any means. It was quite interesting with two rather skilful teams trying to jostle their way into position for a shot on goal.

There’s some exciting news on the football front too. Cymru under-17s have won their way through to the next round of the European Junior Championship. There are three games taking place at the end of the month, against Iceland, Montenegro and a third team that I’ve forgotten. And my Welsh newsfeed service has won the right to broadcast them on the internet.

And then the Welsh part-time XI is playing the English part-time XI in a couple of weeks and they are broadcasting that match too.

So it looks as if we are going to be in for a foot-fest at some point. I’d better go to bed for a good sleep in order to prepare myself for all this excitement.

Thursday 9th March 2023 – MY LITTLE WALK …

… into town today seemed to go even better and I felt much more like my old self.

That’s not to say that I was feeling cured and that I no longer had the issue with my legs because that’s a feeling that’s not going away, but I was feeling a lot more enthusiastic and I was moving about rather easier.

During the night I was moving about too – a lot more than I would normally have liked and as a result it was another one of these bad nights, of which I’ve been having far too many just recently.

To my dismay, there was nothing on the dictaphone either from during the night. Dismay for two reasons – firstly it means that I didn’t sleep all that well and secondly that nothing – or no-one of any interest – occurred and as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … what usually happens during the night is much more exciting than whatever happens to me during the day.

After I’d organised myself I had to sort out all of the medication that I’d bought yesterday. That’s not as easy as it might be because, as I said yesterday, some of the trade names are different and it involves some detective work in order to figure out which is which.

Following that, I set off down the hill into town and I bowled along rather somewhat, at least, considering how I’ve been in the recent past, and it was quite a pleasant walk despite the crutches.

At the chemist’s I picked up the medication that they had had to order for me and then I went down the road to the Post Office. I’m running out of prepaid envelopes so I needed another supply. I don’t use them all that often but when I do, I never seem to be able to find any.

The walk back was somewhat breathtaking, and for obvious reasons too. I’m still having breathing issues but for the last few months I’ve never been in a position to notice, not being able to move around as I did before. So the fact that today I was feeling out of breath is a small improvement all on its own

Back here I had breakfast – some coffee with another one of my delicious fruit buns. I’d been out all told for 75 minutes which is rather disappointing because in the old days I could be in town and back in 20 minutes. But the fact that I actually made it out and back again is something of an achievement.

The rest of the day has been spent writing up the notes for the music that I chose yesterday, and then choosing some more music for a subsequent radio programme. And when that particular programme will be broadcast it will contain a song that I know for definite has never been broadcast anywhere else on any other radio programme.

Liz was on line later on so we had a lengthy chat. She showed me a video of the snowfall in her back garden and it looked quite impressive.

For tea tonight I had a meal that I haven’t made for an absolute age – steamed vegetables and a large vegan sausage all smothered in a beautiful vegan cheese sauce. It really was nice.

But now I’ve run out of frozen cauliflower so I’ll have to buy another batch, unless I can find some fresh cauliflower to blanch and freeze.

But one thing is certain – and that is that when I do finally move house, I’m going to buy a bigger fridge with a freezer so that I’ll have much more room to store stuff.

Tomorrow the physiotherapist will be coming round but that’s all that I have planned. They are talking about a storm and hurricane tomorrow but if it doesn’t arrive I might go out for a walk.

Now that I’m feeling a little more human I need to push on. It looks as if walking around is making me feel a little better so I need to keep it up.

Wednesday 8th March 2023 – MY LITTLE WALK …

… into town this morning was quite a success, all things considered.

In fact, despite walking much farther than I have ever walked in one go, I managed to do it without any complications or difficulties and I was quite impressed.

Much more impressed than I was with my night of trying to go off to sleep. That was something of a disaster because it took me hours to drop off and I was wide awake again at 04:45. That’s the kind of thing that fills me with dismay.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too so I must have had a deep sleep at some point. I was with Zero’s father (but not Zero unfortunately) last night walking around this industrial estate somewhere. We’d actually been in our office and had seen something on a TV programme from the USA about chaos in an Australian chat room on the internet. The Americans were going on about how there were all these wonderful innovations coming from Australia that had yet to hit the USA such as video conferencing etc. Of course, as we were walking around we were talking about how we’ve been saying that we’ve been having all of this for 20 years in the UK. There were vehicles parked everywhere on this industrial estate on the grass verges and all over the place. We’d heard a story of someone who had been taken seriously ill there. There were some paramedics tending to him. We were wandering vaguely that way to see what we could do. There were some women lorry drivers parked on a car park doing something on the internet and having a blazing row about someone doing something or other. We just kept on walking and talking.

After the medication I checked my mails and messages and then had a few things to do here and there before setting out for town, like doing some photocopying and writing an important letter.

It was cold, windy and threatening rain but all the same it was quite a nice walk. Despite the crutches it took me less time than the time before to make it to the chemists where I picked up the product that I need for my hospital visit next week.

They agreed to dispense the prescription that I’d received at Leuven, but only insofar as they could because the trade names are different for the products and while some are easy to translate, others are not and they don’t want to make a mistake.

Some of the stuff wasn’t in stock so they had to order it. And that means another trip into town tomorrow. That should be exciting.

After that, I staggered on to the bank. When the final Act of Purchase is signed for this apartment that I’m buying, I’ll need to have an insurance policy in force to cover my liability. The bank deals with my insurance policies and the more that I have, the greater a discount I receive so I may as well get them to do it.

All in all I was there for an hour and a half. Actually signing the forms for the insurance took about 10 minutes but the rest of the time was spent having the hard sell worked upon me for more stuff that I don’t need. I couldn’t help but bring to my mind the lyrics of PRETTY BOY FLOYD and
“As through this life you travel
You’ll meet some funny men.
Some rob you with a six-gun
And some with a fountain pen.”

It was too late to do anything much by the time that the interview finished so I posted the letter and then headed for home. There’s a new spices shop opened in town and I wanted to go for a look around but not during lunch break. As Maréchal Foch once said when he was appointed to command a French Army during World War I “I only require two things. A free hand to deal with the Army as I think fit, and two hours for lunch” and nothing in France has changed.

It was 13:00 by the time that I returned here – a three-hour round trip. The first thing that I did was to have lunch. I ‘d been given a coffee down at the Bank but that’s not enough for a growing boy like me. And I do have to say that my fruit buns are delicious.

The second thing that I did was to make the place a little more presentable so that the cleaner wouldn’t have a heart attack. And I’d locked the door to the apartment on coming back through force of habit so she had to phone me up to get me to open the door.

While she was here I wrote out the notes for the radio programme that I’d been preparing and they are mostly complete. I just want to rewrite the final one so that it makes a nice lead-in to the end of the programme.

Another thing that I did today was to make the final payment for the apartment that I’ll be purchasing. That involved sorting out a few things in Belgium. I had hoped to do that over the counter when I was in Belgium last week but what with not being kicked out of the hospital until it was far too late, that was that.

But it’s all paid for now and I’m just waiting for the solicitor to extricate his digit and bring the papers up to date. But I do have to say that I’m glad that I hung on to the balance of the sale price of my old apartment in Belgium and didn’t fritter it away.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with a salad. And for a change, seeing as I had some vegan sliced cheese, I made my burger into a cheeseburger and that was delicious with a baked potato done in the air fryer.

So tomorrow I’m heading back into town to pick up the rest of the medication. I have noticed that the muscles on my legs are thickening out again so all of this moving about is doing me good. I shall have to do more of it, if only I could summon up the energy.

So let’s see what the hospital at Avranches can come up with next week. I don’t think that I’ll actually pick up my bed and walk, but almost anything will be an improvement to how things are right now.

Tuesday 7th March 2023 – MY LEFTOVER CURRY …

… tonight was absolutely delicious.

Half a small courgette, a pile of mushrooms, some garlic, some chick peas and an onion and there we go. Lots of nice spices (I still have some left even though I was unable to buy any on my last trip to Leuven) and it was delicious. But I must remember to put the toilet paper in the fridge tonight because I was rather heavy-handed with the chili.

Anyway, last night was rather better from a sleep point of view. Not by much, I have to say, but I did manage to fall asleep comfortably at some point.

We had some travels last night, but I didn’t go all that far. I was in the Army, in World War I. I was in a front-line trench during an artillery bombardment. Suddenly the whistle blew and we charged out of the trench. My regiment was the Cheshire Regiment. For some reason the NCOs and officers wanted us to follow the Hampshire Regiment but once I passed through the barbed wire into No-Man’s Land (and I will never ever forget the University ) I came across a group of North Staffords. I followed them. It was probably lucky that I did because from what I understood the regiment I should have been with was massacred yet we of the North Staffords were able to find some kind of shelter in the lee of a hill where we could build a trench to occupy. That way we were at least spared for the moment from artillery fire.

When the alarm went off at 07:30 I was deep in the arms of Morpheus so I awoke with a start. It all took me by surprise.

But anyway I was up and out of bed straight away and after the medication and checking my mails and messages I started to revise my Welsh ready for the lesson.

However there was an interruption. The bank telephoned me to invite me to bring forward our appointment to tomorrow. One day here and there doesn’t make much difference in the great scheme of things so I agreed. I shall hobble down into town on my crutches and see what happens, passing by the chemist on the way..

We were very few at the lesson today so it’s always hard work in these circumstances. However, once again it passed off fairly well. I don’t know whether it’s my preparation that’s paying dividends or whether things are becoming easier or whether my brain is functioning better, but things might be looking up.

After the lesson I had a shower and a good clean-up. And it was much easier climbing into the bath for my shower. I remember how awful it was when I came back here in December. I’m not going to pretend that things are now back to normal but I don’t have to put any thought into climbing into the bath.

And to your surprise, and certainly to mine, I did some tidying up later. There have been all kinds of papers lying around here but the bin across the road has been full for a while. But my paper bin was now well overflowing so I gathered it all up and took it down there.

Somehow I managed to fit it all into the paper bin and it made the apartment look so much better, and I profited by bringing back the last of the shopping that was hanging around in Caliburn.

The physiotherapist was impressed with my progress. He’s going to design an exercise programme for me to follow to make sure that I work hard at my leg muscles. And he didn’t bat an eyelid when I told him that I intended to walk to the bank tomorrow. He just warned me to use both crutches.

The rest of the day has been spent pairing off all of the music for the next radio programme and making a start on writing the notes. I’m not working very hard, I have to admit, but I’m making slow progress

The curry was, as I said, absolutely delicious and after that I ended up having a lengthy chat with someone who lives in Virlet who has tracked me down via my social network. We had a lot to say to each other and we’ll be working a few things out in due course

Right now though I’m off to bed. I have a lot to do tomorrow apart from my little trek into town. And I’m actually looking forward to that one way or another. It would be nice though if there were a café half-way up the hill where I could stop for a coffee. That would make things much easier but I don’t suppose you can have everything.

Monday 6th March 2023 – JUST FOR A …

… change, I had something different for tea tonight.

With not having gone to either Carrefour or LeClerc this week I didn’t have any of the small cheap peppers that I usually buy. At LIDL they just had the monster-size ones that would do me for a week so I decided to pass on those.

However my friend Esi in Brussels had posted the other day the details of her favourite quick meal – a courgette cut in half, cooked for 3 minutes in the microwave, layered with some cheese and then put back in for another 2 minutes.

The other week I’d found some melting fondant vegan cheese in LeClerc and I’d bought some. So instead of the peppers I bought a courgette at LIDL and went to have a go with that.

It sounded a little bland to me so I coated it in tarragon and black pepper before cooking it and made some pasta and veg in a spicy sauce to accompany it, and it was actually quite delicious.

Furthermore, there’s another half of the courgette waiting for some other time, but I’m thinking along the lines of making a curry with that and the left-over mushrooms.

That is, if I wake up tomorrow because I didn’t have much sleep last night and I’ll need all that I can get. I was in bed quite early ready for my early start today, but I didn’t get much sleep. It took an age to drop off to sleep what with one thing and another and then I kept on waking up.

Mind you, when the alarm went off at 06:00 I was in a deep sleep so somethign must have happened at some time to make me drop off at some point.

Having checked the mails and the messages and the like, and having had my medication, I attacked the radio programme that I’d recorded yesterday. I edited it, joined it up together, added the final track, dictated the final speech, added it in and then edited all down to one hour exactly. It didn’t really take all that long.

And then I had a listen to the one that I’ll be sending off for broadcasting this weekend to make sure that it was complete and had no faults.

It won’t be long before I have to think about what I’m going to do for my 200th broadcast. I’ll need to do something special for that, I reckon. For my 100th I did a rock festival of a dozen live concerts but I won’t be doing that this time, I reckon. I’ll have to think of something else.

Once I’d finished that, I had a few phone calls to make. And as a result I have an appointment at the bank on Thursday morning and the visiting nurse is going to come to see me on Monday and restart the injections.

There’s some other stuff that needs to be done for this visit to the hospital in 10 days time and that involves a trip to the pharmacy. I’m hoping too that they will accept the Belgian prescriptions that I have. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that by the time that I’d finished at the hospital last week, the chemist was closed.

Anyway, I’ll find out the answer to that question on Thursday morning because I’ll drop in there on my way to the bank. Yes, I’m planning, for my sins, to actually walk there. Let’s hope that I can walk back too.

And apparently I’m supposed to have another appointment at Leuven on Monday but it’s out of the question that I’m going. I need to telephone them and ask them to postpone the appointment. I have asked them on many occasions to schedule all of my appointments on the same or adjacent days to save on the travelling and I’ve no idea why they wouldn’t do it, especially when they have plenty of time in advance to arrange it.

With all of that out of the way, I’ve been dealing with more radio stuff. Choosing another pile of music for another radio programme in the near future, and then tidying up a few of the databases that I keep. I’m constantly revising then as experience leads me on to change my way of working, to add new features into the programmes and to revise the basis on which I make them.

In fact, I could have done much more than I did but unfortunately I … errr … had a little repose during the afternoon. Not that that’s any surprise.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone again from last night, so I must have gone off to sleep at some point. There was a dream that I didn’t understand at all. It was something to do with travelling around etc. I ended up somehow talking to a girl who was with us on this trip. I had to go to the doctor’s. We went to the doctor’s surgery. Much of what he was doing was done in the open air in public. he was interviewing these people, giving out remedies and prescriptions. I was hoping that I’d have the chance after everyone had gone to go and have a talk to him, tell him about my symptoms, have an injection in the right leg to ease the muscle pain that I have and take it from there but for some unknown reason closing this meeting seemed to take for ever

Later on I was back home asleep when the alarm went off in my dream. It awoke me so I dived out of bed and dashed over to where the phone was but I couldn’t see it there at all. I wondered what was happening. I had a search but couldn’t find it. In the end I had a look and it was only 01:42 or 42 past the day and at this point I fell asleep and I apologise for doubting the word of Percy Penguin (who doesn’t appear half as often in these pages as she deserves) who used to complain that I snored when we slept together and I always denied it and that was easily what was happening to me. I was fast asleep. Sure enough when I looked at the watch it was 01:42 and I fell asleep in the middle of dictating it.

So if you can make any sense of that, then good luck to you.

Finally there was something going on with our Welsh class at some point during the night where we all had to be on call to do something over the weekend for 4 days, Friday – Monday. We were allocated 3 hours each. Everyone was complaining about the time that they were given. Mine was from 11:00 to 14:00 which would seriously disrupt my plans. We started to have a bit of a discussion about it.

There was something else happening as well but I’ve no idea what that was. I was in the middle of a dream and the alarm went off at 06:00 and awoke me. Everything in this respect simply melted away out of my head immediately.

Tea, as I mentioned, was delicious. I’ll have to remember this meal again. It was quick and simple, and quite tasty too. I hope that LeClerc will continue to stock the cheese because that’s the thing that will improve my diet.

Tomorrow I have a Welsh lesson so I need an early night so that I can be ready, fit and able to actually concentrate on some preparation and organise myself so much better.

The physiotherapist will be here tomorrow too and he’ll want to know how I got on on my travels, so I’ll have to have a shower too. I must be at my best for visitors.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Author Archives: Epichall

Monday 20th March 2023 – IT DIDN’T TAKE …

Sunday 19th March 2023 – WELL THAT WAS A …

Saturday 18th March 2023 – AFTER THE EFFORTS …

Friday 17th March 2023 – WHAT HAPPENED …

Thursday 16th March 2023 – DO YOU HAVE …

Wednesday 15th March 2023 – I’VE HAD ONE …

Tuesday 14th March 2023 – IT’S ALL VERY WELL …

Monday 13th March 2023 – IT WAS HARD …

Sunday 12th March 2023 – SO MUCH FOR …

Saturday 11th March 2023 – THIS AFTERNOON I …

Friday 10th March 2023 – AFTER ALL OF …

Thursday 9th March 2023 – MY LITTLE WALK …

Wednesday 8th March 2023 – MY LITTLE WALK …

Tuesday 7th March 2023 – MY LEFTOVER CURRY …

Monday 6th March 2023 – JUST FOR A …

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