Tag Archives: donald

Wednesday 17th May 2023 – AND IF YOU CAN …

… read this, then normal service has finally been resumed. And not before time either because I’m pretty much fed up of this. I did think that their estimate of the time that the internet would be back up was rather optimistic.

In actual fact, the internet did come back up – but only for a very brief moment and then it went again. I received a message from my provider telling me “to contact the service department”.

And so I did. And it’s all automated these days, but my complaint has been recognised and registered because when I tried to log in again to register another complaint, it explained that there “is already an intervention signalled for this number”.

So I just have to sit and wait, and contemplate my navel.

There wasn’t much time for contemplation in bed last night because I seem to have been extremely busy, as I discovered when I listened to the dictaphone. I started off regrettably with my brother. It was coming up to Christmas. We were talking about everything. The subject of presents came up and I said that I’d only bought one Christmas present for someone this year. I couldn’t think of what to buy anyone so I hoped that no-one had bought anything for me because I didn’t want anything. When my father asked me what I wanted for Christmas I had to think for about half an hour before I could come up with anything. My brother said “I would straight away have been able to answer that. I’ve seen this beautiful chandelier”. I replied “yes but that’s for a special purpose, isn’t it, a special thing like that? That’s understandable but I don’t really need anything at all”. When I said that I’d only bought one Christmas present what I meant was one present gratuitously. There were a few people who had done me favours throughout the year and I’d bought something for them but I wasn’t including that.

There was something else about a space probe that had just come back to land on Earth. The guy had undergone some kind of spiritual conversion and was going on about how the Vatican had ordered the rainforest to be destroyed, lots of other kinds of similar things. The Press mocked him about it for thinking that he’d become such an important and new, different person since his exploration, that people would spend more time listening to him. They were having a bit of a Field Day at his expense. There were lots more to it than this but I can’t remember now.

And then a little girl who was barely a toddler had been left at home to learn to walk etc while the rest of her family had gone away. She learnt quite quickly. One thing that they left was all these films about “baby’s first steps” and “baby discovers that she has arms”, all these patronising kinds of films that were aimed at making her grow up quicker and a little earlier if she felt so inclined.

Later on I’d gone away for a weekend. It was in Amsterdam but no Amsterdam that I ever knew. I’d gone to retrace the steps of a journey that I’d made a few years earlier. The Saturday was OK but the Sunday morning before I caught my aeroplane home I went back to do the second part of it. I ended up in an underground tunnel where there were all these cars etc. There were some extremely tight 90° bends in there. These coaches were having a hell of a job trying to negotiate their way round. I was walking round and I saw the girl whom I was with. She was sitting in a waiting room at the far end of this subterranean tunnel. I ran quickly back to a parking space halfway along to collect a few things. I was interrupted by a coach trying to manoeuvre its way around again. Then a load of people came through the double door. At first I thought that one of them was a bear but it was a small rotund man in a fur coat. But it was really so surprising. I made my way back to this waiting room and had to go down all these metal steps. I thought “I hadn’t gone down these metal steps when I saw her and she certainly wasn’t in the ante-room”. When I reached the bottom I found that I’d actually climbed to the very top of a huge radio mast. The view was terrifying. I just looked down at my feet al the time. At the top they were doing some work on it so they had to help me go round to find a place to stand. I made the remark “Oh God! I don’t want to know how high up I am here”. Someone said “you’re at 5000 feet”. Of course I went berserk. I just said that I didn’t want to know. There was some tension. There was a guy there pointing out all these people on these advertising posters that you could see from the top. I tried my best not to look and he was prattling on about this and that. What was going through my mind was “how on earth am I going to get down again from here because I’m paralysed”. And I never did find that girl again.

Finally I was in New Brunswick at my niece’s. I had to go to the solicitor to sign a document so we agreed to meet on the Sunday afternoon. Another woman from the village wanted to come with me too. Sunday at 14:00 I presented myself at this woman’s house and knocked on the door but she didn’t come. A few minutes later a guy turned up with a few young girls. They all went in the house but I still waited. 10 minutes later a couple of women and a pile of children came out. I wasn’t sure whether one of these women was one of the women for whom I was waiting so I said something about going to the solicitor. She replied “you’re lucky”. I said “eh?” but she wandered off with all of the kids down to the lake. I began to go back to the bus stop. Just then a council employee on a moped and pillion went past. I thought “this must be the bus” so I shouted and ran after it but he took no notice and rode past. I walked up to the top of the street because I knew that he’d be coming back along the main street and walked a little way to where there was a bus stop. Sure enough, bus routes 3 and 4 stopped here. I suddenly realised that it’s Sunday. There’s no public transport on Sunday. How am I going to get to town to see the solicitor? I suppose that I’d have to go back, pick up my car and drive there. Then I wondered what I would do if he wasn’t there. I don’t have a Canadian ‘phone and I wouldn’t be able to contact anyone if I were out there wandering around waiting for things to happen.

And not only that – when the alarm went off this morning i was already up and about.

You can imagine that a good part of my morning was spent transcribing that lot of dictaphone stuff. No cats, no TOTGA, no Zero, no Castor either but once again, member of my family rear their ugly heads in the middle of my nightmares. I’ve no idea why either because during my waking (notice that I didn’t say “lucid”) hours I don’t spend a single moment thinking about them.

But what was interesting about the night was me being terrified (not even simply “scared”) of heights. That’s not like me at all. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I reroofed my farm back in 2009 I was working off a ladder overhanging a steep drop down onto solid rock and I didn’t bat an eyelid.

But anyway, I digrsss … “yet again” – ed.

With there being no internet, and hence no work, I spent some time this morning tidying up a few of the directories on the hard drive, making things a little easier to find my way around.

And the rest of the day has been spent going through the arrears on the dictaphone from when I was in hospital. Only 37 entries to transcribe now and if this internet breakdown carries on, I might even finish them at some point.

Updating the relevant blog entries might be problematic however. We shall have to work on that somehow.

The cleaner came round this afternoon. She told me that the neighbour to whom I referred yesterday has had a really bad fall and is off to the hospital to have an x-ray and all that kind of thing. Not that anything is broken (otherwise she’d have been in hospital a long time before this) but I gather that there are other issues. She’s quite elderly.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry and naan bread. The naan was really nice but for some reason it didn’t cook as well as the previous ones. I think that I must be losing my touch

So now there’s not a lot else that I can do. This internet issue is getting on my nerves, not simply because it’s not working but because I have to take my work physically to the radio station tomorrow rather than sending it by e-mail. I can really do without that but it’s a case of “needs must when the devil drives”.

So I’ll sit and twiddle my thumbs for a while and then go off to bed, unless some other inspiration comes my way. But I’m a bit short on inspiration right now.

Monday 8th May 2023 – AND THE ANSWER …

… to yesterday’s question was indeed “not very much”.

It’s actually a Bank Holiday here today when the country celebrates VE Day and strictly speaking I ought to be having a lie-in as I try to do on as many Bank Holidays as I can, but with the threatened arrival of the nurse to give me my fortnightly injection, that’s out of the question.

What usually happens is that when I try to lie in on a day that he is due to come to visit, he usually has a blood test to carry out in the building so he’s here before breakfast. Consequently, we had an alarm set today for 07:00 as usual.

Mind you, I needn’t have bothered because when the alarm did go off, I was sitting on the edge of the bed dressing. we’ve had another one of those nights – and mornings.

It was about 08:50 when he came round to give me my injection. And here’s a thing that’s totally unexpected – the database paperwork that he has to keep to record the injections that he gives me is now full.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“I don’t know” he replied. “It’s never reached this stage before”

So clearly I’m continuing to defy all expectations. No-one with this illness has lived longer than 11 years and I was diagnosed in 2015, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall (and I expect that I had it a good while before then) but while it’s true to say that I know all about ill-health, I’m still fighting on. Not exactly fighting fit, just fighting for breath and fit to drop.

With it being a Bank Holiday I’ve had a very relaxing day doing too much of nothing at all. I did finish the radio programme today, as I said that I would, and listened to the one that is to be broadcast this coming weekend but that’s about it.

There’s just one more now that is half-done and I’ll do that this coming weekend. And then I’ll have to start off again. I’m months ahead, which is good news, but there’s always this feeling that some of it will have to be done again as some of these artists can’t go on for ever. I remember back a few years ago in the old “Radio Anglais” days when I spent quite some time waxing lyrical about Chris Squire, only for him to begin to manger les pissenlits par les racines the morning the programme was due to be broadcast.

There was also the stuff on the dictaphone that needed transcribing too. We’re back on the Sherlock Holmes murders again. A couple of people had been struck down in a park by someone dressed entirely in black. There was some woman who dressed herself in black ready to go out just as 2 people were starting to walk on a common in Balham. These 2 people were talking about their past, the girl saying “wasn’t it to this common that you brought such-and-such a girl with whom you used to go out, but she was rather strange?”. The name that they used was the name of this girl. There were police loitering in attendance. They arrested someone dressed all in black in the vicinity of this couple and dragged him away. It turned out that he was actually a mime artist dressed in black ready to perform his act to collect money. As the camera panned to see him dragged away it panned through a figure in black sitting in a café on the common overlooking the events that were taking place

Later on I was going on a coach trip with work for some kind of sports event. One of my colleagues asked me if I went on the previous one two weeks ago to Carlisle. I said no because I had something else to do that evening. While we were waiting for the coach back on this draughty bus station it just didn’t appear. We sat there waiting. There were several tomatoes rolling around, coming and going. One of them came back so I asked it if it had come to pick us up. Someone said “I’ve already asked him and it’s not him” so we sat there and waited. Suddenly I realised that I didn’t have my watch or my key to the office. I’d left them at home. I was wondering what I was going to do. I thought that I’d better take a gamble and go to fetch them. I ran, which was the first time in ages, all the way home to our house in Vine Tree Avenue. All the lights were on. I could hear people moving around. The front door was unlatched so I walked in and ran lightly up the stairs. The taps were all dripping in the bathroom but no-one was in there. My brother was asleep in bed with the light on so I walked quietly in, picked up the key card and my watch that was on the bed, came out and came downstairs again. I could hear my parents in the front room talking about me but I didn’t have the time to stay and listen. I managed to open the door again without making too much noise and set off to run back to the bus station.

It’s a total mystery to me why it is that my family keeps on intruding into my nocturnal voyages. During my waking hours I don’t even waste a minute thinking about them so what’s going on in my subconscious? I don’t mind Nerina putting in an appearance every now and again – after all I invited her into my life for better or for worse, but one of the reasons of leaving the UK was to escape the negativity of everything that was weighing me down and I thought that I’d left them all behind.

But it was interesting to read the bit about “running”, given how I’ve not been out running for a couple of years and I couldn’t do so these days anyway. When we started this programme at University we had all kinds of people recording their dreams, one of whom was a girl who was born without legs. She would tell us that although she’s never walked a single step in the whole of her life (for obvious reasons) she still dreamt about herself going for a walk. So clearly, dreaming isn’t completely tied up with your own personal experiences.

Finally I’d had some issues at work about sick leave, that kind of thing. In the end what I used to do was that at night I’d take a van from work without authority and do furniture removals etc. On one occasion I came back with my Luton Transit. We dropped it off at Zero’s father and began to strip it for spares so we could sell the bits and move on. It wasn’t until we had it pretty much dismantled that it suddenly occurred to me that in the back of it was an old Volkswagen estate, another estate car, a motorbike and lots of other bits and pieces. I’d been using it as a shed I went round to see his wife and said “you’ll never guess what I’ve just remembered” but she told me. She asked me what the plan was. One thing going through my mind was to hire a vehicle, put the Luton Transit on the back and drive al lthe way to France, unload it, drive back and carry on. I said that it would probably take us about a week. If you like, you, your husband and Zero could come along as well. She looked dubious at that point and asked “could it be done in a weekend?”. I replied “we could get there and back in a weekend but unloading it is something else”. She said “the difficulty is with Zero. She could go to her grandfather’s who could take a day off work to look after her but I don’t think that we could do anything else. Are you sure that it couldn’t be done in a weeked?”. I had to describe the journey to her etc. She said “the next question of course is whether we have any money”. I repled “you won’t need any money. Everything will be on me of course”. We had this huge discussion.

Interestingly, I do have a Luton Transit, as regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous versions will recall. I bought it for scrap because I wanted the box off the back to use as a garden shed and it’s still down on the farm 20-odd years later. And there is a Volkswagen estate in the back of it too, albeit in pieces. A diesel estate that was crashed in Spain and which I recovered to use for spares for mine.

And even more interestingly, while I was waiting to take it down to the farm, I did use it around Brussels doing furniture removals at night and weekends. No tax, no MoT, no nothing in fact. But back then in those days no-one really cared. I remember reading the story of Sir Daniel Gooch, Chairman of the Great Western Railway, reminiscing about the experiences of the way that the GWR operated in its early days, and commenting “what would be said of such a mode of proceeding today?”.

And, interestingly, once more as Tom Petty would have it, “HOW COULD I GET SO CLOSE TO” ZERO “AND STILL BE SO FAR AWAY?”. I’m not sure how many times this is just recently that she’s just been tantalisingly dangled out of reach during one of my nocturnal rambles. It seems that I can summon up members of my family at the drop of a hat but Zero, TOTGA and Castor are totally eluding me. And the Vanilla Queen dropped off the radar a long time ago.

Looking back on things, each time that I’ve been up in the High Arctic, and each time I’ve been trying to edit that Colosseum live concert late at night on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR I’ve had a strange encounter with a mysterious young lady of the opposite sex. First there was The Vanilla Queen, and the next time there was Castor. Jamais deux sans trois as they say around here, but the way my health is going, there won’t be another trip out there. 700 miles from the North Pole we were in 2018 and it looks like that will be that. No Rensselaer Harbour, no Thank God Harbour (where my namesake is buried after they poisoned him 150 years ago) and no Fort Conger.

All of this reminiscing probably means that I have too much time on my hands. But nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

So having crashed out here and there, I went for tea. Steamed veg with falafel balls and a vegan cheese sauce. It’s amazing just how different things have become since mainstream French supermarkets are now selling vegan cheese. It’s expensive of course, but it saves me having to bring back a rucksack full every time that I return from Leuven.

Tomorrow is a Welsh lesson of course, so I’m off to bed early. I don’t want to go crashing out in the middle of my lesson. And then I’ll have to pack my stuff ready for Leuven. Three hospital appointments I have on Thursday so I’m going to be busy.

Thursday 4th May 2023 – I HOPE THAT YOU HAD …

… a happy star wars day today. May the Fourth be with you.

It’s certainly been with someone, because it hasn’t been with me at all. I don’t know why but I seem to have gone several paces backwards today.

It was another one of these usual nights that started off with a disaster. Every night before I go to bed I back up my computer.

There’s a powerful memory stick in one of the back ports and I use the search option to identify all of the files that I’ve used during the day and copy them onto the memory stick “just in case”.

So there I was using the “search all files saved today” function and all of a sudden it came up with “no files found”. That’s of course nonsense because I’ve spent much of the day working on the computer.

Three or four attempts came up with the same result, but then all of a sudden the light went on in my brain. In the time it had taken (a mere few milliseconds) to actually start and then finish the search it had passed midnight. So “today” was now “yesterday” and I wasn’t searching that. In the couple of milliseconds that had been “today” I hadn’t used any files.

From all of the foregoing you’ll gather that I had a late night. But even so, coupled with all of the usual difficulties that I’ve been having about sleeping, I was still up and about before the alarm went off at 07:00.

When I say “up and about”, I mean in the figurative sense. The body was there but the mind certainly wasn’t and I can’t think of a single thing that I did during the morning. I just sat and vegetated.

At lunchtime though I went and had a shower in the hope that that would revive me (it didn’t) and then I walked into town. And I hadn’t gone 20 yards from my doorstep before my right leg collapsed again. Luckily I had my crutches to hand otherwise we might have had a nasty accident.

It gave out again a bit further on as I headed down the hill and this is extremely discouraging news. I’m off to Leuven next Wednesday and this is not the time for my leg to be breaking down.

At the letting agent’s I introduced myself and gave them the necessary paperwork and discussed my plans. They shall make further enquiries and get back to me. But it’s not going to be as quick as I was expecting or hoping. Not to worry though. The news that they were able to give me was encouraging from my own point of view.

It was a bright sunny day when I set out so of course I went without a coat. And so as you might expect, it was raining when I returned. Only for a while tough. It soon brightened up again.

Still warm though, so the sight of two elderly tourists wandering around in thermal bubble-jackets, woolly hats and scarves was rather bewildering.

Back here I had some hot chocolate and more of my coffee biscuits and then transcribed the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. And for a start I had awoken again right in the middle of a dream only for it all to completely evaporate away the moment that I awoke. This is all very depressing and disappointment because I want to know who it is on whom I’m missing out.

Later I’d gone out for a run in a wood in an old quarry. I was running around there when my brother appeared (yet again). For a while he was with me but I accelerated a little and left him behind. When it came to going back home I started to race and I was quite some distance in front. I pounded up a steep gravel bank to the top, only to find that he had caught up with me somehow. He said something like “oh I’m going to catch you up”. I replied “no you aren’t”. He asked why and I replied “I’m going to go ‘BOOOH” to you” which of course I did. he was so startled that he fell down in this quarry all the way to the bottom again. I could have carried on had I wanted but I stopped to see how he was. Then we carried on back towards home talking about football and things like that.

And then I was with a girl from University last night. We were talking a bit about old times, then I forget most of what happened after that. But later I stepped back into this dream and she was running a newspaper or some kind of similar office. I’d started to do some volunteer work for her. I turned up in the afternoon after lunch. She was doling out the work to different people. She gave me a couple of pieces, one of which was some information about someone who lived in a certain building in the City of London. At first I didn’t recognise the name of the building – then I did because it was the building where my aunt used to live but had changed names. I knew that there was a pretty disreputable guy who lived there. This was asking all kinds about him. She wanted someone to research it. That’s why she asked me to do it. There was more stuff too, a little more complicated. I was reading this memo that had come. It was a simple straightforward memo by the looks of things. I suddenly had a kind-of Writer’s Block. I couldn’t think of how I was going to reply to it. Then I began to worry thinking that I don’t have much time as it is. I can’t afford to spend this time sitting here staring at this and not actually doing anything about it.

I also had a phone call to make. It was really early in the morning. Another friend of mine from University (and I wish that I’d noted who he was) was in a Court case. He’d said something about something or other. I’d sent him a message asking him if he needed me to do anything for him – to find anything. But late last night as I was going to, I noticed that he’d replied and said “no” so this morning very early as soon as I awoke I phoned him and had a very quiet word with him to wish him luck and making sure that there had been no new developments overnight that needed me to do something on his behalf.

Finally, coming into Paris, I was with a couple of good friends. We were driving. The first thing that I noticed was that at the slip road at the side of the motorway there were a couple of motor bikes that looked as if they’d had an accident and were blocking the road. A little further back there was a car and someone was moving a pile of cones so that the car could join the main motorway rather than carry on along the small road. Then there was a whole pile of motorcycles that looked as if they’d been flattened by something and cars that were parked any old how. It all looked as if they’d been disturbed by a hurricane or tornado or something. As we dropped down the hill into the city we could see everything in the distance. There was what looked like a huge gorilla walking around in a park quite some distance away. We could make it out with the naked eye. We all stopped and had a look. Just then our car performed a 360° pirouette then carried on driving.

After all of that I … errr … reclined for a while.

Tea tonight was one of those curried vegan burgers with some curried fried rice. And for some reason it didn’t taste as nice as my food has been doing just recently. In fact, thinking about it, yesterday’s meal didn’t taste as good as it might have done either. I wonder if I’m sickening for something.

Like I said just now, this is really not the time for me to go breaking down.

But break down I did because when I came back in here after tea, I crashed out yet again. This really is too bad.

Things are going to have to improve at some point soon, I hope, because all of this is getting on my nerves as you can imagine. I’m not looking forward to my trip next week if I can’t do better than this.

But one thing is certain after what I learnt today, and that is that I’m not going anywhere without my crutches. Not on your Nellus Secundus

Monday 1st May 2023 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… a Bank Holiday of course and so I have celebrated it by imitating my namesake the mathematician and doing three fifths of five eights of … errr … nothing.

And when I say “nothing”, what I actually mean is that I switched off the alarm last night before going to bed and so, despite waking up here and there on several occasions, I didn’t actually leave my stinking pit until 11:55 this morning.

That’s what I call a lie-in.

And I did actually transcribe the dictaphone notes. I was going to say that I left it until after lunch but lunch was of course taken quite quickly after raising myself from the dead.

And didn’t I travel miles during the night? I was in a hotel room somewhere. In the distance I could hear a woman shouting but it was very muffled as if it was a voice coming through a phone. I then heard my brother answer. A heated conversation went on for a couple of minutes. There was then a pause. Afterwards he came into the room. You could see that he was extremely emotional. I asked him “who was that shouting on the phone?”. He mentioned a couple of guys’ names. I said “no, the woman”. He mentioned a friend of his. I asked him what was going on. For some reason he wouldn’t tell me. In the end I went out for a walk. Putting the conversation together I had the impression that my brother was extremely short of money. I remembered myself about how I used to be short of money and how I always used to go out to find a part-time job or something. For some reason he didn’t feel like working very hard to pull himself out of a hole.

Later on we were in an office somewhere. It was actually quite dark even though it was the middle of the afternoon. You couldn’t really see very much. We went outside because we had to drive to our other office. I’d never seen a sky so black and clouds so heavy in all my life. It was a real, proper torrential rainstorm type of clouds. We drove to the other office. A couple of people in the car were talking. One said that they were going to buy a television. I thought that she was buying it for home but apparently it was for the office. I asked about it. She said that one of these price war places on the internet was selling TVs that were only tuned in to Channel 4. Their aim was to have one in the office with the Channel’s rolling news service playing, either talking or watching, so they could see where they are and find out what was happening in the world exactly when it happened. I thought that a surprise because these were young people who didn’t seem to have too much interest in current events.

And then I was driving in a car through part of Texas last night. The roads were absolutely awful, full of pits and everything. At a certain point, without realising it I crossed the border into Spain (or do I mean Mexico?) following another car. We drove down this dirt road that had taken us over the border which came to a dead stop by 3 enormous hangars hidden in the trees. Seeing a railway line I wondered if there would be some railway locomotives. I took my camera, left the car and walked to one of these hangars. I ended up following a corridor that took a lot of twists and turns. In the end I decided that it was pointless to keep on going this way. I turned round. At one point I must have taken a false turn because I started to find myself up against all kinds of historic artefacts, business machines, typewriters etc from the 1930s. I thought “I didn’t remember these, coming along here”. I came to where there was a set of steps with half the steps missing. I had to lower myself over the edge onto the stairs down below and drop down into a room where there were old bicycles from the 1930s. I thought “I seem to have found myself in a museum now”. It was a strange museum with heaps of stuff piled everywhere with no explanation. I quickly worked out the way to go and ended up at the front door. I didn’t recognise the view from there at all, and it was locked. A woman came over to see me, talking in Spanish which I didn’t understand. She pointed the other way from which I’d just come. I had the impression that the museum was closed to new visitors and the people in there were having to leave. Just then an announcement came over saying something like “it’s now 21:00 and everyone has to go”. I thought “21:00 – I have no hotel, I don’t know where the car is, I’m in a strange country, nowhere to stay”.

I stepped back into this dream later. I ended up walking around with a young guy in the Czech Republic somewhere looking at al the buildings in this town. He asked me questions about the building – whether things in the Czech Republic had improved over the last 30 years. I said “in the big cities and major centres of population things have certainly changed but not so much in the rural areas. The emphasis at the moment is on key industries and commerce. Social needs are being somewhat left behind”. We climbed over a pile of rubble that was being used to regenerate the town centre. He started to ask me whether it would be possible for us to maybe see each other again for another talk as he had to leave. I made a non-committal reply to that.

That’s one thing that I actually noticed with my frequent visits behind the Iron Curtain in the old days and then how things changed once the Wall came down. How quickly things changed. And how quickly they adopted the worst aspects of capitalism too. I loved the east in the old days and even took Nerina there on our honeymoon. There was an innocence and naivety there that was quite appealing and 10 or 12 years later it had all gone completely

And later I was walking through a town in Germany. I’d left my rucksack at the airport and gone to do something, then I had to return to pick up my rucksack because it was late. I couldn’t work out how to get to the airport . I was wandering aimlessly around the countryside and came to a town with a beautiful church or something perched on a hill. I stopped to take a photo with the NIKON D3000 but the photo came out all dark. I went to try to take it again but it was difficult being on crutches etc. I couldn’t really feel the camera controls. Then I bumped into my friend from Munich. He took me into a hotel where he was staying. The girls were there as well so we began to walk round these stone passageways. We came to a place where there was a cupboard in the way. We couldn’t go through. I climbed over the cupboard and so did he. We bumped into one of the girls. I ended up having to crawl underneath a bed to enter the room. I thought “this looks wrong to me”. It turned out to be a room in a hostel with about 30 beds and desks etc in it. I had a look around. The people looked reasonably respectable wo I thougth “I’m going to try to book a room here but I don’t want a room in a hostel”. My friend said “they are very expensive”. I said “if everyone else is staying here I’ll stay here but not in a hostel”. I had to walk around the corridors to try to find the reception. There were all kinds of exhibition cases with expensive guitars. I heard a familiar voice. It was another friend of mine, one from my Manchester days, giving a conducted tour of the castle. I thought “that’s strange. He’s only been here 5 minutes and he’s doing conducted tours already as if he’s been here 100 years”. I asked him where the reception was. He pointed in some general direction and said “it’s in an office in between 2 floors over there” so I headed that way to book in.

While I was out driving around I heard yet another friend on the radio. His wife had been doing some knitting and she had a ball of yarn left over. She was going to give it away to anyone who might find some kind of pleasure from doing something with it during lockdown. There was quite a chat about this ball of yarn. I couldn’t understand why because it was a case of “who wants it”. A short while later when I was back home he turned up. He’d brought some things for me that his wife had. I misunderstood because there was something said about eggs. I had some eggs in my fridge. I thought that he was after them for her because I thought that they were hers. I gave him the eggs. While I was going through the dishwasher I found some meat stands, metal things with prongs that you use to put your meat while carving it. I have them to him to him too because they’d be much more use. I don’t use things like that for cutting bread or cake anyway.

So a lot of my friends were out and about with me last night and it was nice to see them all. No Castor, TOTGA or Zero unfortunately, but everyone else was most welcome.

Something else that I did was to have a little look through one of my playlists that will be on the music player later in the week and making sure that it was up to date

Tea was a stuffed pepper. A frozen one out of the freezer. However I turned the heat down on the air fryer to make sure that it was cooked better but that way it didn’t dry out the humidity. There’s obviously a fine line between heating it through and boiling off the water and I’ve not found it yet. I need to practise more.

But right now I’m off to bed. No Welsh in the morning as it’s a holiday over there. So who knows? I might even do some homework. I have to crack on.

Saturday 29th April 2023 – THAT WAS EMBARRASSING

It’s cup final weekend in Wales at the moment. The Welsh Cup is being played tomorrow between TNS and Y Bala, but today at lunchtime we had the final of the Welsh Amateur Cup between Trethomas Bluebirds and Denbigh Town and this evening, the 2nd Division Cup between Barry Town and Colwyn Bay.

It was the latter game to which I’m referring right now. Barry had won the southern division and Colwyn Bay the northern, having had some really impressive runs all the way to the league titles. Colwyn Bay for example had only lost once this season and Barry twice, and they have both been promoted to the Welsh Premier League next season.

They both had reached the final of the cup competition at something of a canter and so we were all expecting a real humdinger of a match this evening.

However, for reasons that have no place being discussed here, Colwyn Bay sent out their youth team to face a Barry Town team in full cry. And the result was rather predictable. Even strolling around at a leisurely pace with no sense of urgency at all, they still had far, far too much in the tank for Colwyn Bay.

The other match finished 2-1 for Trethomas and the scoreline was an understatement because in all honesty Trethomas should have been down the road and out of sight a long time before the final whistle. But at least it was entertainment and not punishment.

While we’re on the subject of punishment … “” – ed … I actually had a better night last night for a while. I was fast asleep quite quickly, and doesn’t that make a change? However, I was back wide awake again at 04:20 and I spent the next couple of hours tossing and turning about.

Mind you, I didn’t beat the alarm this morning. At some point after 06:30 I must have dropped off to sleep because I was flat out asleep when the alarm went off at 07:00 and I had a struggle to beat the second alarm.

Anyway, once I organised myself Caliburn and I set sail for the shops.

First port of call was at Noz where I didn’t buy anything special. I did however buy a new pizza tray. I had to butcher my old one to make it fit into this little oven and I’ll need a proper one for the new oven, whenever I might actually install it. So seeing as they had a stock at a silly price I bought one.

That’s the thing with a shop like Noz. It sells all kinds of end-of-ranges, bankrupt stock, that kind of thing, so if you see something you buy it, even if you don’t need it yet because when you do need it, they won’t have it.

Leclerc came up with nothing at all of any interest so I headed for home, where I had a chat with a neighbour on the doorstep. I seem to be flavour of the month right now.

After a coffee and a cheese on toast there was time to transcribe the dictaphone notes. This is only part of a dream last night . I had to do something about my family and this involved involving my brother. I had to go to find him. I knew where he was, in his dormitory, so I crossed over the road and stood at the bottom of the stairs. I looked up to the dormitory and shouted. There were a few people walking around there but he didn’t come. I shouted again but he still didn’t come. In the end I gave up and decided to do something different on my own and walked away. As I walked down the stairs to go out of the building I bumped into him. he asked about something or other. I replied that I’d shouted twice and he hadn’t come so I was just going to leave it. The dream carried on from there but I can’t remember any more now

There was something else about me having a couple of cats as well. I’d built some play activities for them, one of which was something extremely tall. Someone made a pun about it saying “that’s a bit over the top isn’t it, that one?”.

And finally there was a cricket or football match taking place somewhere outside town one afternoon. I set out to walk there to see what was happening. As I drew closer I could see a group of people there wearing crash helmets. I thought “this is strange”. I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my camera with me. I thought “that’s disappointing but I don’t have time to go home to pick it up and come back again”. When I arrived at this field, a while before this match was due to start, there were these kids playing a kind of ice hockey. There was someone there who bore a strong resemblance to Nigel Garbage throwing a puck up in the air. These kids were practising hitting it. One kid hit the puck and it flew past me. I put out my hand instinctively and almost caught it. I thought “I wonder if they are looking for a goalkeeper … “net minder” – ed. We made ourselves ready for what was going to happen. One thing was quite strange – all through this dream I had a feeling that Zero was there. I couldn’t see her and had no evidence to suppose that she was. There was just this really uncomfortable feeling that she was there in this dream somewhere and I think it was that that awoke me

Earlier on I mentioned the Welsh Amateur Cup. This is for clubs who don’t qualify for the professional cup. There were 250 clubs who participated and in the end it came down to two clubs from the 3rd tier – Denbigh from the 3rd tier north-west and Trethomas from – I think – the 3rd tier south-west.

Both clubs are third in their respective leagues so we were expecting a tough match. However it was nothing like it. As I side, the score might have been close but the play wasn’t and Trethomas made really heavy weather of what should have been a simple task.

As for the second match, well, I’m not going to say anything because I imagine that there will be quite enough said about that elsewhere.

The rest of the day has been spent, would you believe, working on the photos from 2019. It’s been ages since I’ve edited those so I carried on with a few more today. We’re still in Peel Sound right now somewhere in between Somerset Island and Prince of Wales Island heading for my Appointment with Destiny on one of the days that is missing from my blog .

One day I’ll have to write up those missing days.

Tea tonight was chips – not frozen chips because they were quite expensive and they had normal potatoes at a good price. Plenty of rather elderly burgers in breadcrumbs in the freezer so two small ones bit the dust today with the chips and a delicious salad. Over the next few weeks I’ll have to dispose of a pile more, and then give serious consideration to make a start on making them.

But it’s late now – early morning in fact – and I can’t sleep. I’ll feel like death in the morning but having done my radio programme for next week I’m not bothered if I sleep all day really.

As long as I don’t miss TNS v Y Bala. I know what the score will be already but we have to go through the motions, I suppose.

Friday 28th April 2023 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I’ve had today. I’ve actually spent most of it asleep.

And that’s no surprise because I had another miserable night. Apart from the fact that I took an absolute age to go off to sleep again, I awoke at about 04:20 and just lay there vegetating for ages.

The alarm goes off at 07:00 these days and at 06:55 I found the energy (I’m not sure where from) to haul myself out of bed to beat the alarm. And that was probably the most energetic thing that I did.

The nurse came round as planned and took my blood sample. She had to take three goes before she could extract any blood from me. This is becoming ridiculous. I really am beginning to hate all of this.

It took me a while to come round into the Land of the Living enough to book all of my transport arrangements for my trip to Leuven. To my dismay my Old Fogey’s Railcard has expired and I’m having to pay full price for my travel, and I’m not ‘arf noticing the difference.

There are several factors contributing to the extra expense, apart from the absence of railcard

I’m coming home on a Friday, not a Saturday
I’m not taking the cheap route via Lille because I can’t walk quickly enough between one railway station and the other. Lille Flandres and Lille Europe are situated a good 10 minutes away from each other for a fit person. God knows how I’ll cope on my crutches if I tried that
The two cheap morning trains from Brussels, at 07:13 and 07:43, are fully booked and there are no seats available

And as for the last couple of times, I’m not staying at my usual hidey-hole either. It’s a long walk from the station and also if I want anything to eat it’s a long walk to the shops. There’s an Ibis Budget at the back of the station where I’ve stayed a few times, and that’s where I’ll be hanging my hat.

It took ages to sort everything out though. I went to pay with my Belgian bank account only to find that the app has to be upgraded. That took an age and when it had finally installed itself correctly the order had timed out and I had to start again.

And then there were issues with the SNCF app. That needed upgrading too and now that it’s done, it won’t open on my old phone. I’ve had to do everything off the computer and I’ll need to print out my tickets.

This afternoon the first thing that I did was to have a shower. I was feeling quite cold and I don’t know why and I thought that a shower would warm me up.

While I was in the bathroom I went one step further than David Crosby, gave in an inch to fear and cut my hair. Probably because I had the flu for Christmas, I reckon.

Back in here I fell asleep yet again, and that was that for quite considerable time. And when I awoke I really felt so miserable. It took for ever for me to pull myself together. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’ve been doing so well just recently.

There was time to listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. At one point I was asleep but awake in a kind of dream watching something happen in front of my eyes on the road while I was standing behind a hedge on the edge. It turned out to be a scene from a sequel to a well-known film – a kind-of Lord Of The Rings or The Hobbit or something. It turned out to be a kind-of trailer for a brief film where the producer shows his top-20 moments from his top favourite sequels to well-known films of that nature. We were there watching bits from The Hobbit, Harry Potter, this kind of film until he finally came round to his n° 1. everyone was praying that it wasn’t a certain scene but I didn’t get to see what it was because I awoke just as it was about to start the final scene. Just my luck

Did I dictate the dream … “no, you didn’t” – ed … about being on the taxis last night, having worked really hard with some really long hours. There was a lot of work to do around the Market Drayton area. One of the drivers phoned the people concerned and asked if we were still on for this work. They replied “yes” so he set off to Market Drayton. The way he went was down towards Woore and then across the old road to Knighton, that way. A way that I know well from my perambulations around that area in my youth. We were talking about some other people, Nerina and I, who we knew who had bought some kind of place out there. I had a couple of hours to spare so someone dropped me off at a little sweetshop-type of place. I went in and the guy said “you want upstairs”. I went up these incredibly steep stairs and found myself in this beautiful clean, tidy apartment. It was where one of my taxi drivers and his wife lived. They certainly weren’t the type to have had somewhere that was absolutely spotless. I was intending to try to ask if I could have a bath but when I saw how neat and tidy their house was I had second thoughts because I didn’t really want to mess it up.

And then one of my drivers had been out doing taxi jobs in Northern Ireland with my brother. They’d been away for a while. The guy who had organised it all came back and said that he would refuse to work with my brother again. He began to write out a whole list of everything that went wrong including my brother throwing some mushroom fried rice at him. I had to go off to do something. By the time I came back there was an enormous list. Part of the list was showing that everything in Northern Ireland had increased in price and how much was the increase. This list was enormous, on several pages. The guy in charge of everything said “I think that I’ve decided that I’m going to stop doing the cable car work from now on”. Another guy – a driver – rummaged through his bag and began to pull out things saying “I don’t need this, do I? I don’t need that now, do I?”. Something was strange about what he was pulling out so we had a look at it. It was actually the mirror arm of a car. Why he’d have one of those spare I really don’t know. In the end everyone calmed down and that left me and another driver to do the work for the night. I could see that there was going to be a lot of sorting out that needed to be done over the next couple of days to try to keep everyone happy again and try to stimulate some more business without running into some ridiculous costs.

By the looks of things I’ve been spending a lot of time back on the taxis just recently. And it’s not wishful thinking, I promise you that. For a while it was good fun and quite an enjoyable job but it eventually took on a life of its own and swept us all along in the momentum.

Tea tonight wasn’t as nice as it might have been and I don’t know why. The potatoes didn’t really make nice chips, I suppose, and the sausage rolls somehow didn’t inspire me all that much. My salad was nice though and I’ll have another one of those tomorrow.

Shopping is on the cards so I’ll buy some more spuds for chips for tea tomorrow but the freezer now has some room in it and I’m wondering whether a bag of frozen chips might be a better idea in this case. I shall have to look into that.

There’s more frozen stuff that’s been in the freezer since the Dawn of Time too and I’ll empty a few more bits and pieces to have with my chips and salad tomorrow. But right now I’m off to bed. It’s been a horrible day as I said earlier and the best thing to do is to forget about it and start again tomorrow

It’s been said quite often that no amount of alteration can sometimes change something that’s clearly not working, and it’s better to forget it and start again. I suppose that that’s probably why I have a younger brother.

Wednesday 26th April 2023 – THE DEED IS DONE

After this morning’s efforts I’m now the proud owner of another property. All signed, sealed, delivered and paid-for

But when I’m able to move into it is another story completely. There’s a strict procedure to follow and, surprisingly, it’s not the duty of a solicitor to perform it. It needs to be undertaken by a huissier, which is, I suppose, a cross between a bailiff and a Clerk of the Court. So I need to make further enquiries.

But the timetable that I had laid out in my head is looking … errr … optimistic.

The solicitor tells me that the letting of the property is undertaken by a management agent – the same management agent who manages the communal affairs of this building – so that’s obviously the best place to start. In fact, on the way home I stopped off at their offices to talk to the managing agent but she was busy. They said that she would call me back this afternoon but it’s now 21:30 and I’m still waiting.

There was plenty of waiting around during the night too because it was yet another bad night. At some point I did go off to sleep but I did awaken at about 04:00 for several hours but dozed off again. I awoke about 5 minutes before the alarm went off so I fell out of bed with the idea that at least I could say that I beat the alarm again, but I didn’t feel much like it.

After the medication I went for a shower and then Caliburn and I headed for the hills and the notaire‘s office at la Haye Pesnel.

09:30 was the time of our meeting and to my surprise, I only had to wait 10 minutes today beyond that time. That makes a change. Nice guy though he is, he usually works to his own convenience and not that of his clients.

he explained the reason to me why completion took so long. This building is officially an Ancient Monument, built in 1668 and registered on the French list of Historic Places.

There are all kinds of things that need to be investigated in this case. It’s not easy tracing the official history of a building and finding the deeds of a property that old when there’s been a Revolution and a couple of World Wars that have destroyed all kinds of archives. For example, the Public Records Office in St-Lô, the capital of this département, were destroyed by the Americans in a bombing raid in June 1944 and I bet that the Revolutionnaires had a bit of a bonfire too.

That’s the least of the problems that the notaire faced. Because it’s a listed building the Government has first dibs and so it can’t be sold to a private person until the Government has been offered it and sent a formal refusal.

And so once the sale can actually go ahead, the change of ownership (even if, in my case, I only own 250/10000 of the property) has to be notified to the Register of Historic Buildings and a list of permitted and forbidden alterations and activities has to be prepared.

The notaire certainly earned his money.

Liz thinks that it’s appropriate that I’ve bought a slice of French history. I told her that it’s appropriate because I’m something of an ancient monument myself.

In case you don’t know, where I live is part of a huge old military barracks complex built by the French in the 17th Century to protect the coast of Normandy from raids by the British forces based in the Channel Islands in the turmoil that followed the 30 Years War.

It was occupied by the French Army until 1988 when it was abandoned and fell into disrepair. The huge dormitory building is now the local High School, the canteen is now the Young Workers’ Hostel, the Officers’ Quarters is now the public rooms and Council offices and the other two buildings that were the barracks offices have been converted into small apartments.

When I moved here, it was as a tenant, with the aim that I can have a look around the town and see if I could find somewhere nice to live with the money left over from the sale of my apartment in Brussels, but I love it here up on the rock with the sea on three sides in this magnificent building and my really nice neighbours.

As I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed …this is the first place in the whole of my life where I’ve actually felt “at home” so I didn’t want to move away. I’ve had to wait patiently for something to come up for sale that I could afford.

Of course I’m not in my new place yet, and it will be quite a while before I am as well, but I’m one step further on down the road.

Ordinarily I would have qualms about putting a tenant out on the streets but a rented apartment has to be offered to a sitting tenant first, and so she’s had a couple of bites at the cherry and turned them down. And in any case, I can always put her in touch with the landlord of my current apartment if she needs somewhere else to go.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

When I left the notaire I went to the management agent but she was unavailable, so I went across the road to LeClerc for a bit of shopping.

Back here I had a coffee and some cheese on toast from the air fryer, and then I went to see the President of the Residents’ Committee to thank her for everything that she did. It was a tip-off from her that put on on the scent of the new apartment and I shall be forever grateful.

The cleaner had been and gone while I was away chatting so I made some hot chocolate and armed with some of my delicious chocolate biscuits, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was living in a caravan somewhere in a field. When I returned home my brother was there. He’d found his way in and was going through my record collection. I went to throw him out but he put up a bit of resistance. In the end I had to phone the police. At that point he left but he took several of my albums with him. I had to follow him to find out where he was going and what he was going to be doing. The police weren’t a great deal of help which I thought was unfortunate. In the end I walked back from Crewe (we were in Crewe at the time by now) to my caravan. All along the path were loads of dead foxes. It was very difficult to say whether they had been dead before or dead since or whether someone had moved them. I really didn’t know what I was going to expect when I returned to my caravan. When I opened the door I couldn’t see whether anything had changed or not. It was one of these dreams that awoke me bolt-upright and I couldn’t go back to sleep for ages afterwards.

And then I was part of an investigating team inspecting a battlefield in Normandy during the war. We were looking at a damaged American tank. We examined some of the bullets that had hit it. They turned out to be American. Part of the job of our unit was to investigate American or Allied weapons that had fallen into the hands of the Axis so we were interested in these bullets. We managed to find one that was almost intact. Somewhere near the battlefield was another unit that was involved in discipline etc that had a female civilian judge in charge of it. I went with my officer down there. We presented ourselves to this woman and explained what we had found. She wanted to know our interest. We said what we were doing. Our job was to trace this equipment to find out whether it had been equipment that had the Germans had captured, whether it was equipment that had been sent to the Soviet Union on Lend-Lease or whether it was something much more sinister than that, an American soldier firing on his own side. A guy with this woman judge immediately went on the offensive to some kind of absurd and ridiculous degree that embarrassed everyone there in this room. It made the situation completely uncomfortable. We had to explain that finding the answer to these kinds of questions was very important for a variety of reasons but he was still carried away on this emotional tide.

And while I was on my travels later on, someone had contacted me to go to meet them somewhere. I got back into Caliburn and set off. I noticed that Caliburn was running low on diesel. I thought that I knew where the diesel station was but by the time that I’d arrive it would be after 19:00 and it would be closed. It was in a very rural area so what would I do? As I drove down this road I came to 2 petrol stations, one on either side of the road, that I’d forgotten about. Problem solved. I pulled in there and fuelled up. I went in there to have a coffee too. You chose a mixer cup and they mixed your coffee and poured it into a goblet to give to you. I said that I’d go to the van for my thermal mug. When I reached Caliburn it was surrounded by people eating sandwiches etc so I had to fight my way in. I took my thermal mug but it was full of rubbish so I had to start to remove it. Some wouldn’t come out. It was a really difficult job to extract this rubbish. When I returned to the coffee counter the woman saw me. She asked “rubbish?” and found a waste bin to throw it into. I gave her my mug but I must have been distracted because I stood there and she was serving other people. There was an issue with someone’s card. She had to ring up about it. I asked “is that my card?” and she replied “no, you’re good to go”. Just then the guy she was ringing up managed to get through. He said something about Cheadle Hulme. I said “are we that close to Manchester”? She replied “that’s not that close to Manchester, is it?”.

I’ve forgotten most of this final dream. There was a couple of teenagers, a boy and girl, who were doing ice-dancing. Their routine wasn’t particularly adventurous but you could see that they were quite relaxed. They knew their stuff and quite enjoyed it. The next couple came on, a much older man with a girl probably about 6 or 7. You could see that she was terrified as they went through their routine. It was as if this guy was dancing with a plank of wood. They tried a few adventurous things and it must have been a horrible thing to do because you could see that this girl was scared to death. She was as rigid as a board as he was trying to hold her and twirl her around in the air. We thought “this isn’t any good whatsoever. They are never going anywhere like that”

And then I crashed out. The events of the day have been far too much for me, I reckon.

Tea tonight was a delicious left-over curry with naan bread. That’s the last of that batch and I do have to say that it was a total success. I shall definitely have to make much more of that, and quite right too

So that’s enough for today. I’m off to bed. I have the nurse coming to take a blood sample tomorrow morning so I shall have to be fighting-fit and hope that he won’t be looking in vain to find a vein in my arm. I’m fed up of being a dartboard.

Saturday 15th April 2023 – JUST BY WAY …

… of a change, I was fast asleep in bed when the alarm went off this morning.

It’s been quite a while since that’s happened, hasn’t it?

Anyway, I struggled to my feet and went off for my medication and then I set the washing machine off on another cycle. That’s all of the arrears of washing done now, which is good news. I’ve been letting things build up too much again just recently.

Saturday is shopping day so braving the hurricane that was blowing outside (and I DO mean “hurricane”) Caliburn and I set out for the shops.

Noz came up with a few bits and pieces but nothing of any special excitement, and ditto at LeClerc, except that they had an icing bag with a few assorted nozzles on sale at €2:85. It’s nothing very much – just like a refillable tube of toothpaste really – but it would have been handy for putting the crosses on my hot cross buns the other day.

What usually happens with tools and things like that is that I’ll buy the cheapest thing to see how it works and how much use I’ll have from it. And if it’s something that I like and will use often, I’ll pousser le bateau dehors and buy an expensive, better one.

That’s the story of my apartment really. When I moved here I bought everything brand-new but at the cheapest possible price so that I could have everything all at once. And as it breaks down, replacing it with much better-quality stuff. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my saying that the way my health was, I didn’t actually expect to outlive any of it.

Back here, I made it up the stairs quite comfortably with one crutch and the shopping trolley loaded to the brim with goodies, and after I’d put everything away I settled down with my cheese on toast and coffee.

After food I had a listen to where I’d been during the night. I was with my brother at one point. We were camping out somewhere in an old ruined house. We’d set up our kitchen outside. It became tea time so we went outside. The skies were really heavy, overcast and grey as if it would rain at any moment. We had to push on to make food. There wasn’t much to eat so we made the most of what we could find to hand. Some of the stuff had gone off, unfit for human consumption so it ended up in the bin. I was still hungry at the end of the meal and knew that there were more bread rolls in the car so I was going to go back to the car to fetch them while my brother went back into the house. I set off to the car to fetch them

And then I’d been doing some work on a car in a yard somewhere to do with a former friend of mine. There was an article going round on the TV about someone who had died and left some motorbikes one of which he wanted to be left in the original condition and the others he wasn’t all that bothered about. What they had done with one of the others with a Norton Featherbed frame was that they had taken off the fuel tank to fit on another bike, they’d taken out the engine to fit it somewhere else and they’d ended up with the Featherbed frame and wheels and very little else attached to it, no engine, tank, seat or anything. I thought “what a waste of a really good bike this is. It looked lovely before they started messing around and breaking it for bits”. By the time that I’d finished I had to leave the yard. There were so many vehicles parked in here that trying to leave was a nightmare. I had to reverse as far back as I could and then try to swing round somehow. I could see that I was getting it all wrong. Then the clutch started to slip. I put it in reverse at one point again and the clutch was slipping. The car was slowly rolling forward. That wasn’t what I had in mind at all. I thought that i’d have to rev the engine really hard to move from here and that’s not at all my way of driving.

Finally I was in the offices of a ferry company last night trying to arrange some kind of travel accommodation for that former friend and his wife who were going to Europe for the day but who would be stranded because of the ferry strike but the alarm went off in the middle of it. You’ve no idea how disappointing that was because those two actually have some kind of connection with Zero, a young lady of my acquaintance who figures in these voyages not half as often as she deserves or as I would like, and here’s a chance where at some point she might put in an appearance and the flaming alarm goes off.

The rest of the day has been spent sorting out some stuff for the spacerock festival about which I talked the other day. There’s well over a year before it becomes important but knowing me, I’ll lose track of time at some point and the date will be upon us before I know it.

It’ll take some research too because I know very little about most of the groups who appeared and who my friend’s son recorded when he was Hawkwind’s sound engineer – well, he was actually sound engineer for the Pink Fairies but there was an awful lot of overlap between the backroom staff of the groups who moved in that circle.

Later on, we were treated to one of the best football matches that I have seen in quite some considerable time. 2nd-bottom Aberystwyth Town were away at 5th-bottom Haverfordwest County in a game that they absolutely had to win, and which Haverfordwest needed to win too in order to keep their season alive

Consequently both teams threw everything that they had, including the kitchen sink, at each other for the whole 90 minutes and with the score at 1-1 with 10 minutes to go, I began to understand the meaning of the phrase “gripping the edge of your seat” because I was, and so, I imagine, was everyone else in the ground.

However it finished 1-1, not for any want of trying. And if you have a spare 90 minutes and want some decent entertainment, why not WATCH THE GAME yourself? If you’re a football fan you’ll quite enjoy it. I’ve even found you an English language commentary instead of the more usual Welsh

But one thing – well, more than one thing, but one thing in particular – impressed me with the Haverfordwest team today. They had their third-choice goalkeeper in between the posts today, a young lad called Zak Turner. Not only did he have an excellent game, he’s the first keeper whom I’ve seen for ages who would come off his line to intercept crosses like that Uruguayan goalkeeper Ladislao Mazurkiewicz who had an outstanding World Cup in 1970 and impressed me greatly.

They had some of my favourite burgers in LeClerc today so tea tonight was a burger on a bun with diced fried potatoes and a big salad. And that was absolutely delicious too. I really am eating very well these days, especially with the air fryer.

Tomorrow I have to make some pizza bases as I’ve run out. I should also be baking fruit buns and biscuits too but there’s not really much point as I’m not going to be here to eat them next week. I’ll be in hospital being poked and prodded about.

So a quiet day tomorrow then. About time too. I need to build up my strength for next week.

Tuesday 4th April 2023 – I’VE HAD A …

… very quiet day today and I’ve not really done all that much at all.

It’s possibly because the excesses of the last day or two have caught up with me because much of the afternoon was spent asleep on my chair as well.

That was really disappointing because I went to bed last night at some kind of reasonable time and had what, for the last couple of weeks, was a reasonable night’s sleep. And so I just don’t understand why things were so difficult.

There was quite a bit of travelling during the night , but that doesn’t really count for much I suppose. It was a Round of the the Scottish Cup in Scotland last night. One of the semi-professional sides was playing against an amateur local team. The local team managed to go 1-0 up thanks to intercepting a poor clearance out of defence. It wasn’t a particularly strong shot. It just about rolled over the line ahead of a defender who was running after it. There were the usual arguments about whose fault it was and how this village amateur side was just a couple of famous names who had rtired from professional football etc.

And later there was one of these Agatha Christie-type of murders that took place involving poison. The dream that I had was a long and complicated dream about who could possibly have been responsible until in the end they found the person who did it. I couldn’t follow the logic. I tried to dictate it as it all happened but it was just so complicated to try to follow.

And that always reminds me of the delicious mushroom soup that Nerina once made for me.
“This is a really beautiful soup” I said. “Where did you find this recipe?”
“In an Agatha Christie novel” she replied.

At one stage too I owned a single-decker bus, quite a modern utility type that was used for transporting schoolkids around the Northwich area. I had to do some job on it, a quick service but noticed that all the wheel nuts had come off. I had a closer look and the threads had all been stripped on the studs on the wheel. It was only held on by one nut. I thought “this is dangerous”. I went to scavenge another stub-axle from somewhere to put on it, although why a stub axle would solve this problem I don’t know. I had an endless job trying to hunt around in my garage for one. I had to ring up my father and try to contact the garage etc. In the end I patched up the bus enough so that it would go out to do this job. I was on board there with my brother. We started to dismantle it while it was driving, to undo the seatbelts. The kids all wondered why I was doing this so I thought “there’s no point exciting all kinds of unusual discussion. We’ll leave it until everyone gets off”. This bus was crowded. I hadn’t understood just how many people we’d take on this school run. Some people alighted and some boarded. I was chatting to a little kid as the bus carried on. It didn’t occur to me until I awoke that for changing the wheel studs is a simple 5-minute operation that doesn’t invove any kind of dismantling at all except to take off the wheel. Why I didn’t do that during the night I really don’t know.

It was a desperate stagger to arise from the dead before the second alarm, and then after the medication I checked the mails and messages and then tried my best to summon up some enthusiasm to do something.

Once I’d recovered somewhat I transcribed the dictaphone notes and then carried on with sorting out my music database and then choosing the music for some more programmes.

In between all of that I crashed out, and for quite a while too, and then I wasn’t in much of a mood to do anything else.

Having made several steps forward over the last couple of weeks, I’m really disappointed to have taken one rather large step back – at least as far as keeping awake goes.

On anothee matter, I actually picked myself off my knees with one hand today and quite easily too. That is certainly progress and as far as my mobility goes, I’m making progress there. Not quite the “giant leap for mankind” – just a couple of little baby steps.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg. Things are looking up on the cooking front , at least, from that point of view. But disappointingly, there’s still no news about signing for my apartment downstairs. There’s no reason why it should take this long

But I can worry about that tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed. The cleaner is coming tomorrow of course so I need to be in some kind of energetic mood in order to whizz around the apartment and make it look nice.

But making anywhere look nice wherever I am is a pretty difficult task.

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.

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?

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.

Monday 27th February 2023 – IT DIDN’T TAKE …

… long for me to finish off the two radio programmes this morning. They were all done and finished and up and running before 09:00.

And had I been more determined than I was, I might even have had them finished well before that too but I wasn’t in very much of a hurry today. I could afford to take it easy.

It had been another bizarre night too. In bed nice and early as is my wont on a Sunday evening but once more it took an age to go off to sleep.

When I finally did, it was another quite mobile night, as I discovered later in the morning when I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was with someone, although I don’t know who it was. It wasn’t anyone significant though. A bow and arrow set belong to one of my siblings had come into our possession. We’d been out one night playing around with it. We were rubbish because it wasn’t as easy as it might sound. We’d spent a whole night trying to improve our performance but to no avail. In the end we gave it up. Next morning the messenger from work was away so they asked me if I’d run the deliveries between the various offices in Crewe. I worked out where I needed to go and set off on foot. For the final one which was quite a distance away from the others I ran all the way. I femt so much better having done that. Having dropped off what I had to drop off I was back at the house of my sister and her husband which was very close to Crewe town centre in Tollitt Street. I went round the back and gave back the bow and arrow. We were discussing this and my brother came in. He asked in a menacing tone if I’d brought everything back. I told him that I had and I told them all that they aren’t going to find this easy. If they are going out looking for good results quite quickly they are going to be very disappointed.

Later on I was round at the house of one of the people for whom I used to drive coaches. We were chatting in general about the employees. I was saying that it was a good job that all the employees whome he had were nice and friendly. He quoted the name of someone and said “he’s not. He’ll have his face pumped in by some passenger or other before much longer” which made me wonder why he kept on employing him. It turned out to be my father. I was reading a pile of old local newspapers. Some of the stories were extremely interesting to say the least. We were chatting about a couple of them. I was then thinking that maybe it’s time for me to go home as I have to be at work at 06:00 but time was drifting on and I was still lounging around there not doing anything thinking that at this rate I could see myself staying sleeping on his sofa and going away from here straight into work so I really ought to make a move to go home but I just couldn’t summon up the energy to be gone

And then I arrived in Brussels. I was changing trains to go on somewhere else. I had to wait the night so I tried to find a hotel. The first 3 or 4 that I tried had no room. I couldn’t go very far because of course I wasn’t very mobile with my suitcase. One hotel receptionist rang round 3 or 4 different hotels for me. She couldn’t find a room. She made it quite clear that that was all that she would do for me. I replied “right, I’d better go and find a railway arch”. Then I couldn’t find my suitcase. I started to search around the foyer of this hotel among all these people who were there but I couldn’t find it at all. I awoke in the middle of having a panic attack and that was quite uncomfortable. It was actually quite realistic

What else I’ve been doing is something that I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while. I don’t use my 3D program anything like as much as I used to and I’ve probably forgotten a lot of things that I knew how to do. But while I was looking for something else I came across a new image-editing program that’s freeware.

It’s used by the 3D programmers for editing objects because of its good transparency add-ons. I use Paint Shop Pro and have done for almost 30 years but it has its shortcomings when green-screening so I’ve been itching to try something that might work better. Consequently I downloaded this program and I’ve been playing around with it today to try to make it work.

It’s actually quite complicated and the layout and instructions aren’t logical. I found a tutorial but it’s for an older version and the interface is different and doesn’t relate to the version that I downloaded. So I’ll have to continue and see if I can figure it out as I go along

As well as that, I’ve made arrangements for my little trip out on Wednesday – booking my travelling arrangements. Coming back on Friday isn’t easy because there’s not very much time at a connection and if we arrive late I’ll miss it. So i’m not booking the second part of my return until I actually arrive.

And then there’s the music for the next couple of radio programmes. I’m starting to run low on opening tracks and ending tracks now, being at Programme 202, so it takes a while to sort them out. And then I have to make a running time of about 48’30” with 10 tracks and that’s not as easy as it sounds either.

It’s quite an art form to do it properly and it certainly keeps my brain ticking over. That’s quite important with advancing age. I’m within touching distance of my three score years and ten and my brain will seize up if I stop using it.

Tea tonight was one of the best stuffed peppers that I’ve ever made. The stuffing was delicious and the pepper was cooked to perfection. There’s not much stuffing left because after all I won’t be here on Wednesday night for my leftover curry. Wednesday night’s tea will be potatoes and lentils with peas and carrots out of a tupperware-type bowl.

So now I’ll hunt down some more music and then I’ll be off to bed. I’ve a Welsh lesson tomorrow so I need to be on form. As well as the usual preparation there are piles of words that I’ve picked up from the football matches over the last couple of weeks that I need to learn There’s no point watching the football if I’m not going to learn anything.

That’s how I started to learn Flemish when I moved to Belgium in 1992, and I’m not alone in this idea. A woman I know has a daughter who is just 11 and a big football fan. These days she’s only allowed to watch football on the TV if she watches it in a foreign language and she has to take a list of new words to show her mother at the end of every game.

It’s catching.

Saturday 11th February 2023 – I’M ABSOLUTELY WHACKED!

Yes – not only did I walk (well, hobble) down into town this morning on my crutches, I walked (well, hobbled) back as well. How about that?

Last night I said that I would give it a try anyway and that was on my mind when I went to bed last night.

And I must have spent a lot of time thinking about it because it took me an age to drop off to sleep, lying there tossing and turning for much of the night. Having that stabbing pain in my foot again didn’t help.

Nevertheless there was time for me to go off for a little voyage here and there during the night. At one point I was having a discussion with my brother. We were 2 small children. We ended up talking about religion and a few things came up. A short while later our father came into the room. He said that he’d heard that we had been talking and come out with some fancy long words. Could we write them down for him? He said something like “covent” which of course immediately reminded us of the Covenanters from the south of Scotland etc. We said that we’d do that.

And then I’d gone on a coach tour around the USA last night, one of these Coach America things. It was our first night and we stopped at this hotel. It was a really expensive hotel but was all included in our price. We registered and I was given a room. Next morning we were being picked up at 09:30 so at 08:30 I left my room and suitcase to go to find where to check out and where to go for breakfast etc. They were talking about the optional extras. They asked me which ones I was doing. I replied that I wasn’t doing any. They looked surprised and asked why. I replied “firstly I’ve seen the USA before and secondly I’m on the economy budget package”. I wandered off to find the checkout. It was miles away but mys suitcase was doing really well rolling and pushing it was no problem. I didn’t have much in my backpack. I found the reception desk and checked out. There were no extras to pay, which pleased me greatly. I started to wander back. I suddenly realised that I didn’t know where to leave my suitcase and didn’t know where the bus was going to pick us up – whether it was here at the main part of the hotel or over in the part where we had our rooms and where I had to go for breakfast etc. I thought to myself that I’m not being very well prepared for this holiday anyway.

When the alarm went off I was out of bed quickly enough, and after I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages, I prepared myself to set out on my walk.

It wasn’t easy going all that way on crutches but it was downhill all the way. I went carefully and took my time and made it to the chemist’s slowly but surely.

Surprisingly, I didn’t actually feel in much discomfort and with at least half an hour before the next bus was due, I decided that I’d give it a try and walk back up the hill towards home. It was very slow, very agonising and very painful. There were plenty of stops and pauses on the way back up the hill but I made it all the same.

Mind you, I was glad to be back home. I made myself some toast and coffee and checked the time. What would normally be a 20-minute walk had taken me an hour and a quarter . That told me everything that I needed to know about my efforts.

But what I’m going to try to do is to walk down into town carrying a backpack with stuff in it. It’s annoying that the bus that stops outside the door doesn’t go to the railway station. Those buses run from the centre of the town so if I need to go to the station I need to take the bus from down there. if I go to Leuven again I’ll have to take stuff with me so I need to know that I can carry it.

Having had my breakfast I made myself comfortable on my chair and it’s no surprise to anyone to learn that I dozed off to sleep.

Mind you, I awoke in time to watch the football on the Internet, Cardiff Metro against TNS.

And while there’s no denying that the money that has been sunk into TNS by the owner has done a great deal to improve the standards of the club and the chasing pack who are obliged to invest heavily in their teams and facilities in order to keep pace with what goes on down in the Marches, it’s still quite boring to watch an endless procession of TNS victories and Championships.

So when they roared into a 0-2 lead after just 15 minutes everyone could be excused for thinking “here we go again”. But then the unexpected happened. The Met pulled one back just before half-time. And just after half time they scored again.

Even more surprisingly, they scored a third after an hour and despite a lengthy period of injury time and mystery time that would have made Alex Ferguson jealous, TNS couldn’t pull a goal back.

That’s the first time that TNS have been defeated this season in the league and I did have to work hard to conceal my delight.

After the game I finished off the radio notes and then did some more work on preparation for my 200th programme later in the year. I didn’t ever think that I would get that far before I would keel over and peg out, but it is coming closer and closer and I have to crack on and do something about it.

Tea tonight was another delicious meal of baked potato, salad and one of these breadcrumbed soya fillets. And I’m definitely pleased with how the salads are panning out. However at some point I’m going to start to run out of vegan mayonnaise and I need to give some thought about how I’m going to make some more if I don’t go to Leuven to buy it.

So before I go to bed tonight I’ll dictate my radio notes so that I really can have a day off tomorrow. I have some pizza dough to make so I’m thinking that I might have a go at making some bread and baking it in the air fryer to see what happens.

It should be interesting, to say the least.

Sunday 5th February 2023 – I’VE ACTUALLY BEEN …

… out for a walk this afternoon.

Well, after a fashion and as much as I can anyway.

It was such a beautiful afternoon with the sun streaming down as it did so I couldn’t resist it. I grabbed the crutches and set off down the stairs. I did a lap around the car park and then walked down to the viewpoint that overlooked the fish processing plant and then came back.

It was quite windy and cold, but the sun made it look quite beautiful and I was glad that I made it outside.

On the way downstairs, I managed to go left-leg first down some of the stairs. That’s important because it means that I have to bend the right knee, and that’s something that I find to be quite difficult.

Much more difficult than going to sleep last night, as it happened. For once I was in bed at something like a realistic time. I fell asleep quite quickly too and slept all the way through until about 10:50. And I felt so much better for it. Especially as I stayed in bed for another 20 minutes doing my exercises.

There wasn’t a great deal of stuff on the dictaphone either so it must have been quite a quiet, relaxing night. There was a whole group of us, a couple of families, all staying in one house so it meant that we were all crammed up sharing a bed etc among several kids. I was sharing a bed with my brother. On one occasion he left the bed and went off because there was some noise or something going on. I took my teddy bear and another toy and put them down the bed with me and tried to go to sleep. I was distracted by all this noise too. I thought that I heard the voice of one of the young boys who was about 7. eventually my brother came back to bed. He was annoyed about the teddy etc being in his way. We started to chat.

Later on we’d been somewhere, a group of us again. I was coming home with a woman and her daughter – it might have been Laurence and Roxanne, I dunno. While we’d been away she’d told some people that there was a James Bond film that they could watch at their house. When we arrived back it was really late at night. We walked in and there was 1 girl still watching it with her mother. We still had a few things to do so for the moment we left them there. Then she said that she wanted to go to check up on another woman to whom she’d mentioned it about her daughter to see if they were still watching it at their house. We ended up driving up Dodd’s Bank. As we were at the foot of the bank I said to her “on the way back drop me here with my little suitcase and I’ll walk through the alley to home”. She asked me to repeat it so I did. In the end I had to repeat it about 3 or 4 times. My aim was to take the short cut through the alley with the small suitcase, leave the bigger suitcase in the car and return for that another time. That would save her a lot of time without having to drive round the housing estate to drop me off. But it was so difficult to try to make her understand what I was intending. She was short-tempered anyway with us being so late and with everyone still being around. And we had work tomorrow as well, of course.

There was rather more to it than all of this but you don’t really want to read it especially if you are eating your meal right now.

This morning I didn’t really do all that much but things began to liven up after I’d had lunch.

There was football on the internet this afternoon, a match in the quarter-final of the Welsh Cup between Penybont and Treffynnon.

Treffynnon spent a few years in the Welsh Premier League back in the 1990s when they were known as Holywell Town but in recent years they have been bouncing up and down between Division 2 and Division 3. At the moment they are doing well in Division 2 but they weren’t expected to do much playing away against a team riding high in the First Division.

It was pretty obvious to most people how this game was going to end but Treffynon put up quite a fight and even took the lead after 15 minutes with A GOAL OUT OF NOTHING but they couldn’t hang on to the lead.

Penybont equalised after 55 minutes and then scored a second from a penalty deep into injury time as a Treffynnon player who had just that minute come on the field as a substitute brought down an attacker in the penalty area with his first attempt to kick the ball.

It just wasn’t that substitute’s day either. 30 seconds later in a scramble to win the ball he ended up kicking an opponent and was sent off.

After I’d been for a walk I had a play about with the pizza dough that I’d taken out of the freezer earlier. And the pizza that I made with it was delicious too. One of my better ones.

And at some point the owner of the apartment that I’m trying to buy rang me up to ask me if I’d heard anything from the solicitor. It looks as if I’m not the only one who is being disturbed by the lack of action from him.

Tomorrow I’ll be doing the two radio programmes and then chasing up to see what news about Caliburn. I’m itching to get back on the road and do some shopping. Supplies of certain items are starting to run low again and I need to go out and about and do some stocking up.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: donald

Wednesday 17th May 2023 – AND IF YOU CAN …

Monday 8th May 2023 – AND THE ANSWER …

Thursday 4th May 2023 – I HOPE THAT YOU HAD …

Monday 1st May 2023 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

Saturday 29th April 2023 – THAT WAS EMBARRASSING

Friday 28th April 2023 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Wednesday 26th April 2023 – THE DEED IS DONE

Saturday 15th April 2023 – JUST BY WAY …

Tuesday 4th April 2023 – I’VE HAD A …

Sunday 19th March 2023 – WELL THAT WAS A …

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

Friday 10th March 2023 – AFTER ALL OF …

Monday 27th February 2023 – IT DIDN’T TAKE …

Saturday 11th February 2023 – I’M ABSOLUTELY WHACKED!

Sunday 5th February 2023 – I’VE ACTUALLY BEEN …

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