Tag Archives: granville

Sunday 26th March 2023 – I’M NOT GOING …

… to tell you the time that I left the bed today because you’ll be as embarrassed as I am. And losing an hour because of the change of time made things even worse.

By the way, did you all remember to adjust your clocks last night? If you live in the real world your clocks should have gone forward an hour but if you live in the UK under Tory rule your clocks should have gone back to 1770.

So really there wasn’t much left of the day in which I could do all that much. The toasted cheese sandwich in the air fryer was not a particular success but not a particular failure either. However, it might have helped had I turned it over half way through the procedure.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And having had plenty of time last night to go places, I hadn’t hung about. I’d recently bought a house in Crewe, in Bedford Street. I was waiting for completion so I could move in because living with the family was just getting on my nerves completely. I felt that everyone was trying to provoke me into a fight or an argument etc, and what is there that is news about any of this? I happened to overhear by accident a conversation that proved that it was in fact the case so I couldn’t wait to leave the family and move into mine. But for some reason signing the contract was just taking an age, just like the contract here to buy the apartment downstairs.

Later on there was some kind of dream about a couple of girls. One of them was very fond of the alcohol and possibly a few drugs as well. I was talking about the situation with a female friend of mine but I can’t remember who it was. I can’t remember the rest of the dream either now but it was a very long and complicated one that went on for quite a while

And congratulations to one of the girls in that dream for being ready in 20 minutes. Congratulations to another one who might have been Zero who was ready in a tenth of the time. And if it had really been Zero, I’m dismayed that that was all that happened concerning her last night – a very brief cameo appearance like that.

There was also something about 3 people, a boy who was rather arrogant and full of himself. He invited a girl out for an evening and she decided to go with him. He also invited another girl out too at the same time and they all met up. He picked up the girl first and then another boy but as the night went on it was the other boy who was spending most of the night with this other girl, flirting around with her. It looked as if they’d become something of a couple instead. When it was time for going home the other guy had disappeared. It was the first guy who had to take the girl home even though it was quite clear by now that she was no longer interested in him. And if that sounds confusing, then don’t worry because it sounded confusing to me too.

Later still I was in prison in the USA I think. First of all I’d been placed in a holding cell and then taken out and put into a reception area. Someone came to fetch me. He handcuffed the 2 of us together and set off with me to my real cell. He was in such a rush that he was dragging me along. I asked “are we in a race or something?”. He replied “you have to be in your cell by 18:30”. We walked down this corridor with doors opening in front of us and closing behind us as we approached the cell where I was going to be imprisoned.

Tonight’s pizza was the best that I’ve ever made. The dough was made to perfection and it just goes to show what happens when you use a decent batch of flour. It might be expensive but it’s worth it. The base ended up being all light and spongy around the edges but beautifully cooked and tasted even better.

So now, after my exciting day, I’m going to bed. It’s exhausting having a lie-in and then doing almost next-to-nothing all day. But tomorrow it’s a 06:00 start as I have a radio programme to do. I’ve not dictated the text yet, never mind edited it, so I’ll be busy for a bit. And then on Tuesday I have the nerve specialist to tell me the damage about my visit to the hospital.

That should be exciting, I don’t think.

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Saturday 25th March 2023 – AFTER HAVING SAID …

… that I don’t need much from the shops today, it was one of the more expensive days out around the town.

A whole variety of reasons for that too.

At Noz –
Firstly they had the spices in stock that I like to use and so I stocked up with them for once. None of the more exotic ones that I use for curries, it has to be said, but some of the more usual and common ones in the nice little hexagonal jars.
Secondly, they were having a cooking sale. And apart from the pie slice and the metal flipper (I’m trying to move away from plastic) they had some really decent non-stick frying pans, small and heavy. The one I have is not non-stick and I’m fed up of things sticking to it.

It was at LeClerc where I did most of the damage though.

There was some more vegan cheese in the reduced bin so I grabbed all that was there. And then, to my surprise, they had the vegan falafel back. That’s something that comes in stock only rarely and I started my last bag of that earlier this week so I grabbed some more.

In the hardware section I did really well. Sean and I have been talking about bowls to put in the air fryer to cook vegetables and I found a perforated metal sieve that will fit perfectly in the basket of the air fryer to hold the veg, and the air can circulate through the holes.

As well as that, I bought a trivet. I don’t have anything on which to put hot stuff that somes out of the oven and usually have to scratch around for a cork mat. A trivet is just the job for that but strangely, it has four feet, not three, which means that it has to be put on a level surface. And nothing anywhere around where I ever am is likely to be on the level.

There was also something else for which I’d been searching for quite a while – a measuring jug for measuring small quantities. I don’t seem to have anything that measures less than 250ml.

All in all, it was a good day.

In fact, it was a better night too. I might have beaten the alarm this morning – been up and about before 07:30 – but it wasn’t at any silly time like 03:30 or 04:45. In fact my saw the light of day at 07:27 and that’s much more like it. Mind you, it still took a while to go off to sleep and I was awake here and there at some point or two during the night

After I’d had the medication I went off for a shower and to clean myself up, and then I hit the streets. Just Noz and Leclerc today. But I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that I was moving around much better and I was even tempted to go for a wander without my crutches.

Discretion was the better part of valour though and I’ll leave that for another time. But going down to Caliburn using just one and taking the shopping trolley, and then coming back inside afterwards using just one crutch and with the fully-laden trolley was quite a comfortable exercise.

With having plenty of cheese in stock now, I don’t need to be so careful about using it sparingly just for pizze so I had cheese and tomato butties for lunch instead of buttered toast. That made a very nice change. Now what would a toasted cheese sandwich taste like done in the air fryer?

Hmmmmm.

Most of the afternoon was spent sorting out the spices. I need to know what I have and where it is and, more importantly, how many of each I have because it would be a calamity if I were to run out.

There’s a plastic storage box under the shelves in the kitchen full of all kinds of surplus stuff so I wwent through it, sorted everything out and made a card with a list of what’s in there so that I can keep an eye on it. There are tons of stuff in there which many people might think is rather a strange thing to do, but regular readers of this rubbish will recall that for several weeks after coming back from Canada, I was stuck in the house and couldn’t get out to buy food.

That’s not something that I would want to go through again without being prepared for it.

Something else that I’ve done is to have a play around with a track that I found from my “usual sources” the other day. It was edited down to make an unsuccessful “single” of 3:30 and the ending was awful. However I worked out that the ending was actually part of the lead guitar break in the middle so I copied that in its entirety, added it onto the end over the top of the messed-up ending and I ended up with a track of over 5 minutes that sounds much more like a rock song than a pop tune.

It took an age to synchronise the edited part and then after it was all finished and up and running, I suddenly realised how I could have done it so much easier and so much quicker.

You live and learn.

There was time to go through the dictaphone too in order to find out where I’d been during the night. A group of us had gone camping where we normally camp in our vans. It was near a big patch of gravel that was like a hill where they’d dumped allthis gravel. We arrived there and walked to the top of this hill to have a look round. Below us was a brabed wire fence with a forest on the other side. There were these people roaming around in the forest. They stopped at the fence and asked “do you have permission to be there?”. On eof our party replied “we come here quite often” and was making up excuses so I asked these people if they had permission to be in the forest. That led to quite a heated argument. I went back to the van and had to set up the kitchen because I was cooking. I had a few other things to do while I was there – write a couple of letters. As it was early I thought that i’d make a start writing these letters. I had to fetch my things out of Caliburn but I couldn’t find which box they were in so I thought that I’d take out all of the boxes. They were far too heavy for me they way that I am at the moment. I could see that I was creating one problem after another for no good reason. My niece came up and asked if I wanted a cherry coke. I said “no, I’d have a coffee”. She said “we don’t drink coffee any more and I don’t think that I have any”. She shouted over to someone to make me a coffee. I said that that’s OK – I don’t need one at the moment.

Actually that brought back some happy memories. In the summer of 1976 I was playing bass in a rock band and living in my old J4 van. A group of us ended up living in various vehicles and tents at an abandoned sand quarry between Sandbach, Holmes Chapel and Congleton. Simming in the lagoon, sunbathing on the “beach” where the side of the quarry had collapsed into the lagoon, all that kind of thing.

It was much more exciting and interesting than Leonardo de Caprio’s rip-off of our story.

I was in Virlet later. It was a Sunday morning and I was lying in bed and heard a commotion outside. It turned out that it was the village’s 200th anniversary so they’d arranged a communal breakfast. They were all setting off at 11:00 to walk to this field, the whole village, where we could have breakfast. I got up quickly and changed. I stuck my head outside and saw all these people. The first person I saw was a friend of mine. She was so surprised to see me so early on a Sunday morning. I told her that she wasn’t as surprised as I was to actually be up. She then noticed that i’d cut myself. She went to tie a bandage around me to stop the cut. When she’d done it she said “that looks much better”. I thought that it makes me look like Paddington Bear so I undid the bandage and took it off.

And then I had some people round whom I knew from Virlet so I was making some food – a huge fry-up in a wok using soya cream etc. It looked absolutely delicious. I mixed in all the ingredients etc that had been cooked separately – it all went in. I stirred it round and finished off frying it. Then I tipped it out into a serving bowl and took the cooking equipment and put it in the sink. When I returned the husband of this woman had grabbed hold of the serving bowl as if it was his own and was happily eating away from it. I said to the woman “don’t stand there on ceremony. Dive in!”. She had a plate ready but wouldn’t go to interrupt this guy from wading his way through this big serving dish full of food that I’d just cooked.

There was football on the internet later. Cymru under 17s v Iceland’s under-17s. If the Cymru midfielders had had Iceland’s two attackers we would have had a cricket score out there. But Cymru’s misfiring strikers only scored one of about 20 chances that they had given to them throughout the game whereas the Iceland strikers scored the only one real chance that they had

Cymru now need a point from their final game on Tuesday against Montenegro in order to go through to the finals of the competition.

For tea, I tried another experiment. There was the salad and the breaded quorn fillet of course but I diced some potatoes and put them in a pyrex bowl in the air fryer with some herbs, garlic and a little olive oil and they were beautiful. I’m ever so slowly expanding my repertoire with the air fryer

Tomorrow then I’ll try the toasted cheese sandwich and see how that works. It ought to be interesting and it’ll certainly give me something to think about when I’m making my pizza dough, for I have run out of that after last weekend. I won’t be making that in the air fryer though.

And I’ve found out something else this evening. Down on my knees to pick up something off the floor, I could pick myself up without any real problem. That’s the one thing that stopped me from going off anywhere in Caliburn – after having no fewer than three punctures last time I went anywhere serious, I was really worried about what would happen if I were to have another one. But going down onto my knees and back up again as I did just now means that I’m not quite so worried about that.

So where can I go for a break than?

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Friday 24th March 2023 – JUST BY WAY …

… of a change, I wasn’t up and walking about at 04:45 this morning.

It was in fact 03:30 instead. And I think that that tells you all that you need to know about another miserable night that I had.

However, I didn’t manage to be up and about this morning before the alarm went off. I was definitely awake at 07:15 but I must have fallen back to sleep at one point because it was something of a rude awakenng at 07:30 and I staggered out of bed looking like a cross between The Death of Nelson and the Wreck of the Hesperus.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages (including one from this guy with whom I spoke the other day about my shower) I contacted the hospital at leuven to sort out these appointments. The result of this is that I’ve arranged for them all to be on the 11th May. That means that I can breathe some kind of sigh of relief about my congested fixture list.

For most of the day I’ve been planning. I’m planning in the future to reorganise my radio programmes to give them more structure, and I’ve been going through my record library making a list of songs that make reference to space exploration. At the moment I have Elton John’s Rocket Man off with Guns and Roses’ Rocket Queen on the Hooters’ Satellite for Bebop Deluxe’s Honeymoon on Mars, to name just a few of the tracks I’ve been sorting out.

The dictaphone contained a few sound files too that needed transcribing. I was at a class for French lessons at one point last night. We were divided into groups of 2. With me and my partner, who was an old guy, we had to wander around the streets looking at nouns and adjectives, finding where they’d been paired either before the noun or after. I was very difficult for me of course because I was on crutches but I did the best that I could. We spotted maybe half a dozen where the adjective was in front of the noun. I couldn’t remember what they were so we had to go to scrounge an old envelope and pencil off someone, go back and start again. On the way around I ended up with a bottle of wine. As I was returning to where our group was standing there were some people with a dog. It wasn’t on a lead and began to run at me, barking. Every time it came close I gave it a kick with my left foot. I was quite accurate too. They were surprised and so was I because the way that my health is for walking I was surprised that I could kick anything at all. This dog certainly knew that it had had half a dozen good kicks from me as it tried to close in. In the end I gave the bottle to one of the people who was there with the rest of the class.

And then I was in a LIDL somewhere. It was half-full of all kinds of end-of-range stuff. Nothing in there of any particular importance. The rest was stuff that they were assembling for the following day. I was having a look around and couldn’t see anything that I liked. There was a film crew in there. A guy was filming something. He was with his son. Something happened and the father bawled out his son and said to the film crew “I hope that you didn’t record that”. I asked “why? Are you ashamed of it? You ought to be! Fancy treating your son like that!”. He followed me down the aisle and started trying to provoke a fight. he was completely out of his mind.

At another moment I was a passenger in a minibus that was doing a school run. We were all dropped off somewhere. The driver wandered off. He came back and got into his bus. Then he came over to me and said “can I ask you something?”. I replied “yes”. He said “next time you fuel the bus up can you fill it right to the brim?”. I replied “yes. Of course I can. I always wondered what happened to this bus after I got off it”. Just them another guy came up. He said “excuse me but someone was telling me that you don’t have a PSV licence, the blue and yellow one”. I pointed to the sign on the door that said “Shearings Bus and Coach”. I replied “of course I do. I worked for Shearings before. I used to work for Shearings. You could see a strange look on the faces of both of these guys.

There was a break in the day’s programme for the physiotherapist, who was very pleased with my progress, and tea tonight was a rather rushed salad and chips with veggie balls.

Rushed because there was football on the internet. Connah’s Quay Nomads v Y Drenewydd. It’s never easy to play football in a howling gale and rainstorm as it proved tonight but Connah’s Quay, playing with the wind in the second half, took full advantage and scored two goals.

However, I would have liked to have been on the touchline to check the positions when Harry Franklin played the ball to Jack Kenny for the second goal. From up on a gantry on the halfway line you have a totally different view of the proceedings and the perspective.

Nevertheless, there were several moments when I was convinced that the referee and the linesmen were officiating a completely different game to the one that I was watching.

Shopping tomorrow, and I don’t need much, although I have said that before with disastrous results. In any case, as I’m out on Tuesday I might nip to Lidl on the way home from the doctor’s then, which means that I’ll need even less today.

But we’ll see. Just because I don’t need much doesn’t mean that I won’t be buying much, does it?

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Thursday 23rd March 2023 – AT 04:45 THIS MORNING …

… I was up and about wandering around the apartment. So much for my idea of having a nice deep sleep sometime.

What’s even more surprising is that i’ve managed to keep going all day as well without very much sign of dropping off to sleep. Mind you, I’d be a liar if I were to say that I’d had a productive day today. Not even I am that good!

However I did go off to sleep at some point during the night because there were a few travels that I’d managed to dictate at some point. I was cooking a meal last night with a group of people. I added the cornflour into the liquid to make a gravy. After I’d added it I noticed that there were tons of liquid in there. The whole thing was about a foot deep in water. Of course I’d added the cornflour so I had to drain out the liquid but try to keep the cornflour still in. I went to drain it but it wouldn’t drain properly. Then something fall into the sink and wedged underneath the pan so I couldn’t tip the pan any further. In the end I had to get a sponge, stick it in and use that to absorb the water then squeeze it out in order to make sure that there wasn’t too much gravy. But it looked an absolute mess. Of course the cornflour had disappeared while I was doing all of this. I was going to have to turn round and make this gravy again because I’d had it in an awful state.

There was a girl I knew from school who lived in Shavington and who was about 11 or so. Not a popular girl, she was a little overweight at the time. No-one really took her seriously. She had to move a car, a silver MkIII estate. She moved it around in this garage. When I saw her she was standing by this car looking really sad. I asked her what was the matter. She didn’t say very much so I was cajoling her, trying to have her tell me what was happening but she was very reluctant to speak. I thought that I’d leave it for a while. later she asked for a volunteer to watch her reverse the car.Everyone else there shouted “no” so I said that I’d voluteer to watch her. It was as if she didn’t hear me. It didn’t register with her. She didn’t turn towards me or anything – she just carried on asking others around this garage at the top of her voice and they replied equally at the top of their voices “no”.

At another point I was with someone watching some events unfold, some very surreal events about some people with a red Reliant van that was continually changing into a red A35 van. It all involved a plot about something going on in Hebden Bridge. I wish that I could remember who it was I was with – it was someone whom I knew very well. We were watching this. I didn’t know where I was at first but then it suddenly struck me that “yes, this is Hebden Bridge”. The person said “yes! And do you know why this film was made in Hebden Bridge?”. I didn’t so the person replied that it was to do with a Court case. I suddenly remembered that there was a little girl who had been murdered and some famous author had written something really disparaging about the town and its inhabitants. When it was discovered that it was someone xompletely different who was responsible the judge ordered him to use his talents to bring some money into the town as a way of recompense. I was talking to this person saying about how I’d stayed in Hebden bridge for a while with someone. The conversation drifted on to our life in the Auvergne. She said “do you remember that patch of garden that I still haven’t done yet?”. I replied “yes” so she asked “why don’t we go back to my house and do it?”. I replied “that sounds like a good idea”. She answered “yes, but I bet that we won’t”.

And I wish that I could remember who it was. It was someone whom I knew very well but I can’t think who it was.

When the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already out of bed dressing, and then I went off for the medication. And having checked the mails and messages I had a very slow start to the day.

Eventually I managed to find the enthusiasm to do some work so I’ve been pairing off the music for another radio programme and writing the notes. And I might have finished them too exceot for a couple of interruptions here and there and another long chat with Rosemary.

The physiotherapist didn’t come today. He’s still feeling under the weather and he’s going to try to come tomorrow if he can.

That was rather disappointing because there has been another improvement in my physical well-being and I almost felt well enough to go to the waste bins outside on my own without crutches, but discretion was the better part of valour there.

Howevern the highlight of my really exciting day was to take out the rubbish and then to bring back the rest of the shopping from Caliburn. And I can say without fear of contradiction that that was the best expedition that I’ve been on since I’ve been back from Canada. In fact I felt not far from normal, and that’s a worrying thought, isn’t it?

While we’re on the subject of my trip out … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’ve had the confirmation of my trip to leuven on 11th May. So tomorrow I need to ring up and change my other Leuven appointments to the same day to try to avoid two trips. The bad news is that Alison tells me that she’s in the UK that week so we’ll miss each other yet again.

Tea tonight was something different. While I was going through the freezer the other day I came across some kind of Chinese pastries that I’d bought from Noz ages ago. I’m not sure why, but at least they were vegan. So I bunged half of them in the air fryer for 8 minutes while I made some rice and veg, and liberally soaked in soy sauce they were actually quite nice.

The other half is in the freezer waiting for another time and when I eat those, I’ll try to remember to fry the rice with soy sauce. That will probably be even better. But once more, the air fryer strikes again.

So I’m off to bed in a minute. But I’m not going to make any remarks about sleeping. I’ll just have to take things as they come and if I fall asleep during the day, that’s just too bad. It can’t be helped.

But I wish that I could.

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Wednesday 22nd March 2023 – AFTER ALL OF YESTERDAY’S …

… exertions, today was a much quieter affair and no-one phoned me at all.

There were a couple of e-mails though. Someone had sent me the address of some handyman who might be interested in fitting a shower in my new place so I e-mailed him. And shock! Horror! He actually replied to me.

That’s a first, isn’t it?

It’ll give me something to think about in bed tonight. And that will make a change from lying there thinking about why I can’t go to sleep. Yes – we had another night like that, didn’t we?

No car alarms this morning but I was still awake quite early. I was on the point of thinking about gettign up when I must have gone back to sleep because the next think I remember was the alarm going off at 07:30

It was a real struggle to crawl out of bed this morning and I didn’t beat the second alarm by all that much.

Once I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages it was a very slow start to the day and I didn’t do all that much at first. But once I’d organised myself I made a start on the next radio programme. I’ve paired off all of the music and by teatime I’d written all of the notes.

Not one of my quickest efforts today.

After my lunchtime fruit I had a shower. And I needed it too because I forgot yesterday what with there being no physiotherapist. And getting into and out of the bath was no problem at all. Things have improved considerably and I’m much more comfortable doing my exercises. I still can’t walk properly but anything is an improvement to how I was 3 months ago.

Another thing that I was planning to do was to take the rubbish out and bring the shopping in but not only was there a howling gale, it was pouring down with rain too so I’ll leave that for another time.

While the cleaner was here I carried on with the notes for my radio programme and after she left I made a mug of hot chocolate. And then, regrettably, I crashed out for a good hour or so and I felt awful.

But that’s not a surprise because when I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, I was astonished. We were in the latter stages of World War II. There was a huge battle taking place on the border between Germany and France. What had happened was that the Front had been shattered and there were hundreds of these German pockets of resistance everywhere. The logical thing for the Germans to do was to abandon many of these pockets of resistance and try to create a front line somwhere but the American general who was being interviewed was adamant that he thought that the Germans would try to defend everything. Their forces would be so thinly spread that they would be overwhelmed. Something had happened to his legs. He’d been blistered with something and the blisters had died so all the skin on his legs was peeling off. It looked a complete mess. Then we had the German Army HQ in this city that was surrounded by all kinds of bomb damage. These high-explosive shells were falling on this concrete bunker. It was very clear that they couldn’t stay there because of the pounding that the bunker was receiving from these shells.

I’m not sure when I reached when I dictated that other dream (and I’ve no idea which other dream that would be) but I finally made it to the hospital for my appointment. There were no notices about which floor you were on in the lift. You had to press a button with some kind of shadow outline drawing on it and hope that the lift stopped at the correct floor for you to go for your appointment.

That previous dream – I forgot a lot of it that I hadn’t remembered but basically I had to go to the hospital at Avranches but there was much more to it that I’ve forgotten and I wish that I could remember it now

Later on I had to sit down and make a map or proper agenda of where I was supposed to go for all these appointments but I couldn’t remember where half of these examinations took place in the first place so I could work out where I had to go again for the repeats. There were all these strange things that happened to me and I didn’t have a clue how I ended up there or even where it was where I had undergone some tests. I really didn’t know how I was going to find these places again in order to go there this time round

I’d hired a Volkswagen to go and do something. When I went to pick it up next morning one of the tyres was down. I strapped an air compressor to the wheel, coupled it up to the tyre and set off. When I arrived at this dirt track that I had to take I turned onto the track and stopped to disconnect the compressor. There were loads of people standing around there examining this Beetle, pointing out the defects. Someone kicked the door. I started to be really annoyed. I went up to one guy and gave him a sharp kick. I asked “how do you like it if my car came along and gave you a kick?” and I kicked him again. “Stop kicking my car and go away”. These people just stood and looked at me as I went to go back into my car. One guy was standing by the door so I said “excuse me”. he asked “do you want to get in your car?” I replied “no, I want to open my door and hit you in the face with it” so he moved off as well.

And then I was with my girlfriend (I wish that I could remember who she was) and 2 other people, another guy and a girl. We’d gone skiing somewhere in this expensive ski resort. I’d been playing bass in this rock band and the guy had been playing drums in it. On our way back to our room afterwards we noticed that the orchestra had set up in the ballroom. He got behind the drums and I picked up the bass. One of the employees came running over and shooed us away telling us not to touch the instruments, going on about the mess that we were bound to make trying to play these things, the noise and how we would disturb everyone in the building withour realising that they almost had for free a concert that they would have paid hundreds of Euros to see.

Finally I was with a friend of mine. We’d constructed a big lean-to shed at the side of Virlet for the rainwater butts to keep them out of the way. I thought that if I were living here I probably would put the batteries in here too. That sounded like a good idea to me. We were busy trying to take some stuff to the tip so we began to tidy up. We began to drag stuff into this shed to see exactly what we had. The first thing that went in was a huge box of coal and wood. That was tucked in the corner. We moved a few things in and then went out for some others. His wife was busy wrestling with a board with some electrical equipment on it so he went to take that from her and put it away. She said that she would put some more stuff in that box of coal and would but we said that she’d have a real problem trying to reach it now that we are arranging everything and getting things ready to go to the dechetterie.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry. Not as good as it usually is (but that’s not saying that it was bad) because I had to rush. There was football on the internet at 20:00 – Cymeu under 17s against Scotland under 17s. I missed the first 5 minutes and by that time Wales were already 1-0 up, and they scored a second goal quite quickly too.

And for the first 70 minutes they were scything their way at will through a very static Scotland defence and how the score was only 3-0 by then I really don’t know.

And then we had a raft of substitutions by each team. It completely disrupted Cymru’s rhythm but it seemed to galvanise the Scots and to everyone’s surprise they scored 2 goals in a matter of 5 minutes and looked by far the better side from then on. We actually had a really exciting final period.

But then Scotland were caught short at the back pushing forward for an equaliser and Cymru scored a fourth.

The next couple of Cymru under-17 games against Montenegro and Iceland should be very interesting.

But now I’m off to bed because I’m exhausted. I can’t keep on going with these bad nights and something will have to happen at some point. I have to be prepared for a nice deep sleep sometime, and my money will be on when I’m at the wheel of Caliburn if I’m not careful.

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Tuesday 21st March 2023 – THERE’S NO PEACE …

… for the wicked, is there?

Following a couple of telephone calls that I’ve either received or made today, my agenda for the next few weeks looks like this –
28/03 – the neurologist
17/04 – hospital Avranches
18/04 – hospital Avranches
19/04 – hospital Avranches
20/04 – hospital Avranches
21/04 – hospital Avranches
04/05 – hospital Leuven
11/05 – hospital Leuven

If I can arrange one of those appointments at Leuven it might end up to be a little better but it’s still a hectic schedule.

The appointment next week is with the neurologist where he will tell me the results of the tests that I did last week and what they propose to do in the future in order to deal with the issues that they have discovered.

The fact that there is already a whole week of further appointments (in at 09:00 and back home every evening) seems to indicate that they are optimistic about doing something about it. But what that’s going to be all about, I really don’t know..

In a sense I’m glad that I’m not having to stay over at the hospital. Hospital beds are not known for their comfort and I’m having enough trouble trying to sleep here as it is in my own comfortable bed. But 25 miles in and 25 miles back every day for a week is not exactly what I had in mind. I shall have to fuel up Caliburn of course.

And I’ll need a bank loan for that.

It goes without saying that I had another bad night last night. I think that this is becoming the default these days and I’ve no idea why I’m having so much difficulty trying to go to sleep.

And flaming car alarms going off at blasted 06:50 with enough noise to awaken the perishing dead doesn’t help matter either. Luckily though I managed to drop off back to sleep at some point, only to be rudely awoken by the alarm at 07:30.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages I sat down to prepare for my Welsh lesson. And the lesson itself was a miserable effort because it was a revision exercise and I’d forgotten almost everything that we needed to know for it. I was really glad when it was all over.

No physiotherapy today. He’d sent me a message saying that he he wa sill and of course he doesn’t want to spread his germs around. So armed with a pile of fruit I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had to write out my notes during the night but I couldn’t find a pencil. When I did find one I couldn’t remember what day I was on and where I had to start. I was keeping my diary of course but I was weeks ahead of where I was supposed to have been. That was OK for one thing but when it came to writing it out I needed of course to write it out on the correct day

Later on there was a group of emotionally-disturbed kids. They had to go somewhere so they asked me if I’d take them and hand them over to this teacher. A couple of them weren’t particularly any great problem but the third one was a young girl, a teenager who seemed to think that the reason why she was having to go somewhere else was that someone wanted to get rid of her out of their class, something of a paranoia situation. I assured her that it was nothing to do with me. I was just doing what I’d been told. If another teacher came along to tell me not to do it I’d quite happily not do it. If she didn’t want to go to that other class it’s up to her to go to talk to the teachers concerned, tell them that she doesn’t want to go, tell them why and for them to come back and tell me. It took quite some convincing to do. In the middle of this argument or discussion someone rather senior in the hierarchy came past. I stopped him, took hold of this girl, basically gave her a push and said “right – go and tell him all about it”. I sat and watched those two having a debate. As far as I was concerned I was doing what I’d been told. That was what i’d been told. If anyone wanted to tell me any different I was fine with that as long as it was someone official telling me.

Finally, there were all big upheavals in the football world last night. Rhyl’s charge for promotion remained on course but the rails came off Bangor City’s promotion bid with a couple of defeats. The whole club was in turmoil now as they were falling well short of expectations. There would have been much more to this had that stupid car alarm not gone off at 06:50.

That latter dream though is quite interesting. Rhyl and Bangor City were until quite recently two of the biggest names in Welsh football but due to reasons that I would mention if it were not for the laws of slander and libel, (of course, vulgar abuse can’t be slanderous or libellous but that’s not really the point) they were obliged to reform way down in the pyramid.

They have both had an inexorable rise back up so far in the pyramid but while Rhyl are remorselessly ploughing on, Bangor have lost their last 2 games and it looks very much at this stage as if they won’t be going up with Rhyl to Level 2. And all those people who put their mortgage on Bangor’s promotion will be very disappointed.

The rest of the day has been spent either on the phone or sorting out this new database that I’m trying to create for my radio programmes. As I’ve said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I want to try doing something new once I can organise myself better.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg – delicious as usual and there is quite a bit of stuffing left over that will go nicely in a leftover curry tomorrow evening.

There was football on the internet tonight – Wales C v England C. Played in a driving rainstorm on a waterlogged pitch it was never going to be a classic and England scored the only goal of the game from a howler in the Wales defence. But I was bewildered by one or two of the substitutions that the Wales manager made. I’m sure that he must have been watching a different game to the one that I saw.

So I’m off to bed now. I’m going to have a nice comfortable night with no plans tomorrow except that the cleaner is coming round so I’ll probably end up quietly in my room writing the notes for a future radio programme while she does her stuff in the living room.

That probably means that I’ll have to spend half an hour tidying up before she comes. And then I’ll have to think about what’s going to happen about my legs. This all sounds extremely interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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Saturday 18th March 2023 – AFTER THE EFFORTS …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then I added the chopped leek and a pile of garlic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Friday 17th March 2023 – WHAT HAPPENED …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Thursday 16th March 2023 – DO YOU HAVE …

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

I do!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Monday 13th March 2023 – IT WAS HARD …

… this morning to get out of bed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That calls for an early night.

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Sunday 12th March 2023 – SO MUCH FOR …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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