Tag Archives: harry franklin

Saturday 30th September 2023 – I HAVE MADE …

… an executive decision, and for the benefit of new readers, an executive decision is a decision that if it turns out to be the wrong one, the person making it is executed.

Anyway, I went to LeClerc this morning to do my shopping. The drive there was horrendous because I can’t now work the brake sufficiently in Caliburn, and the left foot is struggling now to work the clutch.

Not only that, I didn’t have the power to climb back into the cab after my shopping.

When I returned here, I found that my usual parking place had been taken. The only other parking place up against a kerb that was free was right across on the far side of the car park. Consequently my shopping trolley and most of my purchases are still in the back.

Luckily, having had an idea that I might find things difficult, I’d taken a backpack with me so at least I could manage to bring the frozen and chilled food upstairs.

Coming back up the stairs, I did something else that I have never done. The lifts here are on the half-landing so I staggered (and I DO mean “staggered”) up as far as the first half-landing and took the lift up to the next one, and then walked down to my front door.

So in other words, what this means is that I am no longer going to drive. That is, not until I can find a car that works with hand controls only.

Meanwhile, back in the apartment, when the alarm went off I was reading a letter from a company to someone else about a lock-up garage that they were renting and for some reason they hadn’t paid their instalments. There was a family waiting to take it over so what were they planning to do with it. I don’t know why I’d had this copy but it immediately made me interested so I was busy sending it off to our company secretary to see what they could do about it.

So I crawled to my feet and wandered off into the bathroom. And then round about 08:40 I struggled down the stairs with my shopping trolley as far as Caliburn, and then the excitement began.

At LeClerc they had nothing exciting, but I found some vegan camembert-type cheese on sale on special offer so I treated myself to it for a change.

When I finally made it back here, I put away whatever it was that I’d managed to bring upstairs, and then made myself some cheese on toast and a pot of very hot, strong coffee.

Not that it did me much good, because I crashed out on my chair – and no surprise either because I was totally exhausted.

Later on I had a listen to the rest of the dictaphone notes. A group of us was going camping. One of my friends – it might have been a girl – had been to work so I said that I’d pick her up at about 01:30. I set my alarm for about 01:15 and went to bed. When the alarm went off I arose but I had so much to do that 15 minutes was going to be far too optimistic to accomplish it. Meantime I’d been collecting stuff to take with us. One of the things was like a stake that you drove into the ground and you added more stakes to it until it was quite tall and then a basketball hoop. It was extremely high off the ground like this but what my interest was that if I had some kind of long cloth I could make some kind of really nice wind protector for my tent or for when I’m sitting down on the beach, by sewing loops in it and putting each individual stake through each pair of loops to hold it. It was all packed in a big canvas bag like a tent bag so at the moment it was going to be quite easy to manoeuvre. Then I had my dishes to wash, things like that, and that was going to take me ages

And then I went to see my Aunt in London, and I had a woman and daughter with me, who might have been Laurence and Roxanne. We had to go so Roxanne carried STRAWBERRY MOOSE. We walked down from this big building where she lived to where I’d parked the car which was in some kind of extremely steep, muddy car park. I was right at the top so we didn’t have far to walk at all. We piled in and said our goodbyes. I had a packet of digestive biscuits. I made some remark about having made them specially. My aunt said “don’t be silly, Eric. You’ve bought them from a shop to eat on your journey home”. We rolled the car, which was my red Cortina estate, down to the bottom of the hill ready to set off. I remembered something that I had to take back so I left the two of them and the car there and ran all the way back up again. Really, what I wanted to do was to say goodnight to my aunt privately and to ask her about any situation going on that I ought to know. She anticipated this and came down. We met at the entrance to her building after I’d run back up the car park. It was quite an emotional reunion considering, and then we began to chat.

There was also something about some rocky fields and stone walls but I can’t remember anything more than that about it

There was football on the Internet this afternoon – Connah’s Quay Nomads v Penybont, played in a monsoon in a swamp in the Welsh Premier League – second v third.

And despite the conditions, it was an entertaining game with plenty of skill, really enjoyable to watch. And for 60 minutes or so Connah’s Quay roared into a 3-0 lead.

But then, a strange thing happened. Henry Jones, one of the best players in the league when he chooses to be, had been on the bench for Penybont and at the hour mark, Rhys Griffiths sent him on to play.

And a couple of minutes later we had two of the most bizarre substitutions that I had ever seen. I’ve no idea what must have been going through Neil Gibson’s mind but two of his best players, Harry Franklin and one of my favourites, Jack Kenny, who had been running the Penybont defence ragged, were then replaced.

As a result, 15 minutes later the score was now 3-2 and Penybont were going all out for an equaliser. A breakaway at the end of 90 minutes led to a fourth goal for Connah’s Quay but it could have been so, so different.

However, some of the substitutions that one or two of these managers make sometimes totally baffles me.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with salad and chips. And it was really delicious too yet again. I seem to be making good progress with my meals these days and I’m eating well, which is always good news.

So now having had a nice relaxing evening, I’m off to bed, to have sweet dreams and think about how my car-less life is going to pan out in the future.

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?