Tag Archives: vegan burger

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.

Friday 10th March 2023 – AFTER ALL OF …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday 8th March 2023 – MY LITTLE WALK …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday 16th February 2023 – THE PHYSIOTHERAPIST …

… came round much earlier than planned, and much earlier than I expected. In fact, when he entered the apartment I was actually crashed out on the chair in here and it took me a good few minutes to gather my wits.

What might have been the cause of that was that I’d had another bad night – and to such an extent that when the alarm went off, for the first time for several weeks I had a great deal of difficulty in hauling myself out of bed. Although I did manage to haul myself out of bed before the second alarm went off, it was rather touch-and-go.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages, I had a good chat with Liz. It’s been a good few days since we’ve had a decent chat and a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then.

Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone from the night, which might explain how I was feeling in the morning. I started off last night back in Crewe driving taxis. I had to work out some song lyrics for the people who had bought our house in Davenport Avenue and were running a taxi business from there. I did it and I must have gone round there 4 or 5 times until I finally found a woman who was in. She had a baby in a pushchair and was pushing it down the drive on the way out. I gave her the lyrics. As I was leaving she said that she didn’t fancy being in our shoes because she’d seen the insurance renewals for our 2 vehicles which worked out at about £2000 each. I asked her how much insurance she paid on her taxi but she didn’t seem very willing to tell me the answer. I began to suspect that maybe she didn’t have insurance and it was all window-dressing on their behalf.

And then I was at one of the cross-Channel ferry ports. I’d just arrived by train to take a boat across the Channel but I was so mesmerised by how beautiful the railway station and surroundings were that I had a walk around. And then I had to run like hell to reach the ferry terminal in time to catch my ‘plane – or do I mean “boat”? – or else I’d miss it and the next one wasn’t going to be for several hours yet

Later on I was back in this dream about ferries, Someone suddenly awoke and found someone standing by their bed staring at them. It took a few minutes to persuade them to go back to their own bed and go to sleep. But as a result this person overslept and was late for his ferry so he had to prepare everything and run for his ferry terminal in quite a rush in the hope that he’d still be on time to catch the ferry that he intended to catch.

Finally I was with Zero’s father again last night. We were wandering around a field and ended up climbing on top of a brick bunker that was there. Before that I was round at his house folding up some bedding to put in a drawer. Someone came in and asked if he was there. I said that they had better check with his good lady, meaning his wife of course. He went into the kitchen and sure enough he was there. They had a chat and the 3 of us went out into this field. He and I were standing on this bunker when he suddenly got off. First of all a 2-stroke Citroen Ami pulled up inside this field. It was on bogies rather than on wheels, like some Bo-Bo bogies. This field was actually part of an old railway marshalling sidings at the bottom of Ash Bank in Hanley, all abandoned and overgrown. That drove around for a while and then drove off. Another car came in, like an old Opel Ascona. It was somehow very high off the ground and making an awful noise like one of these boy racer things. When I came to get off the top of the bunker I found that the bunker had risen by several feet and I couldn’t jump off. I had to scramble around. In the end I found a wall that I could scramble down onto the ground. The climb back up to the field was steep. I couldn’t really climb up there without falling. Of course this made the other guy laugh to which I basically replied something like “it serves you all right for not waiting for me”.

But here we are again and no Zero to be found anywhere. How disappointing is that?

Much of the day has been spent in a desultory fashion doing the pairing of the music for the second of the radio programmes and then making a start on writing out the notes for them. I’ve not gone very far with that but then again I wasn’t really in so much of a rush.

There was a major interruption when one of my neighbours rang my bell because she had locked herself out of the building. We ended up having a lengthy chat in the corridor because I haven’t seen her for ages and I wanted to find out who it was who installed her shower because if I can’t find a casual tradesman to do install a shower in my new place I shall have to engage a company to do the work.

There were other things too that I have done but apart from transferring over the second instalment of the money that I need to transfer over (and this is going to be a lengthy and complicated business that will take a couple of weeks).

The physiotherapist put me though my paces and showed me a couple more exercises that I need to follow. I don’t know how I’m going to find the time to do them all at the rate that he wants me to do them.

It was a good job that I’d had a shower earlier than usual otherwise I would have been rather embarrassed (even more than I was by being asleep) by his early arrival. However, while we’re on the subject of showers … “well, one of us is” – ed … getting into the bath for my shower is certainly much easier these days than it was a couple of months ago when I returned from the hospital and couldn’t hardly walk anywhere at all. I really don’t know how I made it home from Leuven. That was horrible.

Tea, on the other hand, was quite nice. A simple vegan burger with pasta and veg cooked in a spicy tomato sauce. It doesn’t do any harm to have something uncomplicated every now and again, especially as I have a fridge full of vegan burgers. At one time LIDL had a run of cheap vegan burgers and I stocked up because like most LIDL special ranges, they go out of fashion and out of stock quite quickly.

Tomorrow I’m going to take Caliburn to LIDL and do some shopping. With Carnaval getting underway at the weekend, the town is going to be jam-packed with people and moving around will be impossible for a week or so, so I want to make sure that I have everything that I need so that I don’t need to go out anywhere.

Fighting my way on my crutches through the crowds is not going to be very pleasant

Friday 10th February 2023 – WHAT A WONDERFUL …

… tea that was tonight. Burger on a bap with salad and a pile of chips cooked to perfection in the air fryer. I’m really pleased with my air fryer, that’s for sure, and I ought to explore a few more of its capabilities if it’s going to cook stuff as well as it did my chips and, when I added it to the pot, my burger.

And the salad was delicious too. That’s an excellent plan and makes my meals much more exciting.

But I wasn’t very pleased though with last night. I went to bed at a reasonable time but didn’t go off to sleep for ages. I’ve no idea how long I spent tossing and turning because I was afraid to tempt fate by looking. But it seemed like an age.

There was plenty of time though nevertheless to go off on my travels. And I clocked up some distance too. A former friend of mine had bought a Hillman Hunter and wanted it delivering to his house so I said that I would go to do it. I went into Stoke on Trent to find this car and started to push it towards his house. It was comparatively easy to do that, much easier than I thought it would be, especially up the hill. I had to push it on the kerb, the pavement, not on the road which was fine in some places but in others the grass was extremely long. There was that much dirt on the pavement that at some times I had to dig out the pavement and the side of the road so I could keep on pushing the car up the hill. This went on for ages and ages. It was dark and going into the small hours of the following morning. There were one or two people around, someone in an old MkI Cortina with no headlights driving down the hill practising his rallying. Eventually I got to where he was living, in a motel. Pushing the car down the corridor became quite easy. There was a girl there whom at first I thought was Zero but it wasn’t – she was a couple of years older than her. I said “hello” to her anyway. Just as I reached his front door which was of course where I might have expected to find Zero, I suddenly awoke bolt-upright.

And then we were living next door to him. We had an electric car. The gap between our houses was fitted up with a charging cable. It was a split charging cable with different wires coming out of it so if you had a car there to charge up you had to connect up these 8 wires separately. We were out there and a young schoolgirl went past, I don’t know why. Back inside we could hear him and his wife arguing about something or other. I thought “here I am, wide awake in various places and this is another occasion where I’m close to getting to see Zero again but I haven’t actually seen her”. It’s strange that I thought that in my dream because there have been a few times (including a little earlier this evening) where I’ve been on the point of meeting her in a dream and I’ve awoken suddenly. My subconscious is clearly trying to tell me something, and I wish that I knew what it was.

Did I dictate the story about the car rally that we organised? … “No you didn’t” – ed. Once everyone from the office had taken off, we headed off back home to pick up a few things. We encountered a couple of cars on the way back just as we were pulling into our drive. They were looking for something or other in the vicinity. We had a chat with them and gave them a little clue about one of the clues which was going to be difficult if they didn’t stop and think clearly. The guy who always seemed to run the office seemed to be the bossy type even went to the police station to try to persuade them to let him speak to a prisoner in there who had been involved in a car accident earlier that day. He was of the opinion that the clue involving this ironing board was something to do with him and his accident.

Finally, we’d gone skiing to this mountain. When we reached the top, instead of skiing down there was like an escalator covered in snow that took you back down to the bottom of the hill again. Although I was not able physically to ski, I was still bewildered by everyone else going down the hill on this escalator and not actually skiing down. There was someone in a wheelchair whom I thought was brave to reach the top of the mountain anyway and come back down again but I still couldn’t understand why there would be this escalator when all you had to do was to ski down to the bottom. And it’s interesting to see that my mobility issues are now featuring in my nocturnal rambles.

Much of the day has been spent in some kind of desultory fashion writing the notes for my next couple of radio shows. I’ve not been in much of a rush to do it and there have been plenty of distractions along the way. Consequently there are still some to write out before I can dictate them.

But I’ve been having a little think about my radio programmes and how I can change them to make them better (or, at any rate, different) and I have a cunning plan about that on which I’m working in my spare time, whenever that might be.

This afternoon I went into town on the bus. I had some medication to collect from the pharmacy and then there was a little bit of shopping to pick up.

Not all of the medication was there so they had to order it for me and I have to go to pick it up tomorrow. That should be interesting with a bus strike so I’ve been thinking that I might actually try to walk down there on my crutches and hope that one of the few buses running tomorrow might bring me back.

It should be an interesting trip, especially if there are no buses back, and one thing is for sure, and that is that I won’t be trying it with just one crutch. I’ll persevere with two for now and see how I feel after a few more weeks.

What made me think about it was that I actually managed to stride out something like rapidly (or what passes for “rapidly” these days) and I covered a lot of ground at a reasonable turn of speed. I need to keep on pushing myself forward.

When I came back I bumped into yet another neighbour and we had yet another chat. I seem to be quite popular for the moment and I don’t know why.

After my delicious tea I came back in here and promptly fell asleep for half an hour. All of this walking is wearing me out and I imagine that if I do go into town tomorrow on foot, I’ll live to regret that as well.

And so I’d better go and try to have a decent sleep. I certainly need it. And who knows? I might even finally get to meet Zero.

Thursday 9th February 2023 – CALIBURN IS BACK AGAIN …

… and with a Controle Technique certificate too, which has cheered me up. And seeing as he now seems to start properly whenever I want him to start, it looks as if I’m back on the road again.

Mind you, climbing into the cab is a real issue If I’m at street level when I need to climb in, it’s extremely difficult. I need to find a kerb against which I can park so that I can climb in easier and at LeClerc the kerbs are quite high and it’s a struggle to climb up that high.

One thing that I do have to remember is to exit with my left leg first. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I tried to exit Caliburn the other day “right leg first”, the leg collapsed underneath me and decanted me onto the floor.

But there’s a strange phenomenon going on with my legs right now. For the last couple of weeks I noticed that when I awaken in the morning parts of my legs and feet are quite numb. I wonder if it’s because I’ve been lying on a trapped nerve.

And so it was this morning. And apart from that it was another night of going to bed early, falling asleep early and then waking up and tossing and turning for a while. I was actually awake before the alarm went off at 07:30 and had I exerted myself I could have left the bed. But that was too much to hope for.

But when I did leave the bed,, I had my medication and then checked my mails and messages before wandering off for a shower. And climbing into the bath for my shower was the easiest that it’s been since I came back. This physiotherapy seems to be working.

Although the Controle Technique was arranged for 11:45 I went out quite a bit earlier than that. With not going far these days I was worried about how Caliburn would get on with the pollution test so I took him for a good run – several laps around the dual-carriageway by-pass to get him nice and hot

Anyway, he sailed through with no issues.

Armed with a valid certificate I went to fuel up and then for a good shop at LeClerc. There wasn’t a great deal that I needed but nevertheless I still ran up quite a bill. I’d bought plenty of frozen veg and some more carrots so after I’d brought up most things from Caliburn and had some food and coffee I peeled, blanched and froze 1.5 kilos of carrots. That will keep me going for a while now.

After all of that I fell asleep and was awoken by the physiotherapist who came round earlier than usual. He had me walking around the apartment with just one crutch and wants me to practice that for the next few days until our session on Tuesday next week. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

It’s been a day of interaction too. Apart from having lengthy chats with customers at the garage, I met a neighbour as I arrived home and she kept me chatting at the door for a while. And then another neighbour had a good talk with me as well. If that wasn’t enough, the people with whom I’ve been trying to arrange this money transfer rang up to tell me that they now have everything that they need. And that’s good news.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night and that needed transcribing. I was with 2 girls last night. They had some kind of cupboard and were hanging up something in front of it like a system of chains etc to make it look attractive. It was obviously a project that was doomed because they couldn’t make anything hang horizontally. The wire that they were using wasn’t strong enough. Instead of pulling on the metal tubes that were supporting it, the tubes were pulling the wire and going all out of shape. Nothing was in the vertical. They were having to do all kinds of tricks to try to make these wires go vertically but the more tricks they did on it the worse it became. I had a feeling that this was going to be a project that was doomed to fail from the start. Sooner or later they would realise it but I gave them a hand just the same.

There was also something of which I had a vague recollection was taking place in a Prisoner of War camp where there was some kind of committee that was set up to investigate infractions against the prisoners who broke the camp rules or to investigate possible escape attempts etc. This committee wasn’t very successful. There was a feeling going round that the Germans had infiltrated a couple of people into the camp to serve on the committee and sabotage the work of the prisoners while they were there but I can’t remember very much at all about this.

And then there was me, a young girl and a rather large woman trying to lift an enormous suitcase into the back of an estate car. The young girl was at the front trying to do the lifting and we were at the back trying to push. It was very difficult to make it fit so I suggested that seeing as it was the other lady’s possessions she shoudl go to the front because she would be much better able to lift it. She could decide how in, what articles could be squashed and what couldn’t. For some reason the girl was reluctant to relinquish her position at the front of this line even though she was having an extreme amount of difficulty actually doing anything there.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and veg in tomato sauce. Nothing particularly exciting but I am allowed to have a boring meal here and there every now and again.

Having fallen asleep already this evening I finished off typing out my notes for the day and now I’m off to bed. I have to go into town tomorrow on the bus and pick up some medication and my fresh mushrooms and peppers. I didn’t want to buy them today because the later I leave it, the longer they will keep.

But despite what the physiotherapist says, I’m not going down there with just one crutch. I’ll keep on using both when I’m out and about until I’m confident about it all. It’s not going to be something that will happen overnight.

Friday 3rd February 2023 – IT REALLY WAS A …

… lovely afternoon today. Sunny and once I was out of the wind, quite warm too. It really was a pleasure to be out and about.

With it being Friday today, I needed to go to the supermarket in the town for my fresh fruit and so on. But I’m not sure whether it was worth the effort from that point of view because although I managed to buy a lettuce and some mushrooms they had no bananas, no cucumber and there were a few other things that I wanted that were missing in the shops.

The reason for that though was clear to see. There was a big notice everywhere saying that the shop will be closed on Monday and Tuesday for stocktaking, so I suppose that they didn’t want too much fresh fruit and veg hanging around that they might not have been able to sell.

Hoad I known, I would have gone to one of the other supermarkets in the town centre. There are three altogether. I had plenty of time. But regardless of anything else, I was glad to be out and about in the nice weather.

Before I went to bed last night I was out and about too. I went for a walk up and down the stairs here, without my crutches too. And going down the steps I led with the left leg, to give me an opportunity to bend the right knee. Unfortunately, I couldn’t lead with the right going back up the steps. I’m a long way from there, so far that I doubt that i’ll ever be back.

It was a bad night too, tossing and turning around for quite a while trying in vain to go to sleep. Another night where I didn’t do much except watch the clock go round and round. I did eventually go off to sleep, but for nothing like as much sleep as I would have liked.

There was however enough time for me to go off on a few travels here and there. I started off going to work. I had a great big Audi saloon. I had to take the director or one of the big directors to somewhere in Germany not too far from Berlin. They explained the name of the hotel and the town, and I said that I knew it although I didn’t. When they asked why, I said that because my aunt used to go there because my family is connected with royalty (which they didn’t believe but anyway …). So the next morning I awoke. I was in Shavington. There was a lot of traffic on the road because it was rush hour. I got into the car and started it. I thought that I’d do a lap or two around the block to warm it up but I noticed that it was low on petrol or diesel so I thought that I’d go to the garage on Newcastle Road and fuel it with diesel then come back and we’d be ready to go. I was driving up Chestnut Avenue which was a 4-lane road at the time, in the right-hand lane ready to turn right at the top.

I can’t remember very much about this next bit though but I was creating a 3D figure. The telephone rang so I answered it and said that I’d call them back because I was busy with this thing and hung up. Then I realised who it was and tried to call them back so that I could continue talking to them while I was continuing to work on this 3D figure.

And then I’d bought an apartment in a big house. Rosemary had come along to help me clean it up, the house and the balcony, and do some cleaning up outside in the public areas. We ended up making the place look pretty nice although it could do with a coat of paint inside because I didn’t like the red walls. The communal parts outside were confusing. It was a tiny village with several houses dotted around and what you would think at first was private to this particular house was actually a pathway that led to one of these other buildings. It was extremely confusing to try to work out which was the communal area, which was private to our house and which was private to some other house. While we were standing on the balcony having a look out because it was quite high up we could see loads of old vehicles moving around in the distance. It suddenly occurred to us that there was a vintage vehicle rally in the vicinity that weekend. I told Roemary that I knew where I’d be going to be this weekend.

Later on there was something about one of these American mobsters. He’d been convicted of an offence but there was some kind of public enquiry into his conviction. The FBI was involved in this but the cross-examination of this guy by the FBI was particularly bizarre because it almost amounted to the FBI agent going down on his knees and pleading with this mobster to tell the truth, which I thought was quite a strange way of going about cross-examining someone.

Once again I was up quite quickly when the alarm went off, despite the lack of sleep. And when I’d finished the medication and checked my messages I made a start on continuing the notes for the next round of radio programmes. I didn’t get very far though because Rosemary rang me up and we had another one of our marathon chats.

And she brought me some good news. The sunroof that I’d bought in Canada for that Ford Flex in the Puy de Dôme finally turned up today after several months of dispute and discussion. So that’s now been passed on to whom it may concern.

And the Genz Benz 200-watt bass combo that I’d found on sale for peanuts in a pawn shop in Ottawa turned up with it too. That’s going to have to stay at Rosemary’s for a while until I can go down and rescue it, but at least it’s on this side of the Atlantic and I’ll be back on the road.

It’s nice to have some good news for a change. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Later on I went out for the bus into town. It was the new bus too, the first time that I’ve travelled on that one. and i’m definitely becoming used to these crutches because I was off the bus, in and out of the supermarket and back at the bus station all in 15 minutes and I had 15 minutes to wait for the bus back home. So I had plenty of time to soak up the sun.

Back here, with still no reply to my reminder to the solicitor handling the sale of this apartment, I filled in all of the forms that I need to organise the transfer of the money and sent them off. But there were a couple of things that need more explanation and I’ll have to sort that out over the weekend. And once I’ve done that, then the ball is firmly in the court of the solicitor.

Tea was a burger on a bap with a pile of salad and some chips that had been fried in the air fryer. It really was delicious – one of the best meals that I’ve cooked. That air fryer really is the business and I ought to experiment more with it to try to have my money’s worth out of it. I’m told that it will bake bread and that might be worth an experiment.

Tomorrow i’ll finish off the notes for the radio programmes and then I really can have a complete day off on Sunday. And won’t that be nice?

High time I had a good rest and relax. Anyone would think that I haven’t done that for ages.

Thursday 26th January 2023 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… quiet day today where I haven’t done all that much at all.

But it’s not been without interest. The physiotherapist has had me walking up and down the stairs here this afternoon, but leading with my left foot down and right leg up rather than the other way around. At first it was quite difficult but it didn’t take long to ease off. That’s one of the new exercises that I have to do now with effect from today.

And to my surprise, these exercises seem to be working. I was able to get into the bath for my shower and out again without too many problems. It’s still not 100% of course – far from it – but a vast improvement on the almost-impossible struggle that I had the first time that I tried it 6 weeks ago.

But as I said, it’s going to be a long, hard road.

Getting out of bed this morning was a long, hard road. Not helped in the least by still being up and about at 00:30 this morning. And so I was a little late getting out of bed this morning.

Plenty of time to go off on my travels last night though. I was watching a film on the TV. It was a medieval film about a castle on the coast of England somewhere on the south-east where the knights in armour were occupying it. There was a danger of an invasion so the Lord was rallying his troops to do they best they could in case this invasion took place. One of the visiting knights had fallen in love with a girl whose father was a labourer in the castle. He spent a lot of time talking to her. All of a sudden this castle moved to the borders of Wales. From a nearby church tower someoe fired an arrow into the castle. That was a signal for a siege of this castle to begin. Just then my brother came in. He’d been out somewhere. He wasn’t impressed at all with this film and started to fool around while it was on. He was firing a bow and arrow around the house while I was trying to watch the film. I told him to clear off but he took no notice. Then my parents came in. This wouldn’t be the kind of film that would interest them at all so I could see the TV being changed over to another channel and that would be that once they established themselves in the living room

A little later I was in my father’s place of work. He was working in the office. I’d been doing a few things and I had something to do that required me sitting at a desk. I went to sit on the empty desk next to him but found that there was a young boy already there doing some homework. He’d dated his homework the 12th of whatever month. I thought “he’s started early because that’s not for another week”. I suddenly realised that it was today. I was running so far behind. I tried to squeeze in at this table too but my father told me not to disturb the boy. I did my best to fit in. My father started to talk to me but I had a lot of problems trying to understand what he said. He said that he had a transistor radio from someone. at first I couldn’t work out who but then I realised the shop that he had been to. I said “that’s because you’ve spent a load of money I suppose”. He thought that that was what it might be. Then he started to talk about a night club he used to visit years ago which I thought was in Winsford. He was telling me that someone had asked him for directions to go there, some taxi operator. I couldn’t remember exactly where it was. Then he told me that it wasn’t in Winsford anyway. By this time my father and this boy had worked their way down this table to the end so there was no room for me to sit there. I was then trying to work out where I was going to sit down to do my work because there didn’t seem to be any other empty space.

I had also been round to a former friend’s – someone who has a connection with Zero – for some reason or other. He was talking about the bread that he’d made. It was really light and fluffy. He said that he’d left the flour to soak before he’d actually used it so I was intrigued. He took me into the kitchen to show me some dough that he had soaking in some plastic bags. For some unknown reason I came away from there with a brush cutter. To drive past to his house we’d driven from the north end of Stoke on Trent past Port Vale’s football ground then past Stoke City’s football ground to his house. I mentioned some nickname to do with the club. He was surprised to hear me say this. He didn’t realise that I knew what it was. For some reason he lent me his brush cutter. I couldn’t think of what to do with it. There was some fuel in it. I carried it away. One of the reasons why I’d gone round there – I found that not one of my cars had an MoT or tax these days. I’d had 2 run out last year and suddenly remembered that the 3rd ran out in March but it was now May. I hadn’t a clue what I was going to do about that. I had this brush cutter and was back at the station. There was some kind of competition about getting on the last train. I had to cross over the bridge from the platform where I was up the steps and across the top to the other side then back down the other side and then come back again after a train has passed through. I headed that way towards the bridge, checked the signals to show that they were on green which meant that the train wasn’t coming for a while and crossed over. Then I was thinking about crossing back to catch this other train but I thought that that would drop me off in Altrincham and it would be a very long walk at some silly time of night back home where it’s much easier to catch the 1st train and forget about the train that’s going to be bringing me back. I ended up walking into the town from there to get on a bus but thought that with this brush cutter with fuel in it are they going to let me go on the bus?

So here we go again. Plenty of opportunities for my family to come along again and stick their oars into whatever I’m trying to do, and then being so close to Zero but yet so far. How could I get so close to you and still feel so far away as TOM PETTY SANG.

And while we’re on the subject – “One day you belonged to me. Next day I just wouldn’t know”. What does that remind you of? Yes, one day I’ll write those missing notes for those three days right at the beginning of September 2019.

So having dealt with the issues of the dictaphone I sat down and selected the music for the next batch of radio programmes. I’m working on the radio stuff on Thursday as well as Monday until I’ve build up my library of six months’ work.

Then I paired off the music for the next two programmes and made a start on writing the notes for them. It worked so well on Monday doing it like this that I thought that I’d try it again, although I’m hoping that it won’t be another 04:00 start.

In the middle of all of this I went for a shower. I have to be all clean and tidy and smell nice for the physiotherapist. And as I said, climbing into the bath for a shower was nothing like a difficult as it was when I first tried it after coming out of hospital

And climbing up and down the stairs, I bumped into a neighbour – the one who helped me so much in my plans to involve myself in that apartment downstairs. Having a mole on the inside track on the Residents’ Committee of the building enabled me to take several short-cuts that I would otherwise have been unwilling to take.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I’m convinced that Rosemary installed a camera in this apartment when she came to visit. I’d hardly sat down at my desk after the physiotherapist had gone and she called me up. We had another one of our marathon chats as she prepares for her Asian adventure in a couple of weeks’ time.

And how I wish that my health had been better otherwise I might have been tempted to climb aboard the ‘plane with her.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bun with chips and a simple lettuce and tomato salad with vegan mayonnaise. It was delicious and I even now can still taste the mustard that I spread on the bun. Chips today means no chips tomorrow so I was wondering what to have for tea. And then I remembered the vegan sausage rolls in the freezer. They will go nicely with some baked potatoes.

So right now I’m going to bed. I might have a decent sleep tonight if I’m lucky, and then I have plenty of work to do. But my day will finish off with a visit to the specialist for my EMG – the electric tests on the nerves on my legs. And then I’ll have some news. Last time when I was there, it didn’t sound all that optimistic and the tests that he carried out seemed to confirm it. But who knows – something good might come of it.

Saturday 21st January 2023 – MY EXCITING LIFE …

… reached its apogee today

there I was this afternoon in the kitchen having a wonderful time cleaning and defrosting the fridge. And it needed it too. I’d had one and a half kilos of carrots in there and they took some finding in all of the frost and ice.

There was some interesting stuff in there too – such as some vegan cream with a best-by date of October 2018. They went straight into the waste bin along with some other stuff and there’s actually some room in there now.

And even though I put the carrots in the freezer in the bathroom, there’s still some room there too. It won’t be long before everything is empty and then I can start again. Mind you, I’ve said that before about the freezer and I’ve not reached that point yet.

The kitchen looks a bit of a mess though, but that’s no surprise. I can’t work like I used to and have to go and sit down for an hour and recover after about 10 minutes of work.

And I’d had a better night last night too. Although it took me a while to go to sleep, I wasn’t disturbed as much as I have been in the recent past.

Just a few trips out and about during the night. I was with my mother at a house somewhere in Shavington. There had been a party and we had been tidying it up. It was in the most appalling mess after the party, glasses and food etc everywhere. I sat down to do the washing up which took me ages but eventually I did it. The whole of the work surface where I had the glasses was like a lake. We then decided that we really wanted to tidy up something else. After a while one thing that we realised that we hadn’t seen was the cat. We called this cat but it didn’t come so we carried on doing other things. Some time in mid-afternoon we saw it outside the window so we went to fetch it. It was shaking. The first thing that went through our mind was that it obviously hasn’t had anything to eat for a while so it’s probably starving. We took it into the kitchen and gave it a handful of cat biscuits but it didn’t seem all that keen on eating them. It wanted attention for something or other. It was still shaking but wasn’t all that interested in eating the cat biscuits so we wondered what was the matter with the cat

And then I was going to Canada on a plane. Before that was a meeting that I had to attend and it over-ran by hours. There was only half an hour left for me to catch my plane by the time the meeting finished. I had to enter the lift at the airport but everything was going wrong. She was calling out floors and stopping the lift but no-one was alighting. I was thinking that I would just be later and later as this goes on. I’m never ever going to recover my suitcase and catch the flight or even have time to make arrangements to catch another one going on the same day. I’m going to be in all kinds of difficulty if I miss this plane.

Finally I was at work. One of my colleagues was like Jon Pertwee, always being involved in schemes and blaming everyone else when they all went wrong. Something had happened at work and he said “it was Eric who did that”. By this time I was fed up for a start so I hit him so hard that he reeled right down the end of the room. I went after him but everyone else stopped me. I went back to my desk. On my way back I walked past my old garden which I had now given to my mother. I’d planted a couple of fruit bushes a couple of years ago. I had never done much with them but I noticed now that the fruit on them was enormous and it wasn’t summer yet. They weren’t ripe. The bushes had groaning under the weight of the fruit and it looked as if it was going to be a really bumper year for the crop.

And so I spent much of the night with members of my family. I wish that I knew why. I can’t seem to shift them out of my subconscious mind and replace them with people whom I’d be so much happier to see.

Such as Liz and Rosemary, for example. When I switched on the computer I found that Liz was on line so we had a chat for about an hour or so to catch up with each others’ latest news. We both have a lot going on right now and we haven’t spoken for a week or so.

And no sooner had Liz gone off than Rosemary rang me for a chat for a while.

Apart from chatting to Liz and Rosemary I didn’t really do an awful lot this morning. I had a wander through cyberspace looking for new things that I’m going to need in the near future and make a little list. But finding what I want at a price that I can afford and which will do what I want to do isn’t very easy.

And then this afternoon I cleaned and defrosted the fridge. It’s amazing how much ice the fridge will make when my back is turned.

There was football on the internet later. A basement clash between Aberystwyth and Caernarfon Town. They have both been struggling for the last couple of months and Aberystwyth have been sucked into a relegation scrap down at the bottom. Caernarfon, for all their midfield stars who would grace any Welsh Premier League Club, have a wobbly defence and have no-one at all in attack,

Aberystwyth were the better side and eventually rattled up a 2-goal lead. And they could have had a couple more quite easily too. Caernarfon didn’t really mount a shot on goal until Rhys Alun Williams scored what will easily be THE GOAL OF THE SEASON to pull one back for a late consolation.

Tea was a burger on a bun with baked potato and salad. My meals are definitely improving even though I don’t have what it takes to go and do a proper load of shopping. However when I’m out and about on Tuesday I might do a lap around Lidl, LeClerc and the Bio shop to stock up with stuff that I need.

And as I’m feeling better and Caliburn is going in to be fixed, I might actually start again to go to the shops every now and again to see what I can do. I have to start up again some time.

But having already almost crashed out twice this evening I’m going to go to bed and I’ll worry about the shops some other time. I’m more worried right now about having a good sleep and a lie-in although if past history has anything to go by, I’ll be lucky.

Saturday 14th January 2023 – THAT WAS A …

… rather quiet day today.

Despite everything that I said yesterday about going out for a walk today, it’s been pouring down with rain all day and so I’ve not set foot out of the building at all.

However, I have set foot outside the apartment, and a couple of times too. Round about 17:00 we had a series of power cuts in the building and I had to go downstairs to see what was happening. Mind you, someone beat me to it each time so I may just as well have stayed in here.

When I awoke this morning, I was in agony. My knees were hurting in a couple of places, presumably as a result of my efforts yesterday. However, once I was actually up and about and moving around, not only did the pain ease up but I could move around a little easier too. I think that it did me some good to go for a walk yesterday and I wish that the weather would brighten up a little so that I could go for another one.

Apart from that I’ve had a very quiet day today. All I’ve done is to pair up the music and write a few notes for the radio programme that I’ll be preparing on Monday. I might even do some more tomorrow but I have other fish to fry, like making some fruit buns. I was going to make a loaf but I’ll do that later in the week, I reckon, if I have time. I can’t believe how busy my week is going to be next week.

There was football on the Internet this afternoon too, Llanelli third in the Second Division at home to Connah’s Quay Nomads, second in the First Division in a Welsh Cup match. There was only ever going to be one winner in this game but hats off to Llanelli who made the Nomads work hard and kept them down to just 2 goals.

And how different might things have been had Llanelli scored the penalty that they were given in the second half when they were just 1-0 down?

But it goes to show how wide the gulf is between the First and Second Division, as Airbus UK Broughton and Pontypridd United are finding this season after having been promoted at the end of last season.

Tea tonight was some of those small burgers with baked potato and a salad. I’m really getting the hang of these salads now and not only do they taste nice, they look nice too with lettuce, tomato, mushroom, sweet corn and vegan mayonnaise.

Later on, I had a listen to the dictaphone. I pulled up at this huge, expensive hotel. I was in something big like a Rolls-Royce. There was all kinds of confusion where you park the cars. I had to shout at someone who was continually getting in my way while I was trying to park. Then I had to walk into the reception and fillin a card. It asked for my father’s details and my mother’s details too but the writing was so small that there wasn’t any space to write the answers so I just wrote anything down. Nothing of it was accurate which was just as well because my writing was so small that you couldn’t read it anyway. I was thinking to myself that it would have been far simpler to have handed over at least a passport of my father because my mother was dead. At some point it occurred to me that instead of giving my mother’s details I was giving them Aunt Mary’s details. I don’t know what was happening about that.

And later on I’d gone on a walking tour again with some people camping in the forest and going for a walk along this path. The first morning that we awoke the guy in charge said that we were going to rehearse one of the longer routes that we’d be taking. We started off by the tents. He told me that I didn’t need to come if I didn’t want to but I was there so I said that I would. He was very pernickety about his equipment and about his ownership of all kinds of maps and everything with him and photos, how we would align himself when he was walking through the forest – walk towards this cabin then off towards this rock etc which I thought was probably overdoing everything. We eventually started and I ended up with 2 girls whom I didn’t know. We were in this sports ground, an old type of pre-Taylor-Report football ground type of thing. We ended up in a queue. They said that they wanted a bun or something and did I want one? I replied “no” because there was nothing there that I could eat. But when they came away from this queue they had cups of tea etc with them. I thought that if I knew that they were going to have a drink I’d have had a coffee. Then we had to go to find a place to sit down but there was all this grass seed blowing around everywhere. You couldn’t really sit down because it would all be in your drink etc.

It looks as if I have the subject of holidays running around in my subconscious mind right now. But I can forget all about them until at least I’m mobile again. I can’t go anywhere right now as I am.

However, that’s for later. Right now I’m going to bed as I reckon that i’ve had enough of today. Tomorrow is another day and next week is another week. With an appointment basically every day next week, I need to extricate my digit.

Friday 6th January 2023 – I’VE HAD MY FIRST …

… home delivery from the supermarket today.

They said that my delivery slot would be between 18:00 and 20:00 and so it turned up at … errr … 17:15 before I’d made room to put everything away.

There were several things that didn’t work out.

Firstly, there’s a minimun limit of €50:00 and so despite the cupboards being quite bare in here, I had to scratch around to make up a worthwhile order. At least I now have plenty of rice, pasta, tomato sauce and stuff like that.

Secondly, prices are somewhat elevated. I’m paying a fair bit more than I would in the shop and so, added on to the €9:95 delivery charge, my shopping bills are going to be expensive for a while.

Thirdly, some of the stuff isn’t what I ordered. For example, the soya has come with added vanilla rather than the variety that has added calcium. And I don’t like vanilla in my soya.

However, everywhere is now stocked up which is good news. And I had a lovely tea tonight. Burger on a bap with chips and a salad and for the next couple of weeks I reckon that my meals will go back to being quite exciting again.

What I’m going to do though when stocks run down is another issue. There’s only so much bulk goods that I can store. I suppose that the next load, in a couple of weeks’ time, could have a supply of coffee as I’m starting to run low on that. But then I shall haveto have a good think.

And who knows? Maybe I’ll be better by then and can go and do the shopping on my own.

But one thing that I can say, and that is that this idea of ordering food to be delivered is actually an idea that is practical and it works well enough to stop me starving to death.

It should be said though is that perhaps in the past I’ve had the finger pointed at me by some people because of the amount of tinned stuff that I’ve had on hand here. I made the point that it’s all here for an emergency and it’s just as well that I had it here when I came back from hospital. That was what I called an “emergency”.

Perhaps last night should have been an emergency too because nothing seemed to go according to plan. I don’t know why but I just wasn’t tired at all. I was still up working at 05:00 this morning.

At some point rather later than that I did go to bed. I switched off the alarm because there was no point trying to heave myself out at 07:30 but even so, I was awake at 09:20. I couldn’t go back to sleep either and so I gave it up at about 10:00 and made a start.

To my surprise, there was even some stuff on the dictaphone so I must have had some kind of decent sleep at some point. I had a cat at at one moment during the night but can’t remember anything about it.

Later, it was carnival and fête time. There was a carnival and fête at Crewe and also at Nantwich. I was at the one at Nantwich round by the White Horse. Everyone was having a tremendous time. I’d arranged to meet my sister and her family back at her house with the idea that she could go to the hairdresser’s and then come on to one of the fêtes afterwards. After a while and I hadn’t heard from her I contacted her. She was ‘oh crikey! Oh I’m really sorry. I haven’t done it yet” etc, going way over the top making wild excuses. In the end I told her that what I wanted to talk to her about was the fact that with the Nantwich Carnival being so good we should all go round to Nantwich after. She thought that that was the best idea. But it was another one of these occasions where everyone was taking so long to be ready that I was convinced that by the time we were ready to go back everything would be all over.

It tok me a while to warm up, as you might expect, and then I finished off the radio programme that I’d been trying to do yesterday. That’s done now which is just as well, and starting Monday I’ll be doing two each week in order to catch up with where I want to be. I like to have about 6 months of programmes in advance because no-one knows what the future has in store for me. Seven weeks in hospital sending off radio programmes that I was unable to replace with others has made quite a hole in my little stock.

Having done that, I went through my order for the supermarket and sent it off. The plan was then to make space on the shelves so that I’d have somewhere to put it when it came but that fell by the wayside somewhere.

There are also developments with my little project that is simmering away in the background. I’ve been copied into an e-mail between two other people that shows that there is considerable progress going on behind the scenes. Maybe before too long I’ll have something to report in this respect.

At some point in the early evening I crashed out for half an hour. That’s no surprise given the rough night that I had What was a surprise was that it was for only half an hour.

Tea was delicious, as I mentioned earlier. The salad made quite a change and it won’t do any harm to have a couple more here and there. I don’t want to eat all of the frozen veg too quickly.

Tomorrow I’m going to have to make some plans. There are 1.5kg of carrots to peel, dice, blanch and freeze for a start although I’m not sure exactly where I’m going to put them as the freezer is once more packed to the gunwhales. I really should have bought a bigger freezer but I suppose that I would have filled that just as quickly too.

And at least there’s plenty of food here again and I can relax a little about that for now. Looking back over my last few meals I’ve been eating really well despite the limited supplies here. Things should start to become interesting now that my shopping order has come.

Thursday 5th January 2023 – I HAVEN’T SET …

… any records today with preparing my radio programme. Unless it’s for the slowest one on record because I haven’t finished it yet. I’m a long way short. Everything is written and dictated and I’m in the middle of editing it.

Actually, I have an excuse for this. And that is that I didn’t leave the bed until lunchtime.

And I have an excuse for that too. Gradually, over the course of the evening the pain in my right foot became worse and worse. And by the time I went to bed I was having stabbing pains in the sole of my foot every couple of minutes or so.

That was disappointing of course because having tidied away all of the paperwork etc yesterday, I could fall into bed without actually having to move anything so I was looking forward to a nice, deep, comfortable sleep.

But this pain kept on going and going. I was certainly still awake at 04:30 because I checked the time, and I was awake long after that too. I’d dozed off by the time that the alarm went off, but only just and I just couldn’t haul myself out of bed.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone, which was surprising, so I must have gone off to sleep at some point. We started off on a Friday evening. I was working in an office and everyone started to go home. A group of people where I’d been working had been passing a box of biscuits around and for some unlnown reason no-one had offered me any. After they had left I went and found a box of biscuits, opened it and saw that it was empty. That was pretty bad newz. By now I was starving so I had a hunt around. Eventually I found a box of biscuits open on someone else’s desk. Just as I took 2 of them someone walked in and said that they were looking for a file. I had to act very nonchalantly and help them look for this file with these 2 chocolate biscuits melting away in my hand.

Later, I was working at a building company, something to do with old lorries. There was a discussion going on about some bungalows being built a few years ago that weren’t built correctly. My mother was going through a few things and showed me a packet of red liquid. I asked what it was and she replied that it had something to do with Morse Code that one of her distant relatives had found and sent to her because they thought that it might be of some kind of historical interest for her. She was interested in having a play around with it. There was a lot more to it than this but I can’t remember at all now.

Finally, I was in Shrewsbury last night driving around, having to dictate some kind of information about the route. These 3 roundabouts near the slaughterhouse were different than all the others because they had been installed in a different programme from a different budget. Of course I was having a laugh about this kind of thing. I was having a quiet 5 minutes trying to transcribe my notes but the vehicle was vibrating and rocking so much that I wasn’t able to do it. I could tell that my ribald comments were disturbing one or two other people in this vehicle. They weren’t happy about the levity in which I was treating the subject of these 3 roundabouts. It was just typical to me that there would be all this strange talk about different budgets for this and different budgets for that, different budgets for something else but they were all in fact doing the same thing

With all of that, the night can’t have been all that bad although when I finally awoke the pain was still there.

Once I’d sorted myself out somewhat, I had a shower. And getting into the bachtub was a little easier than it had been on Tuesday. I think that I must be right about this improvement that I’ve been noticing. It’s not much, and I still can’t walk very far at all, but it does seem to be a little easier.

This afternoon I made a start on the radio programme but had to stop because the physiotherapist came. I mentioned the problem with the foot and he showed me an exercise. And at least, fot the moment, it seems to have worked. Whether it will continue to work is another thing.

He also mentioned that the doctor is planning on coming to visit me again in due course. presumably he’ll be in touch with me.

The Mairie from Virlet has been in touch with me too. They need to talk to me about one or two things and will be in touch with me in due course.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and veg. That was quite nice, as usual, especially as I put some chili powder in the tomato sauce. That will put hairs in places where I didn’t even realise that I had places.

Having had a late morning today, I can’t sleep now. It’s actually quite late – or early – and it’ll be dawn shortly. I may as well keep on going though because there’s no point going to bed and not sleeping. There’s always something that I can be doing that means that I don’t have to do it another time, but sleeping would be nice.

We’ll have to see how tomorrow unfolds but as long as I can finish my radio programme I’ll be no further behind than I already am.

Tuesday 27th September 2022 – NOT VERY MANY …

… photos today. And when you look at the photo of the beach down towards Donville les Bains you’ll see why.

When I went out for my afternoon walk around the headland I was almost swept away in a rainstorm and at one point I was even thinking of giving up and going back home. However I trudged wearily and wetly on around my circuit.

So providing that I haven’t caught pneumonia or something else and don’t pop my clogs I’ll tell you all about my day.

And as usual, when the alarm went off at 07:30 it was a struggle to leave my stinking pit. And after the medication I came back in here to revise my Welsh ready for my lesson.

Mind you, I need not have bothered because it was a pretty gruesome lesson. It didn’t go according to plan at all and I made rather a mess of things. Somehow I’ve not been able to get to grips with things since we started back and that’s quite depressing.

After the lunchtime fruit I’ve been organising a few things. There’s a little something simmering away on the back burner and I need to prepare for it. and so I’ve been dragging stuff out of cubby holes and that sort of thing today

Another thing that I’ve been doing is checking all of the electric stuff and making sure that it’s fully-charged. It’s twice this week that I’ve been caught with my batteries flat.

And that took me up to the time when I usually go for my afternoon walk.

It’s no surprise that there was almost no-one down there on the beach. There was just one person out there at the water’s edge eyeing the waves but I was more interested in this guy here.

Al dressed up for the wind-surfing complete with board, but he’s on his way back to the steps up to the Rue du Nord. Obviously the storm was far too much even for him.

It was certainly far too much for me and as I said, I was in half a mind to turn round and go back home.

However, I carried gamely on, not that it did me any good at all because I couldn’t see a thing out there. There was just one person running around on the lawn and that was that. There wasn’t even anyone on the bench at the cabanon vauban..

And so I pushed on along the path on the other side of the headland towards the port to see what was going on there.

And yet more excitement in the chantier naval again today. The only boat that remains in there today is Briscard. The other two, Gerlean and Chant des Sirenes, have now gone back into the water.

Not that this is a good day to be going back into the water. I certainly wouldn’t want to be out there today, not in a 25-ton fishing vessel anyway. We would have been OK on a 12,000 tonne vessel like THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR

And thinking about that has got me going again, hasn’t it? High time I hit the frozen north. What actually brought that to my mind was how cold and wet and windy it was. It actually felt like the Arctic standing there today.

Today is usually the day that one of the freighters from Jersey comes into port.

And there’s a huge pile of freight waiting on the quayside to be picked up as you can see, but this isn’t really the kind of weather that you would expect to see one of them struggle into port.

The two lorries there are quite interesting though. The other day we saw two refrigerated vans parked back-to-back with their doors opened. Today, there are two refrigerated artics doing the same thing.

It must be some kind of ritual, I suppose.

But there’s something going on here in the Rue du Port right now.

There was something in the news this morning about the bus routes being closed this weekend and this is probably why. There’s some kind of concert taking place by the looks of things and they are busy setting up the stage.

Last year, I vaguely remember something about this so I’ll have to look through the old records to find out.

Back here I had a coffee and then had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was another one of these dreams where I had all of my work in a total mess so I was planning on retiring. I had my German homework to do but I hadn’t done it and I hadn’t done the next lot. The tutor started to harass me about my German. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to drop it or not. I explained that I was in a really bad place in my head at the moment. This wasn’t really the time but she kept on insisting. She started to talk about how badly she’d been done by some people. The football team that she’d trained for a football match who had let her down. This conversation started off being about me and my homework very quickly became a conversation all about her. I felt even more isolated while this was going on than I did before.

And I also have the very, very strong feeling that Zero was around last night too, but there was nothing on the dictaphone about that. That’s bizarre.

The rest of the day has been spent doing a load of washing and carrying on with what I was doing before I went out.

Tea was a burger on a bap with the last of the potatoes and then I had another meal to cook because there was still some stuff left in the fridge that needed to be eaten.

So now I’ve written my notes I’m off to bed. I’ve forgotten all about a football match tonight which was sad, and I have a busy day tomorrow so I’m not going to be hanging around for long.

Sunday 25th September 2022 – IT’S SUNDAY …

… today and so I had my usual lie in. And as you admire a few photographs of examples of the local aviation, I’ll tell you all about it.

Not that it was all that much of a lie-in because despite not going to bed until 02:00, I was up and about by 10:30 this morning. And that’s not the usual way of doing things on a Sunday.

In fact, I could actually have been out of bed much earlier than that. I was debating whether to leave the bed and do some work round about 08:30 and that would have been a miracle in itself.

Thinking about it, I really ought to have made something of an effort, just for the sake of it.

After the medication this morning I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

This was something to do with a dog that was hanging around where I lived. I didn’t like it at all. I hated dogs so I was not interested in the least in anything that was going to happen with this dog. In the end we injected it with something that was guaranteed to kill it. Then I had to take a computer out to someone. We took the computer and prepared everything and then went outside. Then I realised that we didn’t have the cable for it so we’d have to go back. We popped in roundabout where the sofa with this dog was that we’d injected. I went back in and went to pick up the cable that was plugged into this plugboard, and the dog got up and started to move about wagging its tail. I told it to go and lie down again and go to sleep. I was really bewildered about this in the dream, wondering what on earth was happening. It was such a surprise in the dream when this dog actually got up when i’d just put it to sleep 5 minutes earlier.

Back in the War, we were preparing for the defence of Jersey. The island fell very quickly so once the War was over there was a kind-of war game. We found an old bunker that had a lathe in it with an electric fan. There was some kind of slicing machine that went on the lathe. We found a way where you could drop hand grenades from this bunker down underneath it if anyone had entered the cellars. We considered that this bunker would have held out for quite some time and probably several others too that were built to the same style although it was never publicly announced as to how they had been built. Of course all of this had been rendered useless in June 1940 when the Germans simply marched into Jersey with no opposition. It was really only a theoretical exercise but having done it we were convinced that we could have held out for a considerable period of time.

I can’t remember where we were next but it was something to do with some Chinese people. They lived in a town where the industrial estate and residential ares were not distinctly separated. Sometimes it was very hard to tell which was the residential building and which was an industrial premises. Having lost a trailer from somewhere or other that we had to find it was very important that we worked it out fairly quickly.

The rest of the day has been spent carrying on with where I left off yesterday. I’ve still not had the replies that I would like so I’ve had to proceed by guesswork and that’s not really all that easy either because I’m more than likely to guess incorrectly.

Things are a little clearer in my head now though, at least for the important parts of it and the rest will surely follow as night will follow day. But I can’t do anything about any other part until next weekend.

So on that note I wandered off outside for my afternoon walk.

As usual I wandered over across the car park to see what was happening down on the beach.

The sunbathers have now all gone home and the only people about and about are the walkers going out to take the air, like this lot here.

And they were all that there was around here. There wasn’t anyone else around here at all.

And there wasn’t anything going on out at sea either. The view was really good out at sea just now but apart from a couple of yachts out towards Jersey, that was really that.

With it being a Sunday I decided to go for a walk around the walls this afternoon instead of around the headland.

From the Place du Marché aux Chevaux there is a good view over the wall and for a change there was no-one obstructing the view. No-one blocking the view of the base of the wall on the outside this afternoon either so I had an uninterrupted view of the repairs.

They had dismantled quite a lot of that and regular readers of this rubbish will recall the big hole that appeared in the wall at one time as they were repairing it, but now they have gone we can see the kind of job that they have done.

And the work that they have done really does look good. I was hoping that the workmen would now come back and work on something else that needs fixing but so far they have been conspicuous by their absence.

So from here I pushed on along the path nderneath the wall towards the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset.

And the end of the season is quite apparent here. For a start, the cabins and the crown off the diving platform have now been removed and placed into store.

No-one was swimming around in the tidal swimming pool either and there are no lifeguards on duty from what I can see.

There are just a couple of people now wandering around on the beach, and they are dressed for autumn too. Bikini days are over now, which is a shame. I can put my eyes back in.

Down in the Place Marechal Foch there was nothing happening, so I wandered off through the Square Maurice Marland. There wasn’t much happening there although a bunch of kids were having a really good time with a small ball.

There’s a little bit more freight on the quayside this afternoon too.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when we walked past here last weekend there were some red dumpers on the quayside. They found their way to Jersey on Wednesday.

Today we seem to have acquired a green ride-on mower. There isn’t anything in the way of grass down on the quayside so it looks as if this mower is going to follow the dumpers out to the Channel Islands the next time that Normandy Trader comes into port.

It’s good news anyway and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any. And we need good news after hearing that the gravel boats have definitely finished coming.

Why St Malo would have bought the gear I really don’t know. They are rather constrained for space in there right now as there is a 6,000-tonne Russian freighter, the Vladimir Latyshev, marooned in the port because of sanctions. She’s been there now for 117 days

As the aeroplane 55-OJ flew by over head, followed by an unidentified helicopter, I set off for the long walk home.

At the Place Cambernon, we had something that I hadn’t noticed before.

Unfortunately I can’t say when this piece of street art appeared but I can’t recall seeing it the last time that I passed. It’s not actually what I would call “professional” and it isn’t up to the standard of street art that we’ve seen elsewhere.

However it had drawn the attention of several of the passers-by and it’s livened up the place a little.

We can see it a lot better now though because the newsagents has gone onto winter house and is closed. There was just the bar, La Rafale, with a few tables out today, and not too many customers were there either this afternoon.

On the way home I went past my favourite house.

This is the Masion du Guet – the “Watch House” (“Watch” as in being a group of people engaged in observation) and was originally built by a carpenter in the 17th Century but in 1696 the French Minister of War ordered the walls to be cleared and demolished.

When the walls were restored, a house was built on the original site and has slowly been extended over time.

Today though, I doubt if they would be allowed to extend it. But with the scaffolding being there, it looks as if they are working on it, maybe doing a little restoration or renovation work.

Jamais deux sans trois – “never two without a third” as they say around here. So sure enough, as I was heading for home I was overflown again.

This one is much more like it – being one of our usual suspects. She’s F-GBAI, a Robin DR 400-140B that belongs to the local aero club.

She had taken off from here at 15:17 and slipped off the radar near Avranches at 15:48. She was then picked up on radar near Avranches at 16:54, flew over airfield at Granville and inland before performing a U-turn to come back, and then disappeared off the radar near the airfield at 17:00.

My photo was taken at 16:52 (adjusted) sometime during the period when she was flying under the radar.

Back at home with a coffee, I carried on with my work and then went for tea.

No pizza tonight though. I’m still dealing with the arrears in the fridge. And cooking a vegan burger in the air fryer was yet another success.

In a few minutes I’m off to bed. An early start in the morning as I have a radio show to prepare. And I might well have to go out for a few hours too. There’s something going on with the radio tomorrow and my presence has been requested.

Wonders will never cease.

Friday 16th September 2022 – MEANWHILE, BACK AT …

… the ran … errr … apartment, I’ve been a busy little B today, and while you admire a couple of photos of unidentified light aeroplanes flying by overhead this afternoon, I’ll tell you all about it.

And for a change, I actually had a good night’s sleep. I was in bed at a reasonable time and there was nothing whatever on the dictaphone until the alarm went off.

Mind you, I’m pretty certain that I was awake at a couple of moments during the night and it’s quite possible that there was something going on, but rather unfortunately these days I’m becoming used to the idea of forgetting to dictate stuff.

As long as it’s not Zero, Castor or TOTGA then it’s not all that important. I’d hate to miss a voyage with one of them in it.

But do you know what?

With having the longest uninterrupted sleep (according to the dictaphone) that I’ve had just recently, when I awoke this morning I actually felt worse than I have done for a while. But isn’t that par for the course these days? It always happens like that.

So where did I get to during the night then? When the alarm went off this morning I was actually in Vienna. I’d gone with a couple of friends to see some woman whom we knew about refugees and to help them. We’d been there once before to do something with refugees but we decided that we’d go again. When the alarm went off I was in a disco while one of these women was dancing to some kind of obscure pop music. I was standing there with my hands in my pockets musing on events while the music was playing and everyone was dancing around. That’s where it got to when the alarm went off

While we’re on the subject of aeroplanes by the way … “well, one of us is” – ed … the French have a saying jamais deux sans trois.

And sure enough a few minutes later an aeroplane did go flying over. And it’s one that we recognise too and can identify.

She’s actually F-GBAI, a Robin DR 400-140B that belongs to the local aero club. She was picked up on radar at 16:12 as she flew down the coast, did a lap around Mont St Michel and flew back, coming in to land at 16:36.

So that’s either a sightseeing run or someone clocking up the hours for the renewal of his licence.

My photo was timed at 16:11 (adjusted) which means that she was just about to burst onto the local radar screen when I saw her.

The rest of the day was spent dealing with the photos from Jersey. Having run aground yesterday as I mentioned, I started from the other end and worked backwards. It was a good plan too because I managed to complete over 20 photos and write their notes until I ran aground yet again.

This time, there’s a delightful house at Fliquet that is clearly something special, but I can’t find a single word anywhere about it and it can’t be something that ought to be ignored.

Amongst the pauses today was of course one for my afternoon hobble around the headland.

And as usual I started off by going over to the wall at the end of the carpark to see what was going on down below.

“Going over” wasn’t exactly the word. “Blown over” is much more appropriate because the wind was quite savage this afternoon and I’d even had to take off my cap as soon as I was outside.

Only a handful of people down there on the beach this afternoon. That was bizarre because even though the wind was thoroughly wicked, it really was a glorious day and I quite enjoyed being out there right now. I’d have thought that there would have been many more people out there in it.

So I headed off along the path towards the end of the headland, admiring the island of Jersey on the horizon which was plainly visible today.

My eyes were however focused at what I could see out along the coast in Brittany. Many of the headlands were quite visible but Cap fréhel, the one on with the lighthouse, was lost in the haze.

There was something out there in that direction that I could see with the naked eye so I photographed it to examine later to see what it was.

At first I thought that it might be the lighthouse itself but it looks too low down to the horizon and there is what looks like rigging attached to it at the top so I dunno.

We’ll have to pass on this one.

Not too many people out there on the car park today so I wasn’t overwhelmed.

However we did have a couple of people sitting down on the bench by the cabanon vauban this afternoon admiring what was (or wasn’t) going on.

They were probably getting their money’s worth looking at the aerial ballet taking place overhead because it was while I was here that we had all of the aeroplanes going past.

Not so much out at sea though. It was strangely quiet in the water today.

There was a lot going on at the channtier naval today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we haven’t seen L’Omerta playing “Musical Ships” over at the Fish Processing Plant just recently. She won’t be playing again for a while because she’s come into the chantier naval.

She’s on blocks over there where Le Styx used to be and they’ve already started to work on her. Le Styx has gone back into the water by the looks of things so we’ll have to keep an eye out for her to see what she’s up to.

And there’s even more changes down there too.

For a start, Massabielle is no longer there. And the unidentified boat has gone! And never called me “mother”! either. Her place has been taken by Black Pearl.

Next to her yesterday was Pierre de Jade but according to the radar, she’s in the inner harbour today tied to a pontoon so I’m not confused as to whether this is she and the radar isn’t correct for some reason, or whether this is a different boat.

She certainly looks the same to me so maybe she’s left her AIS transmitter behind when she was pulled up into the chantier naval. But I’m going for Pierre de Jade

When I reached the viewpoint overlooking the inner harbour I had a look to see if I could see Le Styx but if she was there she was hiding quite successfully.

Plenty of other boats there today though. The white one with light blue and red is Catherine Philippe” and moored at the same pontoon behind her is Trafalgar who was there in the chantier naval for a while just recently.

On the other side of the pontoon in yellow and red stripes is Peccavi who appeared in the chantier naval on a couple of occasions just now.

But talking of Le Styx being well-hidden reminds me of the two soldiers who met in a barracks one afternoon
“I didn’t see you at camouflage parade this morning, Private”
“Thank you, Sarge”.

Meanwhile, over on the far wall, Victor Hugo is back in town.

When I was looking at the radar last night, I noticed that she was back. It looks as if her work for the season is now over. And that was a pretty short season too. As I have said before … ” …and on many occasions too” – ed they need to be doing much more than this if the ferry service is to remain viable.

And I for one hope that it does. It’s why I came here. Next year I’ll plan things better and stay over in jersey a couple of days, if it’s possible.

It probably won’t be long either before her sister Granville comes back to port too. I don’t suppose that she’ll be working much longer either and her season will draw to a close.

Chausiaise is still tied up where she was yesterday too. She hasn’t been out anywhere today.

That was that really. Marité was down at the bottom of the harbour and Shtandart wasn’t and with nothing much else happening I wandered off back home for the last of my chocolate drink.

For a while I carried on with my notes and photos, and eventually went for tea.

There were some burgers that were well out of date so I had one of them with pasta and I’ll finish off the other one at some point in the near future. I’m not too bothered about frozen food right now but for reasons that will become clear I want to clean out the fridge and eating the food that’s in it is the best way of doing that.

Shopping tomorrow so I’m hoping for a restful night and a good sleep. But the way that things usually happen around here that’s hardly likely

There isn’t really much that I need but I have to go through the motions and see what’s about.

Football again tomorrow night. I missed it last weekend and I’m ready to curl up in front of a good internet connection and watch Y Drenewydd. But I can’t remember now who they are playing.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: vegan burger

Thursday 16th March 2023 – DO YOU HAVE …

Friday 10th March 2023 – AFTER ALL OF …

Wednesday 8th March 2023 – MY LITTLE WALK …

Thursday 16th February 2023 – THE PHYSIOTHERAPIST …

Friday 10th February 2023 – WHAT A WONDERFUL …

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Friday 3rd February 2023 – IT REALLY WAS A …

Thursday 26th January 2023 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

Saturday 21st January 2023 – MY EXCITING LIFE …

Saturday 14th January 2023 – THAT WAS A …

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Tuesday 27th September 2022 – NOT VERY MANY …

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