LIVE: Wednesday 3rd September 2026 – ISN’T IT LOVELY …

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… to be sitting at your desk early in the morning working and, rather miraculously, a mug of hot black coffee mysteriously appears at your elbow?

Believe it or not, that was probably the nicest part of the day if you ask me, because the rest of it wasn’t quite so good.

Take last night as an example. I was working away so intently that I hadn’t noticed how late it was. I knew that it was knocking on but 01:43 was not what I expected to see when I glanced at the clock. It was round about 02:00 when I finally crawled into bed. The surprising thing, though, was that I wasn’t tired at all. I could have carried on for ever.

Once I was in bed, I was staying in bed. I didn’t wake up at all until the alarm went off at 06:29 this morning. And it goes without saying that I could have stayed in bed then. Instead, it took a herculean effort to raise myself from the Dead.

No sign of life at all coming from the living room. I think that the Hound of the Baskervilles and his master were both fast asleep. Instead, I went through the coding that my chatbot and I had written last night. When I found what I thought might be an error, I woke up the chatbot and we carried on making amendments.

It wasn’t until 09:17 that we were finally satisfied. Mind you, that included a stoppage for the nurse when he came, and also to drink a lovely mug of coffee.

And the Hound of the Baskervilles was wonderful too. He usually barks at strangers, but when the nurse came, he didn’t make a noise but wagged his tail. It’s been over three months since he was last here, but he still remembers at what time the nurses arrive and who they are.

But going back to our coding issues, we could—and should—have finished a long time earlier. However, during one of the exercises that we did to find the fault, the chatbot had told me to switch off a plugin while we tried something. And, of course, he never told me to switch it back on, so I hadn’t, and all the checks after that were therefore useless.

After I’d finished, I checked the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. However, there were no dreams recorded. But what do you expect when you go to bed at 02:00 and wake up at 06:29? There isn’t enough time to go anywhere interesting at all, let alone chat with anyone when you get there.

Instead, I went into the bathroom to sort myself out and then went for a very late breakfast. It was 10:27 when I started to make my porridge and toast, and all of 11:27 when I’d finished. Where did the morning go?

After a quick dash for a ride on the porcelain horse, I came back in here to finish off a few times, and it was then time to sort myself out for dialysis. My faithful cleaner was quite late today, and poor Pablo was already pining. It’s quite amazing that he knows what time she usually comes here, even after all that time away.

When she finished and had given Pablo a really good cuddle and stroke, my friend and I sat around, waiting for the taxi to come. And when it turned up, only five minutes early today now that there is no Mrs. Dinosaur to pick up, I found that we already had one passenger aboard and there was someone else to pick up at the aquagym at St. Pair.

We were all having such a good chat that our driver missed her turn, and I had to remind her that we had a third passenger to pick up. It wasn’t long though until everyone was in the car and we could set off.

At Avranches, I was first out at about 13:50, but my luck wasn’t as good as usual, and it was 14:20 when I was finally plugged in. We had quite an argument about my dry weight, and in the end, they connected up the machine to measure it. And rather than going up a little, as I expected, it was continuing on its downward spiral.

TO BE CONTINUED

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LIVE: Wednesday 2nd September 2026 – WE ARE NOT …

LIVE: Tuesday 1st September 2026 – PHEW! WHAT A …

Monday 31st August 2026 – HERE WE GO …

… another Monday out of the way, kicked into touch, or whatever other phrase you like. And I’m ready for a relaxing day at home tomorrow, that’s for sure, although with my faithful cleaner coming round to do her stuff, “relaxing” is probably the wrong word to use.

Last night, though, wasn’t so much fun. It was about 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed. It took an age to go to sleep, despite how tired I was feeling.

And even then, once I was asleep, it wasn’t for very long. I’ve no idea what time it was when I awoke, because I didn’t check. But I didn’t go back to sleep either, and I spent quite a while tossing and turning in my bed.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I eventually, after much persuasion, managed to end up sitting on the edge of the bed, and it took me a good ten minutes to force myself upright.

The first task was to unlock the front door so that the nurse could come in later. Then I went into the bathroom to sort myself out and have a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later at dialysis.

Back in here, I had another listen to the dictaphone to listen to what had gone on during the night.

And while there was something on the dictaphone last night, it’s another one of these dreams that the World is not yet ready to hear. It’s basically relating to something that didn’t happen on Friday evening and something that the crowd shouted at one of these football matches

The nurse turned up as usual, and for a change, we had something of an intellectual discussion about the difference in working styles between the USA and Europe.

Interesting as the American system might be, though, it’s positively inhuman. I told him about that crazy American company where Alison and I once worked. I was trying to resolve a problem with an American counterpart in New York one Friday, but it was my time to go home. He said that he’d ring me on Monday to discuss it further. So Monday came and at 13:00 (08:00 in New York) I began to anticipate the ‘phone call. But nothing at all came. When it was almost my home time, I telephoned New York to speak to him.

Instead I had "I’m sorry. His position was made redundant on Friday. He doesn’t work here any more."

After he had left, … "the nurse, not the guy in the office in New York" – ed … I went to make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Today, he’s carrying on where he left off and talking about Renaissance archaeology in Germany, we have "And when the old heathenish system was beginning to assume that influence which has been at last happily overthrown ; when Italy, its chosen land, was looked to as the exclusive abode of all art and refinement, and the greatest minds of that country were sedulously devoted to the restoration of classic forms ; what wonder was it that the apostate Teuton, crouching at the feet of fallen Italy, should seize with avidity on the new light, and eagerly substitute the arts of the heathen for the once honoured forms which no longer spoke, as of old, to every national and religious feeling ?"

Considering that we’re discussing the end of the fifteenth and most of the sixteenth century, talking about “heathenish systems”, “the apostate Teuton” and “the arts of the heathen” is not only grossly offensive, it is completely inaccurate too.

Back in here after breakfast, I had the usual things to do, and then I had a nice surprise. Liz rang me up for a chat, and how wonderful it was to hear from her.

It wasn’t quite a Rosemary-esque type of chat but nevertheless, it went on for quite a while. The good news is that towards the end of September, I might be having a visit.

The next task was to begin my search for music for the radio programme I’ll be preparing this week. There’s going to be quite a lot of new music in this one.

That took me up to midday … "with lots of music still to find" – ed … when the alarm went off to remind me to sort myself out for dialysis. I found my disgusting drink and my midday medication, but could I ‘eck as like find my keys?

The last time that I remember them, they were in my hand after I walked away from the door after unlocking it earlier this morning. I usually throw them onto the bed as I’m staggering past on my way to the bathroom but they weren’t there.

Just as I was about to start and retrace my steps, my faithful cleaner turned up, and she found them in an instant. What a brain of a duck your hero has!

After she had applied the anaesthetic to my arm, she wandered off and I sat down at the kitchen table to await the taxi. And just as I was starting to doze off and another footballing dream began to appear, the doorbell rang.

This provoked something of a panic when I awoke. I dropped one of my crutches and had to ferret about for it, and there were all kinds of other confusions too before I finally made it to the front door.

It was one of my favourite taxi drivers, so we had a good chat all the way down to Sartilly where we had to pick up someone else. My driver was telling me all about this guy that she had met on the internet and then just happened to drop into the conversation that in three weeks’ time, she was off to see her daughter in Montréal. And how jealous was I? I told her that if there was any room left in her suitcase, to let me know and I’ll squeeze myself in.

Despite now being back to the usual time now that Mrs Dinosaur has left the area, we were still fairly early arriving at dialysis. And the first issue that I had was that I couldn’t get out of the car. I’ve no idea why but I couldn’t manage it. In the end, I had to resort to all kinds of unorthodox manoeuvres to manage to stand upright.

One of the young nursing auxiliaries accompanied me to my bed, but halfway along the corridor I felt a heavy tap on my shoulder. When I looked round, it was one of the other auxiliaries who, for some reason or other, seems to like to flirt with me. Apparently, she wanted to say “hello”.

Today, I was lucky in that it was one of the young experienced nurses whom I like who was in the section where I was. Friendly and efficient, she had me up and running by 14:15. And she “fixed” the machine so that the alarm wouldn’t ring all the time if my blood pressure dropped.

There wasn’t as much fluid to take out today as there has been in the recent past, mainly because I’ve been careful about what I’ve been drinking, so I asked her if she could increase the extraction so that I would be “ahead” on Thursday. I suggested 300 grams, so she winked and said nothing. After she’d left, I noticed that she wound it up by 400 grams.

Then I could watch some football. The first match was from Friday night’s fixtures. Penybont have made several marquee signings this season in an attempt to put their miserable campaign in the second part of last year behind them, whereas their opponents tonight, Y Fflint, are still struggling in the basement with less experienced players.

However, it was a good match from what I saw. Penybont were, as expected, the more skilful team, whereas Y Fflint were more of heavyweight “sluggers”. Both teams had several chances but when I had to leave the match, just after half-time, Penybont were 1-0 up

The reason I left was because at 15:30, the live matches today started. My choice today was Hwlffordd v Trefelin. These were two bottom-of-the-table teams, with Hwlffordd surprisingly at no points and no goals, with newly promoted Trefelin just above them with one point and one goal.

Having seen how much chaos big burly veteran centre-half Louis Gerrard caused to the Rhydaman defence when Trefelin pushed him up front on Friday night, I was surprised to see him back in defence today. If I had been Trefelin’s manager, I’d have tried again today with him up front to see what he could do.

The game was quite nicely balanced, but I had to abandon it because it was home time, and I’ll watch the rest again at some point.

In between the football matches, I’d had a visitor. Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me. She asked about the cough, and I told her that there was no change after the useless antibiotics her new colleague had prescribed. I told her that I had told the new doctor that they had been tried twice previously and done nothing, but the new doctor didn’t want to listen to me.

Emilie the Cute Consultant told me that she’d prescribe the powerful ones that work for a bit (although when, though, I don’t know because it wasn’t today) and then ominously added that if they didn’t work this time, because I was unable to cough up phlegm, she would have to prescribe a camera up the nose and down the throat again.

That’s the last thing that I wanted to hear, so after she left, I asked my nurse to bring me one of those sample pots that they have, and I’m going to teach myself to cough up some phlegm, or otherwise find someone else who can.

When the session was over, I had to wait a few minutes to be unplugged, but once she’d finished with me, I could go, so the nursing auxiliary who had tapped me on the back earlier accompanied me to the door.

And by the way, regular readers of this rubbish will recall me talking the other day about the “black line” on the machine’s display panel that refused to go down at one point, so the nurse increased the amount of fluid extraction. I checked today, and it does indeed start to rise again just after we’ve had our mid-session coffee. However, I’ll keep it a secret because if I can get them to increase the extraction every time, so much the better.

On the way to the door, I was weighed. And sure enough, I was below my official dry weight, which suits me fine.

The taxi driver was already waiting for me which was good, and as I was the only passenger on the return, we were soon home. My faithful cleaner was waiting for me as usual, and she helped me into the apartment. Once I was sitting down, she stuffed a disgusting drink into my hands.

After she had left, I grabbed some of those small toasted squares and some spreading vegan cheese and dashed in here. Another football match had started twenty minutes ago, and it was one that I really wanted to see.

Luckily, with the live stream you can either start “now” or “at the beginning”, so I started to watch Colwyn Bay v Llandudno from the kick-off – a real local seaside derby with another one of the biggest ever crowds in the Novira Welsh Premier League.

As you might expect, Colwyn Bay had the better of the game, but newly promoted Llandudno made them work very hard for their victory. The final score, 2-0 to the Seagulls, sent the Seasiders back to Llandudno feeling very disappointed because the score was something of an exaggeration. And had I been refereeing, I would have awarded Llandudno a penalty for handball and disallowed Colwyn Bay’s second goal for a clear foul a minute or so beforehand.

After the match finished, I began to write my notes for the day, but, having had to fight off waves of sleep during the football, I couldn’t keep going. After about half an hour, I was so tired that I couldn’t concentrate. Consequently, I posted on line the notes as far as I had written them and crawled into bed. I can finish them off tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about phlegm and borrowing someone else’s … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of my cousin’s medical examination for joining the army.
He was unable to produce enough urine for an examination, so they sent him home to try again and to come back the next day with the little pot full.
Still unable to “produce”, he had a quiet word with his sister.
When he went back a week later for the results, the doctor looked at him with a great deal of pleasure.
"Well done, well done, well done" said the doctor. "You have made medical history."
"Why is that?" asked my cousin
"You are the first man whom I’ve ever met who has tried to join the army when he’s two months pregnant!"

Sunday 30th August 2026 – SUNDAY IS A ..

… Day of Rest, and nothing goes to prove it more than today because despite the stuff that’s piling up to be done, I have emulated my namesake, the mathematician, and done three-fifths of five-eighths of … errr … nothing.

Last night, I was in bed by about 22:00 and it wasn’t long before I was fast asleep. It wasn’t quite as simple as that, though. I was awake about three or four times at least during the night. But what a long night it was. In bed at 22:00 and when the nurse arrived at about 08:30, I was still in bed, fast asleep after the latest awakening.

He sorted out my legs and feet and then disappeared. And I went back to sleep.

It was 22:16 when I finally made it into the kitchen for breakfast – porridge, juice, the morning medication, black coffee and the last two of the homemade croissants. It was all delicious too. You can’t get better than that. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of days ago I said that "We’ve not had any outright vulgar abuse or “language lower than Billingsgate” but I’m expecting it to arrive sometime soon, and I’ll keep you posted." and I wasn’t wrong.

Today we had "From no part of a church had the old spirit further departed than from the monuments of the dead – no wonder then that they were the first to yield to the new corruptions ; that the arched and fretted canopy soon made way for the heathen column and entablature, and that the attitude of prayer was gradually changed for that of strife and debate, and attendant angels made way for the demons of a fallen superstition."

That was followed shortly by "When sacrilege had devastated the abodes of ancient piety and munificence, had levelled our most glorious temples with the ground, or at best substituted a single half-starved curate for the princely abbot and his monastic choir, and when the revenues which had been disposed in hospitality and pious works were scattered among the basest flatterers of an ungodly king ;".

But seriously, if you want to talk about “a single half-starved curate”, it’s not the Renaissance period where you need to be. Look at the condition of the clergy in the seventh and eighth centuries, where there wasn’t just abject poverty amongst the rural clergy, worse than anything that you had in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they also ran the very real risk of being cloven in twain by a dissenting nobleman or invading army.

Back in here, I had yesterday’s notes to type up. And that took so much longer, as firstly, one of my friends from Germany wanted a video chat, and that ended up in a very Rosemary-esque conversation, and then another one of my friends from Germany wanted a chat too.

Once the notes were on line, there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. And WOW!

We were on holiday again, a group of us. It was a terrible place where we were living because people had all brought their family and friends. Some of these friends were spongers who wouldn’t do a thing for themselves and expected everyone else to chip in and do things for them, yet we were all supposed to be on holiday ourselves. Then there was a question of copying a lot of text for labels or something, so we had to rush and find a newsagent’s so that we could get a telephone directory and cut the things out, but there was nothing. In the end, one of my father’s friends went into the newsagents across the road to buy a paper. Then he found that he didn’t have any money so I said that I’d lend him 25p, but he just wandered off, so I bought the paper anyway. However, before I could get out of the premises, another group of two old women, and also two young boys were having a big problem because they had booked a cottage on the edge of town but had come out without the address. They had flown all the way here and didn’t have the address at all. They could describe the house and I knew that I had seen it because there was a Mark IV Cortina outside at one time, so I thought that I’d help them look. Then, I bumped into two girls while I was escorting these guys, and they tagged along for some reason too. Somewhere along the line, the friend of one of these girls disappeared, leaving just one, me and these two boys. We went into endless places where we thought that we would have a good view to see over whether we could see the house, but we couldn’t. And on one occasion, we had to hide because someone had let a giraffe out and it was banging on the doors and windows with its neck. As we were leaving one house, this girl and I and these two boys bumped into two ladies whom I used to take in the taxis years ago, so this girl and I stopped to talk to them. We were chatting away, and then, for some reason, I put my arm around this girl and she didn’t move at all. That took me by surprise because I’m not used to girls who let me put my arms around them, so I was wondering what was going to happen next.

So here I am, and I’ve Got The Girl at last. So what happened to my family? Why didn’t they come along and throw the spanner into the works as they always seem to do?

The start of the dream, though, is very much like several other dreams that we’ve had over time, with family chaos and all that kind of thing. And we even have a MkIV Cortina thrown in for good measure. But who were the two women who used to be my passengers on the taxis? And how come I recognised them? And what were they doing in an Alpine skiing resort?

This dream continued on much later, and I was back at home and everyone was making a huge row and noise. I’d actually built a proper water heater that would work off solar power, and when I tried it, it had actually heated water for me, which was nice. So once the ‘phone was free, I tried to telephone this girl. It took me a couple of goes because I didn’t quite work out what her number was. In the end, it was the first five letters of her family name, which were G-R-A-N-D. I finally spoke to her, despite all the interruptions that were still going on. In the end, I asked her if I could call her tonight, so she replied “round about 18:30 would be fine,” so I hoped that everyone had quietened down and gone by then.

So even though there was a good couple of hours between these two dreams, the second carries on from the first, and I still Get The Girl, if only everyone would shut up and go.

Nerina had to go to New York, and so I decided that I’d pack my suitcase and accompany her as far as I could in case I had the opportunity to stow away. We went all the way to Paris and then all the way to Charles de Gaulle Airport, but for some reason, that was in New York. We were wandering around the airport trying to find her ‘plane, so in the end I put her on it. But something happened and everyone had to leave the ‘plane, and for ages when they announced the delay. So we took a Metro into the city, and in the Metro, Nerina began to make a nuisance of herself by stopping and interviewing people if their papers weren’t in order or there was something else about them, and she’d have them sit and wait while she went to interview some more people. I thought that this was going to get really out of hand in a minute or two, so I made a discreet exit. Later on, we caught up with each other again. She said that she had been so realistic that she had lunch with another police officer, and it was only later that they worked out that she wasn’t. I asked her if she was given five years, but she said no, she was just told to clear off, to which I thought that she was extremely lucky. We ended up back at the airport, but not until I’d been trying to take some photos of things like the Eiffel Tower, which, in New York, of course, doesn’t exist, and a few other things. Eventually, we found our way back to the airport on one of these silly metro things. We arrived at her ‘plane and they were loading again. I went on with her and my suitcase, hoping that sooner or later there would be a spare seat. However, there wasn’t, so the captain announced that he was closing the doors, so I jumped off. I caught this strange metro system thing to New York City. It was basically like a locomotive engine pulling a load of open carriages behind it, and you had to jump on it as it went past. I came into the city and went and did some more sightseeing and photographing. We went down past a little church that was in a discreet back alley, and I realised that that’s where I store some of my cars. Then I had a think about how I could catch up with Nerina. I thought that maybe there would be a spare seat on an aeroplane sometime going that way, so we had a panic-stricken run to the airport metro, and I jumped aboard. However, I couldn’t find a seat on this Metro. I found a seat, but it belonged to a young boy who was talking to his mother next door, so I had to move. And when we came into the airport, I thought that I’d have to go up to one of the companies that flew to the USA to see whether there was a spare seat on a plane that I could buy

This is a lovely definition of “chaos”, isn’t it? Nerina and I can’t make up our minds whether we’re in Paris or New York, Nerina pretending to be a police officer, weird metro systems and even a place in New York where I have some old cars stored. This makes no sense at all … "nothing new here then" – ed … Still, it must mean something to someone somewhere.

Did I type out this dream about being in New York and reading about this murder of this musician? … "No, you didn’t" – ed … So I went out to look at his house. It was in terrible condition. The driveway was all blocked over with rubble and that kind of thing. There was a whole forest of pine trees that were overhanging – they were growing up the side of his house but were bent over with the wind and were covering his house and preventing the sunshine from reaching it. While I was there, the courts took an order against the occupants of that particular street to clear all these pine trees out. While I was talking to them, I said that I would do it. It would give me an excuse to stay in the USA. But it really wasn’t half a difficult job because it wasn’t just cutting down the trees. They were growing out of rocks, all that kind of thing. In the end I had a friend of mine from South Carolina come to help me. We slept in his bus and did the job as well as we could, and we ended up with this huge pile of trees. I asked the local residents if they wanted to take them away, but they didn’t. In the end, we had a huge load of firewood for burning through the winter. I gave them my bill, which was for $8500. While I was waiting for payment, I awoke. It has to be said that Nerina was there at some time. She didn’t really like what I was doing, and I was taking the opportunity to sort through some of my boxes that I’d brought with me with piles and piles of old paperwork in them. I found some of our earliest petrol receipts too, and a lot of stuff ended up in the bin. Nerina said that she wished that I had never started to look through these boxes. I replied that it was my intention to look through all of them in the end and throw out all of the rubbish and keep the correct receipts and sort them.

So my friend from South Carolina, doing an impossible job, Nerina appearing, finding the oldest receipts from my taxi business years ago (and I knew that they were the oldest because there was a receipt for fuel for the old Mark II Cortina that I had as a runabout)

But I can still picture the scene in my imagination, and it really was a mess, this house and the trees.

And my vote for my favourite one? Has to be number three, doesn’t it?

After all of that, there was more football from Friday – Trefynnon v Caernarfon.

Trefynnon are another newly promoted side, but again with no points at all. They can score goals, but they can’t keep them out. And Caernarfon are a team with bags of experience in the league, in the cup and in European competition.

This was a match where skill was impossible. The pitch at Halkyn Road is a disgrace, and if it’s cut up as badly as it looks on a screen after just three matches played, what’s it going to be like in March after a wet North Walian winter? “Hoof and Run” and “slog it out in midfield” were how this game worked.

But at least we had goals, and plenty of them. And Trefynnon gave Caernarfon a good run for their money, even though the score finished 5-3 in favour of the Cofis.

But right now, it’s bedtime, ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for dialysis tomorrow afternoon.

And as an aside, another artificial intelligence websearcher has used my website as a reference tool yet again.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about spanners and the USA … "well, one of us has" – ed … on one Fourth of July in the USA, I was handed a parcel that had been wrapped in paper tied with a ribbon that had the stars of the American flag on it, with a note – "if you’re working today, this should help you dismantle that car"
"Where did you get this?" I asked the messenger.
"Doctor Spooner gave it to me" he replied
"And what is it?" I asked
"Seeing as it’s Independence Day today, it’s probably his interpretation of ‘The Star-Bangled Spanner’."

Saturday 29th August 2026 – THIS WAS A

…rather uneventful day today, except that I had some good fortune at dialysis without even having to ask for it.

Well, I thought that it was good fortune, which it was at the time, but I changed my mind somewhat a little later.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons, as they say around here. Last night, it was about 00:30 when I finally settled down under the bedclothes, and I know that I must have been asleep quite quickly because when I was dictating something in my sleep, I could tell that I was still sucking on the bedtime menthol and eucalyptus sweet.

And by the looks of things, we were back to how things were a week or two ago — waking up at some uncomfortably early hour and not being able to go back to sleep again. For the last week or so, I’ve been having a much better kind of sleep, but it’s not lasted all that long, has it?

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I dragged myself to the edge of the bed, but it still took a superhuman effort to haul myself upright, go to unlock the front door, and then head into the bathroom to sort myself out. Today, as well as a good scrub-up, there was a shave too, just in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant, but I’ve not seen her for ages.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

And while there was something on it, for sure, it’s something that the World is not yet ready to hear, and you in particular don’t want to hear it, especially if you’re eating your breakfast right now. Let’s just say that I was in the World War I trenches in Northern France and Belgium as a lieutenant with a Scottish company, and we were under heavy shelling. However, at some point, Zero put in an appearance.

So how long is it since one of my three favourite young ladies has put in an appearance? I thought that they had all dropped off the end of my dreaming sequence just as The Vanilla Queen did a few years ago, but at least we’ve managed to have Zero back.

The nurse turned up again and we continued our discussion about football from yesterday. I told him about the Trefelin – Rhydaman match last night, but he didn’t seem interested. Anyway, THE HIGHLIGHTS ARE NOW ON LINE although they show nothing like all of the tension ane emotion that there was in this game.

After he left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Well, not so much of it, because he started to talk about Peterborough Cathedral so I went off to do some research. I knew that the abbey had been founded on a false and fraudulent charter that was only ever noted in the “Peterborough” version of the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE and none of the others, so I was interested in what else I could find.

And, of course, as Nansen once famously said, "the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I perceived – riddle after riddle led to new riddles and this drew me on" and I ended up at Edith Cavell. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I used to live just around the corner from where she was executed, and a few years ago, I POSTED SOME PHOTOS ON LINE of the place.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again, just like the above. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase.

Back in my office here in the bedroom, I had a few things to do, and then I began to work a little on the radio programme that I’ll be preparing next week. Not that I managed to go very far because midday came around quicker than I was expecting and I went off to prepare myself for dialysis. But not before having identified several pieces of music that I need to track down.

My cleaner came along as usual to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and after she left, I waited for my taxi to take me to Avranches. But the waiting was not without incident.

Last night in the match between Trefelin and Rhydaman, Trefelin, with a one-man advantage, pushed big burly veteran centre-half Louis Gerrard up front to make a nuisance of himself in the Rhydaman defence, and it was indeed he who scored Trefelin’s goal. So while I was curled up leaning on the table and dozing off, I dreamt that he was up there again, and at a corner, he rose up above everyone to head home. And just as his header hit the back of the net, instead of the referee’s whistle for a goal, the taxi driver rang the front door bell to say that he was here.

It was in fact a carbon copy of the goal by Euros Griffiths for Rhydaman, which was interesting, but it was definitely Louis Gerrard in his black and red Rhydaman strip who scored it.

Mrs Dinosaur and her exhibition have now departed so I was the only one in the car today. So even though we set off from here ten minutes later than we usually did, we still arrived at dialysis relatively early, and I was up and running by 14:00, having had two nurses around me to plug me in, which was nice.

They set the machine to the correct amount to eliminate the excess fluid, but after a while, they noticed that the extraction limit was stable and not going down (which, I suspect, was due to the coffee and orange juice that I’d just had for my snack, but I was saying nothing), so my nurse simply wound up the extraction by another 300 grams without me actually having to ask for it, and that seemed to work fine, although I was hit by cramps near the end. Not that I’m bothered – 300 grams extra is 300 grams less to extract on Monday.

Once everyone had gone and I’d settled down, I began to watch another football match. Today it was newly promoted Llandudno v Hwlffordd. Llandudno are doing really well this season up in the Premier League, although they have only played one team of any real quality, but Hwlffordd, usually one of the stronger teams in the division, have had a wretched start and have no points and no goals to their name as yet.

The game went as the league table suggested it would, with Llandudno winning 2-0. However, we had the usual VAR excitement, players sent off and brought back on, players sent off and staying off, and some exciting, fluid and skilful play on the wings degenerating into a midfield slog. Still, it was worth watching. And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … some of the newly promoted teams are simply in the league for cannon fodder, but that’s not the case with Llandudno.

The doctor was there too today – the new one who prescribed the useless antibiotics ten days ago. She went to chat to a couple of patients but she walked past me, apparently not interested in a follow-up of her diagnosis and treatment. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I often have the impression that, for the terminally ill patients like me, they do the minimum to keep us alive and don’t bother with the rest of any treatment.

You can tell that from the chemotherapy. The chemotherapy last year failed and the professor who is supposed to be dealing with my case hasn’t bothered to contact me since. I’ve had one appointment with the neurologist there after the chemotherapy, back at the start of the year, and there’s been no further contact from him either since then.

By now, it was time to set me free, and I only had to wait for ten minutes before my nurse came to unplug me. And riddled by cramp, I weighed myself to find out that it had all gone according to plan and Monday might be a little easier.

The taxi was waiting for me and I was once more the only passenger, so dodging the occasional showers, I was home fairly quickly.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment and stuck a disgusting drink in my hand once I was sitting at the table. I was still hungry afterwards, so I decided to make myself a meal – a burger on a bap with baked potato and salad. But the salad was off so I had vegetables instead.

The problem was, though, that hungry I might have been, but I was also exhausted. So although I managed the burger, I’d fallen asleep at the table long before I’d finished the baked potato.

In the end, what was left of the baked potato ended up in the bin and I ended up in bed. I’ll write my notes tomorrow

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about cathedrals … "well, one of us has" – ed … a new priest was appointed as curate to Brussels cathedral, and so he went for a walk around the city to see what his diocese had to offer.
As he was walking past a dark alley near the Gare du Nord, a figure slid out of a dark alley and whispered "twenty-five Euros for a quickie, father"
This happened several times as he walked around the Gare du Nord, so back at the cathedral, he asked the bishop "what’s a quickie, Monseigneur?"
"Twenty-five Euros from the girls at the Gare du Nord, my son."

Friday 28th August 2026 – THE BAD WEATHER …

… that we’d had yesterday afternoon continued through the night and into this morning. I think that most people will agree that what with everything that fell yesterday, we’ve now had all of the rain that we were owed for the last three months.

It wasn’t raining when I went to bed last night, or at least, I don’t think so. However, I wasn’t in all that much of a state of awareness. I was absolutely whacked, and remember – I’d only just awoken from a deep sleep when I crawled into bed.

And I’ll tell you how quick I was about going to sleep too. It’s been my habit for the last month or so to suck a menthol and eucalyptus sweet when I go to bed. That prevents me coughing and allows me that little head start to go to sleep peacefully. Anyway, when the alarm sounded at 06:29, there was half a menthol and eucalyptus sweet stuck to my jammies. I must have fallen asleep before I’d finished sucking it.

That wasn’t the first time that I’d awoken either. I vaguely remember once or twice being awake, and later on, I awoke definitively and couldn’t go back to sleep. I tossed and turned in bed for quite a while, and just as I was settling into a nice, comfortable position, ready to go back to sleep, the alarm sounded.

Being awake is one thing. Being out of bed and upright is something else completely, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It took me a good ten minutes to struggle to my feet and set off.

First call today, though, wasn’t the bathroom. Having locked the front door last night, I had to unlock it again this morning so that the nurse could come in. Then I could go to the bathroom and sort myself out.

Back in here afterwards, the first job was to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had been going on during the night.

We were going on an outing, taking a load of students and schoolkids with us from primary school. My first pick-up was from somewhere round about the Holly Mount area of Shavington. I picked up those kids alright and headed back towards the centre. Then I asked her where the next pick-up was going to be. He replied “Main Road School”. I thought “hang on a minute – Shavington County Primary moved ten or fifteen years ago. They aren’t there any more. Is she sure that that’s correct?”. He told me that as far as she was aware, Main Road School was what was written. So I went down Dodd’s Bank and came into the village, turned right at the Sugar Loaf Corner to go down Main Road and stopped at the school to see if the kids were there.

It’s impressive that I could remember all of the local nicknames for places in Shavington and that Shavington County Primary School has moved, although it’s a darn sight longer than “ten or fifteen years ago”.

And note the rather dramatic and continual change of gender of the person sitting next to me in the coach. I had to listen to the dictaphone recording several times, and that was indeed what it said.

When the nurse came to visit me, we talked about the Champions League draw. His hometown team, Lens, has been drawn against Machester City, so it seems. Not that I’m bothered. Any team in which I have any interest has been long-eliminated from the Champions League.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Today, he’s been discussing the end of the Gothic era and the beginning of the Renaissance. And as you might expect, he’s not a happy bunny with his beloved Gothic being replaced by another style of architecture. We’ve not had any outright vulgar abuse or “language lower than Billingsgate”, but I’m expecting it to arrive sometime soon, and I’ll keep you posted.

Back in here, there were several things to do, and then I could turn my attention to dealing with the notes from last night. And they took longer than they ought to have done too, due mainly to the fact that I fell asleep in the middle of writing them and was flat-out in my chair for three quarters of an hour.

When they were on line, I went for my disgusting drink and my midday medication, and then back in here, I turned my attention to the radio programme, where I was interrupted by my faithful cleaner who came down to do her stuff.

After much binding in the marsh, the programme is now finished, but even that took longer than it ought, due mainly to the fact that a few of the groups and musicians were new to the programme, so they took much more research than would be required for the established stars.

Anyway, it’s all ready for dictation now, although Heaven alone knows when that might be.

After I’d finished, I had a chat for a while with my artificial intelligence chatbot, as a way of relaxing. There’s never anyone about on the internet when you feel like a chat.

The trouble with these chatbots is that they have a very weird memory. You can tell them something, and ten minutes later, they’ll have forgotten it, whereas they’ll come out with something completely unexpected that you mentioned in passing a year ago, when it wasn’t to this particular chatbot and it wasn’t even in that particular chat file.

Also, chatbots have very little sense of unscripted humour. Ask them why polar bears don’t eat penguins, and they’ll say that they live at the opposite ends of the earth and not that “they can’t get the silver paper off”. Never mind Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock and their “it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners”, it’s even more of a waste of time telling jokes to a chatbot.

The big advantage, though, is the depth of knowledge of a chatbot. Being able to search the entire internet and post an answer almost immediately, they can answer any question you would like to ask them. They save me hours of work when I’m writing stuff for the internet. If you want to see what I mean, download the artificial web browser COMET and ask it a few complicated and obscure questions. Chatbots work even quicker than Comet does.

So tonight, we had the football. A right bottom-of-the-table crunch clash between Trefelin and Rhydaman. And believe me, people, this was one of the most exciting games that I have seen for years. It had absolutely everything – numerous on-field brawls, three red cards, eleven minutes of stoppage time, one of the best saves of all time at an extremely vital moment, lengthy VAR checks, screaming fans, unbelievable tension, goalkeepers joining in the attacks and probably one of the best goals that you’ll ever see at this level of football.

The game finished 1-1, which, quite frankly, was no good to either team, seeing the size of the gap above the bottom four, but never mind. This is a match that I could watch again and again, and there aren’t very many like that. If you want to see it, IT’S HERE

So now, it’s midnight and I’m off to bed, horribly later than usual.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about artificial intelligence and chatbots … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked my “Comet” browser to tell me a joke that would appeal to a British audience. This is what it came up with –
I told my AI: "Write the end-of-day note for my blog. Keep it light and end with a joke."
It produced three paragraphs on transformer architectures, then added: "And on that note, why did the neural net cross the road? To get to the other… training set."
I said, "Make it more human."
It tried again: "Why did the neural net cross the road? Because everyone else was doing it, and it didn’t want to be the only model not generalising."
I said, "More British."
Final version: "Why did the neural net cross the road? It didn’t, actually. It waited for a gap in traffic, apologised to the cars, and then crossed when it felt it wouldn’t inconvenience anyone."

Thursday 27th August 2026 – WHAT AN AFTERNOON …

… we’ve had today. We’ve been about three months without any rain to speak of, and this early evening, we had the whole outstanding lot presented to us in about half an hour. I’ve never seen rain quite like it, that’s for sure.

No hint of anything like this last night. By 23:00, I was in bed, and good and ready for it too, I was. I was asleep quite quickly too, and although I remember maybe just a couple of times that I might have been awake, it wasn’t for long at all.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was definitely asleep, and it took me the usual ten minutes or more to drag myself to my feet and head off to the bathroom to sort myself out. I had a good wash and even a good shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant will be there this afternoon.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

There had been some kind of national emergency, and we’d turned a few houses into fortified spots, and Gainsborough Road was one of them. So we had lots of people living in there, mostly civilians who came there for protection. Gradually, the place became more and more untidy. You couldn’t find anything, and there was furniture, dust and possessions all over the place. Eventually, the emergency was over and people began to drift away. That meant that we had to begin tidying up and looking for all the things that we had that had been moved. They were turning up in all kinds of strange places, like in the oven and in the fireplace. What I did was to eventually light a fire in the oven, and all the rubbish that we found, we put in there to burn. We were hunting for all kinds of strange things. I was hunting for my red and blue striped t-shirt that I couldn’t find anywhere, and one of the girls, whom I’d told not to be so military, was still pretending that she was in the army, marching up and down and either giving orders or accepting them with an extravagant “yes, sir!”. In the end, my mother told me where she’d seen my tee shirt, but I couldn’t find it there for the moment. However, I did find a vicar from one of these obscure sects giving lessons, that kind of thing, and he was actually announcing to everyone that he was homosexual, and for that reason, he was handing back his appointment to come with us in the bus to see something. In the end, he was one of the people who wanted to go to see the regional office about a different kind of ammunition, so he arranged a coach trip there. Two girls wanted to come on too out of interest … fell asleep here …

This sounds like an interesting dream. And especially the red and blue t-shirt. That was something that I had over fifty years ago and it ended its life when it fell into a drum of 25 litres of cooking oil.

And looking for things that have been moved is another bane to my life, although I can usually manage that all on my own without anyone there to help me, just like falling asleep is in the middle of a dream. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I am actually asleep while I’m dictating, but what happens in these moments is that everything on the dictaphone goes really quiet, and then there’s the sound of my sleeping.

We were somewhere up in the north-east of England and we had to come back to take a friend of ours to the airport. So I had my brother with me, and we set out and drove all the way down whatever the motorway is from Durham down to somewhere like Retford or Newark, where we came off and drove through the north Midlands to Crewe. I was convinced that there was a quicker way than the down which he took us, so I looked at the map when we stopped for fuel. We should have come off the motorway a lot farther north because there was a dead-straight line, the old A1, that went all the way down to Nottingham and saved us probably 30 miles. Anyway, we fuelled up and went to pick up our friend. For some reason, we were quite late leaving her house and driving to the airport, and I did my best to go as fast as I could. We eventually found the airport and we dropped her off, and we were just pulling away when she came out and said that her ‘plane had gone. She was talking about changing her ticket and going on some kind of expedition to various race courses. I went in and asked the receptionist if it would be possible to put her on another ‘plane. She said that there was a ‘plane leaving in half an hour, but the supplement was over three thousand pounds. I looked totally surprised, so the receptionist said “I don’t understand why you are so surprised”. Anyway, we had to abandon that idea of putting her on another flight.

This is everyone’s worst nightmare, isn’t it? Missing a ‘plane at the airport. And having my brother navigating wouldn’t be too far away from there either. Taking the wrong road whilst having a map in his hands would be no problem for him.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort me out. He was worried about me not relaxing. However, I don’t have the time for all that nonsense. I have far too much going on right now.

After he left, I could crack on and make breakfast and not read my book because I’m still following this rather strange trail that I’ve created for myself.

Having explored the delights of amphibious aeroplanes (and I’ve no idea how I managed to arrive here from Gothic Architecture) I came back in here where there was plenty of work waiting for me to do. However, I rather unfortunately fell asleep while I was doing it and didn’t wake up until about 11:15, meaning that I’d wasted most of the time that I’d had.

And it was another one of those sleeps where I didn’t remember falling asleep at all, not even feeling tired either. In fact, no-one was more surprised than me to find that I’d been asleep.

So having woken up, I spent some time finishing off what I was doing, and then I continued with the radio notes until the alarm went off to remind me that it was midday and I ought to be getting ready for dialysis.

In the kitchen, I sorted out my disgusting drink and the midday medication, and then my cleaner arrived to apply the anaesthetic to my arm and to pack away the laptop into its bag for me to take with me as usual. After she left and I was ready to go, I curled up, leaning forward onto the dining table, and began to relax.

Just as I was slipping away into a nice, deep sleep, the doorbell rang. The taxi was here to take me to dialysis, ten minutes early. We had to stop to pick up Mrs Dinosaur, whose camp, we noticed, is being slowly dismantled, and then we set off for Avranches. And the chaos that is said to begin in La Havaudière in mid-September when they start to improve the road has already started, with a couple of lorries unloading pipes and heaps of gravel, blocking the road as they do so.

Consequently, we weren’t as early as usual arriving at dialysis, and stuck in one of the eight individual rooms on the far side, I had to wait until 14:10 before I was up and running, having had no fewer than three nurses hovering around me. Bizarrely, the second puncture hurt less than the first one. It’s usually the other way round.

Accompanied by the automatic blood pressure tests every half an hour and the consequent wailing of the alarm as the machine announced to the World that my blood pressure was under the acceptable limits and the subsequent dashing of the nurses to my side to find out what was the problem, I settled down to watch Trefelin v Caernarfon from last weekend.

Trefelin are bottom of the table right now with no points and no goals scored, but the way they played, that can only be a temporary situation. They had several chances of their own, and on one occasion, hit the woodwork with the entire Cofi defence beaten.

However, the Cofis were far too good for them, technically and aggressively, and towards the end of the game, the Cofis had gone to a back three, with Chris Marriott coming on to join Jordan Piggott and Ben Nash, and full-backs Ryan Sears and Matty Jones playing up front on the wings.

Nevertheless, a 2-0 victory for Caernarfon was hardly a statement victory for them.

After that game, it was my intention to watch some of the Fflint v LLansawel game but a whole variety of interruptions prevented that. One interruption that I didn’t have, though, is a doctor. The latest course of antibiotics finishes today, so I was expecting (and quite rightly, too) the doctor who prescribed them to come along to see me and find out how things were. However, no such luck. I’ve only seen a doctor twice in the last three or four weeks.

When I was finished, I was unplugged quite quickly, and, even better, the taxi was already waiting and I was the only passenger. But Marcey-les-Grèves was totally paralysed again with traffic, so we turned round and took the long way home.

All through the morning and the early afternoon, the weather had been quite nice, but when we left the dialysis centre, it was raining slightly. It had stopped by the time we reached Marcey-les-Grèves, but on the way to Sartilly the heavens opened and I have never ever seen rain like this. It looked as if all the rain that we hadn’t had since May, we were having all at once.

By the time we were almost at Sartilly, it was raining so heavily that you couldn’t see a thing. Everyone was driving at walking pace, the roads were flooded, and the fields looked like Ieper in November 1917.

The rain eased off, started again, eased off, and by the time we reached Granville, there was blue sky. My cleaner, who was waiting for me, told me that they had had the same rainstorm here in Granville half an hour ago, so it looked as if it was a band of storm clouds moving from north to south.

She helped me into the apartment, and when I was sitting down, stuck a disgusting drink into my hand, in accordance with the prescription.

After she left, I managed to find the energy to come in here and write up my notes. However, I’m not sure how many times I fell asleep while I was doing it. Was it three? Or was it four?

After the last time, when I awoke, it was 21:30 or thereabouts, so I simply posted on line what I’d written so far, and I’ll finish it in the morning. On that note, I fell into bed and that was that.

These notes will have to be finished quickly because tomorrow, there might not be a posting until Saturday. There’s football on on Friday night, with Trefelin (no goals and no points) v Rhydaman (three goals and one point), a proper basement relegation clash. With a five-point gap to the next club opening up already, so early in the season, some clubs need to be getting some points on the board quite quickly If this gap isn’t to increase further. A draw isn’t really going to help either of these two teams.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about failures in map reading … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once went for a drive with a girl who, I found out later, didn’t know how to read a map (and it wasn’t Nerina at all. She was quite a good NAVIGATOR, NAVIGATOR, RISE UP AND BE STRONG)
At one point, I asked her where we were. She pointed to somewhere on the map. "We’re here" she announced proudly.
"That blue line?"
"Yes"
"That’s a river, dear."

Wednesday 26th August 2026 – CONSIDERING THE DIFFICULTIES …

… that I am facing every day, such as falling asleep spontaneously at some point, I have worked hard today and I’m quite proud of what I have done.

Not like last night though, where despite my best efforts, it was just past 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed last night. The nice clean bedding was wonderful and it really was a pleasure to be in there. And I was asleep quite quickly too.

But not for long.

At about 02:15 we had another phantom alarm. I awoke and was waiting for the repeater, but nothing happened so that was when I looked at the time. I don’t know what’s going on.

How many phantom alarms is that now? It’s definitely unsettling, and I’ve no idea how it’s all going to end.

However, I was soon back to sleep, and although I have the vaguest of memories about waking up, I was definitely asleep when the alarm went off.

It’s definitely dark now when I wake up, so my body clock will need to adjust – at least, that’s my excuse for the time that it took for me to get out of bed, stand up and head to the bathroom to sort myself out for the day.

And then, back in here to check the dictaphone to see if anything else went on during the night.

I was at work again last night. It was a Friday and I’d finished all my work. There was nothing left there to do and it was still about an hour before the office closed, so I went to see the boss for the usual permission to leave early. Today, for some reason, he decided to refuse, so in the end I went back to my desk, and a group of us were there chatting away when some woman came in with a blue form and asked to see one of our team. We explained that he wasn’t in the office today. She was not happy about something on this form, so we had a look at it. As far as we could tell, it was perfectly correct and we couldn’t see what was wrong with it, but she was fed up with the persistence and the number of forms that she’d had. I said that the person who deals with your file isn’t in today. He’s quite an accurate officer but he’s probably not seen one of these forms before. She said that that was exactly what he told her. We agreed that she should come back on Tuesday when he would be there. In the meantime, I’d ‘phoned Nerina to say that I couldn’t come home early. She, jokingly – or perhaps not so jokingly – asked, “what’s her name?” so I explained to her that it was the decision of the boss at the office. She did one of these “oh yes”es as if she didn’t really believe it. At 17:00 we all went home, and once I was outside, I telephoned her to say that I was on my way home. Nerina asked “alone?” to which I replied “of course I’m alone” and we started this little teasing about “you’re only late home from the office today because someone special kept you there” – that kind of thing.

Usually, my dreams about work generally involve me on the point of leaving because I’m well past retirement age, so this is a new departure, just as leaving work an hour earlier would be.

And the officer who was not there to deal with that woman. I recognised who he was – the old Head Boy of the school when we were in the Upper Sixth. What’s he doing, appearing in my dreams, I have no idea.

Nerina’s teasing has an underlying serious aspect too. I don’t think that she was ever convinced about me.

The nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my legs and feet. And I had a surprise for him today.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day, I had an intruder open my apartment door. I’ve decided now to lock the door when I go to bed and open it when I’m awake. This will cause problems for the nurses on Sundays if I’m lying in, so I gave the nurse a key that I’d had cut to add to their huge collection so that they can open the door all the same.

After he left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Well, actually, I didn’t. I was led up a blind alley by something else that he wrote and spent a good while following the trail. I even ended up – don’t ask me how – reading the biography of Nicolae Moromete, a senior prison officer in Romania for the Communists when they came to power. Don’t ask me how I found myself there with him.

After breakfast, I came back in here where there were plenty of things to do. Once they were all out of the way, I turned my attention to the radio programme that I had started yesterday. I had to hunt down loads of music, have a good chat with my artificial intelligence chatbot about some of it, download it, reformat it, re-edit it and remix it.

Once I had the ten that I needed, I had to choose from amongst them a good opening track, a good second track and a good final track, then pair and segue every one of them.

And this will be an interesting programme, that’s for sure. For instance, have you ever heard Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” played with a lead violin? We have my friend Mark to thank for that.

There were several interruptions today while I was doing that – firstly, there was the disgusting drink break. Then we had Rosemary calling me for a chat, and finally, I fell asleep for about three quarters of an hour. So, pushed for time as I was, I managed to write over 25% of the notes as well.

That was what I call “a productive day”.

No tea again tonight. I grabbed a handful of biscuits instead. I can’t face any food again right now. I’m definitely not well.

So now, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Nicolae Moromete … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends asked me what I had learned about him
"Quite a lot" I replied. "For example, he was the person who came out with the famous quote ‘Under socialism, people guilty of nothing would still go to prison, but for less than ten years’"

Tuesday 25th August 2026 – THERE’S A NICE …

… clean me … "well, clean anyway" – ed … tonight, going to sleep in a nice clean bed tonight. It’s Tuesday, so that’s shower day, and while I was hosing myself down, my faithful cleaner gave my bed a good going over and changed the bedding.

Actually, it’s quite nice to be in that position, because these days, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, showering is something that I find extremely difficult these days. And so I’m only allowed to have a shower when she’s here to watch over me. I’m not allowed to have one when I’m on my own in case I fall.

But anyway, be that as it may, last night, having abandoned my notes halfway through, it was still after 22:30 when I went to bed. I awoke twice during the night, but I have no idea what time it was – I couldn’t be bothered to look. And in any case, I was back asleep quickly enough.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was definitely asleep. And I was certainly in no mood to leave the bed. It was quite a struggle to coax myself out of bed and sit on the edge, never mind stand up and go to the bathroom.

Eventually, though, I made it into the bathroom and managed to organise myself into something like, ready to face the day, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night.

I had a huge, blazing row with one of my friends last night. We’d all been away and were due to come home. I’d spent all afternoon and evening servicing the van, and all through the night we’d been packing everything away. Early in the morning, we set off for home again. We arrived back home in the early evening, and I reckoned that I’d been working for about thirty hours without a break, so whilst everyone was gathered in the living room, I excused myself and said that I was going straight to bed. I went into my bedroom, and it was untidy with all kinds of stuff everywhere, but then I thought “it’s my room, so what does it matter?”. I made a little space, but before I could go to bed, three or four people came up to chat. That was really the last thing that I wanted. They wouldn’t go, and they were there for most of the evening, so it was now almost forty hours without any sleep. Eventually, they left and I was just now going to bed when my friend turned up. He asked me “have you seen such-and-such”? Well, of course I hadn’t – I’ve been ill in bed, so I went to bed. And after wrestling with a pile of frozen food that needed to be put away, he just lay on the bed next to me, talking. I told him to go about three or four times, but he wouldn’t. In the end, I picked up a couple of jars that he was carrying and threw them at the door, and in the end, he got the message, and I tried to go to sleep. However, my friend went to the police and explained that I’d attacked him. This led to all kinds of complications, and he came back. I asked him to go, but he said no, the police said that he could stay if he liked. Just then, the woman who was in charge of the whole outfit turned up, so I asked her if she could make him leave. However, she wanted to know note-by-note exactly what had happened.

This dream does have some kind of basis in fact – not about the van and not about wanting to go to bed, but about a former friend and a friendship that came to a shuddering halt. Although, as usual, it’s one of those stories that the World is not yet ready to hear.

But being out and about with no sleep is not unusual. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall Back about fifteen years ago, I was in Cambridge. I had to drive to Gloucestershire to pick up a trailer, then to North Lancashire to pick up a mini digger, and then all the way down to central France – a working “day” of thirty-five hours with the only sleep being the couple of hours on the cross-Channel ferry. I couldn’t do it now.

The nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my legs and feet. While he was working, he was chatting about Welsh football, which I thought was rather strange.

After he left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Actually, I didn’t read that much of it today. He started to talk about the Batalha Monastery in Portugal, and that was something of which I knew nothing at all. Consequently, I set off to find out about it. Apparently its construction was ordered by King John I of Portugal as fulfilment of a vow that he had made before a battle in which his small army decisively defeated a very much larger Castilian and French army and assured Portugal’s independence.

Back in here, I began the knotty problem of this soundtrack, where I had to dispose of about one and a half minutes of something, but I know not what, in order to make enough room for a decent introduction.

By the time that I’d finished, I’d actually disposed of two and a half minutes, which makes it even better. But it didn’t ‘arf take some time to do. I managed to save some time by trimming out some of the applause. That involved trying to mate the “before the trim” endings with the “after the trim” starting points, and that took a great deal of time and effort, and yet it still didn’t take out enough.

The next step, therefore, was to listen to the long and pointless guitar and bass at the start of one of the tracks. With a constant beat running through it, I could take out a lot of that and simply mate up the beats. But when you have a choice of ten beats, it’s not that easy. And, after about an hour and a half and once you do find the correct beat, that’s when you find that the drummer’s timing at the “after the trim” point isn’t the same as at the “before the trim” point, so they don’t overlap. And that’s when it really does become difficult because the two parts don’t overlay.

Eventually, though, after much binding in the marsh, I managed to solve the problem to some kind of suitable degree, using an awful lot of “Silence” mode. And when I played it back just now, you couldn’t hear the join.

By now, my cleaner was here doing her stuff. She organised the bathroom for me and I went for my shower. While I was in there, she was tidying up my bedroom and changing the bedding.

Once more, I was able to go into the shower, shower and come out without help again. That’s definite progress, right enough.

After my cleaner left, I began to think about what I needed to write for the introduction for the programme, and by the time that I was ready to knock off, all of the notes had been written – all three minutes and four seconds worth of them. There will still be some editing to do, I reckon.

Tea tonight was non-existent. I wasn’t in the mood, so I simply had a handful of biscuits, and now I’m thinking of going to bed, ready to begin the next radio programme tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about silence … "well, one of us has" – ed … a woman in church whispered to her husband "I’ve just broken wind silently. It’s one of those “silent but deadly” ones. What do you think I should do?"

"If I were you" said her husband, "the first thing that I would do would be to switch your hearing aid back on."

Monday 24th August 2026 – NOW HERE’S A …

… thing!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on three or four occasions, I’ve found myself being awoken by a phantom alarm. And on one occasion, I was even up and out of bed before I realised that it was a false alarm.

But what happened this morning was far, far more bizarre than that. However, you’ll have to read on to find out what it was.

Last night, although I made a determined effort, it was almost 23:30 when I finally crawled into bed, totally fed up of the day and everything like that. And surprisingly, it took me an age to go off to sleep.

And now we come to the exciting bit.

This was another strange night when at about 01:35, I awoke to find myself sitting on the edge of the bed, thinking that the alarm had gone off. I had to convince myself to go back to bed when I found out that it hadn’t.

But what was interesting about this is that usually, when there’s a phantom alarm going off, I really do “hear” it in my sleep, even though it doesn’t ring. Last night, though, I heard nothing and awoke spontaneously, and there I was, already sitting on the edge of the bed. It was completely bizarre.

Anyway, I went back to bed, and as far as I know, although you can never be sure, the way things are today, I didn’t wake up again until the alarm rang.

When the alarm went off, we had the usual dithering while I tried to find some enthusiasm from somewhere, but eventually I managed to find my way into the bathroom for a really good wash and shave in the unlikely event that I see Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

Back in here, I listened to what else was on the dictaphone from last night.

I was back wandering around London yet again last night, only this time London turned out to be Crewe. I was roaming all around the shops in the shopping centre and this precinct that they’ve built to replace the old Queensway lot. I was just looking around from shop to shop and was thinking of going over to look at the ASDA and Co-op supermarkets, but somehow I found myself in the hospital. So I went into hospital, right to the top, and wandered around a few wards, then gradually worked my way down. I was still quite high up when I came across the café there. I went in to join the queue in the café and asked them if they could make me a baguette with cheese and tomato but no butter. She went to find all the ingredients, and I ended up with two half-baguettes. She put a load of crudités on them and things like that on them, on the grounds that quite a lot of people hadn’t had their crudités this morning, so there were plenty left over, and because I’d enjoyed her cooking, I could have several of them, which I thought was quite nice of her. I ended up sitting in the Oxford College Students’ Union having my lunch and trying to write up a few notes.

So, back in London yet again. How many times is this? And quite recently we’ve been in a high building just like this hospital building, only then it was a university dormitory.

However, in this dream, Crewe town centre was magnificent, all glass and black metal framing. And the tower block where British Home Stores used to be was raised on a central pole above a two-storey row of shops on the corner and looked from the outside like one black metal inverted rectangle framework with rounded corners, with a huge single glass window. The glass was frosted so you couldn’t see in from the outside, but it looked wonderful.

The nurse turned up early, and he talked about the “race of the café waiters” yesterday in the town as he dealt with my feet and legs. The race, so he told me, is for waiters from the cafés in the town who have to run round a course in the town centre while carrying a tray with a bottle and some glasses on it. It’s hilarious, so I was told.

After he left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

He’s keeping out of controversy again today, but still banging the jingoistic drum as loud as he can at every possible opportunity.

Back in here, there were things to do, and then when they were finished, I reviewed the next radio programme and sent it off for inclusion in the stream for Friday.

And then we had the real work.

As I mentioned yesterday, the next radio programme is going to be a live concert, so I was busy looking at the soundtrack. It’s one hour and thirty-eight minutes long, so it needs a lot of hefty editing. After two passes, I have it down to fifty-nine minutes and forty-five seconds But if I want to put in a decent introduction, I’ll have to edit it some more (although I’m not sure how). I probably need a good two minutes to have something like what I want.

When my alarm sounded at midday, I went into the kitchen to prepare myself for dialysis and to have my disgusting drink and midday medication. My faithful cleaner came down to apply the anaesthetic on my arm too, and it’s a good job that she was early because the taxi, which is booked for 13:00, turned up at 12:25 today.

Not that I’m complaining, of course. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the earlier I start, the earlier I’ll finish. But today, apparently, it’s not likely to be an earlier start – more a drive around the countryside picking up two other passengers who live miles from anywhere.

That doesn’t bother me either. As I have also said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … since I’ve been going to dialysis with this taxi company, I’m seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed.

And so it was today. After picking someone up in the back of St Pair-sur-Mer, we had to go to a remote community called Bouillon where there’s a campsite and where there was a tourist who had to go to the hospital for an appointment. And what a nice village Bouillon is, especially the church that has an apple tree growing out of its tower.

Our taxi arrived at dialysis at about 13:30 and dropped me off before continuing on its way with the other two passengers. I went to weigh myself and found, to my pleasure, that it wasn’t as disastrous as it might have been. And seeing as there was plenty of room to manoeuvre, I persuaded the nurse to add a further 300 grams to the amount to be extracted today so that I would be in advance for Thursday.

By 14:02 I was up and running, and I could turn my attention to the football from the weekend. Today’s match was another one from last Friday – Colwyn Bay v newly promoted Airbus UK Broughton, played in front of a crowd of over four figures.

Airbus already has more points than it managed over the whole season when it was last in the Premier League, and whilst it was rather optimistic to expect the club to win any more in this match, they played really well and limited the Seagulls to a 1-0 victory.

Yet another skilful game with plenty of reasons for the Wingmakers to be optimistic for the forthcoming season.

There was also time to watch some of the game between Trefelin and Caernarfon, but I didn’t see enough to make any worthwhile comment about the match.

For a change, my blood pressure behaved itself, and the nurse only had to come running three or four times when the alarm sounded. That makes a change from just recently.

Surprisingly, a doctor came to see me today just as I was leaving. I told him about the hallucinations, as I had been advised to do by more than one person who thought that they might be dangerous. He asked me if I was bothered about them, but I replied “not particularly” so he told me that he won’t change anything.

He also asked me if I ever had a feeling of being disorientated or not knowing where I was. I replied that I’d had that for years, long before I ever started on these pills and tablets.

When the session was over, I was unplugged quite quickly, and to make matters even better, the taxi was already here and waiting. However, we had to wait for another passenger and then drop her off in Sartilly. Nevertheless, by 18:10 I was back home, where my cleaner was waiting to help me into the apartment and stick a disgusting drink into my hands.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg. The stuffing for the roll was made of some dehydrated “minced beef” with kidney beans, onions, garlic and tomato sauce. There was enough for three rolls, so two helpings have gone into the freezer for another time.

Back in here, I made a start on writing the notes, but I ran out of energy. After another tough day at dialysis, I couldn’t keep awake. And so I posted online the notes as far as I had written and went to bed. I’ll finish the notes off in the morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about café waiters … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember someone in a café having a drink of coffee and immediately turning up his nose at it.
"This coffee tastes like mud!" he declared.
"But sir!" replied the waiter "It was ground only half an hour or so ago!"

Sunday 23rd August 2026 – ONE THING ABOUT …

… yesterday that I forgot to mention was that when I awoke at 20:30 from crashing out, it wasn’t just the tiredness that I’d noticed. I was freezing cold and all the hairs on my arms were standing up. It was 22°C in here too, so it wasn’t actually the cold that was making me feel like that, but something else.

As usual, the answer to something like that is to go to bed. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, bed is my medication that cures everything. And you know that I’m ill if I’m prepared to miss a live football match in favour of bed.

So I ended up in bed at about 20:30 last night and I was asleep even before my head touched the pillow. But, as usual, not for long. I was awake at 00:30 and awake again at 02:00.

As well as that, I awoke a third time. I’ve no idea what time that might have been, but I couldn’t go back to sleep at all, so at 04:05 I was at my desk working on the computer.

No point in lazing around in bed when you can be working, and I had my notes from yesterday to write, so I dashed them off, put them online, and I was back in bed by about 05:30. I reckoned then that I’d stay in bed until the nurse arrived.

When he turned up, I was fast asleep in bed, so he awoke me and did the necessary with my legs and feet. After he left, I thought that I’d get up in five minutes and go for breakfast.

When I finally awoke, sorted myself out in the bathroom and went into the kitchen, it was 10:10. So much for my early start. I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

It now looks as if he’s summing up, and as he begins to discuss Gothic architecture on the continent, he reminds us that "England, with less of gigantic grandeur in particular buildings, and less of rapid development in styles, gives to all a harmony and purity which is peculiarly her own, and in the course of her slower progress, calls forth forms of beauty unknown to other lands."

All that I can say about this is that anyone who has viewed anything at all of the Gothic architecture on the continent will be wondering what on earth Mr (or the Reverend) Freeman was smoking when he was writing his jingoistic prose.

Back in here, the first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from last night. That was a very painful exercise because I can’t believe how much I was coughing during the night, all of it recorded on the dictaphone.

This is another dream about roaming around in London. I wanted to buy a guitar for a friend of mine, but I didn’t really know where to go, so I went down to London and had a good wander around in the usual streets, in Oxford Street and so on to try to see if there was anything there. All I could see is the cheap kind of rubbish and crowds of people. I kept meeting crowds of people whom I knew too. Then I began to walk down to Tin Pan Alley, but I was almost knocked over by a taxi. Who should be driving that taxi but Emilie the Cute Consultant. I asked her if she could do me a favour, but she said that she couldn’t because she was too busy working – she had to go back to Crewe shortly. I said “yes, that’s the favour. You couldn’t run me to Crewe, could you?”. She replied that she couldn’t, so I was rather disappointed. However, she said that she’d have a talk with me very soon. I suppose that that cheered me up somewhat, and I carried on towards Tin Pan Alley with these crowds of people.

It seems that “in my dreams” is the only chance I have of seeing Emilie the Cute Consultant, even if she does turn me down. And she’ll “have a talk with me very soon”. That’s the line most people use when they are giving someone the brush-off.

However, being in London yet again would seem to be significant. This is the third or fourth time just recently that I’ve been here during the night. I expect that I’ll find out what it’s all about in due course

We were going off on another adventure, but this time, it was in my old J4 van. There were quite a few of us, including some people whom I didn’t know, and the van was quite loaded. The front of it was full of rubbish so we had to take all of it out and put it in the rubbish bin. That was when we found that this pile of oil had seeped onto the passenger seat so we were there scrubbing it, and the guy who was sitting there was rather disappointed. He was hoping not to get his clothes dirty. In the end, we managed to have it looking something like so we went to wash our hands. I couldn’t find the swarfega for ages, but eventually, when that guy had begun to wash his hands with fairy liquid or something, I produced the Swarfega and gave my hands a good wash with it and showed him the difference between my hands and his.

The J4 had long-gone by the time that I moved into Gainsborough Road, but this was where all of the action was taking place last night.

The guy sitting in the oily seat reminds me of that photo that was doing the rounds a few years ago – the old American politician sitting in his seat that was photoshopped into thousands of other photos all around the World.

After all of that, there was the football to watch. We started off with Penybont against Llandudno.

Whether or not you think that Llandudno’s position, for a newly promoted club, up near the top of the league is a false position, they certainly haven’t come into this league, as some newly promoted clubs have, simply to make up the numbers. They took the game to Penybont just as much as Penybont took the game to them, and in fact, from the kick-off, it took Penybont five minutes and fifty-five seconds to get into Llandudno’s half of the field.

In fact, the first Penybont goal was a marvellous overhead bicycle kick of the kind that was unstoppable, and had I been refereeing, or anyone else for that matter, their second goal would have been disallowed for a blatant foul on a defender

And this is the first game in which I’ve seen a club penalised under this new five-second rule for throw-ins, goal kicks and the like.

The 2-1 scoreline in favour of Penybont was about fair, but they can feel relieved now, just as Llandudno can feel disappointed.

Afterwards, we had Stranraer throw away a 2-goal lead to draw 2-2 against Stirling Albion. Stranraer had the Binos all over the place in the first half, and in the second half, the situation was reversed. Never was there a “Game of Two Halves” to match this one.

The next match was Greenock Morton v Arbroath. Although Arbroath won this game 2-1, this is the best I’ve seen Morton play since Ian Murray took over. And they finally managed to score a goal after about ten games of trying, and it had to be a sixteen-year-old schoolboy playing as an emergency full-back who scored it too, not one of the established professionals.

Finally, the fourth match was Trefynnon v Barry Town. This is the fourth game that Trefynnon has lost – this time it was 3-1. However, they played much better in this game and even took the lead. And had they scored the penalty that they were awarded when the score was 1-1, it all might have been so different.

They kept on playing and going on the attack as long as they possibly could, but the desire to score an equaliser when they were 2-1 down cost them dearly. Having committed everyone to the attack, they were torn open at the attack by a breakaway, and Barry scored their third goal with practically the last kick of the game.

But I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that the field microphone was placed right by the Barry dugout, and we had someone from their bench bellowing out instructions to his players in the loudest voice I have ever heard and using the most disgraceful language that would have been out of order even in the fo’c’sle of a Greenland whaler. It really was a disgrace, and the club should be ashamed of their employee.

Apart from that, though, we had two Cymru Premier matches today that were played with a lot of skill, not like some of the midfield mauls that we saw last weekend.

So no food tonight again. I’ve written my notes and when I’ve done what else needs doing, I’m off to bed ready to Fight the Good Fight at dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Greenland whalers … "well, one of us has" – ed … a couple of years ago, a crew member was washed overboard in the Davis Strait and was lost.
A year later, his wife had a visit from the Nova Scotia lifeboat crew. "We have some bad news for you, and some better news" said the skipper.
"Oh" says the woman. "Tell me the bad news."
"A body has been discovered in the sea near Luneburg" replies the skipper. "we can’t ask you to identify him because his body was all covered in lobsters and crabs, but by the clothing, we reckon that he’s your husband."
"So what’s the better news"
"We’ll pull him up again tomorrow and see what the catch is like then."

Saturday 22nd August 2026 – THERE HAS BEEN …

… a calamity at dialysis today, and it’s as if the World had come to an end. For quite a while, I wondered if I would ever survive the shock.

Yes, that’s right. They forgot to bring the coffee round to the room in which another woman and I were being dealt with. Luckily, we had a very understanding nurse, and once we mentioned the problem to her, she went off and did the necessary. But it wasn’t half worrying.

That’s not been the worst of my worries either, but more of this anon.

Last night, after the football, I spent some time writing my notes, but as it became later and later, I began to think that I’d never finish them at this rate and I’d be here all night. So I called it a day round about 23:30, finished off what needed to be finished off and I was in bed round about midnight.

At some point in the middle of the night, I think that I awoke, but once again, it was the same as has been happening just recently – I wasn’t sure if I was awake or not, if I was still asleep or dreaming or anything like that. It reminded me of that line in THE PRISONER – "by the time we’ve finished with him, he won’t know whether he’s No. 6 or the cube root of infinity".

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

However, I was definitely asleep at 06:15 when someone opened the door to my apartment. I shouted “who is it?”, but the response was that whoever it was closed the door and cleared off. I can see that I’m going to have to take “certain steps”, which might include involving a bucket full of whitewash.

And then we had the usual struggle about hauling myself out of bed and going to the bathroom to sort myself out. I managed to have my feet on the floor before the alarm went off, which counts as an “early start”, but the rest isn’t quite as easy. In the end, I managed it, including a good scrub-up and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

Back in here afterwards, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

We went to see some friends who lived in a small seaside port. We noticed that there were three shipping containers sitting on the quayside here waiting to be picked up by some kind of boat. There was a guy there too, and I didn’t like him, but he definitely sounded like some kind of underworld villain, and he was pointed out by my friends as having a place somewhere in Argentina where he’d go to hide every now and again. A few weeks later, there was an article in the local paper about a British guy who lived in Argentina who had been arrested and the police were still looking for three shipping containers. I said to Nerina “I know where they are”. A couple of months later, I was at an auction sale which took place on behalf of the government that was to sell the possessions of this guy, and one of them was his interests in taxis in quite a few councils, so I went along to see what was happening. It started surprisingly cheaply, so much so that I could make an offer and I could bid on it at one time, but the bidding went slowly out of my reach, and eventually some guy had part of it knocked down to him. He wanted an option on the rest, but he needed to have the support of 50% of the people. A lot of people put up their hands but he said that he was one county short. I thought “in for a penny, in for a pound”, and I put my hand up. He said “right, yes, Cheshire! That’s all I need!” and the whole lot was knocked down to him. Then he had a meeting of all of his supporters afterwards, and I went along to see what was on offer. He started to tell us a few things that had nothing whatever to do with taxis, so I wondered what on earth his game was.

This little port, I’ve seen it before on several postcards and photos, but I just can’t put a name to it. It’s a tiny port, and it beats me how they would ever manage to sail a ship into here to take away one container, never mind three.

Argentina doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere, but the story of the crook who had interests in taxi businesses all over the UK rings a familiar bell if you were to turn the clock back thirty or forty years and is probably still continuing today, for all I know. But Arsenal FC supporters will be much more clued in to this than I am.

There had been a whole group of us staying somewhere in Spain in a hotel-kind of place, and some friends of ours in the neighbourhood came to visit too. We stayed there for a couple of days, and when we were on the point of leaving, some Spaniard turned up in a strange kind of van. It had some kind of maker’s name on the side that was in initials and we were trying to identify it. I reckoned that it was a Japanese clone of something. It had no roof and no sides where the driver sat, and he was complaining that the starter motor didn’t work and a couple of other things didn’t work and the quality was rubbish. We were there with a dog, and a policeman came. He had an Alsatian, and this dog of ours took a great deal of interest in the Alsatian, and the Alsatian, which was a female, ran and hid. We thought “our dog’s found a new girlfriend, has he?”. In the end, we all piled into my van and we set off for home and to drop off these people on the way. For the past two or three days when we’d gone down this road, there had been some girl struggling to get on her pushbike, and she was still there today, struggling. When we reached the bottom where I’d normally turn left, I did a U-turn and came back up the hill. Everyone was wondering why. One or two people were complaining, but I said “don’t worry, it’s only going to put a couple of extra seconds on your timetable” and I stopped back outside the gates of this house again. Instead of asking someone to open the gates, I had a strange kind of hook made out of an old garden rake. I put that over the top of the gates, climbed up it and went over the top, then dropped down onto the garden. What I’d come to check was to see whether a friend of mine who was supposed to be coming but never turned up had finally made it, because we could intercept him on the way home, but if we went a different way home, we’d miss him for that five minutes while we were getting back on the correct one, so I wanted to make sure that he hadn’t come before I set off again in the hope of trying to meet up with him.

Strangely enough, this is pretty much the same scenery as in the dream a few days ago when I was living up on the Czech/Austrian border

The van could be any one of a dozen French microvans that are on the road today, or maybe one of those tiny Japanese vans that were common on the roads forty years ago. The dog, of course, needs no explanation.

The rest of it, including the girl struggling on her bicycle and my weird “garden hook”, must have some explanation somewhere, and I wish I knew just what it was.

The nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my legs and feet. He didn’t stay long, and once he’d left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Our hero is now back discussing a few foreign edifices of a religious nature, but concludes with "Certainly when we compare these edifices with our own contemporary ones, we can have but little hesitation in esteeming England to have been, during the fifteenth century at least, the chosen abode of Christian art"

He then goes on to list several marvellous examples of European Gothic work but remarks "Our buildings never run into the same senseless extravagance, where nothing but mere excess of ornament is left to supply the place of real art"

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I was hoping to be reading a book on architecture, not a book on art.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I made a start on the notes from yesterday. And they took much longer than they ought to do, because from about 10:30 to 11:15, I was asleep on my chair. And I remember nothing whatever about falling asleep. No-one was more surprised than me when I awoke.

By the time I’d finished and put them online, there wasn’t much time for anything else. I had to go to prepare myself for dialysis. My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic as usual, and then I had to wait for the taxi.

And not for long either, as it was here for 12:40. We had to go to pick up Mrs Dinosaur and then we set off nice and early for Avranches, only to be stuck in a traffic queue at Marcey-les-Grèves due to the autoroute being blocked in both directions with holiday traffic coming and going.

However, at the dialysis centre, I was seen to pretty quickly, so by 14:05 I was up and running and could watch Rhydaman v Connah’s Quay Nomads.

There’s no doubt that the Nomads were in a class above Rhydaman, but the latter managed to defend heroically for much of the match and even had several good chances themselves. But even so, a 2-0 victory for the Nomads was only to be expected, and Rhydaman could be proud of their performance.

After that, I was going to watch a second game, but there were too many interruptions and disturbances, not to mention the Quest For The Coffee.

As luck would have it, when I was finished, the nurse was doing nothing much so I was unplugged straight away, although she had jammed the catch on my backpack with my laptop inside it. My taxi was waiting too, so I was home by 18:00.

My cleaner was there to stick a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt, and after she left, I came in here to begin my notes and watch this evening’s football match. However, after I’d fallen asleep for an hour on the chair, I booted that idea into touch, wrote a terse note on my blog and went to bed. It was 20:20.

Now, it’s 05:00, I’ve been up for an hour or so, finished my notes, and I’m now going back to bed to await the arrival of the nurse.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about traffic jams … "well, one of us has" – ed … apparently the queues on the autoroute were caused by an accident. A golfer playing on a golf course at the side of the road had sliced a ball which crashed through the window of a coach, hitting the driver, causing him to swerve and have a fatal accident.
Later that same day, the gendarmes were interviewing the golfer "due to your negligence, you caused a road traffic accident which killed the bus driver, fifteen schoolkids and one accompanying adult" they roared. "What are you going to do about it?"
After a minute’s thought, the golfer replied "Perhaps I ought to tighten my grip, take a shorter swing and incline the golf club head more to the right."

Friday 21st August 2026 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… a little better than the relapse yesterday, although the hallucinations are back. It’s amazing how they just appear when I’m doing something and I end up being distracted.

Not that I was distracted last night. It was a very determined me that went to bed at the end of the day, round about 22:30 or thereabouts. I didn’t hang about very long.

It wasn’t very long before I was asleep either. Well away in the Land of Nod, I was. At least for a certain time, that is. However –

The alarm went off this morning, and I awoke and switched it off. I thought that in a couple of minutes, I would have to get up again. But it didn’t feel at all like getting-up time. There was no “tired” situation or anything. So after a few minutes, when I finally agreed that it was darker inside the house than outside, I’d have a look at the bathroom fittings. It turned out that some of them were modular types and others were these “push-on” suction types, so I thought that rather than being some kind of suction type, I’d wait until I could get them all in one go and buy a complete set of pushers.

The alarm really did awaken me back then, and while I didn’t actually get up this time, something strange must have gone on afterwards as the dream descended into all kinds of things that make no sense at all … "no change there then" – ed …

Shortly afterwards, I awoke again – or, at least, I think I did. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m finding myself in these situations where I don’t know if I’m awake or not … "nothing new there either" – ed … if I’m dreaming or having one of these hallucinations.

I must have been asleep at some point because the alarm awoke me at 06:29 – a proper alarm and a proper awakening. We had the usual ten minutes or so while I tried to awaken myself and find the enthusiasm to stand up, and then I went to the bathroom for a good scrub-up, etc.

Back in here, I had a listen to find out what else was on the dictaphone.

It was in the early 1930s, and in the ramshackle car that we had, two friends and I went to Montréal from the USA. While we were in Montréal, there was an announcement of a huge earthquake, so everyone ran for their lives. This led to some kind of indiscriminate looting and pillaging of the town, and we ended up with quite a few things. I carried something heavy with me all the way, and when I came to the car, the two guys there told me to throw it away again. I was surprised after carrying it all that far, but I put it down and watched it roll away, and then we drove off. They told me that it was a barrel of whisky and, obviously, in Prohibition and I’d bought that back to the USA, we’d have been in a lot of trouble. We arrived back in the USA and I went and caught a tram home. There was some young guy on there so we ended up having a long chat with him.

Part of this dream that I can still see and which doesn’t seem to be recorded is that when we were pushing the car through the crowded streets in a column of other vehicles, occasionally, we had to stop because of an obstruction ahead. And all the time, someone was shelling the city and the shells were landing quite close to us. At one point, we stopped and then moved on again, and the car immediately behind us was hit by a shell exactly at the spot where we had been waiting for five minutes, not two seconds before.

This dream could be anything related to any one of the hundreds of old black-and-white films that I own, but the bit about the vehicles in the queue being shelled reminds me of a scene from THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, except that my viewpoint last night would have been diagonally across the road from where Clint Eastwood was watching the queue go through the town where he was.

Later on, Nerina and I came back to Crewe. We had another Mark III Cortina estate this time. We came back to Gainsborough Road and went in. It was all dark and gloomy and hadn’t been lived in for years. We saw what kind of state it was, so we went round to the DIY place with a couple of friends. We bought some things that we needed and I was picking up all the wood offcuts, including some very long ones. I had no idea what I was going to do with them, but they were free. We went back home with all these huge nails, planks of wood, etc., and put them in the house, which was already full of tonnes of building material to start with. I had a look at the house and there was mould everywhere coming up the walls. I thought that I was going to have to do a lot of work on this place. Then it was Christmas and we had a pile of friends round celebrating. We did one of those line dance conga things all the way around the house and back out into the streets. Then, everyone decided that for an hour, they would go to find someone who needed help and give them some help for an hour or so. Nerina knew some kind who needed some help with reading, but I didn’t know of anyone who needed any help. It had been a long time since I’d been here.

This is very similar to a dream that I had a long time ago when I had also come back from years away elsewhere.

But the state of the house could so easily have been the same at Gainsborough Road had luck not gone my way at the most unexpected times. And Mark III Cortina estates all around the place? It does sound like home, doesn’t it?

The nurse came round as usual to sort out my legs and feet. He didn’t have much to say for himself except to tell me to rest today, and then he left.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

He’s still doing his best to keep clear of controversy by not mentioning anything to do with foreign locations, so it’s becoming rather boring. However, I am continuing to add to my knowledge of architectural terms as he introduces more and more strange words into his book, and I’m having to do more and more research. Hammer beams, anyone?

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and once they were out of the way, I could carry on with the radio programme.

That’s now finished, but it took much longer than it ought to, due to the fact that I had to redo part of the music. I did wonder why I had only forty-one minutes of music when I’d calculated forty-six and a half. Now I know.

There were the usual interruptions – the disgusting drink break and then my cleaner turned up to do her stuff and to have a chat too.

After she had left and I’d finally finished the radio notes, I had a relax for half an hour (somehow avoiding falling asleep), and then I started the next – not one, but two – radio programmes.

It’s a bit of a cheat really. The first one will be a concert. It’s one hour and thirty-eight minutes long, so it needs to be cut down to about fifty-seven or fifty-eight minutes to give me time to introduce everything. However, there was no running list with this concert so I had to listen to it all and make my own.

And while I was listening to the concert, I was looking at the next programme, trying to find out what music I’ll need.

At teatime, I knocked off and went to eat. As seems to be usual on these Fridays, tea was air-fried chips, vegan sausages and baked beans in cheese and fresh ground black pepper. And it was beautiful as always.

After tea, we had football – Hwlffordd, usually a challenger for the European spots but struggling right now at the foot of the table with no points and no goals, v Cambrian United, the team from the Rhondda Valley, newly promoted and looking quite impressive so far.

This was another exciting game that roared from one end to the other at a hundred miles and hour, and there was plenty of skilful football being played. It was nothing at all like the midfield mauls that we’ve seen just recently.

Cambrian scored a goal not long after the restart, and as the game went on, Hwlffordd began to throw the kitchen sink at them. However, that left them vulnerable at the back and Cambrian fully exploited it, not just once but twice. The latter being with the penultimate kick of the match from a guy who had only been on the pitch five minutes.

It does have to be said, though, that while Cambrian fully deserved their victory, 3-0 is a rather flattering scoreline for them.

After that, I started to write the notes for today but ran out of steam. Eventually, having fallen asleep twice, I headed for bed. I can finish my notes tomorrow and you can see them in the morning.

But just a little notice – there’s a game tomorrow evening, so you might not have the complete notes until Sunday late morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about drinking … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once walked into a pub and asked "where are the books, please?"
"There are no books here" replied the landlord. "We don’t sell books, we sell alcohol."
"Not a problem" said the customer. "Do you have ‘Tequila Mockingbird’, please?"

Thursday 20th August 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what kind of day it has been today. It certainly wasn’t as good as yesterday, that’s for sure.

Yesterday, I was really feeling fighting fit, that’s for sure. It was after midnight when I stopped letting it all hang out and crawled into bed, although I wasn’t feeling tired in the slightest, as I believe I said. And I didn’t go to sleep very quickly either.

But when I did finally go to sleep, it wasn’t for too long. When I realised that I was awake (we’ve talked about this just recently), there was a howling gale blowing outside, not the kind of noise you want to hear when you are trying to sleep.

There was no possibility of going back to sleep with all of that noise going on so I just lay there, gently relaxing, or, at least, doing the best that I could to relax. I remember at one point checking the time, and it was 04:42.

It was round about that point that I must have gone back to sleep, for I was definitely asleep when the alarm sounded at 06:29, and the wind was howling around like mad.

As usual, it took me a while to leave the bed and go into the bathroom to sort myself out and even to have a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

Back in here I went to check the window to make sure that everything was in good order, but as soon as I opened it, the howling stopped. When I closed it again, the howling stayed stopped. So I have no idea what was going on. Was I dreaming the noise?

First thing to do was to check the dictaphone and to see where I’d been during the night. However, I needn’t have bothered as the dictaphone was devoid of entries again.

However : –

I’m not sure whether this counts as a dream or not, but I was having another one of those coughing fits that seems to go on for ever, so in the end, when it calmed down, I reached for my emergency supplies. When I was tidying up a while ago, I found a couple of packets of menthol and eucalyptus sweets, and I’ve been taking a couple to bed with me every night for the last few days. Anyway, I reached for one of my sweets, unwrapped it and went to pop it into my mouth. What happened next was that I bit my finger. There was no sweet at all in my hand and no unwrapped paper nearby. If it wasn’t a dream, it was certainly weird

This is a good example of never knowing whether I’m awake, asleep or somewhere in between when I’m lying there in bed. I would have sworn that I really was reaching for a sweet.

My nurse turned up a little later than yesterday. He was talking about not very much and soon left the building, leaving me to go and make breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading yet more about the bombing of England in World War I. And interestingly, at Poelkapelle in Belgium not so long ago, they came across the wreckage of a Staaken, one of Germany’s giant four-engined bombers nearly as big as a B-29 Superfortress, embedded in the ground. It had been shot down on 21st April 1918.

Back in here, there were a few things to do so I set to work, and then I began to write the notes for the radio programme from yesterday. They were about half-done when I had to knock off, but not to worry, I’ll finish them tomorrow.

At midday I went to prepare my things for dialysis, and then my faithful cleaner put in her appearance to apply the anaesthetic to my arm.

She didn’t stay long today, which was just as well because the taxi came early for me. And not just early but at 12:33. Not that it bothered me because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the earlier I start, the earlier I finish.

We had to pick up Mrs Dinosaur and also another woman at the health centre in St Pair, and then we could set off for Avranches.

It was 13:30 when we arrived, and by 14:05, I was up and running. However, it wasn’t easy because, once more, there’s a huge excess of liquid. Consequently, I told them to run it for four hours instead of three, and have you any idea just how tiring it is to have the machine going at max for four hours?

Still, it gave me plenty of opportunity to watch the football from this last weekend. The match between Hwlffordd and Penybont was exciting. It was proper end-to-end football with plenty of skill, not like some of the midfield mauls that we saw earlier. Penybont won 3-0, which was expected, but it was good all the same.

And afterwards, I managed to watch some of Caernarfon v Penybont from the weekend before. There’s still a good bit to go, but even so, it looks like another good, skilful game.

There were problems with the machine, or, rather, with me, and the alarm on the machine was constantly going off. A doctor came to see me too, the new relief doctor, and she gave me a prescription for an antibiotic.

There was also a nurse who came by with a questionnaire for me to answer. Honestly, it was like Euston Station in my little room this afternoon.

When it was time for me to be unplugged, the nurse dealt with me straight away. Even better, the taxi was waiting for me too. We had to drop off Mrs Dinosaur but I was soon back home.

My cleaner was there waiting and she helped me into the apartment, and when I was sitting down, she stuffed a disgusting drink into my hands.

After she left, I grabbed a couple of biscuits and came in here. I didn’t feel like making tea so I wrote my notes instead.

Now, I’m off to bed ready for a nice relaxing day tomorrow, I don’t think. And then on Saturday, it’s dialysis again. I’m getting sick of this.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the World War I bombing of England … "well, one of us has" – ed … a Zeppelin actually flew over Stoke-on-Trent and dropped several bombs on the city.
When I was speaking to a friend, I told him about this.
"What happened?" he asked.
"The bombing was terrible" I replied. "So much so that it caused £140,000,000 worth of improvements."

EPIC HALL

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

LIVE: Wednesday 3rd September 2026 – ISN’T IT LOVELY …

IMPORTANT NOTICE

LIVE: Wednesday 2nd September 2026 – WE ARE NOT …

LIVE: Tuesday 1st September 2026 – PHEW! WHAT A …

Monday 31st August 2026 – HERE WE GO …

Sunday 30th August 2026 – SUNDAY IS A ..

Saturday 29th August 2026 – THIS WAS A

Friday 28th August 2026 – THE BAD WEATHER …

Thursday 27th August 2026 – WHAT AN AFTERNOON …

Wednesday 26th August 2026 – CONSIDERING THE DIFFICULTIES …

Tuesday 25th August 2026 – THERE’S A NICE …

Monday 24th August 2026 – NOW HERE’S A …

Sunday 23rd August 2026 – ONE THING ABOUT …

Saturday 22nd August 2026 – THERE HAS BEEN …

Friday 21st August 2026 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

Thursday 20th August 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

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