Author Archives: Epichall

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… how I’m going to start today’s entry, because, after racking my brains for long enough, I can’t think of anything important or significant that happened.

TNS won … "yet again" – ed … the JD Cymru League championship, but that’s anything but important or significant. In fact, it’s quite usual. It’s long been suggested that it’s a waste of time playing a season’s worth of football. The Football Association of Wales should give all of the trophies to TNS and relegate the newly-promoted sides before a ball has been kicked. That’s usually how it all ends up.

Not necessarily this year though. While newly-promoted Llanelli have already been relegated, the other promoted side, Colwyn Bay, buoyed by some of the biggest crowds that the league has seen, have recruited a good squad of players and are currently in sixth place.

Y Barri lifted the League Cup against TNS the other day, and in the Welsh Cup, TNS were surprisingly eliminated a while back, and this weekend, we have the not-to-be-missed semi-finals with the unlikely pairings of second-tier Y Rhyl against Caernarfon and third-tier Dinas Bangor against Y Fflint. I don’t think that in all the long history of the competition, there have ever been four clubs from the North Wales coast all together in the semis.

While it’s probably too much to hope for, a final between Y Rhyl and Dinas Bangor would certainly be a match to remember, with old rivalries and battles going back almost 150 years, as regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous guises will recall when we were on the terraces at the old Farrar Road Stadium for a match between the two clubs.

But anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

Last night, I raced through everything that I needed to do and, quite surprisingly, finished fairly early. I was actually in bed at 22:20, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been in bed before my curfew time of 22:30.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall what happens next at times like these when I’ve had an early night. That’s right – and at 02:10 too. I tried my best to go back to sleep – tried for hours – and I thought that I would never manage it too. However, at some point, I must have done because the alarm awoke me at 06:29.

And I’m glad that I did too, because I had a special visitor during the night, but more of that anon.

For a change, I was up and about without too much effort and headed into the bathroom for a scrub-up, following which I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

I’d been round at Zero’s house last night, talking to her parents, going over old times again. Their house and their lifestyle were still the same as they always were. We were sitting there, discussing things, and they announced out of the blue that they were going to go out for a meal that evening. I gathered that I wasn’t included in that, but it didn’t bother me at all. However, they asked me if I’d stay behind and keep an eye on Zero. I thought that I may as well do that, so I then had to find some food to eat. They gave me the number of the local chip shop so I tried to telephone it, but for some reason, it wasn’t connecting, so Zero’s father came over and, as usual, over-complicated the affair. Eventually, I managed to get through, and I asked them what vegan or vegetarian options they had. After a lengthy discussion, they didn’t really have anything, so I asked them if they could just send a large bag of chips down and I would make do with that during the evening. Zero asked me if I would be staying there while her parents went out, so I told her that I would, and then her parents made ready to leave.

So welcome back, Zero. I thought that you had deserted me for ever, as TOTGA and Castor seem to have done and the Vanilla Queen did quite a few years ago.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m not in control of whatever happens in my dreams, so just in case anyone is reading this, in real life I would never ever have been left without food when visiting Zero’s parents, that’s for sure.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in after her week’s break. She was in an incredible rush, with a pile of blood tests to perform, which is quite usual after her break. She didn’t hang around long and was soon off on her travels. I could push on and make my breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, for some reason, we are discussing the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople, and this has led me off on a tangent … "as usual" – ed … to examine the entire walled defences of the city and the giant cannon that the Turks used to try to breach them during the siege of 1453. I’m not quite sure how I arrived at this stage, but it’s not surprising.

After breakfast, I came back in here and revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. And, as seems to be usual these days, it all passed very well.

Our classmate from Dubai was there today. We asked her how things were, and she simply couldn’t understand why we were concerned. There had been maybe six, maybe eight rockets that had landed, and no-one was taking any notice of them. The horse racing at the weekend went on as usual and the Emir, the Crown Prince and a group of about twenty sheikhs went for a walk around the city.

She said that there has been no sign whatever of any of the “panic” reported in the Western Press. As far as she’s concerned, it’s the usual “horror story” in the Press, designed to drum up hatred with no foundation whatever in fact.

And that’s all that I’m going to say about it.

When the lesson had finished, my faithful cleaner put in an appearance and shooed me into the shower as usual. And while I was showering, she changed the bedclothes so I now have my nice, clean bed for tonight. And that means a clothes-washing session on Friday.

After she had left, I had a little relax for a while and then attacked the radio programme that I’d begun yesterday. By the time that I’d finished, all of the music had been paired and segued, and some of the notes had been written.

Then, it was a mad dash into the kitchen for tea. I’d planned some pasta, a vegan burger and some ratatouille, but then I remembered that I had some crusty spinach things from ages ago, and I thought that a handful of those would be nice with ratatouille, so I bunged a few in the air fryer.

That was when I discovered that I had no ratatouille. You really can’t make it up, can you?

Back in here, I was in time for the football – Connah’s Quay Nomads v TNS – and if TNS win, they win the Championship.

Unfortunately, Connah’s Quay never looked like scoring, and as the match dragged on, it became more and more obvious that TNS would pull something extra out of the bag. Sure enough, with just a few minutes to go, they won a penalty, one that I considered was rather harsh. However, TNS tucked it away to go into the lead.

Surprisingly, the Nomads went straight from the restart and scored an equaliser, but that wasn’t the end of the story. I’ve lost count of the number of times the Nomads have conceded a goal right at the death and today was no exception. Just ninety seconds to the end too.

The after-match celebrations and speeches went on for so long that it was almost 23:15 when it was all over, far too late to begin to write my notes, so I went to bed instead. The notes can wait until morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Zero … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends asked me if, in the dream, her parents wanted me to babysit her
"You don’t mention the word ‘babysit’ to Zero" I explained.
"Why not?" I was asked
"The first time that I did" I replied "it took two weeks for the swellings to go down and another week before the bruises faded.".
In her youth, she was a fiery, feisty creature.

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Monday 2nd March 2026 – ANOTHER EXCITING DAY …

… at dialysis, I don’t think. If I’m not careful, I shall die of boredom in there. As if I don’t have enough to do with my time as it is, and when you only have one hand that you can use because the other one is pinned to the side of the bed, it all becomes extremely complicated.

Having been going there for as long as I have, I can see why most of the patients in there just curl up and go to sleep.

Actually, that’s how I felt today, and I almost did fall asleep too, but then again, I had a very good reason to do so.

Last night, it wasn’t quite so late as it has been in the past. By the time that I finished everything that needed doing and crawled into my stinking pit, it was 23:20. Still much later than I would have liked, of course, but still earlier than some have been just recently.

What was the killer, though, was that I awoke at 05:20. And it was a case of leaving the bed at that moment too, without even five minutes to let the bedroom stop spinning around.

While I was up and about, I went for a wash and shave and to dress, and then I came back in here because it was far too early to go for my medication.

Instead, I took advantage of the early start and dictated the radio notes that I’d prepared since the last time that I’d had an early start. There were seven lots of programmes all told, and that was a Herculean effort to dictate them all and then upload them to the computer, but I’m glad that they are all done now and I’m up-to-date from that point of view.

Once I’d finished, I went off into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been up to during the night.

I was driving my taxi again last night, and there was something going on in the town centre, so I was there. I must have taken away about twenty fares. One of the very early ones was to go from the town centre with a girl whom I knew who worked in a restaurant there and drop her off at home down the West End. But every other single trip involved a trip down Gresty Road, and I couldn’t understand why everyone seemed to be heading that way. On the way back, on the corner where the Crewe Alex ground is, there was a huge church with lots of tourists milling around there. There were two or three taxis that were waiting there for fares in amongst the crowds, and there was some kind of official, like a tourist guide or something, amongst them. As I kept on going back there to the town centre, I kept on going into a kind of room. At one point, back in this room were some of the people whom I’d taken quite early on in the day, so we had a joke about the trip down the West End because that girl was back there too. I said “I’d have to take a photograph of you,” but she misunderstood it because she was a foreigner, and wondered what on earth kind of photograph I was thinking of. At one stage, I had to go into a different room. I was carrying something. The reason why was that I needed some kind of authority from someone senior, and I knew that the small rooms where the senior people hang out were down this corridor. And out of another room towards the room where I was standing came someone with whom I used to work years ago. We went into his room, and he said “I suppose that you’re going to come out with some kind of comment about photos too, aren’t you?”. Then I suddenly realised that this guy had commented on some photos on a social network, and his comments would not have been the kind that would have been approved today, although thirty or forty years ago, there would have been no remark made. I replied “oh no, but they were rather indiscreet, weren’t they?” to which he just gave a shrug.

This is one problem with living and working in a foreign language. Quite often, you might understand the words but not the actual meaning of the phrase, and this can lead to all kinds of double-entendres and misunderstandings.

But here I am again, driving taxis around Crewe and bumping into old work colleagues. And it’s true about how the UK, and probably many other countries in the Western World, have become more sanitised, and the kind of risqué or oblique comments that we used to use in the past suddenly became banned overnight – round about 1991 and 1992 when we began to have these “political correctness” lessons in the workplace. I remember that a lot of my more humorous cassette tapes that I used on the coaches were completely outlawed

There was also a dream about being down in the Isle of Thanet on holiday. I was walking along the beach, looking up at the promenade thinking “wouldn’t it be great if they dredged this out and they had ships coming along here to moor and anchor right up against the promenade? Then, my mother was talking to my father about the houses in the area. They were alternately grey and white, but we didn’t really know why. We went to visit someone whom we knew, who lived in one of these grey and white wooden wattle-and-daub type of cottage. We went into the kitchen, and I vaguely remember the kitchen from years ago and it looked different to me. She said “yes, there have been one or two changes here. Can you think of what’s missing?”. For some unknown reason, and I don’t know why, I mentioned a bookcase. She looked surprised, and she said “there used to be a bookcase just here”, pointing to an empty space on the wall, “but that’s long gone, and you’ve never seen it. It’s been long gone before you first ever came to this cottage”.

Firstly, there are several places in the World where different colours of houses represent different ethnic groups. Hungary and southwestern Newfoundland spring straight away to my mind, and I seem to recall that Romania does too, or used to.

As for the Isle of Thanet, though, my mother had distant relatives there and every summer, we’d go down there to stay with a great aunt or something, Dolly, Gertie or Mabel. On the Friday night after school broke up, our father would come home from work, we’d all pile into his van and drive through the night and next day down to either Birchington or Hamstreet.

He’d have a few hours’ sleep and then drive back Saturday night and Sunday, ready to start work again on Monday, and that was no picnic in the days before motorways and in a 1937 Fordson van with a three-speed gearbox.

And then he’d come back down for the final two weeks of our school holidays.

Incidentally, many years ago, I went down there myself for a good look around and to visit the places where we used to go. With the M6, M1, M25 and M2, the journey from Crewe to Birchington took just under four hours.

The nurse turned up as usual and was in a chatty mood, hardly surprising because he’s on his week’s break as of this evening. He didn’t stay long, and I could push on, make my breakfast and read my new book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Our author is coming to the close of the period of the Roman occupation, so naturally we’re discussing the religious disputes and also the gathering clouds on the horizon as Alaric and his Huns, various Visigoths and a few Ostrogoths are heading towards Athens and the other Greek cities.

The next few years look to be fairly bleak from a Greek point of view.

Back in here, I reviewed a radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend and, satisfied with how it runs, I sent it off for inclusion in the broadcasting stream. There were a few other things to do, and then I made a start on the next radio programme. All of the music has been chosen and prepared, and I’ve made a start on pairing and segueing it.

My cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and then I had to wait for the taxi. He was more-or-less on time but there were two other passengers to pick up, and as one of them was late for her appointment, we had to drop her off first and I ended up being the last to be dropped off.

At the dialysis clinic, it was one of the new nurses who attended to me. She’d had a very bad experience on Thursday connecting me, what with the machine breaking down and all that, so naturally she was extremely nervous today. I tried to encourage her but even so, it wasn’t far short of 15:00 when I was finally connected.

Nothing exciting happened there today apart from that, but the doctor came to see me to see if everything had been OK over the weekend. What could I say? Nothing ever changes around here.

Eventually, hours late, I was unplugged, but at least the taxi was already here. It was the young chatty driver who came for me, although I would quite happily have swapped for my favourite lady driver who had come for someone else. But anyway, we had a good chat on the way home.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me when I arrived, and she helped me into the apartment.

After she left, I warmed up my half-pizza from yesterday and for a change, I had a small baked potato with it. It was followed by an apricot half and home-made ice cream.

So right now, I’m off to bed, ready to catch up on the sleep that I missed last night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about double entendres … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me if I’d heard the story about the girl from Crewe who went into a pub and asked for a double-entendre.
"No, I hadn’t" I replied. "What happened?"
"The barman gave her one."

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Sunday 1st March 2026 – DYDD GWYL DEWI …

… hapus iawn, pawb!

Did you all enjoy your leek soup? And did you arrange your daffodils neatly in your living room? And did you give your pet dragon a little treat? As long as you did all of that, you aren’t likely to receive a visit from an angry druid today.

As for me, I’m afraid that I didn’t. Sunday here is pizza day, and as well as that, I can’t go out hunting for daffodils, although Rosemary did send me some virtual daffodils via an internet chat program.

Instead, I’ve had something of a lazy day, and you’ll be surprised at just how productive I have been, because I know that I am.

Last night wasn’t as I had planned it either. It ended up being horribly late, just after midnight, when I stopped letting it all hang out and went to bed instead. And instead of the decent sleep and long lie-in that I wanted, it was one of those mobile nights where I was tossing and turning, half awake and half asleep, without actually going into a really deep sleep.

When the nurse put in an appearance, I was actually awake, and so I pretended to be asleep so that I didn’t have to leave my comfortable bed. He sorted out my legs and feet and then disappeared. I curled up under the bedclothes and tried my best to go to sleep, but with no luck at all.

Eventually, round about 09:15, I gave it up as a bad job and arose from the Dead. I gathered up my clothes from the chair and, throwing my slippers in the general direction of the bathroom, I scored a beautiful hole in one, right into the toilet bowl. What a way to start the day!

In the kitchen, I forgot my medication, but I had a lovely breakfast of porridge, hot coffee and two of my homemade croissants. That’s a really nice way to start the day, especially when you take your time and don’t go into your office to start work until 10:45. I wish that every day could be like this.

What took me so long was that I was engrossed in my new book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A. Miller.

Today, we’re discussing the complicated relationship between Thebes, Athens and Sparta, a relationship that sporadically erupted into warfare, with any two pitted against the third. It’s helping me brush up on my classics from when I studied Latin at grammar school, and it’s amazing just how much of the old classical stories have been proved by modern archaeology to be true.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

I was living in some kind of communal living thing. There were lots of different people there doing lots of different things. There should have been a meeting late one night before going to bed, but it turned out that the guy on whose behalf the meeting was being held had simply gone ahead and applied the texture mix to his skin, which meant that he’d be busy recovering or whatever, changing or something, and so the meeting was cancelled. That was extremely disappointing, so I gathered up a couple of things from the radio, some old English-language programmes that I’d done years ago and went to see the girl in the next room who worked for the local radio. She thanked me for coming but said that they were doing things in a different way these days and didn’t need the programmes that I had. However, there would be plenty of opportunity to do stuff in the future. She was thinking of having some kind of doll or something and she would want me to write the speech for it. I took my things to go back to my room, but on the way back, I heard that there had been some kind of announcement that Jim Dale, one of the CARRY ON stars, had been seen hiding in a tree near the old airfield up near Wardle – it was described as “Stoke Bank” in this news report. He’d been repeating one of his “Carry On” speeches from out of this tree and it had made the local news in all the papers.

Whatever the significance of the first part of this dream might be, I have no idea. As for the second part, I have a whole stock of English language radio programmes that Liz and I prepared when we were running “Radio Anglais”, programmes that were broadcast on French local radio. A short while ago, a radio station in Nantwich was calling for radio presenters and programmes, so I sent them one or two as tasters, to see whether they might be interested in a programme from me every now and again. It goes without saying that they never replied.

There is a “Stoke Bank” along the A51 a couple of miles from the old Wardle Airfield, which was my home … "the airfield, not Stoke Bank#34; – ed … for a short while when I was a baby. But there aren’t any trees there in which Jim Dale could loiter, whether or not he might be repeating a “Carry On” speech.

And I did once live in some kind of commune. But not for long, though. Firstly, I’m not a sociable animal, and secondly, most people in that place preferred to live off the backs of other, hard-working people. In the end, I preferred to live in my van.

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.

There are also links on the sidebar 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.

There had been a couple of girls who had come over for an environmental conference. I’d been chatting to one and I was getting on extremely well with her. For some reason, my brother ended up with their contact details, but I didn’t. On the Sunday, we had various things to do, like we had to pack our place up as we were moving house that weekend. We were busy organising everything, and there was this beautiful cupboard that I’d had my eye on for ages with several drawers in it. It just looked like a huge bass speaker. The price on it was something like £275.00, which I thought was too much. Someone whom we knew came along and asked about it. The woman said “if you take it now, you can have it for £180.00. He paid her cash on the spot, and I felt really annoyed because I would have had it for £180.00 any day of the week. I told her to wait a minute because it had some of my paperwork in it. I had to go through and find somewhere to put this paperwork. I asked someone if they had a sack, and my mother made some kind of comment about that, but I wasn’t in the mood to joke. In the end, someone found a large paper sack and I began to put my things into it. One thing that I’d noticed was that a plot of land on which I’d had my eye too, which was formerly a garage in Audlem, had come back onto the market. The announcement from the paper was that there was a confusion about the closing date of the auction. Of course, I was far too busy to concentrate on this and we were still putting away our things. I came across a press cutting that showed that this conference to which we’d been was going on today, and there was a chance to meet all the contributors. That really annoyed me because I could have gone along and seen that girl again. Then my brother came up with some kind of story about how his car, with a trailer on it, had an electrical fault and he’d had to manually flash the rear lights to make some kind of brake lights every time he stopped. I was still in no mood for any kind of joke

This is quite a regular theme, isn’t it? Here I am, just about to Get The Girl, and a member of my family comes along and throws a spanner into the works.

The chest of drawers sounds interesting, and had I been healthy, I would have gone all-out to make one. And moving house, cars with electrical faults and looking for plots of land were habitual themes in real life back in the day.

There was also something about a Grand Prix around by Monte Carlo, the Monaco Grand Prix, twisting and turning through the streets with all of these cars taking part. We were watching it from a distance, and suddenly, after about half of the cars had gone past, there was complete silence and nothing. Then, all of the Grand Prix drivers who hadn’t gone through in their cars, they came through, and they were running. Apparently, there had been a major accident somewhere and they couldn’t proceed any further with their cars – this major accident behind the leading group so they couldn’t proceed with their cars, so they were going to run the rest of the course.

Before I went to bed last night, I was reading a news article about Cadillac’s entry into the Formula One circuit, but that their engine is not considered to be as reliable as it needs to be. Running the course on foot would be a novel way to proceed, though.

There was some kind of dream going on about a football competition. One of the teams had been relegated. There was something about a particular match and it involved my vegan ice cream somewhere, but I really can’t remember any more about it because I awoke as it was under way and it all evaporated … "the dream, not the ice cream" – ed …

Llanelli has just been relegated from the JD Cymru League, and lest night, we were watching the Welsh League Cup Final, complete with its very emotional ending, followed by vegan ice cream for dessert.

Seeing as we have been talking about the Welsh League Cup Final … "well, one of us has" – ed … this is the LINK TO THE HIGHLIGHTS. This is the LINK TO THE FULL MATCH. If you have the time, it’s well-worth it from a footballing point of view. The highlights don’t really show anything like a fair representative proportion of the game.

When I’d finished the dictaphone notes, there was yet more football. Morton were comfortably beaten by Airdrie after going down to nine men, and then Stranraer’s long unbeaten run came to an end as they were beaten at home by Elgin City.

After a disgusting drink break, with some of the medication that I’d forgotten, I had a pile of *.html coding to edit.

First thing though was to upload my graphics program onto this laptop. That’s easier said than done because there is no DVD drive on it. I had to rummage around deep in the bowels of the box where all of the redundant hard drives are hiding, and there it was, right at the bottom. And to my surprise, the USB cable and power pack were with it. Usually, knowing me, I would have expected them to have been scattered to the four winds a long time ago.

The next step was to open the drive. With not having been opened for years, the springs had seized. Luckily, there’s an escape hole, and a straightened paper clip fitted in quite nicely to lever down the internal catch.

Having uploaded the program, I could then go ahead and prepare some graphic images. And then I had to hunt down a few web links to tie to the images, and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been.

The next task was to edit the *.html coding to include the images and their links, and I was dismayed at how much *.html coding I’ve forgotten. Turn the clock back thirty years, and I was writing web pages by hand in “Notetab” and even teaching basic web design to a couple of interested people, but I couldn’t do it now.

There was an hour to spare, so I made a start on the Welsh homework. I’ve done about two-thirds of it, and as it doesn’t have to be done for two weeks, I’m glad that I’m well in advance because I can have a relax at some point.

At 16:30 I knocked off to go a-baking. A loaf of bread and a vegan pizza were today’s output. The bread rose like a lift and looks excellent, and the pizza was absolutely delicious, with half left over for tomorrow.

But right now, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed … and to reflect on what a busy day I’ve had, considering that Sunday is supposed to be a Day of Rest.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about The Monaco Grand Prix … "well, one of us has" – ed … Percy Penguin once told me that she’d like to go there to watch the Formula One race.
However, I told her "we don’t have the money to go to watch the Formula One race in Monaco. And in any case, it’s pronounced Gron’ Pree."

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Saturday 28th February 2026 – I HAVE JUST …

… watched one of the best football matches that I have ever seen.

Of course, watching a good match is always quite enjoyable, but when it involves TNS not only being beaten but also royally stuffed by a real Welsh football team, and in a Cup Final too, that really is the icing on the cake.

It’s a match to which I’ve been looking forward all weekend, and so last night, I decided to have an early night so that I would really be in the best of form to watch it.

Of course, what I decide to do and what actually happens are not the same thing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And so none of my faithful readers will be in the least surprised to hear that it was 23:50 when I finally made it into bed.

Yes, it was that late. I really don’t know where the time goes these days. No matter what I try to do, it’s very rare that I can beat my curfew time of 22:30.

Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly, and that’s the last thing that I remember until the alarm went off at 06:29. It was another night when I don’t believe that I moved a muscle at all.

As seems to be the case these days, I struggled to make it into the bathroom, but I finally managed it and had a good wash, a change of clothes and a handwashing session. I need to keep on top of my socks and undies, otherwise I’ll run out of stock.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and took my medication, including the Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D supplements that the people at dialysis are insisting that I take. It’s only once a month, and I usually always forget to take them.

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

One of my neighbours had a car parked on their property for a couple of months and I had my eye on it. Then, they announced that they were selling it but the price that they wanted for it was way out of my pocket and way out of what I thought it was worth, so I was rather disappointed with them about this. But we ended up walking into Crewe, walking down Delamere Street towards the post office one early Saturday morning. I had a letter to write and I needed a stamped envelope, so I thought that I’d go into the post office to buy one, but I suspected that if the post office were open at this time, there would be quite a queue inside. So we went and opened the door, and there was really a queue, quite a long one in there in fact, and they were all at one counter because there was just one counter open. Someone was arguing with someone about small change, saying that they’d had to go all the way to Chester this morning to fetch some small change, so they are rather careful about how they give it out. Eventually, the queue divided into two as another window opened. There was a young girl who went up to the window and handed over a ring. She asked if she could change this engagement ring for a single person’s ring. A couple of people felt sorry for her, but I seemed to remember that this girl had been engaged three or four times before, but it had all broken off, so I wondered what was happening now with this latest one. Then she explained that she’d like to have the money back, and have it back quickly, because everyone will remember what happened when she used a cheque last time she had to buy something. I for one didn’t know what she meant, but I imagined that one or two other people in this queue must have known or something like that.

In the past, I would always have been interested in cars parked up for ages in neighbours’ gardens, but these days, there’s not a car being made anywhere in the World that is of any interest to me.

The story about the Post Office is perfectly true, though. Go in there at any normally busy time, and there would only be one window open of the five or six available. And I know who the girl was too. She was a colleague of Nerina’s when Nerina worked at Crewe before she moved to Stockport, who was also in the same school year as my brother.

Interestingly, going to Chester for small change was an interesting point. When I had my taxis, we had the contract for the local McDonald’s. They could only ever use approved products supplied by the franchise and never buy anything in a local shop. There are several occasions when we had to run to the Wrexham outlet for a bag of lettuce or to the Chester one for some cartons of milk, that kind of thing. I remember once, the Saturday before Christmas, having to go to Wrexham for lettuce, taking Nerina with me, dropping her off at a supermarket there to do our Christmas shopping while I went to pick up the lettuce.

That was the kind of pressure under which we were living. We never had five minutes to ourselves to relax. No wonder our marriage didn’t last.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort out my feet and legs, and we had a chat about Welsh football. I’m not quite sure why because it’s a very specialised subject.

After he left, I made breakfast and began my new book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A. Miller, having finished the previous one about plants at Calleva Atrebates.

This book goes back to 1921 and refers to the history of Greece under the Roman and then the Byzantine Empire, something about which I really ought to know much more.

Everyone knows about the “Franks” — the crusaders who passed through there on their way to the Holy Land and who seemed to spend more time fighting the Byzantines as they crossed that empire than they ever did fighting the Saracens to free the Holy Land — but that’s about the extent of my knowledge. I really ought to be doing better than that.

Back in here, I had something of a footfest with the highlights of last night’s matches in Wales. They were quite entertaining, but there was nothing remarkable about any of them.

In fact, it was quite a leisurely late morning, with the monotony being broken by a series of ‘phone calls about a missing letter. I posted it (or, rather, my faithful cleaner did) on the 12th February, but it’s still not been received and the action to which it refers took place today. I had to find a copy of the letter and e-mail it.

This afternoon, after my disgusting drink break, I attacked yet another pile of radio notes, as I said yesterday that I would. And now they are edited and the two halves of the programme have been prepared. The joining track has been chosen and remixed etc, and the notes are written ready for typing. This means that I can have a complete day off tomorrow. Won’t that be nice?

Round about 17:30, I went and prepared tea because there won’t be much time later. We had the football match to watch instead.

It was the League Cup Final with TNS, odds-on favourites to win (as usual), against rank outsiders Y Barri.

Usually, games involving TNS, the only full-time club in the league with a squad that cost a fortune, involve a backs-to-the-wall approach with the opposition penned back in their own penalty area with piles of desperate defending. However, I’ve noticed a weakness in TNS’s defence, and that is that they are very susceptible to the ball “over the top” with a quick forward rushing onto the ball. And Y Barri have the two quickest forwards in the league in Ieuan Owen and Ollie Hulbert

Y Barri took the game to TNS right from the start and actually had TNS pinned in their own penalty area for long periods of the game. And when the TNS goalkeeper couldn’t hang on to the ball from a cross into the penalty area, Ieuan Owen was the first to reach the loose ball, and that was Y Barri 1-0 up.

As the second half wore on, you could see that Y Barri were tiring rapidly, and it was a question of whether they could hang on. But as we entered injury time, we had Ieuan Owen reacting first to a loose ball about twenty-five yards out of the TNS goal, and what followed was the best goal that you are ever likely to see at this level of football. HOW ABOUT THIS?

That wasn’t all the excitement either. The match finished in a good old-fashioned brawl involving just about every one of the twenty-two players, all of the staff and all of the substitutes on the bench.

After that, I went and had the tea that I’d prepared – baked potato, vegan salad and one of those breadcrumbed quorn fillets that I like, followed by ginger cake and home-made ice cream

Now though, I’m off to bed, hoping for a good lie-in tomorrow. I certainly deserve it, but we shall have to see about that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my new book … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends asked me what book I was reading at the moment.
"It’s called ‘Essays on the Latin Orient’" I replied.
"Oh yes" she said. "Weren’t they promoted to League One a couple of seasons ago?"

0

Friday 27th February 2026 – WHAT A DAY …

… I’ve had today. And if I did crash out for fifteen minutes towards the end of the afternoon, I can only put it down to the after-effects of some very hard work.

Last night was quite hard work too. Once again, despite my best efforts, I didn’t seem to make much progress, and by the time that I’d finished everything and was ready for bed, it was 23:30 and how I wished that it was an hour earlier.

Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly, and there I stayed until the alarm went off at 06:29. Surprisingly, when I awoke, I found myself in exactly the same position as I had been when I went to sleep, so it’s not a surprise at all that I remember nothing at all. I can’t have moved a muscle all the way through the night.

When the second alarm went off at 06:33, I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor – which is what counts for “beating the second alarm” – but that’s a long way short of saying that I was actually up and about.

The first thing that I have to do is to wait for the room to stop spinning around before I can even think about standing up. That can sometimes take a good few minutes.

Eventually, though, I found my way into the bathroom, and after a good scrub up, I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, but to my dismay, there was nothing at all on there. It really must have been a deep, sound sleep. I had to find a few other things to do to fill in the time before the nurse arrived.

But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … not having any dreams to which to listen is extremely disappointing. It’s just about the only excitement that I have these days.

The nurse didn’t stay long today. He was being harassed by one of his boys about some clothes to wear at a paintball rally in the firing range and so needed to return to sort them out. That meant that I could start my new book, THE DEBATABLE TERRITORY WHERE GEOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY MEET by A Lodwick.

This is a book that re-examines the excavation reports of Calleva Atrebates of 1909 and the collection of new evidence for the flora of the site in the prehistoric age.

Although I’m not much of a botanist (regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the only reason I passed my Biology ‘O’ levels was thanks to the helpful drawings on the walls of the Gentleman’s Rest Rooms at Crewe Bus Station) this is a fascinating book, as it talks about the expansion of the British crop pool during the Iron Age and early Roman period and suggests that many seeds common in the modern era were actually introduced into England by the Romans.

After breakfast, I started a new project. I went to make vegan ice cream.

In the fridge, I’d found some banana-flavoured milk and some coconut cream. So with some maple syrup, a pinch of salt, vanilla essence and a pile of chopped chocolate from the slab of cooking chocolate that I found, I went to work, whisking all of the ingredients together.

While that was doing, and in between going into the kitchen every hour to give the ice cream a stir to stop it freezing in one solid mass, I was editing the next lot of dictaphone notes.

There was an interruption when my cleaner came round to do her stuff. And a discussion. Apparently, Mme la Presidente of the Residents’ Association had had the engineers round to install her fibre optic system, but the engineers had declined, for the same reason that they had declined at my place.

Perhaps they’ll all believe me now.

Anyway, it led to a flurry of e-mails, and I couldn’t resist throwing my weight in.

However, I’m appalled by all of this. The conduit for the telephone, through which they’ll be passing the fibre cables to the apartments, has been blocked for over twenty years, and everyone knew this.

Nevertheless, the estate agency that manages the site gave everyone the go-ahead to apply for the installation. I was the first to apply. I had the engineers round who couldn’t install the cable because the telephone conduit is blocked, so on the 21st January I wrote to the Estate Agency to tell them.

Since then, nothing has happened. The estate agency hasn’t sent out a letter to people telling them of the problems, and as a result, there have been countless hours of technicians’ time lost, countless frustrating hours of residents’ time lost and the fabric of the building, a listed building of the “Patrimoine de France”, has been irreparably damaged by the two impatient residents who had technicians drill through the listed walls of the building.

Later on, a couple more technicians turned up to see me, to make a written report as I had asked. However, there was no need. I grabbed hold of another resident and Mme la Presidente and sent them off to speak to the technicians.

And surprise! Surprise! The technicians said exactly the same thing as those this morning and those who came to see me twice before.

Perhaps they’ll all believe me now.

After everyone left, Mme la Presidente came in for a chat and a piece of ginger cake, and once she’d left, I finished off editing the notes, assembling the radio programme, choosing the joining track and writing the notes for it.

This week, I’ve only actually written one programme instead of the two that I’ve been trying to do, but I’ve prepared two others, and tomorrow, I’ll try to prepare a third from the notes that I’ve dictated in the past. Then next week, I’ll go back to writing two more.

The stress and effort today were such that I crashed out in my chair as soon as I’d finished, and so tea was late. Beans with vegan cheese, chips and sausage followed by ginger cake and homemade ice cream. It’s not much of a success, texture-wise, but the taste is terrific, and I’ll make some more like that if my faithful cleaner can find some more of that banana-flavoured soya milk. The ground chocolate really added something special to it.

And that made me start thinking … "which is dangerous" – ed … I have some of these fruit cordials here of the type that you use to make fizzy drinks. How about a coconut milk-based one with chocolate and a stream of mint cordial running through it? There must be plenty of mileage with stuff like that, if the cordial won’t curdle the milk.

But that’s tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed, to sleep, perchance, to dream. Or, as Lee Jackson put it, YOU WOULD GIVE A SMALL FORTUNE TO GET BACK IN YOUR DREAMS

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about ice cream … "well, one of us has" – ed … at the ice cream van at the park where I used to take Roxanne on Sundays, an old man hobbled over, obviously in great difficulty walking.
"An ice cream cone please," he asked
"Certainly, sir" replied the vendor. "Crushed nuts?"
"No" replied the old man. "I always walk like this."

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Thursday 26th February 2026 – TOTAL, ABSOLUTE CHAOS …

… at dialysis today. Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong and I had one of the latest departures that I have ever had. Consequently, I am running hours late, and it’s debatable whether I’ll finish my notes or not before I have to retire.

Last night wasn’t much better either. Despite having no tea, except for a slice of cake, I still couldn’t manage to complete everything at a reasonable time, and it was about 23:00 when I finally settled down in bed.

One thing that can be said, though, is that I stayed asleep until just after 06:00.

At that time, I suppose that I could have forced myself into an early start, but I soon put that silly idea out of my head and waited for the alarm to sound. And although I sat up quite promptly with my feet on the floor when the alarm went off, that was as far as I went for at least ten minutes.

Eventually, in the bathroom, I had a good wash and a shave. I’m not sure why, seeing as Emilie the Cute Consultant no longer loves me, and then I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

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

I was in bed, having a lie-in one morning when a girl on crutches came into my room. She was being quite offensive about me still being in bed, saying that I had to get up and have breakfast etc. However, I had no plans to leave the bed for quite a while yet, but she became so insistent that in the end, I left the bed. The first thing that I did was to take one of her crutches, dismantle it and throw all of the different pieces off to different corners of the room. Then, I took the other one, dismantled that, and did the same again. And then I went back to bed.

What a rotten dream! I must really have been in a bad mood that morning. But it did remind me of Jethro Tull and –
"REMEMBERING MORNINGS, SHILLINGS SPENT,
MADE NO SENSE TO LEAVE THE BED.
THE BAD OLD DAYS THEY CAME AND WENT
GIVING WAY TO FRUITFUL YEARS"
– a song that includes one of Martin Barre’s best-ever solos that sends a shiver down my spine each time I hear it; it’s so good. And Glenn Cornick on bass, the best bassist that Jethro Tull ever had, playing one of his best-ever bass lines. I can listen to this track time and time again.

Later on, I had to go to drive somewhere. I said to a girl in my apartment that I’d be back later. We discussed food, and I said that I’d make something when I came back, to which she seemed to agree, so I wondered if she was going to be staying there by the time that I returned. However, I was absolutely overwhelmed by hunger at that point and on my way out to wherever it was that I had to go, I stopped at a supermarket and went in. I noticed that they had hot cross buns at half price – not hot cross buns but currant buns at half price, these packets of four – so I picked up a packet and one or two other things. I thought that this would keep me going until I returned

When I used to go wandering around the UK for weeks on end, back in the past, sleeping in the van, breakfast would almost always be a pack of fruit buns, a pack of hot cross buns or a malt loaf. Fruit buns at half price would be my paradise.

There was also something about football matches. In South Wales, some team had qualified for promotion to the next layer, from the third tier to the second. A girl who was with me who had something to do with this football club had to go to a meeting to discuss promotion, so I went with her. However, it seemed that the situation was simply being decided by choice, and when she arrived, most of the teams had already chosen where they were going to be. The only spots available for this particular team involved some considerable travelling distance, which made her quite disappointed and it led to some kind of discussion about people going to see football matches on public transport, someone saying that public transport and the connections were so bad that it took three hours for them to go to see their local football team by going on the bus. I reminded them of a football club in the north where a bus used to arrive fifteen minutes before kick-off, which gave everyone a good chance to go, but had been retimed just recently and was now at fifteen minutes past kick-off, which meant that no-one could go at all. This girl was still talking about this promotion, and she saw someone who appeared to be the secretary of this organisation who was packing things into her car boot as if she was going on a car boot sale. She asked a few questions but didn’t receive any kind of sensible answer, and that led to me making a comment that this looks like the quality of the organisation of this particular football league; it’s not a surprise that it all seems to be in such a mess. The woman with this car and the stuff in the boot was very, very unhelpful and didn’t seem to be interested at all in what she was supposed to be doing. She was more interested in packing her stuff for this car boot sale.

Judging by what happened in the dream, it was from the fourth tier to the third, and it would have been just like the Football Association of Wales twenty years ago to be more interested in organising a car boot sale than a football league. As well as that, the story about the bus timetable changing brings back a memory of a dream that we had a long time ago about a match on the border in North-East Wales.

There was another dream too, but the World isn’t ready to hear it, especially round about when everyone is eating his meal.

The nurse was late today, for a change, so he didn’t hang around. He was soon in and out, leaving me to breakfast and MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

We’re approaching the end, and it won’t be long before we’re in the summary, which should be interesting. However, I couldn’t pass by a remark such as "It has been argued (J Evans, Rouse, and Sharpies 1989) that, because of the socially dangerous nature of the ritual activities that would have taken place in this enclosure, such enclosures would be situated away from the settlement area."

This all sounds extremely interesting, and I wonder why these activities might be considered to be dangerous. Whatever must have been involved?

One thing that he does mention, which I found extremely interesting, is that during the Middle Iron Age, as the reconstruction and remodelling of Maiden Castle advanced, other hillforts in the area declined or were abandoned. Is this maybe a sign that the occupants of Maiden Castle had managed to impose themselves upon the settlers elsewhere and forced them to abandon their defensive sites?

There’s evidence that the style and quality of pottery changed round about this period too. Is this indicative of new arrivals bringing with them a different culture from elsewhere?

Back in here, there were things to do and then in a mad fit of enthusiasm, I attacked some radio notes that needed editing. Not only are they done, but the two halves of the programme are assembled. All it needs now is the joining track and the notes to go with it.

My cleaner turned up as usual to help me with my anaesthetic and then I had to await the taxi to take me to dialysis. And with just me today, we arrived at dialysis at 13:50.

Nevertheless, with several people arriving all at once, I was late receiving attention. And then the connection failed. This meant that they had to unplug me, compress the punctures in my arm, reload and recalibrate the machine and then plug me back in. By now, the anaesthetic had worn off and the cold spray can only do so much.

That was bad, but the guy in the next bed, his system simply stopped functioning. It took an age and three nurses to deal with his problems and then he had to restart too.

As a result, even though it was 18:35 when I was finally unplugged, there were still one or two people waiting patiently for their sessions to finish.

The taxi was waiting for me when I’d finished, but even so, it was 19:40 when I arrived back home. And I treated myself to an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit from the freezer, followed by fiery ginger cake and custard for afters.

Right now, though, I’m off to bed. But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about nurses … "well, one of us has" – ed … the receptionist telephoned the dialysis unit to say that the Invisible Man needed an urgent appointment.
"We have no room for him here" said the administrator. "Send him to the ICU."

0

Wednesday 25th February 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what’s the matter with me today. This afternoon, I seem to have gone from feeling energetic, dynamic and focused to being flat-out, exhausted and overtired in my office chair, all in one swell foop.

It might actually be something to do with last night. What with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed … it ended up being a night rather later than most just recently. It wasn’t until almost midnight that I finished everything and crawled into bed.

Once again, it was another one of those really deep sleeps, and I was shaken to the foundations when the alarm went off at 06:29. I just about managed to beat the second alarm by having my feet on the floor and the covers off when it went off. However, as the Duke of Wellington said after the Battle of Waterloo, it was "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life"

In the bathroom I managed to have a good wash, and then I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

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

A friend of mine was talking to someone on the telephone. I recognised the voice, and it was Percy Penguin. They were chatting away and were talking about fuel. She was going on about how she filled up her car maybe once every eight days, or something like that. I took the ‘phone and said “hello” and asked “do you have a car?”. She replied “yes, a Nissan Micra”. I asked her when she had passed her test, and she replied “in July”. I told her that it was wonderful and when I would be next in the UK, because I would be going home very shortly, she could come down to wherever I was staying after she’d finished work one day. But for some reason, that seemed to offend her. My friend took back the ‘phone and talked to her for a few minutes and then hung up. He told me that Percy Penguin was offended by that comment, and I replied that I couldn’t understand how, but what I would do is to write to her. He told me that maybe she wouldn’t like the idea of me writing to her, but I replied that it’s the best thing that I can do, isn’t it, to write to her, to have a chat and to see what was happening and why she wasn’t so happy?

How long is it since Percy Penguin last showed her face in one of my dreams? She certainly deserves to appear more often than she does. But you won’t ever catch her driving a car. She had absolutely no interest, all the way throughout the twenty years that I knew her, and that’s not likely to have changed.

She wasn’t easily upset either, although she could be a little sulky at times.

Then it was work’s summer holiday break for me, and over the past few evenings they’d been having matches between the various departments of the factory. I was doing the radio introduction for one match, introducing the teams and explaining who they were and what the current score was because we’d arrived late to record it. Suddenly, we heard the ‘phone go behind us, and it was someone ringing up a professional football club. They asked the secretary if they could identify a certain player. It was a footballer with a broken leg from a few months ago who was still out injured. Eventually, they put someone on the ‘phone and a little boy took the ‘phone. He said “dad, I’ve broken my leg in a football match”. The father was extremely shocked and could only encourage his boy, because he wasn’t able to be there right at that particular moment but he’d be there as soon as he possibly could. His son was to lie there and take it easy and not move. So when we took the ‘phone back off the boy, we spoke to the dad and said how impressed we were with his footballing, but we didn’t think that his dad needed to come down to check on him and watch him play football because he could realise just how good he was himself.

The local Rolls-Royce factory in Crewe, back in its heyday in the 1970s, used to have these inter-departmental football matches. However, massive redundancies in the early 1980s put an end to all of that, and it was never the same again.

As for the broken leg, I was at a football match at Alsager Town in the 1970s when a player broke his leg, and they used my heavy overcoat to cover him while they waited for the ambulance to arrive.

Someone was running one of these “lifestyle” courses about how to improve your life. They were discussing many aspects of this. One of the things that I do remember is about French actresses who were ordinary people who figured on a lot of escape literature, etc. during World War II who all became famous film stars because they seized the most of their opportunity. He was working his way through dozens of examples like that. And as he came to “storage”, he began by saying “if you can store it, you can keep it.” I began to open a few of my boxes from a furniture removal and saw loads of stuff in there. I began to think to myself “why on earth am I keeping this? Why am I keeping that?”.

This is the story of my life. I have too much rubbish accumulated just about everywhere, and I really ought to have a good sort-out of everything that I have. However, I expect that this will be a job for my heirs, who won’t be as emotionally attached to my possessions as I am.

The nurse turned up after his week in London, and while he was attending to me, he gave me an account of his visit.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

We are now beginning to read his conclusions from the excavations. And the first thing that he notes is that "there was a significant change in the vessel type and fabric between phase 6F and 6G. The build-up of a substantial layer of soil between these phases suggests that there was a long period, where there was no in situ occupation"

This suggests that a new group of people from a different culture arrived to occupy the fort, having found it abandoned. These phases seem to be round about the end of the final century BC and the beginning of the first century AD, round about the period of the Belgic invasion, maybe.

His phase 6G is also the period when most of the piles of slingshots seemed to be assembled. Could this be the new arrivals having to defend themselves against further attack? This would seem to be about the time of the coming of the Romans.

Following that, phase 6H, presumably the après-guerre period, seems to show the most domesticated activity. This seems to suggest that if there had been warfare at the end of phase 6G, one side had a decisive victory. Could this relate to the crushing blow that the Roman forces gave to the local inhabitants?

However, about my theory about control of the iron manufacturing, he tells us that "there is little evidence to suggest that hillforts were high-status areas. ". Of course, “absence of evidence” is not the same as “evidence of absence” and such events as looting by victors of anything worth taking away are always a possibility.

Back in here, there were things to do. And in answer to several e-mails that I was sent, I managed to avoid being arrested on my birthday, unlike certain well-known people. And I received no birthday presents. After all, what exactly do I need that I don’t already have?

Having done what needed to be done, I attacked the radio programme that I’d started for fifteen minutes yesterday. And in some kind of Herculean effort, all of the music has been sorted out and dealt with, and I’ve written all of the notes ready for dictation too.

And then I began to edit the notes that I’d dictated a while back for another programme. That’s now all complete, and the two halves have been assembled. The joining track has been chosen and remixed, and the notes written ready for dictation.

This was the difficult bit because I kept on falling asleep while doing it and it took an age, all told. There was an interruption too that awoke me from a doze – a neighbour came by to see how I was and to inspect the apartment as he hadn’t yet seen it. He was well impressed with everything.

By the time that I’d finally finished everything after dozing off all those times, it was teatime, but I wasn’t hungry. I couldn’t however resist another helping of my gorgeous fiery ginger cake, this time with vegan ice cream.

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 my lack of presents for my birthday … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was once at one of these super-motivational evenings with one of these highly energetic speakers.
He was actually talking about buying presents for the wealthy and as a question, asked "and what do you give the man who has everything?"
And a small voice piped up from the back "penicillin?"

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Tuesday 24th February 2026 – ♬ HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO …

… me ♬

Yes, another year older and deeper in debt, right enough. And don’t ask me how old I am because at my age, you don’t count the number of years that you’ve had – you count the number of years you have left. And in my case, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not all that many. In fact, if I see this one out, I shall be setting a new record.

So in preparation for my birthday, I tried my best … "and failed miserably" – ed … to rush ahead with what I needed to do. However, it was still late by the time that I finished, but not as late as some have been. I was in bed by 23:00, which is not bad going these days, although I wish that it could be better.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly. But as seems to be par for the course following a session of dialysis, I was awake quite early. 03:50 as it happens.

And for the first time in a while, I managed to go back to sleep again – until all of 05:00. And after that, I just lay there trying unsuccessfully to doze off again. But when the time came round to about 06:15, I slid out from under the bedclothes and put my feet on the floor.

When the alarm went off, my feet were still on the floor and so that counts as an early start, even if I hadn’t been able to do anything in the way of work.

It was a struggle to stand up and go to the bathroom, but I did manage it in the end, and then I went off into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I found that I’d already received a few birthday messages, which I then read, with a great big thank you to those of you who had written. And my three friends from our travelling club were online and we all had a chat, including my friend from Munich who is just out of hospital after an eye operation.

While we were chatting, I was transcribing the dictaphone notes from last night.

There had been a body discovered in a shallow grave in Canada. It was of a girl about ten years old. Eventually, the police managed to track down her family – they lived in the Maritime Provinces. At one stage, they had moved out west but the lure of the Maritimes was too strong and they had returned. That was as far as I’d gone before I awoke.

Bodies are being pulled out of shallow graves by the dozen in North America, so there’s nothing new here. And neither is people going out west to the oilfields of Alberta from the Maritime Provinces, especially after the collapse of the fishing industry following the cod moratorium of 1992, something that we have discussed on numerous occasions during our visits around the Atlantic coast of Canada.

It’s also true that most of the families do end up coming back. The pace of life in the oilfields is much more intense than the laid-back attitudes of the Maritimers, so once they have done several years out there and made their pile, they gradually filter back home to work at whatever they can find while drawing on their not-insubstantial savings.

I was with one of my friends last night and we were in Crewe watching the Crewe Carnival. And while I was trying to fix something and she was watching me, another parade went past with all young people. I happened to recognise two or three people in this parade. I’d heard that there was going to be some kind of parade in respect of something else, some march or demonstration, so I wondered if this was it. After the crowds dispersed and we slowly began to walk away, we were walking down Queen Street … "It was Queensway actually" – ed … and there was sunlight with a very fine rain and we bumped into one of the girls whom we’d seen in this parade. I asked her how her parade went and she replied “ohh, the speech by the leader was magnificent and it’s really going to make him grow”. I replied “yes, but what about the parade?”. “Well, maybe there were six hundred people there and it all seemed to go very well” she said. And while I was standing in a queue for something or other, it might have been a packet of crisps or something, another girl whom I knew came along. She tried to take her mug off the counter but she couldn’t quite reach it, so I reached behind me and it was much easier to reach from there so I passed it to her with a smile. She wandered off, but my friend asked me about the girl – who she was. I replied that she was someone from our office. We began to walk down Queensway and I was eating my packet of crisps. I asked my friend what she was doing this evening. She replied that she was going to look for a pair of shoes in some of the shops around the area, so I said that I’d come with her, with the idea that maybe later on, we’d go for a meal or something. Then she began to talk about Margaret, a former employee of mine on the taxis. She said that she went round to see Margaret’s first accommodation which was some kind of bedsit place down one of the back streets off the West End. She said “it has to be worth more than £1000 per year”. She mentioned something about the smell but I didn’t really notice it. She began to think aloud about investing some of her money from her retirement pension into a rental property in Crewe and seeing whether that would make a better return than what she’s receiving on her investments at the moment.

Strangely enough, in our Welsh class later, we were talking about rituals and ceremonies and discussing how many old ceremonies have disappeared in recent times. The subject of Crewe Carnival actually did crop up during this discussion. It disappeared about fifteen or so years ago, which was a shame because at one time it attracted tens of thousands of people to the town.

The two girls – I know them too. The second girl was a girl with whom I worked for a while, and the first one was a friend of a friend from Stoke-on-Trent who came to stay with me for a few days while she was interviewed for a post at the European Commission. The bit about “the leader” sent a chill through my spine, though. There are far too many of these “leaders” around these days and it can only go all pear-shaped.

Isabelle the Nurse came along later and wished me a happy birthday as she sorted out my feet and legs. And after she left, I made breakfast. As a special treat, I had cheese on toast with my porridge, and it would have been really nice had I not dropped both slices upside-down in the oven.

While I was eating, I read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

He’s finally finished discussing pottery, and he’s still no nearer solving the riddles that have been plaguing him throughout the chapter. His conclusions are full of theories and unanswered questions, but at least, his “layering” technique for identifying periods of occupation seems to have produced positive results, even if they aren’t the results that he’s expecting.

Back in here, I went to revise my Welsh and then I joined the lesson. And it passed really well today. All of this revision seems to be paying off, if only I could remember it the following morning. Wouldn’t that be nice?

After lunch my faithful cleaner came to do her stuff and she shooed me into the shower too, so now I’m nice and clean … "well, clean, anyway" – ed …

Liz ‘phoned me later and we had a Rosemaryesque chat that went on for an hour and eighteen minutes. Just a short one today. We discussed lots of things and she promised to send a recipe for a grilled vegetable salad, which I received later.

My niece and one of her daughters ‘phoned me later, as did my friend from the Orkney Islands. I shall have to have birthdays more often at this rate, if I’m so popular.

Once everything had quietened down, I began work on another radio programme but regrettably, I fell asleep for almost an hour – one of those sleeps where I don’t even realise that I’ve gone to sleep until I awaken.

While I was asleep in the early evening, I was with two friends. I’d met them while I was out driving down Chestnut Avenue in Shavington, presumably on the way home to Vine Tree Avenue and they were walking up the hill. There was a house for sale in the avenue and I’d noticed it because it seemed to be remarkably cheap for what it was so I happened to mention it. They looked at it – a big, modern detached home, on sale for £199,000 and it had a big gazebo at the back. The wife liked the look of it so the three of us went into the garden. She was worried that we had no authorisation but I told her that it didn’t matter. I’d simply pretend. As we walked up to the house, we noticed that there was no path and the lawn towards the front door was badly eroded. But as we walked, it became steeper and steeper and more and more eroded until we found ourselves on the roof. There seemed to be no other way in, despite how it looked from the road. And the roof seemed to be all old slates rather than the nice, neat tiles that we’d seen from the road. We eventually found our way inside, and it didn’t seem to be so bad, but there was someone else in there showing another couple around. He was telling them “you’ll probably get this place for £130,000 because … ” and then he mumbled something that I didn’t quite catch. I asked him to repeat it but before he could, I awoke.

Whatever this is about, I have absolutely no idea. I can’t think of anything that has cropped up recently that will have triggered this off.

Tea tonight was a lovely vegan vegetable stir-fry with noodles followed by a slice of fiery ginger cake with thick custard. And “fiery” is definitely the correct word to use here. I’m well-impressed. Isabelle the Nurse had asked me if I would be putting candles on my cake, but I told her that with climate change, global warming and all of that, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea. Mind you, my breath alone after eating that will contribute to a rise in planetary temperature, I imagine.

But now, I’m off to bed to sleep off my rather large meal. I couldn’t resist all of that lovely food, no matter how ill I might have been feeling.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my friend from Munich … "well, one of us has" – ed … the doctor came to check up on him this morning.
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Four" replied my friend
"Good" said the doctor. "Now come with me" and they both went outside.
"Now what’s that?" said the doctor, pointing up into the sky
"That’s the sun, of course"
"Well, that’s ninety-three million miles away from here. If you can see that far, your eyes must be good enough to go."

0

Monday 23rd February 2026 – I AGAIN FELL …

… asleep in a most embarrassing situation earlier this evening. So we’ll have to see how far we go with these notes right now before I throw in the towel and head for the hills.

It’s something that is very difficult to explain because last night, I had probably the deepest sleep that I have had for many a long time.

Not that it was early, though. It was another night where I struggled to make progress and once more, it was round about 23:30 when I finally finished everything and was able to crawl into bed.

But once in bed, I remember nothing, absolutely nothing at all, and when the alarm went off at 06:29 as usual, I was in such a deep sleep that I could quite easily have slept through it. It took a surprising amount of effort to reach out over my head to the bedside table to find the ‘phone

It took just as much effort to haul myself upright and sit on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor before the second alarm, and there I sat for quite a few minutes, waiting for the bedroom to stop spinning around my head and for me to find the effort to stand up.

After a visit to the bathroom for a good scrub up and a shave, I headed off into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication. Then back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I had been during the night.

There was some guy called Peter McTurk. He’d been found wandering around the streets of Rome as a street child and had been adopted by some rich American woman who had managed to bring him back into society and teach him all kinds of different things relating to civilisation. He’d settled down quite nicely. In 1917 he’d begun to play with a rock band and later on, went on to have his own group in which I was the bassist. This group had a great deal of success, even though it was only something like a high school band. I remember a kind of four-wheeled trolley that you’d push, with a flat bed on it, and it used to take all of our equipment as we were moving about from place to place and unloading the van to go into halls etc. We didn’t have a great deal. One person who figured in it was my girlfriend at the time, but I can’t remember very much more after this.

Fancy having a girlfriend in a dream and not remembering anything about it! That’s a real disappointment.

However, it must have been fun playing in a rock band in 1917. Can you imagine it?

I had another dream similar to the one the other night … "it was earlier this evening" – ed … about playing in that rock group. We had all kinds of rehearsals, things like that, but I can’t remember very much about it from last night, unfortunately.

At one time, we used to have recurring dreams quite often. However, they were never the kind of recurring dreams that I would have liked to have had. For this one, for example, I can’t even remember if the mythical girlfriend from the first instalment put in another appearance.

Isabelle the Nurse put in her usual appearance to sort out my legs and feet. She had a few moments to chat, but it looks as if I won’t see the photos of Carnaval until she’s back on duty in a week’s time or so. She’s working tomorrow, but as it’s her last day before her break, she’ll be in quite a rush.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast. Porridge, toast and black coffee as usual. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

We’re still discussing pottery, and our author is rather puzzled as to why early Iron Age pottery pans are still being found in layers that relate to the close of the Iron Age. The fact that by the end of the Iron Age, there is little pottery from outside the local area suggests that the area was isolated by this time, but this is even more puzzling, bearing in mind that wine jars from southern Spain dating to this period have been recovered and that in earlier iron Age periods, pottery has been found that has evidently travelled some considerable distance

It seems that there are tons of mileage to be explored when considering the considerable remains of pottery that he and his team uncovered at the site.

But while I was in the kitchen, I checked on my cake. Putting it in the fridge did the trick and the filling cream did solidify again. However, not all of it remains in between the two layers of the cake. The cake on its plate looks like a rather large island in the middle of a small frozen lake.

Still, not to worry. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I never make any mistakes. I just learn a lot of lessons, and some of them are expensive.

And that reminds me. Seeing as we have been talking about my cake … "well, one of us has" – ed … I have received a few requests from readers. Most of them are physically impossible, of course, but one was for the recipe for the cream filling.

So here goes –

  • 150 g vegan cream cheese or thick coconut yoghurt. I used 100 g of plain soya yoghurt with 50 g of coconut oil
  • 75 g vegan butter
  • 200–250 g icing sugar – depending on how thick you would like it
  • chopped ginger to taste
  • powdered ginger to taste
  • 2 tablespoons of syrup or maple syrup
  • A pinch of salt
  • cinnamon, nutmeg, orange, lemon to taste.
  1. whisk up the vegan butter until it goes all fluffy
  2. add the yoghurt and whisk until mixed (not too much or it will separate)
  3. sift in the icing sugar, salt, ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, orange, lemon, then whisk until it goes as thick as you would like it
  4. add in the chopped ginger and syrup, and stir well in
  5. leave in the fridge for half an hour to go really cold.

Back in here, I had things to do. And then I reviewed this week’s radio programme and sent it off. Following that, I reviewed my Welsh for tomorrow and, in whatever time was left, made a start on the next radio programme.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and after she left, I waited for my taxi.

There wasn’t long to wait because today, she was early again. There was someone else to pick up in Granville and another person in Sartilly, but even so, we were still early arriving at dialysis.

It wasn’t possible to find a bed to which I had to walk further than the one in which they installed me today. And once there, I had to wait no fewer than forty minutes for them to come to see me. And then it was to couple me up to an electric machine first to check my dry weight. I had to wait even longer for the session to start.

Once installed, they left me pretty much to my own devices. The duty doctor (not Emilie the Cute Consultant) came to see me.

"Is there anything I can do for you today?" he asked.

"No, thank you" I replied, and carried on reading.

When the session came to an end, the nurse dealing with me found everything else to do except to unplug me. I had to wait an eternity to be liberated. And then the taxi driver had to go to the depot to fuel up the car and collect some paperwork so I was horribly late returning home

Tea tonight was the other half of last night’s pizza with tinned apricots and vegan sorbet, which was just as delicious as always. But tomorrow, I’m going to treat myself to some custard for tea. I know that it’s banned for me, but I don’t care.

So right now, having survived falling asleep on the way back to the office and having kept on going to the end, I’ll finish off everything and go to bed ready for exciting times tomorrow;

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my cake again … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone mentioned about it being cooked on the top and not as well cooked at the bottom.
"What did it say in the instructions about putting it into the oven?" she asked.
"Nothing much" I said. "Just ‘put into the oven at 180°’"
"Well, there you are!" she exclaimed. "Put it in the oven at 180°. That means ‘turn it upside-down’."

0

Sunday 22nd February 2026 – WHAT A NICE …

… way to start the day today. By the time that I came back in here to start work after breakfast, it was 11:15. That’s about two and a half hours later than usual, and if every Sunday could be like that, it would be wonderful.

Mind you, it wasn’t an early finish last night. By the time that I’d completed everything that needed completing, it was once more just coming up to 23:30, and I would have loved to have been in bed an hour or so earlier. But simply, I don’t know where the time goes these days.

Anyway, once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly. However, it was something of a mobile night. I definitely remember waking up briefly a couple of times, although it wasn’t for long and I can’t really remember all that much about it.

One thing that I do remember, though, is that when Isabelle the Nurse turned up, I was fast asleep with my head under the covers. And while I was submerged at that end, she unsubmerged me at the other end to deal with my feet and legs.

After she left, I curled up again and went back to sleep. However, round about 09:30 I was found sitting on the edge of my bed. Much as I would like to, I can’t spend all day lying in my stinking pit. I have to make a start sometime.

After a visit to the bathroom, I went into the kitchen. First task was to bake the croissants that I’d prepared yesterday. And this new technique seems to have worked. The presentation was so much better today, and they looked like real croissants.

So a couple of those along with my porridge and hot black coffee, and I was well away. It really was a nice breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

Yesterday, I mentioned that this section about pottery was going to be a very long job. And I was right, too. Today, we’ve been discussing the lugs that appeared on different kinds of Neolithic pottery – just the lugs. This book is going to be a very long read.

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

I’d heard a report that in the near future they would be bringing out a new version of the Berlingo. It was going to be a long wheelbase type of thing with more room inside. That became immediately more interesting to me because I would have liked to have had something like that at some point. I thought that if it was long-wheelbase, it would still be suitable for sleeping in if necessary when I was out on the road. I tried to find out more about it but apparently it was not being distributed for quite a while yet and that was disappointing news because I had a feeling that I was going to be needing a new vehicle fairly rapidly and this would probably have been ideal for what I wanted.

Back in the late 1990s, I needed a car in a hurry after the Mercedes went the Way of the West. With nothing better on the horizon, a friend at work sold me an old Volkswagen Passat diesel estate. Only just a few weeks later, Citroën announced the end of the run of C15 diesel vans, and they were selling them off at just €4995 plus VAT. One of those would have been perfect for what I wanted at the time.

There was also something going on about the Epstein affair. People had suddenly realised that the one important person, the former wife of Epstein, had not yet been arrested despite her name appearing in the files on numerous occasions. The official reason given was that although her name appears in the files, there’s no allegation of any wrong-doing and no-one has made a complaint against her. In that case, as far as the police go, there’s nothing to investigate until something is discovered in the files that implicates her in a crime.

With all of the revelations of the Epstein files and the aftermath, I’m just wondering when my name is going to appear in them. Everyone else’s has, for one reason or another, and I’m feeling left out.

As for the subject matter of the dreams, there was something the other day about AFKAP – the Andrew Formerly Known As Prince – and I imagine that that particular dream was in some way related to the revelations in the files.

When I’d finished the dictaphone notes, we had a footfest, with all of the highlights of the matches from the JD Cymru League over the weekend. And the unbeaten run of Connah’s Quay Nomads came to a shuddering halt as they were beaten by Y Barri 1-0.

And things are going from bad to worse for Penybont. With yet another player dismissed from the field, they crashed 3-1 away at Colwyn Bay. For a team that a few months ago was a comfortable second in the league, they’ve only won once since 21st November, and that game was against struggling Llanelli, where they scraped a narrow 1-0 win.

The next game was Stranraer v Spartans in Scotland. And at last, after a run of I don’t know how many draws, they managed to win. Mind you, it took A WONDER GOAL DEEP IN INJURY TIME by Aaron Quigg to break the deadlock.

A little later, after a little relaxation, I spent a couple of hours revising my Welsh ready for Tuesday, and then it was baking time.

No bread today, though – I took half a loaf out of the freezer ready for next week because I was going to bake a cake and didn’t have the time for everything.

For reasons that shall become apparent in early course, I really fancied a strong ginger cake. As well as that, Rosemary had found an obscure recipe that suggested that desiccated coconut and ground almonds were a suitable substitute for sugar when baking.

That sounded absolutely excellent, so I ground a couple of handfuls of almonds and added a cup of desiccated coconut instead of one cup of sugar in my oil cake and used coconut oil instead of the vegetable oil. With enough ginger to sink a ship, I mixed up all of the ingredients and poured the mixture into the baking tray.

After I’d made my pizza base, I started to make the layering cream for the cake. I’d found a good recipe with butter, icing sugar, coconut yoghurt (I mixed soya yoghurt with coconut oil), maple syrup and spices. I whipped it all up and put it in the fridge to stiffen.

But this filling and the consistency of the sauce looked excellent to me, and I was thinking that I could adapt it to almost any kind of filling, especially chocolate. I shall have to make further plans.

While I was assembling the pizza, I had the cake baking and it was done to a turn – maybe a little too much on top and not enough on the bottom – and I wish that I knew how to deal with that because it’s not the first time that it’s happened.

When it was ready, I took it out of the oven and put the pizza in. That was done to a turn fifteen minutes later, and as usual, I ate half of it, with the other half for tomorrow after dialysis.

Once I’d finished and tidied up everything, I cut my cake in half and went to put the layering mix in the middle in order to make a sandwich cake with the two halves. However, it wasn’t cooled enough and it began to melt the layering mix.

Next time that I make a sandwich cake, I shall have to stick it in the fridge for several hours to make sure that it’s properly and thoroughly cold. One thing, though, and that is that I’m certainly learning a lot as I go on, and that’s the whole point of doing it.

But right now, I’m going to finish everything off and go to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about baking a cake … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of Zero and her mother when Zero was at a young and impressionable age.
They had been baking a cake together and were relaxing in the living room when the timer sounded in the kitchen.
"Be a dear and go and see if the cake is ready" said Zero’s mother.
"How do I do that?" asked Zero.
"Take one of the meat skewers from the cutlery tray, poke it into the cake a few times and see if it comes out clean."
So off trotted Zero into the kitchen.
Ten minutes later, Zero came back in. "Yes, mum, it’s cooked."
"So what took you so long?"
"Well, the skewer came out so clean that I stuck the rest of the dirty cutlery from lunchtime in the cake too."

0

Saturday 21st February 2026 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… day when I seem to have accomplished quite a lot, without really realising it.

Mind you, I did have something of a head start this morning, and that can quite often make a great difference.

It wasn’t like that last night, though. Once more, everything that I needed to do seemed to take so long to do it that it was 23:30 once more when I finally crawled into bed and threw the covers over my head, as I usually do.

And there I lay, fast asleep, until all of … errr … 03:25 when I awoke. And from that moment on, try as I might, I simply could not go back to sleep.

So for about two hours or so, I lay there tossing and turning to no effect whatsoever and in the end, round about 05:30, I arose from the Dead.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that this week, I’ve prepared two radio programmes. The notes had yet to be dictated, and so I made the most of the early start by dictating both of them before we started having people strolling around outside and making a noise.

Once I’d finished, I went into the bathroom to sort myself out, change my clothes and have a clothes-washing session. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … having lived out of a suitcase for several years, I always try to keep on top of the washing of the undies so that I’m not overwhelmed or, even worse, run out of clothes. Handwashing my undies is no big deal.

In the kitchen, I made my hot lemon, honey and ginger drink with which to take my medication, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been up to during the night.

And I was surprised that I’d been up to so much, given how little sleep I’d had during the night.

There was a big group of us sitting around on the chairs and settees and the floor of a living room somewhere. We were discussing various things that had happened, various illnesses, and someone began to talk about a mining disaster up in the Cumbria region where people had been killed. They were discussing how it happened, and someone turned round to me and said “I suppose that if you’d been in charge, Eric, you’d have pleaded ‘Not Guilty'” to which I replied “not at all”. Someone said “yes, but you don’t want to say that at the top of your voice, do you?”. I replied “no, but you review the evidence first before you decide on what you are going to say”. The chap then turned round from that same subject towards the medical and said … “that’s why” I said “I have this illness but no-one is going to say that I die of it because I might die of something else in the meantime”. People usually hedge their bets as to when I’m going to die etc and no-one will give me a date because they are all making sure that they don’t pre-empt anything.

Yesterday, I was writing the biography for a musician who came from Aspatria in Cumbria. And as well as that, it was the anniversary today of one of the SPRINGHILL MINING DISASTERS, the one that took place in 1891.

Later on, we were singing a song called “Rebecca”. It’s a song in French and concerned a girl who was walking around Maiden Castle reviewing all of the changes etc that had taken place there. The song was in homage of what she saw. Of course, it was much more complicated than this and included a dream as well, but it was the song that stuck in my mind mostly, even though I’ve forgotten it now.

This is one of those dreams that I have mentioned before, where I remember nothing at all about it.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am actually asleep when I dictate my notes during the night but even so, I usually have a recall of something or other when I’m transcribing them. However, this is one of those where I didn’t and I’ve no idea to what it relates.

It certainly sounds interesting, though, and I wish that I could remember it.

We were back right at the end of the American Civil War and the siege of Richmond or Fredericksburg. The Union Army was of course on top, and there was one Union soldier who was quite famous for a lot of things. He was running agents behind Confederate lines, doing all kinds of things that had made him something of a hero. The Confederates learned that he was in the front line in their sector, so one of their private soldiers made a kind of search amongst the Union soldiers as best as he could from his own trench, and thought that he was able to recognise the soldier by the accolades that he was having from his friends. One evening, the soldier went and constructed a kind of tent in the front line, a shelter using a tent half and installed himself in it. The Confederate soldier took a rifle from the rack and inserted a bullet in it. He took careful aim but of course the rifle was extremely heavy and he was unable to control it properly when he was standing up. Nevertheless, when he thought that he was correct, he fired. It hit the Union soldier in the leg and rebounded into his chest and there had to be all kinds of immediate, urgent reactions to try to save him, otherwise he’d die. So in the pause that was taking place, a couple of Confederate officers and their wives decided that they would try to cross the lines into the Union Army area and go to do their shopping. When the general heard about this, he was appalled and sent the strongest instructions around. A couple of days later, the Confederate Army surrendered and it made no difference. One thing about this rifle while I think about it was that it wasn’t a muzzle-loader with a paper cartridge and a Minié ball but a breech loader with a proper bullet. In the American Civil War armies, it was extremely rare to find that.

This dream actually concerned the siege of Petersburg, and regular readers of this rubbish in a previous existence will recall that WE WENT TO VISIT PETERSBURG on one of our trips around the USA back in the past.

And I do have to say that I’m so impressed that I can remember from my reading in the past, so much that is relevant to this dream. The Spencer Repeating Rifle that this Confederate private seems to be using was a very rare issue, only issued to Union cavalry and sharpshooter infantry regiments. It had a chamber that could hold seven bullets of the type that we know today

The ordinary “footslogger” used a Springfield rifled musket. These were long-barrelled and had to be loaded at the muzzle. A paper cartridge of gunpowder would be rammed down the barrel and then a Minié bullet, a lump of lead about six tenths of an inch in diameter, would be rammed down afterwards.

The discharge of a Minié ball from a Springfield was of a very low velocity, so rather than the bullet passing through clothes, flesh and everything, the Minié ball would push clothing deep into the body and the weight of the ball would shatter the bone. Consequently, there were many, many cases where gangrene developed, because of the dirty and stained clothing that the victim would be wearing. A surgical amputation of the limb in what passed for a casualty clearing station was a very common result of being hit by a Minié ball.

The survival rate of amputation after being hit by a Minié ball was not very optimistic. I’ve seen figures to suggest that over twenty-five per cent of such amputations resulted in death.

As for the tent, every Union soldier carried as part of his kit a “shelter half” which was half a tent. And when the troops stopped for the night, they would form pairs and make one tent from their two “shelter halves”.

And as I said just now, I’m impressed that I could remember all that in a dream.

Isabelle the nurse turned up as usual and told me that somehow, she’d been locked out of her health card-reading machine. That’s going to cause a few complications if she can’t unlock herself.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

He has now moved on to discuss pottery. And it’s going to be a very long discussion too because his team found a total of 10,432 grammes of pottery from the Neolithic Age alone, never mind the Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the proto-Roman occupation.

At the moment, he’s trying to categorise it into rim formation and shape. I have a feeling that we’ll be here for a rather long time.

After breakfast, I had things to do. Up on the top of my shelf unit were some boxes from the move back in August. I can’t reach them so while my cleaner had the ladder here yesterday, I asked her to bring them down.

And you’ll be amazed at the stuff that I found in them when I was sorting through the contents. It really is quite impressive. Loads of stuff that I’d either mislaid, couldn’t find or didn’t even realise that I’d brought with me from the farm.

The problem now is to find a place to put the things because it’s no use putting them back on the top shelf where I can’t reach them. A lot of it is stuff that I ought to need.

After a disgusting drink break at lunchtime, I came in here and began to edit the notes that I’d dictated a couple of weeks ago for another radio programme. And by the time that I’d knocked off, I’d edited them all, assembled the two halves of the programme, chosen the joining track and written the notes for it ready for dictation on the next early morning.

Then we had the football. And at last, after several weeks, we finally had a match where both the teams were interested in the game and wanted to play it.

Llansawel, fourth from bottom, were entertaining Y Bala, second from bottom. Y Bala were desperate for points to haul themselves out of the relegation places and Llansawel had hopes of catching up the teams ahead of them and pulling further out of danger.

Consequently, they were at it hammer and tongs right from the kick-off and there was no respite.

The result, 2-1 to Llansawel, was probably about fair, but if Y Bala can play like that all the time, they might give Y Fflint, third bottom, a few things to think about.

After the final whistle, I went into the kitchen and sorted out the pastry to make my croissants. I tried my new technique and it seems to work, but we’ll have to wait until I bake them tomorrow morning to see;

By then it was teatime and I made baked potato, a vegan salad and some of those vegan nuggets that I like, followed by apricot with vegan sorbet

Right now though, I’m going to bed ready for my lie-in, I hope. I have to say that I deserve it. Tomorrow, I’m going to try to find a recipe for a ginger cake so that I can make a ginger layer cake, with some vegan ginger cream filling in between the layers, if I can find a recipe for that too.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Neolithic pottery … "well, one of us has" – ed … Niall Sharples was asked about all the pottery that he had collected.
"The problem is" he said "that it’s all broken into small pieces. To all intents and purposes, it’s effectively dead."
"So why are you collecting it all?"
"We’re going to have to try to return it to its next-of-kiln."

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Friday 20th February 2026 – THAT WAS A …

… better day today and I actually managed to accomplish a fair amount of work, which makes a change from how things have been just recently.

Mind you, it didn’t look much like it last night. Once again, things dragged and dragged and it was quite late once more, probably not much before 23:30, when I finally crawled into bed

And wasn’t I glad to be in bed too? As I said yesterday, I had fallen asleep quite embarrassingly and at that point I was all ready to throw in the towel and go straight to bed. However, I did manage to persevere (only just) and finish what needed to be finished.

Once in bed, it took me a few minutes to go to sleep. However, I awoke at some point, totally disorientated, and it took me a while to settle down and even longer to go back to sleep. And there I was when the alarm went off.

Although I was totally dead to the World, I did manage somehow to put my feet on the floor and sit upright before the second alarm went off. Eventually, I could stagger off into the bathroom to sort myself out and have a good scrub up.

After my hot drink and medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was something going on in some kind of big house, and there were several families living there, including ours. In one of the families was a young girl and I was quite taken by her so I began to chat her up. Although she didn’t actually encourage me, she didn’t tell me to clear off or anything like that so I just tried to be nice and tried to talk to her. After a while, she ended up opening up and we had quite a nice little chat. And then my mother turned up, and as usual, she joined in the conversation to such an extent that I could see the tears beginning in this girl’s eyes and she walked out of the room. I waited for ten seconds or so and then went to follow her. And there, sitting by a wall, one of the interior walls, was a cat. Somehow, I knew that this cat was this girl so I crouched down and began to talk to it, to tell the cat that she mustn’t take any notice of that kind of thing. Then I picked it up and began to stroke it.

Now, this was rather a strange dream. But it seems to be par for the course when you consider how things were a couple of years ago, when I had these recurring dreams when I was just on the point of Getting The Girl after a lot of hard work, when someone from my family would come along and heave a spanner into the works. I hope that it isn’t going to become a recurring theme

But as for her turning into a cat, I must admit that I would love a cat here in this apartment but I’m not sure how feasible it’s going to be. For a start, I can’t travel anywhere to collect one.

There was also a dream about a woman who was separated from her husband. She had two children. Her husband wanted to come round to see her so my friend decided that he would hide in this woman’s apartment in case anything went wrong. For some reason or other, I was there too. We arranged one or two things that we arranged quite easily what was going on by putting things in various positions. One of the things was a hidden camera that was in a plastic bag on a shelf. When he came, he asked what was in it, but we’d had the forethought to put a couple of tins of pop in there, so she simply produced a tin of pop. The discussion went on, and then he began to attack her. I had a flask of really hot coffee for some reason, so I remember opening the top of this thermos flask and throwing the coffee all over him, which stopped him in his tracks. Then my friend came along from where he was hiding and dealt with the rest

This is a dream that seems to have come out of nothing, but why do I have the feeling that my friend was hiding in the thermos flask that I was holding? That’s a thought that I can’t push out of my mind

There was also some kind of vague memory about a dream concerning AFKAP – the Andrew Formerly Known As Prince – but I didn’t dictate anything and I can’t recall it now.

Obviously, this wasn’t a very arresting dream.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up, earlier than she did yesterday. She told me that it was her birthday yesterday too so I wished her a happy birthday. It’s a shame that she hadn’t told me beforehand.

After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

We’ve now moved on to discuss bronze and iron working at the hillfort and this is a really interesting section.

He tells us that "Although sheet-bronze working appears to be at present a preserve of the hillfort, some aspects of metallurgy are shared with others, and, having considered the evidence of ironworking slag in the Iron Age deposits at the hillfort, "it is likely that at least 200 kg of iron artefacts were manufactured at Maiden Castle in the Late Iron Age".

This leads his team to the opinion that "it is clear that the ironworking site in the eastern gateway is one of the most important artefact production centres discovered in southern England."

Now, this makes me wonder if we are approaching some kind of idea of the purpose of hillforts in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

It has often been suggested that rather than being a defensive site against an enemy, a hillfort is the home of some kind of elite, with the peasants living outside it. Could it be that maybe the “elite” were the “elite” because they monopolised the important aspects of bronze and, later, iron fabrication, and the purpose of the defences was to protect the industrial site from being pillaged by envious locals who had no alternative but to obtain the sheet bronze and iron from the “elite” in the hillfort in order to fabricate their necessary articles?

Of course, the defences are somewhat extreme and the number of man-hours needed to build them must have been astonishing, and also the area covered by a hillfort is rather large. And as yet, it’s doubtful if the bronze and iron have been shown to have been fabricated in sufficient quantity in the hillfort to justify such a theory. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting idea that is worth exploring.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I pushed on with the radio programme on which I’d been working.

Taking rather a leisurely ramble, it was eventually finished, with plenty of time to go. And so afterwards, I edited the notes that I had dictated for the joining track for an earlier programme and ended up assembling that. So that’s now complete and ready to go.

There had been an interruption too. One of the net curtains here in the bedroom fell down. They are held up by hooks on these sticky pads, and the stickiness wears off after a while. However, we had bought some net curtain rails that came with some metal screw-in hooks, so my cleaner and I went round the apartment and replaced all the sticky pads with the screw-in hooks. I hope that they don’t fall out.

Tea tonight was chips, falafel and baked beans with cheese. French baked beans, which I don’t like at all. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I shall have to bite the bullet and order a tray of British baked beans online.

That was followed by tinned apricots and vegan sorbet, followed by a dismantling of the freezer when a pack of food fell down behind the bottom drawer.

So now, I’m off to bed, ready for a lazy weekend now that everything that I need to do has been done. However, I suppose that I’ll find plenty of things to do, as usual.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about cats … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once had to take Tuppence, my old black cat, to the vets because she was not very well.
The vet picked her up and gave her a really good examination. After ten minutes, he said "I’m afraid that I’ll have to put your cat down."
"Good grief!" I exclaimed. "Is she that ill?"
"Oh no" he replied. "She’s just so flaming heavy."

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Thursday 19th February 2026 – HAVING JUST FALLEN …

… asleep while … errr … riding the porcelain horse after tea, it remains to be seen how much of these notes I actually finish before I crash out on the bed.

But anyway, we may as well make a start and see how we go.

But seeing as we have been talking about making a start … "well, one of us has" – ed … making a finish last night wasn’t very good. I’ve no idea what happened, but things seemed to drag and drag, and it was practically 00:00 to all intents and purposes when I finally went to bed. That kind of thing is no good at all.

And once in bed, it took a while to go off to sleep, but eventually I was deep in the Land of Nod and there I stayed until all of … errr … 06:15.

Funnily enough, I awoke with the feeling that the alarm had gone off, and I was almost ready to leave the bed. Of course it hadn’t, but it took me a good minute or two to realise it.

When it finally did go off, I threw back the bedcovers immediately, but that, of course, is not the same as saying that I left the bed. In fact, what with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed … I was actually later than usual going for my morning scrub.

And I forgot to have a shave too, as I realised later. No wonder Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and took my medication, and then came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night.

And to my dismay, I found that I hadn’t been anywhere at all. That was extremely disappointing because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … going off on my little voyages during the night is about the only excitement that I have these days.

Still, there were plenty of other things to do to keep me out of mischief until Isabelle the Nurse arrived.

She was late this morning too. Apparently, an earlier patient had required a lot of attention, so she had to stay with him for a while. She couldn’t hang around here either, and was soon back out on her travels around the rest of her circuit.

That meant that I could push on with making breakfast and reading some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

Today, we’re discussing bones. And interestingly, some skulls that Wheeler and his team had identified as being from domestic cattle have been identified by Sharples and his team as skulls of the aurochs, a kind of wild cow that became extinct in the UK round about 1200 BC.

Another matter of note is that they observe that the bones of dogs seem to have been butchered and defleshed, as if dog was part of the diet during the Iron Age.

It’s interesting to note that several bones of the more traditional animals, particularly sheep, suggest that malnutrition was present amongst them at this time. So maybe, despite what I was saying yesterday about farming, there was some kind of dietary crisis at some point that led to people eating their dogs.

Back in here, I caught up with my Welsh revision and then turned my attention to the next radio programme. All of the music has now been selected, reformatted, remixed and re-edited, and some of it has been paired and segued. I’ll finish the rest tomorrow morning and then write the notes.

My cleaner turned up as usual to help me with the anaesthetic, and while she was at it, she went through the medication. I’m running low and it’s the time that I need to stock up on supplies. We made a list of what’s needed and she told me that she’d sally forth this afternoon to the chemist’s to fetch the supplies.

Once she’d gone, I had to wait for the taxi to arrive. It was late today, after being so early on Monday, and what with closed roads, flooding everywhere and so on, we didn’t make up any time at all, and I was quite late arriving at dialysis.

Today, we were given a lecture by someone about our bodies in relation to the dialysis procedure, what’s not working, what the machine does, what we must do and what we mustn’t do, all that kind of thing

Not that I really wanted to know, and as if I didn’t have anything better to do with my time, but when someone is standing in the middle of the room speaking, it’s very hard not to listen.

But meanwhile, in other news, they tell me that I’m changing rooms as of Monday and going into one of the big rooms. Apparently, there are too many of us who need too much attention in the small room, where there is only one nurse on duty.

What with starting late, I ended up finishing late. And then we had to drop someone else off in Avranches before I could go home. But at least I was able to see the devastation cause by all of the flooding at Avranches where the river at the foot of the town has burst its banks and flooded everywhere

It’s quite tragic, all of this. There are houses under water just down the road from the dialysis centre, and the little shopping centre by the railway station is also submerged. The shopkeepers can’t open the doors of the shops, with all of the weight against them.

And the rain is predicted to fall, and fall, and fall. It’s a really good job that the tides aren’t all that high at the moment; otherwise there would be many more problems. Luckily, we are perched on top of a cliff well above sea level here, so if we are flooded, then the World has a really serious problem.

The wind back here as I arrived was such that, like earlier when I was leaving, I had to be dropped off at the back of the building. There’s an alley reserved for fire engines and the rescue service right behind the building, so the taxi drivers can reverse down it and drop me off right outside the fire escape at the back.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment and then after she left, I made tea. I had a hankering for cauliflower cheese, I don’t know why, so I made vegetables (including cauliflower) in a vegan cheese sauce and had a couple of small vegan sausages. It was delicious.

So having made it all the way down to the end of my notes, I’m off to bed ready for a hard day’s work tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the chemist’s … "well, one of us has" – ed … my cleaner came back with most of the supplies, and she’ll bring the rest when she comes on Friday afternoon.
She told me, though, that there had been a man in the chemist’s when she was there.
He asked the assistant "Do you have any painkillers? I have this really dreadful pain"
"Certainly, sir" replied the chemist. "Whereabouts is it?"
"How on earth would I know?" asked the man. "It’s your chemist’s, not mine."

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Wednesday 18th February 2026 – I’LL TELL YOU …

… something for nothing, and that is that I’m not going to have one of those caffeine-filled energy drinks again.

Yes, never mind “last night” – I was still wide awake at 03:00 this morning and showing no sign whatever of going off to sleep? And that’s despite the early start that morning.

It wasn’t as if I was all that early going to bed either. By the time that I’d finished everything and gone to bed, it was round about 23:30. So seven hours sleep was the most that I could expect, but I ended up with much, much less than that.

However, it wasn’t all wasted. As I usually do when I’m having difficulty sleeping, I set myself an imaginary problem. Using techniques that I’ve learned about the building of prehistoric and Roman defensive sites, I redesigned the fort that Colonel Carrington built in the Black Hills of Dakota that was abandoned after the Fetterman Disaster. I made quite a few changes and additions too that would have made the fort so much stronger.

At some point though, I must have gone off to sleep because the alarm awoke me at 06:29. And then it was a desperate struggle to force myself to leave the bed. It’s becoming harder and harder to leave the bed these days.

After I’d had a good wash and brush-up, I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone.

I’d gone round to meet my girlfriend, and for a change, we decided that we’d go for a walk. We took some food with us too, and she put some bits and pieces in the food box that I was carrying. We’d hardly left the building when we bumped into one of the drivers from the taxi company, one of the young, chatty ones. He had a few personal problems on his hands. Apparently certain people had found out that he had a daughter and an ex-girlfriend living in Ireland. This was causing him a lot of problems. I said that although I knew, because he’d told me in the past, he’d never said anything to anyone and I knew nothing about it. He said that he understood, but he was still disturbed by the idea that people were gossiping behind his back over this matter and looking at him strangely. As this conversation carried on, I couldn’t seem to … not that I wanted to end it, but I wanted to be with my girlfriend, and this was rather inconvenient. But he carried on and carried on. In the end, we came to some kind of building where we all went in, but I turned round and my girlfriend wasn’t there. I found her leaning propped up against the wall in the corridor. She had a smile on her face but I could tell that she wasn’t happy, so I thought that I’d better take her for a meal or something, and see whether we could sort things out, not that there were any problems but I didn’t want her to be unhappy or be angry or upset with me because of that long chat that I’d had with that guy

Actually, that particular driver had been part of the conversation that I’d had with my cleaner earlier yesterday. It wasn’t about this subject, though. And I could understand why a girl would feel jealous or left out of things under these circumstances.

But maybe, if I’d bought meals for a couple of other girls in the past when they had been feeling left out of things, my life wouldn’t seem to be as disastrous as it appears

There had been some kind of invasion in Scotland – it might have been the Germans. They had rounded up a pocket of soldiers in the Glasgow Underground, and for one of them, they decided that they’d give him an examination for a fitness test for a PSV. What they did was to put some oversized boots on him and told him to simply run. He did a lap around the underground station and when he came back, he was roughly manhandled and pushed over to some kind of officer to be that officer’s chauffeur. One of the trips that they had to make was to go to see some kind of Scotsman involved in something or other, so they turned up at his house and the officer sent the driver in to fetch him. He went in, and he explained that he’d been taken prisoner and was now the chauffeur of this guy so they began to think of a way of escaping. One of the ways that they thought of was by going to the local swimming baths and disappearing in the crowd but when they looked out of the window, the officer wasn’t in the car so they nipped out of the house and started to lose themselves. The officer realised that they’d gone – he had an idea and began to follow them but he’d been drinking and was a little unsteady on his feet. As he was closing in on these two Scots people, he fell over face down into a puddle of water. Some young Scottish girl, rather intoxicated, saw him and fell down with him. She told him “you don’t want to go drinking this. Let’s go somewhere and have a real drink”. She knew some friends where they could go, so this officer, who now had a dog, followed her. They were heading right back to the house where he’d just come from, but suddenly, the dog ran off. The officer had to go to look after the dog, find it and bring it back so they didn’t end up actually going into the house at all. Instead, the girl went into a bar next door while the officer went to try to sort out what had happened to his dog.

This dream, despite it being so long, seems to relate to nothing at all – except that when I was in Brussels and my boss was on holiday for a couple of weeks, I drove the Finnish general who had come to discuss the possibility of a European Army, something that only seems to be happening today, twenty-five years later.

Isabelle the Nurse was early today. She told me a few stories of Carnaval but she says that she’ll show me the photos at the weekend. One thing that she did confirm was that the town is in total and absolute chaos after the parade yesterday.

After she left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

And I must admit to having had a laugh at one of the comments in his book, even though I know that I shouldn’t. Freudian slips are not the subject of history at all – they really do happen, especially as in where he writes "There is also a very similar situation at South Street in north Wiltshire (Ashbee et al 1979), where Late Neolithic activity with Peterborough pottery occurred in secondary woodland." and then goes on to ask "What sort of activity went on in these woodlands and why did it have no effect on the vegetation?"

Judging by the considerable evidence of the presence of numerous children at the site, I have a pretty good idea of what went on in the woodland, and it had probably been going on for so long that the vegetation had seen it all before and so was immune to the shock factor.

But to be serious … "for once" – ed … we’ve gone past molluscs and are now onto plants. Judging by the types of seeds in the different layers of soil, his team’s opinion of the timeline of the land-use as judged by mollusc remains is pretty much correct

However, interestingly, in the earliest layers, round about the period of the early Neolithic, remains of nuts, seeds, grains and fruits seem to be indicative of the remains of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Although there was a great variety of different remains, the edible remains were few, indicating that it was still very much a precarious hand-to-mouth existence.

By the time that we reach the Iron Age, though, the diet seems to be much more monotonous, with a predominance of grain, leguminous plants and arable weeds. This seems to point to a people who abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle a good way back and are now practising sedentary agriculture – large-scale arable farming necessitating a totally different lifestyle involving cooperation and coordination.

Even more interestingly, the amount of crop “waste” recovered that relates to this latter period is described as "copious". It was clearly anything but a hand-to-mouth existence, and this bears out something that I heard when I went to a lecture at the university in Brussels years ago, that agricultural production per capita in the Iron Age was sufficient to support a much larger population than existed at the time, hence there would be little reason for warfare amongst the different tribes and groups of people.

Back in here, I had several things that I needed to do, and then I attacked the radio programme. All of the music is now paired and segued, and all of the notes have been written, ready for the next early start, whenever that might be.

As well as that, I’ve had a couple of online chats with a few people, including my niece in Canada and also with a friend, who wished me “happy birthday”, which is nice of him, even if he is a little early with his best wishes.

When I’d finished, I had a play around with a few artificial intelligence story writers, and I was astonished at the results from two of them. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … this Artificial Intelligence is going to lead to total chaos and a whole lot of trouble before too long, if it hasn’t already. In the past, I’ve already been swapping heads and backgrounds around from one image to another with startling results.

With what time was left, I began to edit a rock concert to use for the next radio programme, only to find that it’s the wrong date, so I’ll have to look for another way of filling up that broadcast.

Tea tonight was pasta and something out of the freezer. It should have been an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit dating back to November 2023 (there is stuff far older than that in there) but it wasn’t. I have no idea what it was, or why it was in the wrong packet, but I identified peanuts in it.

Pudding was a peach half with vegan sorbet. My imagination is rather lacking right now. But when I’ve finished this tin of peaches, I might go for a pear upside-down cake, just to be different. Rosemary reckons that instead of sugar, you can use a mix of desiccated coconut and ground almonds. That should be fun to try.

But not now, because 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 swimming baths just now … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Municipal Swimming Baths in Crewe closed down a few years ago, and they now have somewhere much more modern – and privatised.
They put up a big sign above the door to advertise the place. It said "PSWIMMING BATHS".
And so I went along and asked them "do you know that you have made a spelling mistake?"
"Not at all" the receptionist said. "In these swimming baths, the ‘P’ is silent."

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Tuesday 17th February 2026 – HAVING WAXED LYRICAL …

… yesterday about how much better I was feeling, I was brought right back down to earth this afternoon when I had one of those famous collapses that I have every now and again.

And it was looking so good too.

Last night, I strolled through everything that I needed to do. Nothing seemed to stand in my way and I was actually in bed by about 22:15, having finished everything that needed to be done. And it’s not very often that I can say that.

Not only that, I was asleep quite quickly too. However, you don’t need me to tell you what subsequently happened. You’ve heard me say it often enough, and you are probably just as sick as I am of hearing about it.

So there I was, at 04:15 this morning, lying in bed, trying my best to go back to sleep but without any success at all. In the end, round about 05:45, I dragged myself out of bed and, in a mad fit of enthusiasm, dictated all of the radio notes that were outstanding.

It has to be said, though, that I made a right dog’s breakfast of more than just a couple of them. Probably because at that time of morning, I can’t see straight enough to read my notes and I’m not awake enough to concentrate. There will be piles of editing to do, but it can’t be helped.

After I’d finished, I staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication. I really do like this hot lemon, honey and ginger drink, despite all of the rubbish that I’m obliged to take with it.

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

I dreamed that I was working for Birmingham City Transport. I was in a double-decker bus that had Route 454 on the front. I wondered where I was going because no-one had said a word to me. I tried to set the destination board to 000 but I somehow couldn’t manage to do it. It was displaying all kinds of numbers. The next thing that I remember was that I was in the middle of Birmingham Bus Station, in the middle where the buses wait to find an empty bay. Someone came along and said that I was in the wrong place. There were already one or two people on board so I set off to do a lap around the bus station to look for the bay for the 454. Everyone complained that I hadn’t picked up passengers, so I told them that I was doing a lap round to find the correct bay. They explained to me where I had to go, and there were half a dozen people waiting there, so I picked them up and drove out of the city centre. I had no idea where I was going, and we went there and these areas of total devastation where there had been acres and acres of demolition. By that time, there were just these two women on board. They explained to me that I had to take them to some kind of house where they were going to go for a visit. Of course, I knew nothing about this. No-one had told me a thing. I didn’t even know where this house was, so they said that they would guide me. In the end, we ended up walking through the countryside, chatting about all kinds of things, washing clothes in salt to remove bloodstains etc. And the views were wonderful. We met two other people and had a quick chat and just carried on walking into the countryside and we walked for miles. There were these two old Swedish Volvos parked at the side of the road. I noticed them, and they had foreign plates, but I couldn’t identify the plates at the moment. We were just chatting for hours as we walked through the countryside, and I had no idea at all what I was supposed to be doing.

Now, this was a strange dream, if ever there was one. Firstly, I’ve never driven a double-deck service bus. Plenty of coaches of course, and plenty of single-deck service buses but not a double-deck service bus. and as for driving around Birmingham, I know the various ways in and out, but I’d be lost completely if I had to drive a service bus route. However, there was a Birmingham bus route 454 that ran from the city centre out to Smethwick and that way.

So what would I be doing there? And why would I end up walking miles through the countryside with two women past a couple of pale green Volvos, two of the very last 164 models (I can still see them).

As for removing bloodstains, at dialysis yesterday a large load of blood was actually spilled onto my T-shirt and needs to be cleaned.

There was also something about being at home with Nerina. She was drinking a bottle of beer, and she said that this particular beer was really nice. I said that my friend from Munich might be coming to stay for a while, and he likes a special kind of beer, and my brother likes a certain beer, so if my friend from Munich comes to stay we’ll fetch a few beers of each type and we can have a nice night in, and she seemed to like the idea. Then we decided that we’d have to tidy up and she wanted to put some things in the fridge. The fridge was full, so I had to shuffle everything around and in the end, I managed to fit these things in but a couple of bottles of wine wouldn’t fit on the shelves inside so I had to move some things out of the door shelves to put the wine in there and to put the things that were in the door shelves into the fridge somehow. But the bottom shelf of the fridge was full of peat and that kind of thing, composted soil. I had to dig a hole in it to stand these bottles of wine upright in it.

This is probably a little more like it. Nerina wasn’t a beer drinker, but she would appreciate a very good beer very occasionally. I know that my friend does, because there’s a special order here every time that he tells me that he’s coming round.

We were much more into wine back in the old days, Nerina and I, and back in the days thirty or forty years ago, a plate of cheese and a bottle of Burgundy would have been our heaven. Planting a bottle of wine in the soil in the fridge is a novel idea, though.

And why would my brother be rearing his head in the middle of a convivial gathering?

The nurse was really early today – barely 08:00. But the sooner he comes, the sooner he goes and that suits me fine. I could push on, make my breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

And we are reaching a really interesting point in the book, a point that has me fascinated. Firstly, he and his team are able to interpret the climate to such a precise extent that, judging by the state of the soil and vegetation immediately underneath it, they can tell you that the prehistoric burial mound in the middle of the hillfort was begun when it was pouring down with rain. And it doesn’t become any more precise than that.

Furthermore, by examining the mollusc (snails, etc.) remains in the various layers of soil, his team can tell you that the land was first climax woodland, then cleared, then abandoned and returned to scrub and woodland, then cleared again, then overgrazed and overworked, then heavily eroded and left to grassland with occasional farming. Different types of molluscs flourish in different types of soil and vegetation, and examining their remains in the different layers of soil can pinpoint the vegetation (or lack thereof) at the time.

But interestingly, I was dragged off on a tangent to an article about the “Beaker People”. Their culture (there’s a dispute as to whether the people came with their culture or not) arrived in Southern England round about 2500 BC and died out round about 1800 BC, to be replaced by the Bronze Age. What is significant about this period is that during that relatively short time period, about 90% of the genetic make-up of the population of Southern and Eastern England was displaced by an equivalent genetic make-up from Eastern Europe.

Back in here later, I had a few things to do and then I read a couple more chapters of my Welsh course book to do a little revision. However, what with my Teflon brain, nothing will stick.

After that, I had an important task to perform. What with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed … I hadn’t filed away my correspondence for well over six months, and there were mountains of paperwork everywhere. So I sat down, sorted through it, threw away a pile of unnecessary paperwork and then filed the rest.

It goes without saying that I really ought to be much more organised than I am, although I have said that a hundred times before, and still, nothing has changed.

My faithful cleaner turned up later and shooed me into the shower for a good scrub up and so that I smell nice, not that it will make much difference, I suppose. And then afterwards, we did our monthly sort through the medication and organised a few other things too while we were at it.

After she left, I came back in here to sit down, and that was when I was overwhelmed by an enormous wave of fatigue. I crashed out completely, and for over two hours too. I don’t think that I’ve ever been so far out as I was this afternoon. So much so that when I was finally able to move, I had to have one of these caffeine-laden energy drinks.

Eventually, I managed to pull myself together again and I finished choosing the music for the next radio programme, reformatting where necessary, re-editing and reconverting it.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and ratatouille, followed by the last of the jam roly-poly. I’ll have to think of a new dessert for tomorrow, but if all else fails, I bought some tinned fruit, having had my taste buds titillated by the fruit that my neighbour brought me the other week.

But that’s tomorrow. Right now, I’m off to bed, later than usual. And who knows? Maybe I might have a good sleep tonight. Wouldn’t that be nice?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about shuffling … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a friend of mine from when I lived in Chester who was bewailing his back luck at the racecourse during one of the racing weeks.
"I don’t understand it" he said. "If I’m having a game of cards, I usually always win, but at the racetrack, I never seem to win anything"
"Well, you shouldn’t blame yourself" I replied. "It’s not your fault that they won’t let you shuffle the horses."

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