Category Archives: avranches

Wednesday 4th September 2024 – THERE HAVE BEEN …

… raised voices in this apartment today. And how!

The tension between the nurse and me has been simmering away for a short while now, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and today it finally overflowed.

And it was going to be such a good day too. I was actually in bed before 23:00, for once in my life, and as seems to be the case these days, I fell asleep quite quickly.

And there I lay, flat out until about 06:15 too – one of the best sleeps that I have had just recently too. Over 7 hours-worth of uninterrupted sleep is a luxury these days.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was fast asleep, but I soon hauled myself out of bed and went off for a good wash and scrub up ready for my trip out.

Yesterday I’d told the nurse that I was going out at 08:15 and so after much moaning and complaining he’d agreed to be here at 08:05 at the latest. He’d told me that at 08:00 I had to be sitting in the chair in the kitchen where he does his stuff.

So there I was at 08:00, sitting in the chair, and at 08:15 with him still not having turned up, the taxi came and we set off for Avranches.

We were some way down the road near the Granville ring road when the phone rang. It was 08:30. “Where are you?” asked a voice which I recognised.

“Where am I? Halfway towards Avranches. It’s now 08:30, not 08:05”. I replied

“OK. Call me when you’re back”.

We reached Avranches and the clinic at 08:55 for my 09:00 appointment – the first one in. And so it was logical I suppose that I wasn’t seen until 09:30.

Emilie the Cute Consultant wasn’t there which was a shame and I had to see the nurse. She asked me all kinds of probing questions although with no doctor or consultant there and no news about a follow-up, I couldn’t see the point.

And it looks as if this might be escalating. Now that they’ve talked the plaster off my arm so that my port is there in view in glorious technicolour if I choose to look at it (which I haven’t done as yet) they now want me to run an antiseptic cream on it and wrap it in clingfilm before I come for dialysis.

So that tells me two things. Firstly, that I have to come for dialysis and secondly, I am going to become more and more involved in the mechanics of this procedure.

In fact, she was there pushing a few boundaries, telling me a little bit more and a little bit more of things that I really don’t want to know.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … when this process starts we shall have the panic attack to end all panic attacks. I am living my worst nightmare with all of these tubes and pipes. I’m really sure that many people, people who have never been through any of this, just can’t understand what I’m feeling.

While I was there she weighed me, and my weight is stable, although it’s 7kg too much and even 12kg more than I used to like it. She said that my blood is stable too, so I told her that I would be much happier if the Creatinine was stable at 270 where it used to be instead of this 450.

With running late, everything else was running late. The taxi had arrived at 10:00 for me but I was nowhere near ready so the driver had gone off to pick up another passenger and then come back for me, and we reached the door of the building at the same time.

Back here at the apartment, these last two days have seen a stunning development – I’ve managed to climb back up the stairs all on my own, the first time since February.

It’s not very aesthetic, I have to say. I have to Put my right hand behind my left knee, raise my left foot onto the step and then push up my right side with the aid of my crutches.

God knows what anyone else might think if they were to see me, but twice now I’ve tried it, and twice now it has worked. If I carry on like this, Friday morning shopping might be back on the agenda.

This is the first time in quite some time that I can say that there has been an underlying improvement.

Back here I put on the coffee, put the porridge in the microwave and the toast in the toaster when the phone rang

“Where are you? asked a voice which I recognised.

‘I’ve just got back” I replied

“I told you to ring me when you came back”.

“Did you not hear the word ‘just’?” I asked

“I’ll be right round” so I switched off the breakfast to wait for his imminent arrival.

25 minutes later he finally turned up. By now my porridge was cold, my coffee was cold and my toast was soggy. And so I exploded.

And apparently it was all my fault for not being up earlier in plenty of time to have my breakfast earlier. And so that was that and the atmosphere became extremely unpleasant.

After he’d cleared off I could finally rescue the ruins of my breakfast. However I was in no mood to read my book. In any case the steam was obscuring my vision and my breath would have melted the computer screen.

Our Welsh Summer School cracked on today and I’m impressed about how much I know or have remembered. I wish that it was like this all the time. We had some interesting chats too which was nice

After the lesson was over I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Unfortunately neither Zero nor Castor nor TOTGA came to visit me, which was a disappointment after the other night. I was back at Shavington, Vine Tree Avenue, and we had a couple of guys, friends of my father’s, around. I’d been asked to try to collect worms for some project or other that was going on so I was collecting what I could find and dropping them down a tube, but I wasn’t doing very well. One of my father’s friends was talking to me about it. In the meantime someone else turned up at the house and asked my father if he had any leaf mould to spare. On the back lawn were several enormous piles of rotting leaves so this guy and I were joking about my father sucking his teeth and saying to this guy that he hadn’t any, and how difficult it was to get hold of. As it happened my father turned him away anyway and went back to weeding his garden but it was a very lethargic, disinterested weeding so we were wondering what was going through his head at the time

And my father weeding? If we had a nice garden (which we didn’t) when we were kids it would have been due to my mother. She was the only one who ever voluntarily did any weeding. We as kids formed a reluctant press-gang but you wouldn’t have found my father anywhere at all near a herbaceous border. But after Zero the other night, it’s my family again and isn’t that awful?

A little later I’d gone to a football ground. There, I’d been involved in helping tidy up and was collecting things for the shower room. I thought that I’d collected quite a few but people kept on pointing out things that I’d missed that I’d have to pick up and keep until I could get into the showers. They were discussing the games taking place this weekend, thinking that maybe Celtic would win because all the players will want to go out there and impress their new manager. Someone came round with a plate of sandwiches. One or two of the players helped themselves. I thought that that was really not a good idea because they’d be starting a game in a few minutes and the last thing that they’ll want to do is to have to run around with a full stomach like that. They’ll end up with stitch or cramp or something

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back a long time ago I used to travel with and occasionally run (or walk, in my case) the line for Pionsat’s 3rd XI and despite (or maybe because of) my coaching they were always near the bottom of the lowest division in Puy-de-Dome football. One day they arrived at the wrong time at an away ground and had a two-hour wait so they all went out for kebabs. And knowing all about running around on a full stomach and what it can produce, I feared the worst. And so they went out and won decisively 5-2 and I shut up after that.

While we’re talking about football, we had football later. TNS playing Aberystwyth in one of the catch-up games after several of their matches have been postponed due to TNS’ European involvement.

TNS fielded a weakened team that included Doris the tea lady, Stan the car-park attendant and Tiddles the stadium cat so Aberystwyth packed their defence and refused to advance over the half-way line. If they were ever going to do any good against TNS today would be the day.

It was ugly to watch but it was effective up to a point. It took TNS a good while to break them down and the score of 2-0 to TNS can be seen as a triumph for Aberystwyth.

That’s because it’s going to be packed down at the bottom as Llansawel, Y Fflint and Aberystwyth are miles off the pace. LLansawel are down already after only 5 matches but the other two will slug it out and take the odd point here and there when they can. Goal difference might be crucial so a goal difference of minus 2 for Aberystwyth is as good as 3 points when compared with Y Fflint’s goal difference against TNS of -3 (a 4-1 defeat the other week).

Tea was a delicious leftover curry with naan, and so right now I’m off to bed ready to fight the good fight with the nurse tomorrow as I don’t think that we’ve heard the last of this.

Can you not just picture the scene? You can imagine him roaring "we itinerant nurses are the cream of the crop"
"Yes" I’ll reply. "And it looks as if I have the clot"

Wednesday 28th August 2024 – MY GINGER CAKE …

… is really delicious. Not quite fiery enough, I reckon, but that kind of thing comes with practice. The consistency was exactly what it should have been, except that it was cooked more at the top than underneath.

Usually that would mean lowering it in the oven, but that won’t work as it’s already on the lowest possible shelf, so it’s going to be to turn down the oven and prolong the cooking time.

But that won’t work if I’m baking bread at the same time, so it will have to do.

Consequently, given the shortcomings of my table-top oven, it was a resounding success. Just wait until I have a real oven, whenever that might be.

At least the sponge rose up as it was supposed to do.

While we’re on the subject of rising up as it is supposed to do … "well, one of us is" – ed … I rose up as I was supposed to do this morning when the alarm went off at 07:00

That was helped by the fact that for once I was actually in bed before my ideal curfew time of 23:00. Not by very much, I have to say, but even one minute is some kind of progress.

After I’d finished my notes last night I did everything that I had to do and then headed for the hills.

Once in bed I remember very little. I started my little bedtime mantra but didn’t get very far before I fell asleep. And apart from a couple of awakenings at various times, there I stayed quite comfortably until the alarm went off.

In the bathroom I had a really good wash and clean-up, followed by a shave and some clean clothes. I must look my best for my trip out today. Who knows? I might even meet Emilie the Cute Consultant.

While I was at it, I washed my trousers and undies in the sink ready for next time. I try to keep ahead as much as I possibly can.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Nerina and I were going through one of our phases and were walking down Hospital Street in Nantwich or driving down there, but we stopped at a pedestrian crossing to let a pedestrian pass. I recognised him as he walked past. He was a musician and after listening to his album thanks to a recommendation by a friend I’d actually gone out and bought a copy. I just happened to mention that I’d bought a copy of his album and we ended up having a very lengthy discussion about the music business before he left. He noticed a cut on the side of my face so told him that it was nothing to worry about and began to sing a parody of the Dire Straits song I’D PUT A BIT OF PLASTER ON MY FINGER, PUT A BIT OF PLASTER ON YOUR THUMB. He came running back wondering where he’d cut himself. I had to explain to him that that’s the lyrics of a song. Once he’d worked it out he went on his way quite happily.

But I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that if I can write parodies of modern (well, for me anyway) songs while I’m asleep I’m doing really well here. And walking through Nantwich and encountering rock musicians would have been quite a usual occurrence in the mid-70s with a host of garage bands in the area and recording artists like Strife. They were some really good times with the pubs in Nantwich like The Wickstead, The Rifleman and The Bowling Green. There was a time when my friends and I were thrown out of most of the pubs in the town at one time or another.

There was a boxing match out in Aston, a girl from our class, whatever her name might have been. We set out in the car to go to see it. It was taking place outside the church. We knew that we had to rush. Nevertheless we arrived late and the fight was under way. It looked as if she had been hurt because she wasn’t her usual lively self for boxing. Her opponent, an older man, was there and they were standing toe to toe trading blows. She was fending off more of his but then she caught him with a beautiful overarm right just as he was trying an overarm right. It was a very painful, tired overarm right as well as if it was her very last effort that she put into it but it made a perfect connection on the point of his jaw and that was him out for the count. She won the competition again but this time it was much closer than it had been in previous attempts so we were going to have to work on why this was the case and do something about it for the next time

What beats me about this is that I actually mentioned the girl’s name. She would have been one of the most unlikely candidates for a competitor in a boxing match (having said that, had any of the girls in my year or thereabouts come up against a male boxer, my sympathy and commiserations would have been entirely with the boxer) but not only that, I don’t think that I’ve ever spent even a minute thinking about this particular girl since I left school. So what’s brought her suddenly to the forefront of my mind?

Later on we’d been sorting out some music concerts. There had been a complaint from one of the washrooms that all of the towels had been used by a certain group wiping the lipstick off their faces after being kissed by thousands of girls so there were no clean towels in the washrooms. A certain guitarist was also there on tour. He was a nightmare to handle as everything had to be absolute perfection but perfection according to his standards. He had no spatial awareness and no awareness of anyone else around him and their feelings and so on. Everything was all about him. It was a very complicated issue to deal with him. He was sacking everyone after the first show, replacing his staff and then firing them again after the second and we just couldn’t keep up with all of the changes. Neither could he. It was beginning to deflect from his show but he wouldn’t have it at all and wouldn’t listen to explanations from anyone that maybe he ought to moderate his unnecessarily high standards in order for a compromise to be made that would mean that everything would go ahead. The more people he upset and the more people he fired, the fewer people he would find who would be willing to work with him

Anyone in the music business would be able to name this guitarist – I did in my dream but I edited it out – whose constant search for perfection has had exactly the opposite effect to that intended. Anyone of any great competence will look at the speed at which our guitarist has been hiring and firing and decide that he’s better off where he is. It’s not at all like Neil Young who has often been criticised because of what is perceived to be the lack of ability of his backing group, Crazy Horse. But as he has said on many occasions, he’s here to have fun and a good time with his mates and make everyone happy, not to launch himself into an eternal quest for the unattainable goal of perfection.

The taxi was late coming for me but it was a lovely drive down to Avranches even if the driver kept the windows closed.

The letter that I had notifying me of my appointment showed a different time from the time that they had noted so I’ve no idea what was happening there.

Anyway, I was eventually seen and the first thing that the doctor did was to rip off the plaster and give me a lecture about having it covered. I felt like a small child up before the headmaster (although where I would find a small child up before the headmaster in that hospital I really don’t know).

So I have to keep it uncovered and let the air get to it, and like it. So far, I’ve managed to avoid not seeing it. How long I can keep that up I really don’t know.

The doctor ran her echograph machine all over my arm right up as far as my armpit, and passed it fit for service. So on the 4th September I’ll know when dialysis will begin.

While I was waiting for my taxi back I bumped into Emilie the Cute Consultant’s sidekick and we exchanged a few words. And then the taxi came for me

All the way back (with the windows closed again) and the taxi driver had to help me up the stairs – something that she found extremely difficult and so did I. Seriously, if my cleaner’s not available to help me it’s going to be a real struggle

First thing that I did back here was to have a very late breakfast. I’d had nothing to eat or drink all day as yet so I was ready for some food.

It was interrupted by the arrival of the nurse. "I was here at 08:20 but must have just missed you"

"Yes" I thought. "And the taxi was late so it was well after 08:30 when we left" but I didn’t say anything.

After breakfast I had a lengthy chat with a friend in the UK. We have a project on the go and that involved some lengthy discussion.

It should also have involved a transfer of money but the battery has gone flat in my card reader so I had to order another and the money will have to wait.

There’s some bad news about this project, but it’s not unexpected so it’s no skin off my nose really. But with having a professional on the job, there are already some considerable savings that have been made so it’s “swings and roundabouts” really.

Liz was on line too so we had a lengthy chat. She was keen to see how today went and what the plans are for the immediate future so I filled her in.

The cleaner was here too and she whizzed through the apartment.

Once everyone had gone and things had calmed down I went for a very late hot chocolate and a slice of ginger cake. And it really was delicious as I said.

But now I know that I can substitute things in my basic recipe, how about a coffee cake? What about strawberry cordial instead of water to make a strawberry cake, with real strawberries in there somewhere?

But this is how most recipes work – trial and error. Sometimes some of these experiments work in spades and other times they are absolute disasters.

After that I made some naan dough and put most of it to freeze but kept one ball for tonight’s leftover curry, which was delicious as usual and the naan was perfection.

But now I’m off to bed. I have no plans for the next two days so I might even do some work. But right now I’m listening to a live concert by a Canadian group called “Black Mountain” so I’ll be going nowhere for a while

But on the subject of Liz and “filling in” I’m reminded of the guy who went for an interview for a job at the Ritz Hotel in London
"You should fill in our questionnaire" said the receptionist
"Very good" he replied, and went outside and beat up the doorman.

Friday 2nd August 2024 – I’VE HAD A COUPLE …

… of lovely chats on the internet this afternoon.

The first was with one of my neighbours, the President of the Residents’ Committee who was so helpful when it came to buying the apartment downstairs

And the second was with a close fried who lives in Newport. He was actually best man at my wedding and we still keep in touch.

However last night, I wasn’t anywhere like in touch with my ideal night-time curfew of 23:00. It was actually after midnight before I finally hit the sack, running as late as I was. The list of things that I have to do before going to bed seems to have grown longer and longer.

But once I was in bed, I didn’t reach all that far into my little mantra before I fell asleep. That’s one good thing – that I’m asleep quite quickly whereas in the olden days I’d be tossing and turning for hours.

There were no stone cutter, no diggers, no nothing going on outside this morning so I slept all the way through until about … errr …. 06:15 when something must have awoken me. And I lay there semi-comatose until the alarm went off at 07:00.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and sorted out some clean clothes. Who knows? I might get to see Emilie the Cute Consultant at the Clinic so I have to look my best.

With clean clothes, it meant that I could give my undies and trousers a scrub in the sink. These days I wear these shell-suit trousers all the time because they wash and dry in no time, which is good news seeing how filthy I can be.

Next step was to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I was doing during the night. I was in Shavington going to catch the bus to Nantwich and for some reason or other decided to walk up to the bus stop at the Elephant and Castle. I set out to walk and on my way I noticed in the distance the Farmer’s Daughter who has figured on these pages once or twice but she had short hair and that suited her head really well. She walked off somewhere and I was debating whether to go to follow her to see where she was going and to see whether I could summon up some kind of excuse to have a good chat. I walked up to where the Elephant and Castle is and put my hand out to turn right even though I was walking on foot. A couple of kids on the pavement, tiny kids who were presumably going to catch the bus to school saw me and waited on the edge of the pavement until I went past. There on the right hand side was an Austin Cambridge but it was “A” registration as in 1983 or 1984 but they stopped making Cambridges in 1967 and any vehicle that was subsequently registered would have had an age-related plate fitted to it, so why was this one carrying the plate of such a recent date. That was a complete mystery that needed to be resolved.

Yes, well I’ll tell you something for nothing and that I would not have been convinced if she wanted to cut her hair. I’m afraid that I’m quite the male chauvinist when it comes to girls’ hair. I think that long hair on girls is absolutely beautiful and it’s a cardinal sin for a girl to set out to disfigure that which nature has blessed her. But I’m impressed that I can remember banal details about car registration numbers and years of manufacture while I’m asleep.

As for The Farmer’s Daughter, there hangs a long tale that might be one of the many recounted at my funeral.

The taxi came bang on time which was nice and another passenger already in there graciously yielded up the front seat – it’s much easier for me to pop in and out of the front.

We set off for Avranches and first had to drop off the other passenger at the hospital, and then take me to the clinic across the road and up the hill.

This is a brand-new building and it does look impressive, although it beats me why they couldn’t have built it onto the existing hospital.

The nurse is there is one who has seen me before and she remembered me, which is rather sad going, I suppose. Once seen …

She asked me a load of questions about my current symptoms, and either she’s excellent at prognostication, the symptoms from which I’m suffering are well-known, she’s a regular reader of this rubbish or else she’s in league with the Devil.

It was interesting when she asked me things like "when you go to sleep in the afternoon, is it a sudden, dramatic sleep with no warning and no realisation that you’ve been asleep?"

You can say that again.

She weighed me again. And having been down past Target Weight 01 and close to Target Weight 02, my current weight is depressing to say the least.

She took off all of my bandages and dressings and commented about how well the surgery was looking. "Would I like to see?"

And so I told her to clear off and put a dressing on it, and it took her a while to do it. I think that she was hoping that I’d catch sight of it.

She’s formally forbidden me to wrap a dressing around the arm – just leave the plaster on it. And she’s going to ‘phone up the nurse and give her instructions. And so I’m suspicious.

But some good has come out of this meeting. I told her of my woes at the private clinic. She was horrified. Being a terminally ill patient, I’m entitled to 100% of my healthcare covered by the State. She showed me the paper that she has which confirms it.

The Private Clinic had no right to make me pay even a penny. So she’s asked to see a copy of the receipt and she’ll take it up with the Hospital’s Welfare Department

After she’d taken a blood sample she threw me out and the taxi brought me home where my faithful cleaner was waiting. She helped me up the stairs and into my apartment.

She seems to think that I’m moving better than I did previously, and how I wish that it were true

Not having had anything to eat or drink as yet, I sat down to breakfast. And couldn’t move for a while afterwards, so when the nurse came round to deal with me later, the place was a tip with breakfast dishes everywhere.

After she left, I had some ‘phone calls to make.

The President of the Residents’ Committee is returning on Sunday so we had a good that about this and that.

It included the latest news about our neighbour, currently residing in the hospital. Things are not looking to bright for her future and we may have seen the last of her in this building

Once we had hung up I made a drink and then ‘phoned a friend.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago I mentioned a project that I might be starting at some point.

It’s had a couple of false starts and deciding that it can’t go on for ever and can’t be delayed much longer, I have decided to go in a different direction.

This actually means calling for help. After all, the key to success has been knowing where to stop and when to seek the advice of experts, and if you have friends who can be depended up to help you in this respect, then so much the better.

And I’ll tell you something else for nothing, and that is at the end of a chat that lasted a Rosemaryesque one hour and 15 minutes, I was a long way further down the road than I was after several months of prevaricating

Tea tonight was pie and veg, the last slice which was a shame because it was so nice. And it was followed by apple turnover and soya cream

Yes, my air fryer is great for warming up slices of pie and apple turnovers.

So now I’m off to bed, hoping for a really good sleep, and I mustn’t forget to wash my shorts in the morning. I forgot last week. Why I wash them on Saturdays is because with not going to bed until later, they have longer to dry.

But before I go to bed, let me tell you about the Clinic at Avranches and the guy in the next cubicle to me.
He works in the quarry down the road and wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way when they detonated some explosive.
"And it’s badly damaged my … errr … ummm …" he said, groping for the polite word.
"Rectum?" asked the nurse, helpfully
"Well" said the man "in all honesty it’s not done ’em much good"

Friday 19th July 2024 – "SMILE!" THEY SAID.

"things could be worse!"

And so I smiled. And sure enough, things were worse.

It’s difficult to believe just how things are unravelling here right at the moment. Getting ready for bed last night after finishing my notes, I fell over.

It was another one of these “falling over backwards” things like I had in the kitchen the other day. This time though it was in the bedroom.

What is hard to believe and it’s true all the same, that despite all of the rubbish, mess, guitars and everything that clutter up this place, I actually hit the ground on my back without hitting anything on the way down. And the chances of that happening must have been extremely remote, to say the least.

It took me about half an hour to make it to my feet. Some kind of weird gyration from a sitting position into being able to crawl onto the bed with the aid of a well-stuffed suitcase as some kind of half-way step

But what a state to get into. I had visions of pulling the quilt down and sleeping on top of the carpet until Isabelle the nurse would rescue me in the morning.

However I struggled back upright, finished what I had to do and then rather happily crawled into bed with a sigh of relief.

After all of the exertions I was totally surprised to be wide awake at about 06:15 and I was actually up and about before the alarm went off

This morning I had a good wash and scrub up as well as a shave and change of clothes if I’m going out. And then waiting for Isabelle the nurse, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with my taxis last night. We had a town, we had a plot of land so we decided that we’d set up something there and run the taxis from it. I had a nice little garage and a couple of cars but while I was talking about setting up everything I awoke in the middle of it and lost all of the momentum in the dream that I was having which was a shame

Not really a shame. I might have enjoyed running a taxi business 40 years ago but the gloss soon wore off and I wouldn’t go back to doing it again, not even during a dream, thank you very much.

And then I was expecting to slip into the estate of a relative of mine who was dying. What was important about this was that there had been another relative who had died under mysterious circumstances abroad and his body had been in a deep-freeze for years while people argued about where he was to go and what he was to do etc. I suspected that the British Coroner was unwilling to accept the body because he’d have to perform a post-mortem on it. There had been this huge campaign for years to bring this person’s body and that of several other people in similar circumstances, to bring them home and lay them to rest. The first thing that I did when I inherited the estate was to contact some firm of undertakers and make arrangements for this body to be brought back to the UK. I was expecting to be besieged by the Press and by news reporters but no-one actually came to visit me last night about this. The only person who set foot on my premises was my brother and I didn’t really know what he wanted. It was certainly nothing to do with this particular thing but after all the fuss and bother that had been made when the relative who died had refused to repatriate the relative from abroad, the fact that I issued repatriation instructions immediately that I took over the estate and that passed unnoticed, it was totally bizarre.

My greatest wish is that no-one repatriates me to the UK. I own a burial plot in the cemetery at Ixelles in Brussels where Marianne is interred but I don’t want to go there either. I want to be put in a natural cemetery and a tree planted on top of me. That’s how I shall live for ever – being absorbed into the roots of a tree that will grow and grow.

Finally I was living at home and wanted a bath so I stuck my head in the bathroom. My little sister was in the bath and my two younger brothers were drying themselves so I thought “never mind – I’ll have a bath again”. I went off to do something or other. On the way back I heard some noise in the bathroom so I went to see. Now my sister had left the bath so I thought “ahh, here’s a bath full of water free”. My brother said “the shower by the way is totally useless but the bath is wonderful” so I thought “I’m really looking forward to getting into the bath at last and having a good wash. I certainly need one”.

Ahhh the good old days – all in the bath, oldest first while the water is hotter. If we are lucky there might be a bit of hot water left in the baby burco water boiler – careful not to scald yourself when you pour it into the bucket and tip it into the bath.

All the smaller kids in the bath together. “ohh look, a bubble-bath” – yes, it was baked beans on toast for tea

Apart from the fact that I don’t have two brothers, anyone who goes on about “the good old days” will receive a smack in the mouth. There was nothing whatever that was good about them.

Isabelle was late coming. There’s all kinds of chaos going on all over the place this morning apparently. She didn’t wait around long because she was in a hurry so she cleared off quickly and I had a rather late breakfast.

The taxi was late coming too. All of their computing system and radio control has broken down and they are driving around with pencil and notepad with a list of jobs. Just like back in the 1960s before radio control in fact. Nothing seems to be working this morning.

They were all working at the Nephrology Clinic – at least, the people who saw me were. Unfortunately Emilie the Cute Consultant wasn’t there to soothe my fevered brow but her sidekick was and I told him my tale of woe about being held to ransom at the clinic down the road.

He had the decency to be upset and apologetic, but I made it quite clear that I wasn’t going to set even one foot ever again in that maudit établissement

And it turned out that while Emilie the Cute Consultant wasn’t there, she’d been talking about me to the others and some of my little secrets are now in the public domain.

Still, there’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s NOT being talked about. It’s nice to know that Emilie the Cute Consultant thinks that I’m worth talking about.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … Nephrology Clinic, the consultant there admired the work that my cleaner and Isabelle the nurse had done. He considered that I’m lucky in having such good and attentive people around me.

There’s localised swelling but the wound itself is healing, it’s not septic and he’s pleased with the progress.

He can’t explain the panic the other night because there were no obvious signs. If we hadn’t imagined it, which I assured him that we hadn’t, he reckoned that my little team of helpers had resolved everything on the spot in the nick of time.

While I was waiting for my taxi back his secretary went off in search of an orange juice. And just as she came back with apple juice, the taxi arrived.

On getting in I texted my cleaner to say that we were on our way back, only for him to announce that we had other pick-ups.

So eventually with a full car of passengers we headed back to Granville. The driver asked if he could practise his English on the way home so we had a very interesting chat on the way home

Back here I had a salad for lunch and then came in here where I promptly crashed out. And how. I was dead to the World. I hadn’t even noticed that my cleaner had been and gone.

Rosemary rang me for a chat and it must have been a very strange chat at first as I struggled to awaken.

After she’d finished I had my hot chocolate and then made a loaf of bread. While that was proofing i made some naan dough

And then I could finally have the leftover curry that I should have had on Wednesday.

Tomorrow I have lots of work to to, catching up with radio stuff. I should have finished off that radio programme today but what with one thing and another I didn’t.

So don’t forget, Saturday night, my Hawkfest at LE BOUQUET GRANVILLAIS at 21:00 CET, 20:00 UK Time, 15:00 Toronto time.

But thinking of all of the kids in the bath together reminds me of the noble Lord being attended to at his bath by his manservant, Wibble.
Suddenly the noble Lord breaks wind in the water. And the manservant dashes off and comes back with a hot water bottle.
"Why have you brought that?" asked the noble Lord
"You asked for it, My Lord" said Wibble
"I asked for it?"
"Yes, my Lord" replied Wibble. "I heard you clearly. You said ‘what about a water bottle, Wibble’ "

Wednesday 17th July 2024 – I CAN’T BELIEVE …

… the nerve, or cheek of some people.

Highway robbery at the point of a pistol is a fairly common phenomenon, but highway robbery at the point of a card reader is something else again.

But anyway, more of that anon. Retournons à nos moutons as they say around here. Where was I?

Ohh yes, finishing off my bread and carrot purée and going to bed.

But not to sleep, unfortunately. It was a long, long night listening to my neighbour snoring away and waiting for the inevitable 06:00 stampede as the nightshift dashes to finish off its tasks before the day shift comes on at 07:00.

They gave me a diabetes check and it went off the scale, so no orange juice for me which was a shame. But I’m convinced that their reader must be wrong. How could it be off the scale when I’ve had next-to-nothing to eat for 36 hours?

After breakfast (which included jam despite the diabetes check) a doctor came to see me. She didn’t have much to say for herself but I managed to winkle out of her that I’d be leaving at 10:30

With that news I contacted my faithful cleaner but she told me that she wouldn’t be home until 13:00. And so I asked the staff here if I could postpone my departure but I was told in no uncertain terms to sod off and like it.

With that news I sat down to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night while I was waiting. Some doctor here was looking for an e-mail about my health but he’d filed it away somewhere on line and when he’d gone to fetch it back it had disappeared so he was found rounding up all of his colleagues to come and look, to see whether any of them could help to try to find out how to fetch it back

That sounds about right for “cloud” storage systems. Everyone else can access the document except the person who posted it there. I’m afraid that I still favour the old traditional method of copying to USB key. There’s one plugged into this computer into which I back up every night, and there’s a “travelling key” on my keyring that I use for moving documents about between the big desktop machine and the portable that I take with me when I go anywhere.

And then Zero had come to see me during the night. She was in something of a bad mood, saying that she had to go to see the physiotherapist a week on Monday. Her step-father insisted, so I wanted to find out why. She told me that it was to fetch the results, the “results” she said in inverted commas, so I imagined that it was something to do with an incident that had happened a couple of weeks earlier in respect of which a complaint had been lodged. I thought that this was going to be the decisive moment but for some reason or other she was clearly not happy at all about having to go and I couldn’t understand why

How lovely to see Zero again after all this time. Wasn’t it nice of her to come to see me? But it wasn’t very nice to see an unhappy Zero, that’s for sure. I much prefer the lovely smiling face, puffy cheeks, green flashing eyes and all those miles of vibrant red hair. But a “step-father”? What’s become of her real dad? That’s worth a story all by itself. I wonder if I’ll have part two of this episode any time soon.

While all of this was going on, someone from the admin office came to see me and asked about my Health Insurance. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I don’t have the State insurance system. I have a private health insurance paid for by the European Commission so I gave them the form and also a copy of the form that they can use to seek direct billing.

The above is quite important, as you’ll see as the story unfolds.

The taxi turned up for me bang on time so we went to the Admissions Office to collect the paperwork for leaving, and this was where I was “held up” with the card reader

"That’s One thousand five hundred and seventy two Euros and 68 cents please"

"You have my Health Insurance details there" I said "and a form to apply for direct billing"

"It’s an assurance that I don’t recognise" (like, the European Union and she doesn’t recognise it) "so you’ll have to pay"

She was totally and utterly intransigent, apart from being too utterly bone-idle to scan my documents and send them off.

So eventually I made it home and as the taxi driver was helping me up the 25 Steps the phone rang. It was Isabelle the nurse. She’d heard that I was back on the loose and would I like my legs seeing to?

A cheerful word and a smiling face is always welcome so I told her to come round. By the time she arrived, so had I and she was able to sort me out.

She wasn’t impressed with what the hospital want her to do. She didn’t think that it was her job but with a good grace (which was nice to find someone with good grace after this morning) she agreed to do it.

She needed a lot of equipment and material so she wrote herself out a prescription and said she’ll leave it at the pharmacy. My faithful cleaner can pick up the articles this afternoon.

When my cleaner came round later we went through the medication, worked out what we were short of, and she went down into town to do the business. Poor thing – she had a struggle to come back with all of the supplies for the nurse. She’ll have to bring some back tomorrow, bless her.

So in my nice clean kitchen I made a taco roll for tea with rice and veg. It should be “leftover curry” night tomorrow but it’s also football so it’ll be pasta and veg, with the curry on Friday. It’ll probably walk out of the fridge on its own by then.

So having washed my puttees tonight, I’m going to bed nice and early, still fuming about today’s events but hoping that if I’m lucky Zero will come to console me. Good news is hard to find and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

But going back to the hospital, my room-mate had a rather bad habit of … errr … breaking wind. And it was quite embarrassing at times.
At one moment, whilst being examined, poked and prodded by a doctor he let out an extremely loud raspberry
Obviously, to save his embarrassment, the doctor turned to his nurse and said "stop that, nurse!"
"Certainly, doctor" she replied. "Which way did it go?"

Tuesday 16th July 2024 = I’M STILL ALIVE …

… but in indescribable agony I’ve a feeling that I’m going to regret this. In fact, one way or another I’ve not had a very good day today.

Just like last night actually. Once more it was a very late night, not that I was bothered because if I’m tired I can sleep at the hospital. I won’t have much else to do there.

Nevertheless I slept right through until the alarm went off at 07:00 with just the odd bit of tossing and turning here and there

But as the alarm sounded I staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out, completely forgetting that I’m supposed to be using this special shampoo detergent stuff.

While I was waiting for the nurse to arrive I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I went during the night. This competition is now coming down to a knock-out between clubs rather than based on a league performance. There aren’t too many clubs or teams left and newspaper reporters are interviewing. They are astonished at how much has been spent but someone seems to think that it’s worth every penny and brings an enormous amount of revenue from advertising. And everyone doing this would have a team of his own racing in these races considering that it would put his town on the map. There were several other chairmen who thought it important that their team climbed onto the world stage and played this type of event for the attraction of the World all looking on and making sure that they did all their best

Where that came from, I don’t know. But it certainly seems to be true. I remember when Llandudno surprisingly won the Welsh Cup and qualified for Europe, the town council sponsored the club’s shirts for the European games and paid the travelling expenses of the club simply for the reason that the club’s presence on the European stage would attract enough tourists to the town to make it a financially viable proposition. And who am I to argue with Llandudno Town Council?

What I found was that there were too many small, tiny shopkeepers or market traders standing on this market each selling very high turnover goods which meant that there was no speciality or anything like that. It was all pretty much the same. There was nothing to choose between any of them. Where you bought your magazine from was by random and it made no difference. They weren’t sufficiently skilled in the products that they were selling. One of the shopkeepers was trying to market some kind of typing course but admitted that he hadn’t managed to work it himself . He had no idea how he could actually make it work but was still trying his best to sell it on to members of the public. I thought to myself that people with just one or two racks of magazines in a place like this just aren’t going to make any difference whatsoever. It needs one or possibly two major sellers to come in to reorganise it with a much wider range of goods and know much more about their product and generally go out to sell the stuff instead of being haphazard, hoping that someone would come along and buy it. I thought that it was very depressing and dismal that they were just sitting back letting the World roll by. They should have been out there selling their wares. But definitely half a dozen people with one magazine rack each trying to make a living in a place like this was never going to be a possibility. It just needed one or maybe two major players who could go for the variety of product and go all-out to try to grab hold of the passing trade.

So as well as fighting wars and inventing machinery in my sleep, I’m now running some kind of Cost Accounting and Business Planning service. I’ve definitely been doing something wrong all these years if I can think of all of these exciting and satisfying ways of earning a living while I’m asleep. The sad part about it is that not only am I asleep while all of this is going on, so are my clients. If they were awake and paying me good money for my services and advice, I’d clean up.

There was also something about a friend of mine asking me why some other friends of ours who had been in France as long as we had, hadn’t succeeded in accumulating more resources. She pointed out to her house, the holiday cottage and so on that they had managed to accumulate without too much effort and wondered why they hadn’t managed to do the same.

And that’s true too. In the Auvergne you can have as much property as you like. The place is littered with all kinds of tiny farms that are abandoned and available for next to nothing. The mechanisation of agriculture in France after World War II and the industrialisation of the country led to a flight of all the young people to the towns. All the old people died off and the houses were simply left to abandon.

The nurse came and did her best to cheer me up which was nice, seeing as I’d lost yet another clip for my puttees. I was expecting an argument. She’s given me a few tips about the hospital and then wished me luck.

No breakfast for me this morning. I have to be without food so instead I checked over my packing and made sure that I had everything that I needed. This requirement about “medication in the original boxes” is ridiculous, especially just for one night’s stay.

Next was to make some sandwiches because, without doubt, the food, if in fact I receive anything, is going to be rubbish. And if I’m without food all morning, I’ll be needing something.

Back in here I had a few letters to write and things like that but I was taken by surprise by the taxi that turned up a good 20 minutes early and I was nothing like ready. Nevertheless, we went with what we had.

It was a lovely drive down to Avranches and how I enjoyed smelling the open countryside for the first time since I don’t know when. It’s a shame that there wasn’t more of it.

It’s the Polyclinic, not the hospital, where I’m going. And finding my room was rather complicated as we turned up at the lunch hour. Eventually someone directed us to my room, which it seems I’m going to be sharing.

A nurse checked me in and asked me a load of questions, most of which I answered wrongly. She had to fetch an electric razor to shave my arm – what did I know about doing it – and then she wandered off.

They gave me a load of paper clothes to wear and once I’d changed, they wheeled me away in a wheelchair as far as surgery where they put me on a trolley and took me into a corner of the room.

While I was waiting, I fell asleep. I was dreaming that I was dreaming and dictating the dream into my dictaphone but someone snatched the dictaphone from me, threw it onto the bed and wheeled me off somewhere. There I was for hours hoping that at least they would be able to take me back to wherever it was that the dictaphone had landed and that it had been switched off so that the batteries hadn’t gone flat

It was another panic attack but with everything that’s going on right now, that’s not a surprise. I’m surprised that I’ve not had more of them just recently.

They moved the bed across the room (waking me up). “Hold out your arm” said someone, so I did.

Next thing that I remember, it was a couple of hours later, there was a big white plaster on my arm and a pain going all the way up into my shoulder. But at least the worst is over (I think) and it was done exactly as I would have liked it – no fuss, no explanation, no nothing. Knock me out and get on with it.

They took me back to my room and put me to bed where I slept for an hour or two before gradually coming back round into the Land of the Living

And then I had to hassle them for my meal. They seemed quite reluctant to bring it, although I can’t see why. I made sure that I had plenty of bread for my soup and my main course of carrot purée (and that’s it), thinking that I’m glad that I made my butties. I’ll need those if things don’t buck up.

One of the nurses asked about the pain. It’s been increasing all the time as the anaesthetic has worn off. When I mentioned it to a nurse she came back immediately with some Doliprane. Which I refused, of course. The whole of France is awash with Doliprane.

Seriously though, if you have a pain, it’s for a reason. And if you hide or mask that pain and put effort on joints that really need time to relax and recover, you can do more harm than good

So gritting my teeth, I went to bed.

And my arm in a sling reminds me of the well known Austrian who invented the brassiere, Otto Titsling

Wednesday 3rd July 2024 – "A GENERAL ANAESTHETIC …"

"… for just a few cuts in a couple of veins? Certainly not! You’ll have a local anaesthetic for a half-hour operation like this!" (… and like it!) and there was no arguing with the Beast of the Hôpital de la Baie

Here was a woman who means business – at least, I think that’s what she was meaning. If you think that my accent is bad you want to hear hers. She comes from a Spanish/Portuguese environment I reckon and I could hardly understand a word that she said at times.

A few other times I understood clearly enough. "They have you down for an overnight stay too. Why is that?"
"PLease miss" I felt like saying, "I live on my own". I replied "There’s no-one looking after me."
"Well, don’t you have a friend where you can go? Isn’t there a neighbour who will take you in?"

Well, as it happens, there is a neighbour who will take me in but I’ll be lucky to come out alive. Do you remember the case of Kirk Anderson, the Manacled Mormon who claimed that Joyce McKinney had chained him to her bed and then had her wicked way with him? We’ll be back reliving those events again.

At least, not all of them. And it won’t be a doctor that I’ll need to see. His job is to heal the sick. I’d need the assistance of a medium or a spiritualist to help me raise the dead.

But seriously just for a moment, I was lucky to leave the Beast of the Hôpital de la Baie’s lair alive and I’m having a horrible feeling about this business on the 16th. I’ve mentioned before … "and on several occasions too" – ed … the rather brusque business-like attitude and manner that seems to exist in the hospitals around here.

Never was it more in evidence than today.

Nothing else very much business-like about today unfortunately.

Last night was another late night which was a shame followed once again by being wide awake at 03:15, lying there with streaming nose and eyes and feeling absolutely lousy.

It was at about 06:00 when I gave up the fight and arose from my stinking pit. And when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already washed, dried and sitting at my desk working.

The nurse was late today. Apparently my neighbour had had a bad fall and when the nurse arrived there she was sprawled al over the floor. He had to pick her up, dust her off and start her all over again.

He’s trying to encourage her to go into a Home for the elderly and infirm and it’s not a bad idea, except for the fact that robbing a person of their autonomy is often sentencing them to death. I know people mean well when they go to, say, take the tops off your yoghurt for you or cut up your meal for you, but it really is humiliating.

On that note, he did what he could to put my neighbour back on her feet and then came down here to see what damage he could do to me.

And as it happens, I didn’t need much from anyone else. I could create enough damage on my own. He sorted out my legs with my puttees and then pointed out the shortage of supplies. Not that it did much good because he was gone before I could take it all in.

After breakfast I had a listen to the dictaphone but there was nothing there from the night which was a surprise because there was a lot of stuff that I can’t remember now about the confusing aspects of going to hospital – is it better to take one form of recovery or take another form, what was wrong with each one? How would I return home? How things would be complicated and how things would be managed. That drifted on through some kind of wartime scenario but it was all to do with my ill-health. Unfortunately I can’t really remember all that much of it now which is a shame but I definitely recall being torn desperately in two directions with no clear path to guide me – and there’s a lot of truth in a feeling like that right at the moment. I’m currently being pulled in every direction save that in which I think that I ought to be going.

Today I’ve been working on a new project. One of the greatest live albums ever celebrates its birthday soon and although the album is actually quite short, the whole concert lasted for just over two hours, the event was recorded (well, obviously) in its entirety and I have found, tucked away in a few various recesses here and there, a copy of the recording!

It contains the songs that are well-known from the published work of course, but also plenty of others and loads of interesting and illuminating dialogue between the musicians that has never seen the light of day.

We shall be having a great deal of fun with this broadcast when it hits the air.

There’s also been a cookery master-class going on too. I’ve been teaching everyone in my little travel group to make naan bread, seeing as almost everyone seemed to be planning on making a curry.

My cleaner came and went early today as I had to be ready by 16:00 for the taxi to take me to see the Beast of the Hôpital de la Baie.

We were late arriving, due to problems on the road with all the traffic, however that meant that I didn’t have to wait long.

With the kind of glance that would curdle milk at 100 paces she enticed me into her lair and then the interrogation began. I felt like at any moment the bright light and thumbscrews would be out but eventually she threw me out, satisfied that another helpless victim has been ensnared.

The taxi brought me back here where my loyal cleaner helped me up the stairs, God bless her! Ho nice it was to see a friendly face.

And her help was welcomed too because I’d have never managed the 25 Steps on my own.

On that subject, I might not have to face them for much longer. Although there’s 11 months left on the lease of the tenant in my apartment downstairs, I’ve issued instructions to the letting agents to start proceedings to make sure that the lease isn’t automatically renewed, as most leases are.

Here in France, tenants have a great many rights and things have to be done “by the book” So it’s worth paying someone to do it correctly. But I bet that there’s yet another banana skin somewhere lurking around.

Up here i made tea – a leftover curry with naan bread and it really was delicious. I could eat that all over again. But not right now as I’m off to bed. Next Wednesday will come round soon enough

Talking about anaesthetics however reminds me of the time that Idi Amin went to the dentist’s. The dentist worked out what he needed, laid out all the tools and drills and went to his fridge from which he pulled a hypodermic needle
"What are you doing?" asked a panic-stricken Amin
"There’s no need to worry" said the dentist. "I’m going to give you a local anaesthetic."
So Amin left his chair, picked up the dentist and began to beat him to a pulp.
When he’d finished, he turned to the dentist’s assistant and said "NOT local! American! OK?"

Tuesday 25th June 2024 – SO IT’S OFFICIAL.

The anaesthetist “wants to see me” and has set aside 16:45 on Wednesday 3rd July for the purpose.

And then the operation will take place on 16th July. I shall be there overnight because given my opinions of hospital, operations, blood and gore as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have elected for the “General anaesthetic” rather than the local anaesthetic.

There’s no way in this World that I’ll be lying there watching a local anaesthetic slowly wear off and catching sight of what is going on.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my adventures in Castle Anthrax a few years ago where they turned up unannounced in my room, whisked me and my bed off to the cellar clamped a gas mask over my face, said “smell this” and the next thing that I knew, it was four hours later and I’d had a surgical operation.

Even today, I still don’t know what they did, and that suits me fine. If all operations went like that, I’d have more of them. But this modern 21st-Century society where I have to be informed of each step and each procedure in graphic detail and formally agree to them.
"But it’s your right!" they wail.
But what about MY right not to want to know? No-one cares about my rights.

As long as the operation is in the morning. TNS are playing in the Champions’ League that evening. That time in Castle Anthrax I missed Newtown v Caernarfon

Meanwhile, abandoning another good rant for the moment, last night was again horribly late by the time that I went to bed. I just don’t seem to be able to make the time go any slower

Yes, when we were kids, our six weeks of summer holiday used to last for ever. Now six weeks goes in the blinking of an eye.

And once in bed, I didn’t need much rocking yet again. It’s lovely and warm and comfortable in there, just me and STRAWBERRY MOOSE tucked up tight.

Not so comfortable that I didn’t awaken before the alarm went off. When I awoke at about 06:00 I made some kind of comment and I’m certain that I had some kind of reply from someone sleeping in the next bed about life in the RAF. Of course, then then kind of thing evaporated and I realised that it really was 06:30 and I really was awake in my own bed with my own things

And that was weird too. It really did sound as if there was someone else in the room. And it wasn’t His Nibs either. If only he could talk, he would have a few tales that he could tell that would be worth a good few bob to anyone who might be interested.

He could tell me a few tales too of when he’s been let loose on his own in the company of ladies of the opposite sex.

But returning to the dream, I’ve no idea what was happening there.

I also have a vague impression of walking through Shavington en route for somewhere else, just using one crutch and feeling quite confident about it too

If only I could walk with one crutch. I used to be able to do that up until about 9 months ago but how my mobility has reduced over that period of time. There are times when I’m hard-pushed to walk with two these days.

Just to prove that I can do it when I really try, I pushed myself out of bed before the alarm went off. Only by five minutes, it has to be said, but five minutes is five minutes and they all count.

After a good wash and scrub up I loitered around for a while transcribing the dictaphone (such as they were) until the nurse came round.

When he arrived I told him about the prescription to which he readily agreed, and then he cleared off without writing one out. I hope that he does it back at the office and drops it off in the morning.

Once he’d finally gone I made breakfast – porridge and toast with orange juice and strong coffee. And believe me, I needed it.

There wasn’t much time to revise or review my Welsh before the lesson started, and having missed a week, Bane of Britain revised the wrong module. But it makes no difference because I’m rubbish whether I revise or not.

And having given the matter serious thought, as well as studying next year as normal, I’m definitely going to retake this year in an evening class with another provider because I’ve missed so much of it with hospital and all of that, and I don’t want to embarrass Coleg Cambria by doing it with them.

The difficulty is finding a provider who offers “North Welsh”.

For the southern dialect there are more courses than you can shake a stick at. It’s not too much of a problem because my grandmother came from down south even though she lived most of her life up in the north-east so I’m used to hearing both dialects. But I’m definitely a “North-id”. Bangor University is affiliated to the “LearnWelsh” programme so they might have something.

After the end of the lesson, when we all went our separate ways for the summer holidays, I changed the habits of a lifetime and had a sandwich seeing as I won’t be having my mid-afternoon snack.

And then I made myself ready for my trip to Avranches.

The trip down there was the first time that I’d felt tired? but I soon livened up when I couldn’t get out of my chair and everyone in the building had to rally round and help. Fancy a hospital waiting room with no arms on their chairs!

Anyway, the surgeon played ball, which was nice. He understood my fears, mumbled his way through what he was supposed to say, didn’t say anything else and asked if I agreed with what he’d just said.

How could I do anything else?

Next step will be the anaesthetist. He wants to “see me” – I suppose, in the same way that the executioner looks over the condemned man. I’m already feeling rather uncomfortable and we haven’t started yet.

We had a full car going home – it seems as if we went to every medical establishment in Avranches on some sort of Cook’s Tour to pick up everyone heading to this neck of the woods.

Back here I was first out, and my faithful cleaner helped me up the steps, standing behind me lifting up my foot with hers.

This can’t go on much longer. I don’t have the force to keep on dragging myself up the handrail, and neither does she, I suspect. I can only see an unpleasant future of doom and gloom if this carries on. And if I have dialysis, I’ll be doing it three times per week at least.

Once I was home I sat down – and crashed out. I was dead to the World.

Only 20 minutes late starting tea. At least it was taco roll with rice so it didn’t need much preparation.

As for me, neither do I. I’ll be in bed before you know it and there I intend to stay until my name changes to Rip van Epic. I am totally wasted after this afternoon – and I have to do it tomorrow too. That’s when I go to see Emilie the cute consultant’s sidekick.

But as I said, I’m off to bed to reflect on the events of the day and mull over the words of the surgeon – at least, the words that I understood.
"I’ve listened to you for fifteen minutes" I told him "but I’m still none-the-wiser"
"Maybe not" he replied "but you’re certainly better-informed."

Tuesday 18th June 2024 – ON OUR WAY …

… home, going home where lovers roam.

Yes, unfortunately I can’t welcome you to the Pleasuredome yet – that’s another year away once the tenant downstairs clears off, but I can certainly welcome you to an apartment that I have never ever seen in all my life before.

Not only is the apartment spotlessly clean, and by that I mean my office and bedroom too, everything in sight has been washed to death including all the bedding and I have a lovely clean bed in which to climb later this evening.

My cleaner has worked miracles to have this place ready for me and I’m beyond speechless at the efforts that she’s made for me.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the solidarity that I have encountered in this building has made coming to live here all worthwhile.

A shame that the hospital couldn’t have joined in the fun. Like most French public functions it’s “duty before everything else” and most of the staff had a tendency to be rather brusque but nevertheless, in unguarded moments they could all (well, mostly) be good fun and apart from the dreadful stuff that passed for food, I enjoyed my stay.

Well, most of it, anyway.

And for a change, I actually enjoyed last night. I had a good sleep for once. Although I wasn’t in bed until long after midnight, I slept right the way through until 06:00 without awakening when I had to go for a ride on the porcelain horse.

And would you believe, well, I’m sure you would because you’ve been following these pages long enough, someone chose that moment to come in to tell me that they wanted to take a blood sample.

"Come back in five minutes" I grunted.

Ten minutes later we had the 06:15 whirlwind through the ward. I gave blood and just about everything else. Surprisingly they didn’t ask for a diabetes sample – I suppose that they’ll “get that from the blood test” – but they gave me a totally unsolicited glass of orange juice all the same.

Having gulped that down, I settled down under the covers again and was totally dead to the World until the next round of awakening at 08:15. That two hours or however long it was was the deepest sleep that I have ever had, I’m sure of that.

With that procedure out of the way, breakfast came round. And once I’d polished that off I nipped into the bathroom where, sitting astride the you-know-what, I had my last hospital shower.

And remembering what happened the other week in Paris, I didn’t wash my clothes. I don’t want to be lugging soaking wet clothes halfway around Normandy.

After the shower I had a visit from the medical staff. All of my medication has changed and I noticed with a wry smile that in some cases we’re back to where we were a couple of years ago.

And a real surprise was that the chief of the dieticians came to see me today to excuse herself and her team. Nothing I can say or do will change the Byzantine nature of things in the French Public Service so I listened politely and thanked them for coming, but I must admit that it was through gritted teeth.

As well as all of that, there are several appointments in the immediate future and a couple of tasks for the nursing staff who come to the apartment every morning. I’m definitely going to be having my money’s worth.

What was sad that it wasn’t Emilie the cute consultant who came to say “goodbye”. She sent a sidekick to blast me off into Eternity today and I was really disappointed at that.

And so it went on for several hours, people preparing me and then unpreparing me for departure so in the end I gave up and went to sleep in my chair.

Eventually an ambulance arrived and the ambulanciers strapped me to a stretcher and loaded me into the back of their vehicle. And there I was, hoping for a rather discreet and unobtrusive return.

My cleaner bless her was waiting downstairs to help me up here but the guys put me in a chair and carried me up. It’s a good job that I’d lost all that weight.

Once inside the place, while I was being overwhelmed by the kindness, my cleaner was going through my prescription, restoring to the shelves medicaments that had been discarded in the past, withdrawing medicaments that had only just been prescribed and then she sallied forth into town to have the new prescription made up, and presumably to arrange a lorry to bring it all back.

While she was away I had some hummus and biscottes along with a mug of hot chocolate. New stuff fresh from the bottle – you should have seen how bloated the stuff was in the fridge that I’d left when I went in.

When my cleaner came back, she had half the stuff. The rest will be here over the next few days. But we both came to the conclusion that the amount of stuff here now is overwhelming and I am going to need help to sort myself out with this medication otherwise we’ll be having a tragedy.

What I shall probably have to do is to involve the visiting nurse in all of this.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. That was when we just realised that there would be quite a lot more than just rape back at our base so we decided to hurry back from the end of this mission and take up some kind of armed guard although we expected that if our armies were defeated we’d all be disarmed anyway in which case if would be very pot luck as to what happened and what people had to suffer before the end of the war was announced.

Quite a gruesome subject, I know, and ordinarily I wouldn’t post something like this but it actually has some kind of basis in fact. A prison camp containing prisoners of all nations was overrun by the Russians in Eastern Europe and the prisoners were released. Many of the prisoners remained in some kind of orderly cohesion but the Russian prisoners went berserk and began to commit all kinds of atrocities. A delegation from a local village came to the camp and pleaded with the British officer in charge to send a platoon of British prisoners to protect the inhabitants of the village from the depredations of the Russians. The irony of the situation was not lost on the British prisoners – defending their enemies from their allies – and it was definitely a premonition of the times five years hence.

Tea tonight was my long-anticipated pasta with vegetables and melted cheese, along with a burger from the European Burger Mountain in my fridge. And you’ve no idea just how delicious it was. It made the waiting all worthwhile.

Well, perhaps not.

So now I’m going to curl up in my luxurious clean bed and if it wasn’t for the nurse in the morning, I wouldn’t be leaving it for a week.

At least there will be no bed-baths. There was a strange, foreign nurse on the ward this morning giving bed-baths. With one guy she folded down his nightgown to his waist and said "first I wash as far as possible"
Then she rolled up his nightgown, began to wash his legs and said "next I wash as far as possible"
And finally, with a flourish, she ripped off his gown and said "and now I wash possible"

Monday 17th June 2024 – I’M BACK …

… from Paris, and in one piece too which makes a major change.

And I’ve learned a lot too, which also makes a change, but very little of it about what is going on, for the simple reason that I’m not convinced that the hospital knows all that much about things.

Not that that’s any surprise. It’s pretty difficult when you are dealing with a rare illness for which there is no known cure and everything has to be done by trial and error, crossing of fingers, and hoping that something somewhere will work a miracle.

Instead though, I’ve been shown a whole new way through Paris – a way that’s almost totally devoid of traffic – and Ill remember this for if, by any luck, a miracle happens and I can come here again under my own steam. However, I am not optimistic.

Just as last night I wasn’t optimistic about having a good night’s sleep. I never seem to manage one in normal circumstances and there’s even less chance when I have a journey the next day. It’s always the case and I’ve never worked out why.

Going to bed long after midnight doesn’t help matters much, but I’m at the stage where I’m past caring. As I said yesterday, whenever that was, I’ve long-since lost all track of time here.

Whatever the contretemps was last night when I was thinking of going to bed, it was still continuing so I thought that it was probably a better idea to keep well clear rather than sticking my oar into a controversial situation … "perish the thought" – ed … and I left them to it.

For a change I was asleep quite quickly but as usual kept on awakening which put me off my stroke.

There was the 06:15 blitz through the ward and even though I had my alarm set for 07:00 I was awakened unceremoniously at 06:25. Diabetes check below the limit but I was refused my supplementary orange juice. "Your breakfast will be here in a moment".

When I protested I was told to sod off. What a way to start the day!

However, she was right. Breakfast WAS served soon. Too soon in fact because the bread hadn’t arrived and I had to have biscottes.

The taxi driver came early and I wasn’t finished in the bathroom so he had to wait. But when I emerged I was shoved into a wheelchair and pushed off, clutching my crutches and the packed lunch that the nurse handed me.

There was “some issue” about my packed lunch. When it turned up it was ham and cheese sandwiches, absolutely ideal for a vegan I don’t think. And so for the first time ever in my life I have had bread sandwiches – two slices of bread with … a slice of bread in between.

The driver has run me around before. He’s a nice enough guy and a good driver but doesn’t have much to say for himself. Nether did I today so it was a fairly quiet drive and I slept for some of the way.

Astonishingly, we weren’t held up at all anywhere and sailed all the way through. A four-hour trip took just over three hours today.

Even more surprisingly, I was seen straight away by the specialist.

The lumbar puncture and the electric shock examinations from the other week when I was here as an in-patient don’t show any significant deterioration. But they don’t show any significant improvement either, which he found disappointing.

Consequently he’s going to change my chemotherapy tablet, the one that costs a King’s ransom for some other tablet.

There’s also the suspicion – only a suspicion, mind you – that there’s something else causing this creeping paralysis. He reckons that the amount of drugs pumped into me ought to have had a reaction. Consequently he wants to carry out a Biopsy of my nervous system. This will involve the stay of a few days in September.

Well, why not? What do I have to lose? Only my appetite with the food that’s on offer there.

But seriously, if I’m going to be poked and prodded around and used as a guinea-pig, I may as well make it worth my while and go the whole hog.

There was a blood sample that needed to be taken so I staggered off there where they had several goes at finding a vein and, on staggering out, staggered right into my driver who was passing down the corridor.

"Do you want time to eat your lunch?" he asked.
"No thanks" I replied, having seen what was in my food parcel "Let’s go straight back"

So having taken a different way home, at least as far as the suburbs of Paris, we were back here at 16:15 where the nursing staff, sincerely and unprompted, expressed their dismay at my lunch. "The hospital needs to make more of an effort". Someone fetched me an apple, for which I was grateful.

It’s been confirmed that I am going home tomorrow. "You could have gone home tonight but we didn’t want you to go home to a cold apartment and have the effort of cooking for yourself after the exertion of your trip to Paris" said Emilie the cute consultant who came to see me.

And you ought to be proud of me. I actually did refrain from offering her my front-door key and telling her warm up the place and put the supper on the stove.

But she did come to see me to find out how things went and she photographed the relevant info from Paris. She wished me luck on the next stage of my adventure with my health issues and by the time our conversation finished, I wasn’t really sure who was chatting up whom.

Yes, I’d quite happily massage her clavicles any time of the day or night, whether she asks or not.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from last night. I’d been out entertaining our parents in the RAF station.. When they came back there were three bats entangled in the barbed wire. We tried to laugh it off but in reality what had happened was that a couple of Lancaster trainers had one into the barbed wire too. Two of our students were killed. We tried to laugh it off as some kind of nothing much or not very important but from where we were we gradually prepared ourselves for flying operations and gradually tried to keep in shape etc ready to leave and set off. But we had the funeral and then we had to check the barbed wire in the camp and the guards. The guard was shaken up but I dunno I suppose that was what happened.

That’s rather a garbled account of something that I can’t really understand. The barbed wire from last night seems to be there but I’ve no idea about the rest of it Funerals on Air Force bases were commonplace following crashes and the like when trainees were overwhelmed by the equipment and machines that they ere operating and people who witnesses these accidents went to extraordinary lengths and took extraordinary measures to put the images of what they had seen behind them..

While I was on a field exercise I came across a guy living in a hut in the mountains. He was living in deplorable circumstances but I’ve no idea why. I had him arrested and taken back to base. It turned out that he was in fact someone who had been conscripted years ago but had fled. His whole life had been living in this cabin and he had learned so much in his two years of isolation. He taught it all to us, even down to eating possum Without him, our Air Force careers would have been so much tougher because he taught us to survive, and to survive on next-to-nothing. When we were prisoners that was just how it was – survive on what you had and don’t think about anything else

That reminds me of when I lived down on the farm and at a meeting once I was chatting to two British guys who were discussing “this strange British guy who lives like a hermit up in the mountains and no-one ever sees” and it took me a full fifteen minutes to work out that they were talking about me. I’d fit the description in this dream quite happily except that I’d draw the line at eating possum of course. The “deplorable conditions” would fit nicely though.

So anyway, home tomorrow it is. At least, if I can climb the steps up to my apartment. I’m not optimistic because I’ve been practising and it doesn’t seem to have made any difference.

And that bit about “dealing with a rare illness for which there is no known cure” brought a wry smile to my face. It reminded me of the Summer School for one of my University modules back 20-odd years ago where a group of us on a Science awareness course managed to club our heads together in the laboratory and discovered a cure for which there was no known disease.

Sunday 16th June 2024 – I’VE NOT DONE …

… all that much more today than I did yesterday.

Quite possibly because I was catching up on my sleep from last night. It was another late night, probably the latest of all just recently. As I have said before… "and on many occasions too" – ed … time has gone out of the window in this place.

Hours, days, weeks – I haven’t a clue where I am really and as we know judging by recent events, neither has the hospital. One of these days our two eccentric circles will correspond, only for them to fall apart again.

Tomorrow anyway, we seem to agree on one thing, and that is that I’m going to Paris. However it now seems, judging by a text message that I’ve had that my appointment has been advanced to 11:05 from 12:30.

Clearly, Paris should be joining in this group of eccentric circular timespans because there is no way in this World that I’m going to be there for then. My taxi isn’t picking me up until 08:30 and it’s about a 4-hour drive. I keep on telling them in Paris that with all the best will in the World I can’t respond to last-minute additions or changes, with all of the logistical difficulties that are involved, especially when I only receive the notification on a Sunday when the taxi office is closed.

So it’s going to be 12:30 whether they like it or not, and if it’s too late so they have to cancel, then that’s too bad. With this latest round of hospital treatment here, I obviously have other fish to fry at the moment and we’ll worry about my cancer treatment at another moment.

Anyway, I was having a good read of all of these notes and things last night, completely lost track of time and ended up crawling shamefully into bed long after everyone else and hoping that no-one noticed.

It was pretty much useless though; I don’t know what time it was but it sounds as if they are dismantling a factory outside my bedroom door. I don’t think that I’ve ever heard so much racket inside a hospital as what’s going on at the moment and going to sleep was pretty impossible for quite a while.

But go to sleep I did eventually, hoping for a night like last night but no such luck. We had the 06:15 whirlwind and blitz though our rooms, and the 08:00 diabetes test. 0.79 mine was today, just on the limit for orange juice. The nurse didn’t think it worth it but I wasn’t going to miss out on extra orange juice. Ohh no!

Breakfast was late today which was a shame because I was starving. And the coffee was cold so they must have been held up somewhere which is not a surprise because firstly there’s a new guy on the ward who seems to need a lot of people buzzing around him judging by his tone of voice and secondly, there was much more movement than usual of people in beds coming and going, pushed by the orderlies but having to be positioned and so on by the auxiliaries

After breakfast I had a good scrub and then watched a film – INSPECTOR HORNLEIGH ON HOLIDAY, the second film of the trilogy. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. I’ve downloaded a good few of these films onto my laptop for when I’m on my travels and bored in a hotel. I’ll never tire of Gordon Harker

And watch for the young girl at the piano right at the start of the film. She appears in tiny cameo roles in quite a few films of this nature during this period, and I still haven’t worked out why.

The doctor from yesterday came round to see how I was, so I had to pause the film. She seems now to agree that it is in fact Tuesday that I do go home, which is good news, but there’s still plenty of time to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in this respect.

More good news is that she weighed me. There are two target weights that I try to reach. The first is my “inactive” weight when I’m not running or keeping fit, and the second is my “active” weight when I am. And the weighing machine tells me that, fully clothed, I’m now below my inactive weight heading for my active weight target.

She of course thinks that it’s this water retention issue sorting itself out but I put it down to the starvation rations in this place.

The Creatine level is stable – at … err … 440. She told me that that was good news but I told her that it would be better news if it were stable at 270 where it was before all of this performance began or even stable at below 100 where it’s supposed to be. What’s this “300 is a critical level” thing all about?

Her reply was that I seem to be coping really well with the limitations and it would have been a different matter entirely had my body not responded to the shock treatment that they gave me when I came in.

After she left I carried on watching my film. Lunch was late too, but for a change I received everything that I was supposed to. Things are definitely looking up in that respect

This afternoon I watched another film, BEHIND GREEN LIGHTS, a cheesy detective thriller from 1946 with William Gargan and Carole Landis who are both actors far too good for this sort of script. Nevertheless, for passing an idle 90 minutes, there have been worse ideas than watching this.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too which was a surprise. Amongst the people taken by surprise by our sudden movement was a certain Frenchman who was standing in the middle of where we pitched our tents shaking his head found by the military police wondering where we’d all gone. Apparently he used to come here every evening for reasons like … and was able to skip past the guards on the perimeter until he made it to the centre of the camp and whoever was billeted here

And then, it seems, I had a very similar dream later on. Similar, but in more detail and our mysterious man’s nationality had changed. Apparently the departure of 131 Squadron for the UK was so rapid that amongst the items left behind on the abandoned airfield in North Africa and recovered by a Recovery Unit was a young, immaculately dressed Italian man. Apparently he had been in the habit every might of climbing the barbed wire perimeter defences totally unobserved so that he could visit his “friend”, for whatever purpose one can only imagine. The departure had been so sudden that the airman hadn’t had the time to communicate the fact, and there was the Italian man, having climbed the barbed wire defences once more, face to face with an Irate Recovery Squad Officer.

For the record, 131 Squadron was a bomber squadron in World War I and a fighter squadron in World War II, yet I was convinced that I was discussing a bomber squadron which makes sense, with all this stuff that I’ve been reading. The squadron never served in North Africa anyway. In World War II it served in England, Wales and India, flying Spitfires and, later, Thunderbolts.

The rest of the day has been spent either working on more radio stuff or else reading more notes. Anything to keep out of mischief.

Tomorrow then, I’m off to Paris. What happens next, we’ll find out when we arrive. Apparently I’ll be given a picnic for midday by the hospital but that will remain to be seen. If the journey goes OK they’ll throw me out of here on Tuesday and I’ll resume the battle with just the Visiting Nurses keeping an eye on me, not that they did that too well just now.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, when I contracted this cancer back in 2015, the advice that every medical professional in Castle Anthrax gave me was to “save your strength for the struggle that lies ahead” and left me in no doubt that it would be a struggle. So despite all of the setbacks that we have had, the battle will go on.

First, though, I’ll go to see what the fight down the corridor is all about. But not before I mention that the story about Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris and the Australian airman yesterday reminded me of something else. I think that it was Percy Penguin, bless her, who told me about the time that the Queen Mother visited the Home where she worked.
There was one old lady who clearly no longer had both paddles in the water who objected to the fuss being made, and expressed herself in “forthright” terms.
"Don’t you know who I am?" said the Queen Mother indignantly
"No dear" said the old woman "but ask the matron. She’ll tell you"

Friday 19th April 2024 – YOU HAVE NO IDEA …

… – or maybe you do, I dunno. I know very little of your personal habits – just how absolutely wonderful it is to be standing underneath a constant stream of hot water out of a shower outlet after all these months of being without.

Now that my emergency backpack has arrived, complete with wash kit, spare pair of undies and the like, I closed the door to my room, put something to stop the bathroom door being opened, and away I went underneath the little shower tucked away in the corner of the bathroom.

Of course, it stopped my little student nurse from coming in to scrub my back and massage my clavicles, but it also stopped the retired Bulgarian female weightlifter from doing the same, and also stopped the nurse from coming in to remind me to tell her when I’ve been to the bathroom

And I’ll tell you now that it was heaven.

While we’re on the subject of the massaging of clavicles … "well, one of us is" – ed … I had a visitor during the night.

Actually, I had several because it was quite a mobile night but the most important of them all was Zero. It’s been a while since she’s put in an appearance, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but there she was last night and wasn’t it nice to see her?

All I need now is for TOTGA and Castor to come back to see me but I have a rather depressing feeling, at least about Castor. As for TOTGA, it’s not quite two years ago that … well, never mind.

So last night after I’d finished the notes and put them on line I had a pause and then attacked the notes for Monday, which are NOW ON LINE in a basic form. I’ll add the dictaphone notes in due course, whenever that might be.

It was after midnight when I went to bed and what with 05:00 diabetes checks and the like I was expecting a turbulent night.

And I was right too, but for totally unexpected reasons. As I mentioned, Zero came to see me. We’d been going to the local pub, a group of us of all ages of people. I’d made a few enquiries along the way and I’d worked out which was everyone’s favourite biscuit. There was a young girl, probably about 9 or 10 or so who loved chocolate, there was Zero who loved a certain type of biscuit etc so what I’d done ready for when we’d be going that Saturday was that I’d been to the pub on the way home from the shops and dropped off the biscuits. We rounded up everyone and prepared to go down to the pub at lunchtime. The first thing about which we talked was “a drink for the little one” – of course, she wasn’t that little. She wanted something or other. I asked her what she wanted to eat so she mentioned “biscuits”. I pulled out a pile from under the counter and had a chocolate in my other hand. I said “right, which biscuit do you want to swap for this chocolate?”. I wasn’t given any choice because the chocolate disappeared immediately. It was the same with Zero. She chose her favourite biscuit and had that as well as the other ones that were there and wolfed it down. I began to talk to her then after everyone else had had their biscuits. Zero and I began to have a really good chat. There was some paperwork involving her that needed doing so I thought that I may as well sit down there and do that while everyone is busy and maybe persuade Zero to come over and help me fill it all in.

Then another girl who has appeared once or twice in this rubbish previously puts in an appearance. It’s as we thought, with all this turmoil going on during a school dance or something we’d all been separated because we can’t behave ourselves. I’ve been put over one side and ended up dancing with this girl but I’m busy fighting her for a little more than she’s prepared to give me, like most teenage boys back in those days. There was something else going on with one of the other girls etc so in the end the teacher called a halt to the proceedings and dragged the lot of us, the entire group, down to see the headmaster and began to recount all of the problems that she was having with us and who’s been doing what wrong. Of course he picks on me and begins to give me a really good lecture as if it’s all my fault but it’s probably only some of it and everyone else was probably to blame for a lot.

And there’s nothing new in any of that either. Whatever was going on wherever it was always seemed to be my fault, even though it was nothing to do with me.

It reminded me of a tale of woe that a friend’s daughter in the USA once told me. She was 11 and had a 7 year old brother.
"Whenever I do anything wrong, my brother tells my mom on me and she yells at me" she said once. "But if he does anything wrong and I tell my mom on him, then she says it’s my fault for not watching him properly and yells at me"
That story has a very, very familiar ring as far as I’m concerned.

But there’s a funny story about a similar situation with the children of my friend Erika in Georgia. Her two kids were about 6 and 2 and the time.
"Mom!" shouted the 6 year old. "… (the two year old) … has a choking hazard in her mouth!"
So mom dashes to the rescue and removes the offending article
"Mom!" said the 6 year old in a tone of admonishment "I think you really MUST watch us better!"

Anyway we we were back in that dream again. The teacher was giving her report. One of the younger girls was up to some kind of mischief. That girl from just now was still there. It was obvious to the teacher that there was some kind of … errr … inappropriate behaviour (especially as she was a couple of years younger than me) between the girl and me that was beginning to get out of hand in the middle of one of the songs. There was a third thing happening so in the end she decided to call it all to a halt and drag us all before the headmaster who hopefully would lay down the law and even more hopefully we might all listen to what is being said and take note.

I have to admit that I admired the optimism of some of these new teachers who came to our school straight from University

It was as I said. I was messing around with this girl. There was someone else there messing around and Zero put in another appearance doing something – I think that it was she who was singing falsely at the end. Anyway we were all passing through a group of china and the Headmistress was annoyed in case we fell over and broke it all so she read The Riot Act to us all. Generally, it was the kind of place where we wished that we’d all gone home because we’d really all been getting out of hand just then and making the teacher’s life difficult.
(…And if I’ve been fooling around with another girl – no matter who it is – when Zero is there I ought to be ashamed of myself and go home in disgrace…)

But there was no sense of shame or guilt about any kind of interaction that took place between the teachers and the pupils. It was the Law of the Jungle, them or us even when it came to a group of a dozen boys bodily picking up a teacher’s car and wedging it between two brick walls. “That’ll teach her! Get out of that one!”

My own preference was a War of Nerves, but the less said about that the better in an open forum.

They awoke me for the blood test at 05:00 and also for the diabetes test, which I passed, and so I could go back to sleep.

But not for long because I soon had the morning chorus of people around doing all kinds of things and stopping me doing anything else for a while.

Breakfast then came, complete with jam, so I was left alone to transcribe the dictaphone notes for a while.

My faithful cleaner asked me if they had told me whether I could go so I told her “no news” and 30 seconds after I sent it, they came to tell me that they’d ordered my taxi for 15:00. That was when I hit the bathroom.

Doctor n°1 came to see me when I was packing and told me that I could go, seeing as my results had improved. So I told her goodbye and thanks, that I was sorry to leave and that I hoped that I’d see her again. She blushed again and I kid you not, she skipped – really skipped – out of the door as if she was about 7.

As usual, the taxi was late coming but the driver was someone who had taken me to Paris once so I knew him. We were back quite quickly and my faithful cleaner was waiting to help me up the stairs. I really don’t know what I’d do without her.

Once inside I had a hot chocolate and apart from the banana-flavoured soya drink that I’m currently drinking, that’s it. I’ve not moved from my chair, not even to make any food. I just can’t.

Liz was on line so we had a good chat and now I’m off to bed in my nice clean bedroom – my cleaner has been busy while I’ve been away. It’s probably taken her all week to do what she’s done.

So after Zero’s dramatic reappearance last night, who’ll be coming to see me tonight? My money is of course where it usually is – on one of my family coming along uninvited.

It’s hard to believe though that Zero turned up a second time and I was …. errr …. busy elsewhere. I’m clearly losing my grip. But at least I noticed her. Just imagine if I hadn’t.

Still, I’m not alone there. A friend in the Army was once selected for camouflage training. He simply didn’t go and was later commended for his disguise and attention to detail. It fooled everyone apparently

Thursday 18th April 2024 – APPARENTLY I MIGHT …

… be able to go home tomorrow, so they say.

But simply to pack my bags ready to go to my next hospital.

Apparently I’m being passed from hospital to hospital quicker than in a game of “pass the parcel” in a bar in West Belfast

Mind you, I can’t say that I’m sorry, for I might be able to have a little peace.

Not that I’m complaining about the service. Not at all. In fact, quite the reverse. There’s far too much of it. So much so that it’s overwhelming the other services that follow on.

This morning I was awoken at, would you believe, 05:00 because they wanted to check my blood sugar. At 05:00!!
So "help! Your blood sugar is too low. Drink this orange juice! Eat this jam!"
"Eat this jam? Eat it neat? What do I eat it with?"
A couple of minutes later "Here’s a ‘madeleine’ to eat with your jam"
"You’re quick enough to spot that I’m at risk of diabetes. And at 05:00 too! But not quick enough to spot that on the same page just 2 lines down it says that I’m a vegan."
Eventually we agree on some biscottes

And then at breakfast "Where’s the jam for my bread?"
"It says here on your notes that you’re diabetic. You aren’t allowed it"

While I’m actually eating (with my jam that I have now negotiated) –
Person n°1 comes with my medication
Person n°2 comes to change the plaster on my foot
Person n°3 comes to inject me in the hip
Person n°4 comes to remind me to tell her when I’ve been to the bathroom
Person n°5 comes to take my blood pressure and temperature

Eventually everyone clears off for a couple of hours and leaves me at peace with just the usual interruptions

And then round about 11:00 the doctor comes to see me. And while she’s soothing my fevered brow (and believe me, she can soothe my fevered brow any time she likes) –
Person n°1 comes to make the bed
Person n°2 comes to give me a clean nightshirt
Person n°3 comes to talk to the doctor
Person n°4 comes to tell me to tell her when I’ve been to the bathroom
Person n°5 comes to take my blood pressure and temperature

"Blood pressure’s rather high today" said the doctor, looking at the figures
"Surely not" I said. "Perish the thought!"

Eventually everyone drift away and leaves me in relative peace

But then I do need the bathroom and so I set off. And it’s odds-on, and you would have bet your money on it, that as soon as I’m in the bathroom the blasted phone rings

So I make it back to the phone just in time (which surely must be a ‘first’) and while I’m listening to radio business with the phone at one ear there’s the nurse in the other ear reminding me to tell her when I’ve been to the bathroom.

And so it’s gone on (and on, and on) all day. But at least I saw two friendly faces today. A couple of my neighbours, my devoted cleaner and the President of the Residents’ Committee, came to say “hello” and to bring me my emergency backpack, including the travelling laptop, and so I’m saved. The solidarity in my building is impressive.

After they leave, Doctor n°2 comes to see me. She’s from the Nephrology Department. Apparently she’s spoken to Paris and they’ve decided that as Nephrology is where my current problems lie and as there is no-one special at Paris handling my case from that point of view they can do it here so she’ll be taking over.

What I reckon is that she just wants to get her teeth into my kidneys – preferably wrapped up with mushrooms in a puff pastry.

Then Doctor n°1 came to tell me what Doctor n°2 had said so I told her that I was sorry.

She asked why so I told her that it was because I wouldn’t see her again – and she blushed!

And so it’ s gone on. It’s now 21:00 and I’m still being injected and I really ought to be running a sweep about how many more times tonight a nurse going to come round to tell me to tell her when I’ve been to the bathroom.

But as I said, I’m not in the least complaining. Had I been in the UK I’d have had to wait 18 months for an appointment to go to the bathroom. I’d have been pushing up the daisies a long time before this

As for my part, I’m like Mona Lott on ITMA and "it’s being so cheerful as keeps me going"

There’s some stuff on the dictaphone that needs transcribing too. I was doing something with a group of people, one of whom was a young girl whom I quite happened to like. It involved changing my clothes and I had to carry them across the room to the sink. I just about dropped them but managed to catch them just at the point where I awoke. It was, I think, the shock of dropping the clothes that made me awaken. I thought that I had a really good reflex action of catching them while I was half-asleep and there weren’t any real clothes there anyway.

It’s not bad, is it? Being able to catch non-existent clothing with a lightning reflex action when I’m asleep. Not for nothing did I keep wicket for one of the local cricket teams when I was younger.

And then I had to think of some good adverts for a bus company so we took it in turns to sing a rhyme of doggerel. One girl who was very much like Whats’ername who used to appear quite a lot on “Just A Minute” … "Sheila Hancock" – ed … sang a rhyme basically to say that she knew nothing at all. The boss who drifted onto the scene in the middle of a snowstorm in an old double-decker bus came along and told me as I was watching “that’s the way, Eric. Baffle them with nonsense”. Of course he couldn’t see where he was going because of the snow and ended up driving over the pavement and falling over the pavement head-first with his bus and ended up on the grass sticking upright. He was delighted because there was a part that had been damaged previously and they’d fitted a replacement panel. You could see a perfect reproduction of the panel in the snow even down to the makers’ name and date. He thought that if we could cast on that we could make some brilliant replacement panels ourselves of the one that he’d damaged ages ago and just had replaced. I thought that it was a strange idea but most good ideas like this always start off being strange.

It seems that I have several hidden talents, so well-hidden that I can’t find them anywhere during the day. Planning battles and military campaigns, catching non-existent clothing and running advertising campaigns during my sleep.

This isn’t the first advertising campaign that I’ve run in my sleep either. It’s a shame that no-one is actually paying me for the services that I’m providing during the night. I could afford to retire on the proceeds if this kind of thing carries on.

While I was asleep in the afternoon a new girl had started work in the office. There wasn’t really very much that we could do except to send out the new instructions for the new year. As nothing had been printed yet etc it was a case of having to do everything manually so I was running around looking for a 500-roll of stickers. She told me that they were in someone’s second drawer down. The girl herself was saying that “well no-one has recalculated anything so we’re going to have to do all that by hand too” which I thought was amazing considering that she’d only just started. We were trying very quickly to collect everything together so that at least we could have something that needed to be done and could set things under way so that at least she would feel that she was doing something on her start at the office.

That’s not everything that there was but you don’t really want to know the rest.

So this is all that I’m going to do for now. There are tons of arrears still to do but I need to be in the mood for it

But talking of blushing just now … "well, one of us is" – ed … this morning the little student nurse came to help me change my nightshirt and as she lifted the old one over my head she said, jokingly "ohh la la! Striptease!"
So I whispered in her ear "to tell a little secret, you aren’t the first female to undress me" – and she blushed too!

All of the foregoing is probably why I’m leaving tomorrow. I think that I’m actually being expelled, not discharged.

Wednesday 17th April 2024 – AT LEAST I THINK…

… that it’s Wednesday 17th April. I’ve lost track of time and I couldn’t care less.

I’m still here and for the foreseeable future too for all I know.

It’s actually been “all go” today. And not just during the day either because it was a very disturbed night as well. At about 23:45 I definitely heard someone shout an enquiring “hello” as if from the front door of my apartment being open while I was in bed. I replied with a “hello” but I didn’t hear anything and I didn’t leave the bed at all – I just lay there. Somehow I knew that it was imaginary but it really WAS real and I could quite easily have been mistaken into thinking that it might have been a real person who had opened my door and stuck his head in to shout “hello”.

Thinking on about the matter though, what I reckon that it must have been was a nurse putting his or her head around the door of my room and thinking that I was still awake. I can’t think of what else it might have been, but it was certainly something that sounded real to me.

But while we’re on the subject … "well, one of us is" – ed … there’s plenty of other stuff on the dictaphone too. I was having a long, complicated dream about how a friend’s daughter was a big star of Mexican football, a very controversial star but how in the end she admitted to being involved in all kinds of bribery scandals. This only seemed to enhance her reputation and became one of the most popular female footballers of all time. It was a long, complicated dream that seemed to go on for ever about the matches in which she’d played, some of the goals that she’d scored, how she’d scored them and how aggressive she was.

But leaving aside the fact that the friend in question doesn’t actually have a daughter, I’ll have to stop watching all of these Mexican women’s football matches on the internet.

And then in the Regional Accents programme on BBC Radio there was a story about a girl who had started to play her football with Chelsea and then moved to live in some remote rural region of the area. She was afraid at first when she mentioned that she’d played at Chelsea that everyone would think that she was a superstar whereas in fact she’d really just played for amusement and wasn’t of any particular quality etc. She was just doing it for fun. When they were interviewing the people with the regional accents I didn’t understand a single word that these people were replying. It was such a remote and rural-type of setting that they had an accent all of their own that meant that no-one could understand the English that they were speaking.

Finally, whenever I’d been away on my business, which was very top-secret, I’d always come home by parachute. I’d plan my landing so that I’d bale out of the aeroplane and land in through one of the windows of the barn. Then I’d lower myself down to the ground, roll up my parachute, stash it away and sort out the stuff that I’d brought back. This proved to be useful on a few occasions when hanging from the parachute inside the barn waiting for things to quieten down, I’d hear the plans about what was going on with my family, what they were talking about, why the kids were unhappy etc. My brothers and sisters weren’t a very happy unit. It all proved to be very useful. The problem was stashing away all of the goods that I’d brought back. I kept on bringing back small-sized seat covers for the cars which although fitted, were quite a stretch. It would have been much easier had I brought back medium-sized seat covers that would have gone on and off a lot easier and could have been washed better. But whatever it was, I kept on bringing back small ones. That was a mistake.

So after all of that I decided to go to the bathroom.

On my way someone stopped me to give me a message, then once I was safely installed, a whole stream of different doctors and nurses came to see me, including a nursing assistant who asked me if I needed a toothbrush.

All of which went on while I was … errr … riding the porcelain horse and I began to think "I ought to be selling tickets for this performance. I’d make a fortune". It really was quite embarrassing.

However I’ve had more blood tests, been whizzed through a Stargate time tunnel, seen a couple of doctors and even had a dietician come to see me.

That latter visit wasn’t all that much use either as she told me that there’s not much they can do about my diet with their hospital food. It won’t be the first time that I’ve been told to “bring a picnic” but of course, with this being an emergency admission there was no time to prepare anything.

So having eaten what I can and done what I can, I’m going to go to sleep and dream of happier times.

All of this makes me wish that I’d brought my emergency bag and my travelling laptop. Thank God I have some decent music on my phone and good friends sending me lots of nice messages.

But the question of hospital food reminds me of my time at Riom when I exclaimed quite loudly "I haven’t eaten anything for three days".
And a rather obese gentleman in the next bed responded "Blimey! You’ll have to tell me your secret!"

Tuesday 16th April = I’M IN THE …

… cardiac unit of the regional hospital at Avranches while they try to work out why my blood results have gone so berserk just now.

To say that things are not unfolding as well as I would like is proving to be something of an understatement.

It goes without saying that last night I didn’t have much sleep. These hospital beds such as the one on which I was trying to sleep aren’t actually made for comfort and then of course the surroundings weren’t actually comfortable.

To my great surprise though there was something on the dictaphone so at some point I must have dropped off into the Land of Nod. At one point I was dreaming that I was thirsty so I opened my mouth and grabbed hold of a hose but it was the green house of the car and I think that that was where air came out. I felt so stupid not knowing that the green hose was not water at all but it was something else and I didn’t know it.

When the alarm went off (yes, an alarm. Bane of Britain strikes again!) I was a dispatcher for the US Air Force arranging their planes to go off on bombing missions against the Germans in their big Superfortresses … "actually B-17 Flying Fortresses" – ed … etc. It involved finding crews, preparing the crews for departure, putting them in their aeroplane, making sure that when they took off they knew where their meeting point was, over which beacon etc, generally keeping up with the thousands of changes that would take place during the course of the preparation of the mission

Of course they would actually be Flying Fortresses. It would be extremely rare to say the least to find a Superfortress flying on combat in the European theatre of operations. An expensive aeroplane such as that would have been a luxury when its advantages (super-long range and extremely high altitude) wouldn’t be reached anywhere where it would be required to deliver a bomb-load in Europe. Dollar for dollar, a Flying Fortress could drop many more bombs on Germany.

Of course, dispatching would be nothing new as far as I would be concerned. By air though would be a totally new medium but the principle would be pretty-much the same as by road.

However, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, and things developed as I expected. I’ve been here before, once in Verdun and once in Winnipeg and the results were the same.

Luckily, with having expected it, the necessary precautions had been taken and it wasn’t as embarrassing as it might otherwise have been.

Naturally, I refused any food for breakfast while things tried to settle (a forlorn hope) but at least they moved me to a more convenient location, a little side room off the emergency treatment area, where things could evolve in comparative peace.

Nevertheless a few people came to see me, including the duty doctor. She told me at first that they were planning to keep me under observation for 24 hours and then send me home, but when she saw what was going on, she went away for another think.

In the meantime my blood tests came back. Something in my blood that should be less than 100 and I’ve been living with figures in the 260-270 range for the last few years has suddenly shot up to 316 in the period since my last blood test.

Apparently those kinds of figures won’t usually support life and they are quite concerned. Consequently an ambulance pulled up and I was bundled on a stretcher and stuck in the back.

So here I am at Avranches, 30 kilometres down the road where there’s a regional hospital.

Strangely enough, this was where it all started in March last year when the neurologist sent me here for tests and they couldn’t find the problem – hence my visits to Paris.

The hospital is an old monastery by the looks of things at the front, but there’s a whole huge new extension built on the back and it’s really quite nice and modern. The rooms are small but it’s not as if I need much

So here I am, being cared for and cossetted by a group of nurses. Actually, for the most part they are quite brusque and business-like which differs from most of the nurses in Paris who are much more patient-orientated, but I suppose that they have much more work to do and can’t find the time to be as sociable

While I was asleep at some point during the afternoon there was a dream about a lorry driver who was saying something about how easy it was to set himself up in business. He had a tanker lorry but I remember him having an old “D”-registered ex-RAF tanker before that one. He had several trailers that ere quite substantial trailers and I was saying that he didn’t pick these up for peanuts, and by the looks of things were specially-made. It was quite obvious to me that yes, you can set yourself up in business but you need to have the kind of capital to ba able to do that kind of thing. That’s not just available to everyone at all

And that reminds me of someone I know who lives in the countryside a few miles south of Nantwich, who made a fortune simply by being willing to go crawling and climbing where other people dared not go

The food here is the usual hospital rubbish, I have to say, so it’s a good job that I’m not feeling in the mood to eat anything right no, which is just as well.

And so I’m going to try to sleep – a forlorn hope, I reckon. I’m feeling a little better, but not that much.

I’ve set the bed fairly high so it’s easier for me to get out and in without any help (something that will be quite important as the night develops) but they aren’t happy about it and keep on trying to lower it. I’m winning the fight at the moment but things will almost inevitably change as the night goes on.

It’s “visions of Bernard Bresslaw” in CARRY ON DOCTOR hobbling around with his leg in plaster
"What’s the matter with you?" asked Frankie Howerd
"Appendicitis" said Bresslaw
"So why the plaster on the leg?"
"I fell off the operating table"

EPIC HALL

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