Category Archives: doctor

Monday 13th April 2026 – THIS EVENING, I …

… have had my first cooked evening meal for almost two weeks. And about time too, because one or two things in the fridge and vegetable drawer are beginning to look rather fruity, and I see that I shall probably have a good clear-out at some point soon. I hate throwing food away, but sometimes, keeping stuff like that goes beyond a joke.

And actually, I was looking forward to a hot meal too. After my chocolate cake and home-made ice cream last night, I was definitely feeling hungry. But I resisted the temptation until after dialysis this afternoon.

Instead, I came back in here to write up my notes and do everything else that I have to do. However, I still managed to run rather late and it was 22:00 or maybe a little later that I finally crawled into bed.

Not that I slept all the way through to the alarm, though. I awoke at one point for the usual reason and had to leave the bed. Not that I’m complaining, because all of this keeps the weight down for dialysis. I’ve no idea what time it was either. I didn’t look and I didn’t care.

Once back in bed, though, I slept right the way through to the alarm, which probably did me a world of good.

When the alarm finally went off, it took the usual struggle for me to rise to my feet and wander off to the bathroom, and what with having a shave too, I was late going into the kitchen. Never mind though, my usual glass of hot lemon, ginger and honey has been replaced on Dialysis Day with just a small mouthful of water. As I said just now, keeping my weight down for dialysis is the most important thing at the moment.

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

There was something about a young male ballet dancer who had begun to dance with a troupe and there were a lot of high expectations placed upon him, but as time went by, he didn’t fulfil those expectations and drifted off into a sort of middle range of professionalism. He ended up at one point at Y Fflint, where the music hall director was in despair about his inability to try to represent the sound on a computer, but they needed to keep the sound whilst trying to … fell asleep here …

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m actually asleep when I’m dictating. But what happens at times like this is that I suddenly go silent and then you can hear the heavy breathing as I fall into a deeper sleep.

As for the dream itself, it means nothing to me. Y Fflint probably relates to the Welsh Cup Final on Sunday but nothing else seems to go anywhere. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I just type out whatever is on the dictaphone. If there ever is any editing, it’s just for things like grammar and so on and has nothing to do with the content. If the content is too gruesome for delicate ears, I don’t print it but put a little note in there instead.

The nurse turned up as usual, full of happiness and joy because he’s off on his week’s break this evening. We had a chat about dialysis, seeing as he was formerly a nurse in a dialysis clinic, and then he left to continue his rounds.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of THE CELT, THE ROMAN and THE SAXON by Thomas Wright.

Our author is off on his hasty “speculations and conclusions” again.

We’re talking about Roman roads, and today he tells us that "two imperfect itineraries, giving us the names and distances from each other of the towns and stations on the principal military roads, have been preserved; the first is contained in the great Itinerarium of the Roman Empire, which goes under the name of Antoninus and is believed to have been compiled about AD 320. The other is contained in the work of Richard of Cirencester and is supposed to have been copied by a monk of the fourteenth century from an older itinerary or map. They differ a little from each other, but our faith in Richard’s itinerary is strengthened by the circumstance that nearly all the roads he gives which are not in Antoninus have been ascertained to exist."

In fact, the work of “Richard of Cirencester” has been proved for almost 200 years to be a pure fabrication, created in about 1750 AD, based on the Antonine Itinerary and its author’s rather fertile imagination.

He continues by saying that Ermine Street "proceeded in a direct line to Durolipons, the site of which is fixed without doubt at Godmanchester", whereas all the evidence today points to it being the site of Cambridge.

Back in here, I had a radio programme to check before I sent it off. And it’s a good job that it did because it needed a little tweaking. And then I could press on with reviewing my Welsh, because the lessons start up again tomorrow.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to wait for the taxi. but not too long, because he was early today.

We had two other people to pick up en route but even so, I arrived at dialysis early. Even luckier, I didn’t have to wait too long to be plugged in either. The fact that it’s the thirteenth and that I was put into bed thirteen has proved to be lucky for me.

And the luck continued too. My weight was down to such an extent that there was nothing to remove. Nevertheless, I persuaded the nurse to take out 500 grammes just for form’s sake.

After she left and went off to another patient, the doctor came along before she had the chance to talk to him about my weight. So he looked at the chart and simply, with no further enquiry, also increased the debit by another 500 grammes. I, of course, said nothing.

Before he left, he gave me my usual three-monthly lecture about chatting up the nurses, but what do I care? I’m far too old to change my habits now. And I don’t care if he reads this either.

During the session, I was left pretty much alone, which suits me fine. But I had a lovely chat with the nurse who came to unplug me. And when I weighed myself, I found myself to be at the lowest weight at which I’ve been for thirty years, when I used to go running around the streets of Brussels late at night.

And my luck continued. It was my favourite taxi driver who came to pick me up, and as we were on our own, we had a good chat about cats all the way home.

My cleaner was waiting for me when we arrived and she helped me back into the apartment. I was feeling a little light-headed after this dialysis session today.

Back in here, after she left, I had a baked potato with cheese and veg, followed by chocolate cake and home-made ice cream. Not too much, because I need to break myself into eating again after all of this time. I’d be really ill if I tried a binge session, rather like one of the Donner Party of emigrants who, after being stranded in a snowdrift for six months, upon rescue, ate to death, quite literally.

So right now, I’m off to bed for a good night’s sleep before my lesson tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the contents of my dreams … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a famous exchange that took place between Doctor Finlay and his faithful servant Janet in Dr Kenlay’s Feesbook or whatever it was called back in the 1960s.
"Ohhh Doctor Finlay: It’s gruesome."
"Och aye, Janet. Look again. it’s gruesome more."

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Monday 30th March 2026 – THE GOOD NEWS …

… is that Emilie the Cute Consultant still loves me. Or so she told me this afternoon at dialysis when she came to see me about the new medication.

The not-so-good news is that the pain in my foot is back after having been absent since Wednesday. I suppose that that’s the effect of this new medication wearing off since I took the last batch on Friday. I shall have to take some more tonight before going to bed.

Last night was rather a painless night, except that it was later than I wanted it to be, as usual. It was much closer to 23:00 when I finally crawled into my stinking pit after doing everything that needed doing.

And it was another really mixed night too, with moments of deep sleep followed by moments of turbulent tossing and turning, and so on. One thing for sure though was that when the alarm went off at 06:29, I was in one of the turbulent phases.

As usual, it took an age for me to sort myself out and head to the bathroom, and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, and what a miserable effort that was.

There was something about my brother going to convince someone else to do something but it was all extremely vague, and I didn’t remember anything more about it unfortunately

The last time that I changed my medication, the flow of dreams dried up for a while and it looks as if the same thing is happening right now. That’s a shame because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I depend on my dreams for my excitement. It’s the best that I can do these days.

So with some free time on my hands, I watched the highlights of Sunday’s game between Connah’s Quay Nomads and Y Barri. But there was nothing of any real interest in the match – none of these “let’s play it out from the back, lads” catastrophes that seem to liven up more than just a few of these games.

The nurse turned up as usual, still his cheerful self, no doubt due to the fact that he’s off on his week’s break this evening.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we were discussing the collapse of the Latin Empire in the Holy Land, and as usual, it makes dismal reading, all of these disputes amongst the Crusaders while the Moslem armies are gathering on their borders. How many times is this that the Europeans preferred to fight amongst themselves rather than make common cause against the “enemy”?

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I spent an hour revising my Welsh, seeing as we have no course for the next two weeks.

There was even time to start the next radio programme, and I actually made some headway with it too.

My cleaner turned up as usual to sort out my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi, which was twenty minutes late. There were already two other people on board, but luckily, I was dropped off first.

We were early arriving and, luckily, I was seen to quite quickly. And then they left me alone for most of the session.

As I mentioned earlier, Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me. She told me that the dry throat was a side effect of one of the medicaments that she had prescribed for me. And she assured me that she still loves me, which was really quite nice. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been worrying me for quite a while.

Being plugged in early was one thing. Being unplugged was quite another thing. When four people finish at the same time and there are only two nurses, it’s evident that someone will have to wait. And guess who drew the short straw?

Still, the taxi was waiting for me, but there was someone else to drop off and we became tangled up in roadworks. So it was just as late as it usually is.

My cleaner helped me back into the building, and after she left, I finished off my pizza and had some more trifle.

So now with the pain back in my foot … "and back in spades too" – ed … I’m off to bed for an early night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Emilie the Cute Consultant … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned that I thought that she didn’t love me any more because of the suicide pills, and how I imagined her sitting at her desk with her fingers crossed.
"That’s not true at all!" she retorted.
"Really?" I asked.
"Yes, it is" she replied. "I’m paid according to the number of patients I treat, and if you die, I’d have to take a pay cut!"

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Monday 23rd March 2023 – GUESS WHO …

… at dialysis today spilled a whole beaker of hot coffee all over the keyboard of his nearly-new laptop?

Yes, I’m convinced that I’m going from bad to worse these days and I don’t know why, but everything seems to be taking so long, and I seem to be creating difficulty after difficulty for myself.

Like last night, for example. It could — and should — have been another early night, but when I’d finished my tea, it was already 21:45 and that leaves me very little time to do anything that I want.

Consequently, it was closer to 23:30 when I crawled into bed last night, and this is good for neither man nor beast.

Once in bed, though, it didn’t take long to go to sleep, and apart from one or two awakenings, more of which anon, I stayed asleep until about 06:15.

Not that I felt much like leaving my bed when the alarm went off. It was quite a struggle to drag myself into the bathroom and once again, it was horribly late when I went in for my hot drink and medication.

To make matters worse, the computer in here wouldn’t boot up. In the end, I had to go into the BIOS to check and, sure enough, the bootable disk had fallen to the bottom of the pile, so I had to promote it to the top and we could start again.

Once it was up and running correctly, I uploaded the dictaphone files to see what had gone on during the night.

A friend of mine had reached his 118th birthday. He was living in an old people’s home where it was customary once every couple of months to let them out for a week to go to some kind of rehabilitation and re-education class. What they did with him was that they combined two groups together so that he could have a couple of weeks away from the home doing different things because he’d been a very active man. They had rung us up on a Monday morning to say that he was being released for a week and did we have any calculations that he could do for recipes etc. We said that we’d sort a few out. But ten minutes later, he was at our door with his carer. Firstly, she was concerned about this process that we had of combining the two series, and secondly, there was some kind of delay in this week’s course starting, so could he come to take part in our group activities? We all went out and saw him in the corridor, and we were delighted to see him and began to chat to him — he was called George — and make some plans about some kind of activity. However, his tutor told us to slow down and take it easy rather than him letting all at once, but we weren’t interested in that. We had our own things to do and the race between one of the tenants from Rhyl and Cardiff Met, and their coach Ryan Valentine … fell asleep here …

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m actually asleep when I’m dictating, but what happens at times like this, I slowly drift off into silence and then you can hear me breathing deeply.

So if you want to hear what I’m like during … errr … four hours and a few minutes of deep sleep, don’t hesitate to ask.

But what this dream means, I’ve really no idea because, … "as usual" – ed … it makes no sense at all. And Ryan Jenkins is the manager of Cardiff Metropolitan – Ryan Valentine is the number two at Y Bala.

Did I dictate the dream … "well, sort of" – ed … about the kind of old man who was being looked after somewhere, and they had programmes and things for him. One day, I noticed that the programmes had returned to the shelf where they stay sometimes, so I wondered which ones they had ended up keeping and which ones had returned. However, they were all returned and the old guy had died or something. From there, I headed back to my van, which was where I was living at the time. There was some kind of squat or something like that, and there were quite a few people living there in all kinds of situations, including several people who were living in some kind of tent, I suppose. But instead of being on the ground, it was hanging by a rope from a tree, with the idea that it would keep out the damp in the cold weather. As you walked into this camp, the glow of the open fires make these kind-of tent things look extremely weird and surreal.

Wanting to dictate this dream led to a mad panic-stricken search of the bed for the dictaphone, which had fallen out of my hand when I fell asleep just now. And it was still running, four hours and a bit after I’d lost it. That’s a long time-gap to drop back into a previous dream.

There were some workmen coming into our office to paint and decorate it, so round about 17:30, I went out to buy a couple of things and some tile cement that I needed for home because these workmen were starting at 18:00 and they needed some kind of supervision. I went into Crewe town centre where I found a really cheap set of golf clubs so I bought them so that I could practise playing my golf. I wandered around BHS and Woolies but they didn’t have any tile cement. When I came to Halford’s up the road, that was just closed so I went back to the office, hoping that no-one would notice me because it was now slightly after 18:00. I noticed that the colours that they were using to paint were horrible, a kind of dark blue in the main office. When I went into my office, there was a guy there preparing everything and I noticed that one of the walls was a horrible dark green. I asked him, and he replied that it wasn’t he who had chosen the colours — the colours had been chosen by the Head Office. I went outside to begin to play with a car — an old MkIII Cortina that I’d found in a shed five or so years ago. After playing around with it, I managed to make it start so I crawled underneath it to see what it would need for the MoT. One thing that it would need was a new silencer, and the silencer was routed so that it expelled air through the hollow rear axle rather than the tailpipe. I thought that this is going to be complicated if I were to renew the exhaust. Then a young Chinese guy came along. He was with the workmen. He began to talk to me about the cars, and the subject moved on to girls as it usually did back in those days. He told me a few little secrets about his life and a girl or two. I thought to myself “why is he telling me all of this? This is something that I don’t need to know especially as he worked with this office-renovating firm and not in our business

No chance of going to Wooolies, BHS or Halfords in Crewe Town Centre these days. Those shops have long-gone and the whole town centre has been flattened by the Council to prepare it for the massive investment of cash and facilities once HS2 arrives in Crewe. It looks as if Crewe Town Centre will be a war zone for many years to come.

But much as I try to keep politics off these pages, Crewe’s decision to flatten the town centre probably came about as a result of Louise Haigh, Labour’s spokesperson on transport who “appeared” during a speech in March 2023 to promise to build phase 2 of HS2, sentiments echoed later by shadow Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds, who said in September 2023 that “We will build HS2 in full”.

And a Cortina in a dream? What a surprise! Just as surprising as it would be if I ever decided to play golf.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and, just as quickly, breezed out again. She’s off on her week’s break this evening so I imagine that she wants to finish as quickly as possible.

After she had left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re dealing with the miscellanea — the little remote areas of the southern Balkans that haven’t as yet figured in the main part of the story. This is proving to be interesting as it highlights how several of these areas managed to skate nimbly in between the various major warring parties and preserve some of their independence.

Back in here, I reviewed this week’s radio programme and sent it off, and then once I’d done what else needed to be done, I revised my Welsh until it was time to prepare for dialysis.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic, and then I waited for the taxi. Bang on 13:00 he turned up, and once we’d picked up another passenger in Granville, we headed for Avranches.

For a change, I was early arriving, and in even more of a change, I was seen to quite quickly. And then I could press on and do some work.

That was, until I spilled the coffee all over the laptop. Luckily, I don’t take sugar, but even so, it was a mess. I managed to throw my sheet over it to absorb what it could, and after some love and attention from one of the nurses, it still manages to work, which is just as well. How long it stays working is anyone’s guess. I’ve left it switched on overnight in the hope that the heat generated will dry it out.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me, and she definitely doesn’t love me any more now. I told her what my nurse and my cleaner had said about the cough and the pain in the foot. She confirmed that there is nothing that can be done about the pain. It’s due to the breaking up of my nervous system, but she’ll do her best to put together a cocktail of painkillers that have no side-effects, and we’ll see where we go.

As for the cough, she’ll try to make an appointment for me to have a thoracic scan, followed by an appointment with a lung specialist. And not before time.

The taxi driver was waiting for me when I was unplugged, but the chaos on the roads meant that we weren’t home any earlier, which was a shame.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment, and after she left, I had the other half of my pizza. And I didn’t enjoy it at all. My taste buds really are changing again and it’s not very nice.

But right now, I’m off to bed, ready for my Welsh course tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about that old man … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once met an old man in a Greek cemetery who was there for a funeral.
"How old are you?" I asked
"A hundred and three" he replied
"Where do you know him from?" asked my Greek friend.
"I’ve no idea" I replied. "But I bet that he comes from Ikaria."

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Monday 16th March 2026 – LATE HOME AGAIN!

Yes, this is really getting on my wick these days. Nothing that I can seem to do seems to galvanise them into action at the dialysis clinic, and I’m always the last to be plugged in and the last to be thrown out.

Having left the apartment at just after 13:00, it was just after 19:30 when I finally put my sooty foot back inside my apartment

In fact, there are quite a few things that are getting on my wick right now, and if I’m not very careful, I’ll blow a gasket. If only I were to still have a spleen, I could vent it in peace without all of this.

Last night wasn’t much better either. As seems to be the case these days, I was horribly late going to bed. It was getting on for 23:45 when I finally slid underneath the covers, and with an alarm set for 6:29, that is good for neither man nor beast.

Although I went to sleep quite quickly, I awoke a few times during the night but luckily, I was able to go back to sleep quite quickly.

When the alarm finally did go off this morning, it took another one of these Herculean efforts to raise myself from the Dead and stagger off to the bathroom.

Apart from a good wash, I also had a shave. Even though Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more, we have to go through all the motions.

In the kitchen, I had my hot drink and medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see if anything went on during the night.

I was with my brother. We were sitting in some kind of cheap café in a town centre that might have been Chester. We were talking about various different things and it became quite late at night or early in the morning. I fell asleep while I was sitting there and was actually quite comfortable. I awoke after about an hour or so, and my brother was still there looking gloomy and glum, so I asked him if he’d managed to go to sleep. He replied that he hadn’t slept for twelve days. I thought that that was surprising, so I asked him why and whether he had considered taking anything for it, but he hadn’t. So we just carried on the chatting when one of my schoolfriends came in and joined in the conversation. Every hour or so, I had to leave the café to go into some kind of gift shop. There was some reason for this that I can’t remember. I didn’t have to buy anything – I just had to go in, go up to the counter and go back out again. So every hour or so, I’d be doing this. In this gift shop was, presumably, the proprietor, but on a bench in what was probably the waiting area was a homeless man who was apparently sleeping there. He was wearing a white suit, but it was the filthiest piece of clothing that I had ever seen, all stained under the arms etc. So I’d go in, go up to the counter, turn round and go back out again and go back to the café. When I came back to the café on one occasion, my schoolfriend was still there, but by now, he had a cup of tea. I said to them “well, if it looks as if we aren’t going to be going to sleep tonight, does anyone want a coffee?”. My schoolfriend said that he had just bought a cup of tea, which I could see, so I asked my brother if he would like a coffee. He said that he did, so I ordered two coffees from the person behind the counter. However, I ordered them in a different language but I can’t remember now what language it was that I used.

So here we go again – yet more family. And a schoolfriend whom I haven’t seen since 1972 except for a brief glimpse a year or two later when he was waiting at a bus stop as I was driving past the other way.

The significance of going into the gift shop or whatever it was, and the homeless person in the filthy white suit totally defeats me, but falling asleep in a café does have a history to it.

In the past, I’ve spoken about the Windsor Free Festival and our trip down there when some of the people with us nearly came to grief when a tyre on the van blew out going down the motorway. My friend and I, after chatting up two girls who wouldn’t come with us, went down on his motorbike, a Triumph 350.

On the way back, after forty-eight hours with no sleep, my friend who was at the front fell asleep and we almost crashed. He asked me to drive the machine after that, but he fell asleep on the pillion and fell off the seat onto the rear mudguard.

After that, he took over the controls but when we reached Oxford Services, he’d had enough. We went inside and we both fell asleep, sitting on chairs and hunched over a table.

Ohh happy days!

There was something else about being with a group of students. It involved them going rock-climbing. One of them fell and broke his ankle but that’s really all that I remember of that dream.

This doesn’t seem to relate to anything.

The nurse came quite early this morning, full of life and energy, seeing as he’s off on his week’s break this evening. He didn’t stay long and I could make my breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re now discussing the Genoese possessions in the islands of Greece, one of which was the island of Ikaria.

Reading some notes about the island, I found that it’s been said to be one of the healthiest places on the planet, "where the population regularly lives to an advanced age (one in three make it to their 90s and a significant percentage are centenarians and beyond)".

It’s said too that their … errr … inter-couple private activity continues to an advanced age, with "80% of Ikarian males aged between 65 and 100 were found to still be having" … errr … friendly relations " on a regular basis". So when is the next ‘plane to Ikaria?

After breakfast, I reviewed the forthcoming radio programme and then sent it off. After that, I revised my Welsh until it was time for my cleaner to arrive.

After she’d sorted out my anaesthetic, I waited for the taxi to arrive, and then we cleared off to pick up someone else to take to Avranches. Her appointment was at 13:45 and mine was at 14:00 so, even though her rendezvous was right across the other side of Avranches, we went there first.

And Avranches is in total chaos. For the next six weeks, the bridge over the railway line by the station is closed and the diversion adds miles to the route. And then, there was an entrance to the motorway closed, so that we had all of that to deal with, and to make matters worse, there was an accident that had closed off part of the motorway a little further down.

We did actually make it for 14:00, but I wasn’t plugged in until 14:50. And it was quite late when I was unplugged too.

The doctor came to see me, so I discussed my “dry weight” with him. He agreed that it should have been reduced the other week and he’ll note it starting the next session. Emilie the Cute Consultant said “hello” too.

Once I’d been thrown out, we joined the chaos outside and then slowly headed back home, going as quickly as we could, which wasn’t all that fast.

Tea tonight was the rest of the pizza followed by vegan cheesecake, and now I’m ready to go to bed if the stabbing pain in my foot would only stop.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Ikaria … "well, one of us has" – ed … an Ikarian man of 97 went to the doctor to complain that he could no longer make love to his wife.
"It’s not really a surprise" said the doctor. "At your age, you’ll be slowing down."
"But my neighbour, he’s 99 and he says that he makes love to his wife three times per week. What can I do?"
"Well, you could always say the same thing."

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Monday 9th March 2026 – WHATEVER COULD HAVE …

… gone wrong at dialysis today did in fact go wrong. And in spades too! I tell you, I’m totally fed up with all of this, and for two pins, I’d pack it all in and do something else with my time than keep on putting up with it.

In fact, things started to go wrong last night when I fell asleep … errr … riding the porcelain horse before going to bed. As if I don’t have enough trouble trying to be in bed at some reasonable time, last night ended up being completely unreasonable.

As seems to be the case these days, I was asleep quite quickly. However, at some point in the morning before the alarm went off, I awoke. I’ve no idea what time it must have been, because regardless, I had absolutely no intention of leaving the bed at that moment. Not even the combined efforts of Kate Bush and Jenny Agutter could have tempted me out of bed this morning.

In fact, I must have gone back to sleep at some point because the alarm at 06:29 awoke me from my slumbers. And once again, we had a real struggle to rise from our comfy bed and face the World.

After a good wash and shave (not that there’s much point in the latter these days seeing as Emilie the Cute Consultant is keeping her distance), I headed off into the kitchen for my morning hot drink and medication.

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

I was driving somewhere down the Devon and Cornwall peninsula on the coast. As I came round a corner, I could see, way out to sea, three enormous freighters or passenger liners heading out towards the Atlantic. I decided to chase them for a minute and look for a car park somewhere where I could take some photos of them. The first car park that I found, the view wasn’t particularly good. I had to climb up onto a rather large rock where the view was slightly better, but I still couldn’t take a really good photo of these ships – or not as good as I might have had from the vehicle a few miles back. Suddenly, I heard a voice behind me saying “it’s Mr Hall, isn’t it?”. I turned round, and there were two people whom I knew from university. They came over for a chat, and I fell off this rock, but I managed in the end to pick myself up. It turns out that they were staying in the hotel that was behind me. They were telling me about a whole series of new rules at university that basically cut down a lot of the jokes and a lot of the fun that we used to have there. I told them about the ships, and they said that there was a really good viewpoint inside the hotel, so I followed them in. We were talking about luggage labels – how it seems that if you go to an airport and you already have a luggage label on your suitcase, every other airport to which you go for the rest of your life with that suitcase, the suitcase will have a label from the landing crew, but it wouldn’t necessarily have a label if there wasn’t one in the first place. We were talking about good ways to dispose of a body, which was to put it into a suitcase and send it off on a flight somewhere. We went in, but I couldn’t find a way in to this viewpoint. It was one of these traditional hotels with lots of people walking around and very small rooms, but they showed me the way in, which I hadn’t realised was an access, which was through a staff door, and then you could open another set of doors once inside there, and there was a hidden corridor that went all the way down alongside the rooms. I was thinking that if I go down there, at long last I may have a photo of these ships, and that was what I was hoping for in the beginning.

The last time that I was driving down there was back in the 1980s when I took a coach tour that way, but I can’t remember seeing any ships.

The hotel reminds me of where we used to stay when we went to the university for meetings, and the idea that they would change all of the rules to stop people having fun is about par from the course. Even STRAWBERRY MOOSE ended up being expelled after he taunted a British government minister.

The thing about luggage labels seems to have come out of nowhere, though.

There was also something about a Dutch rock musician who had died. He had this Gibson SG guitar, but there was some kind of issue with it, but that’s really all that I remember of that particular dream.

As this dream didn’t really end, I can’t really say anything about this.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, with a big cheesy grin on her face as it’s her last day before her week’s rest. She even had time for a little chat before leaving to finish off her round.

Once she’d gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re discussing the Frankish Duke of Athens and his successors. The first Duke seems to have been able to build up a prosperous territory out of the ruins of the conquest, but as usual, it seems that his heirs went about and managed to undo everything that he had created.

Back in here, I had a radio programme to review and then to send off ready for broadcast this weekend, and after a few more tasks that needed attention, I spent the rest of the morning revising my Welsh ready for tomorrow and checking over the homework that I then sent off for marking.

At 12:00, I knocked off and went to sort myself out for dialysis. my faithful cleaner turned up as usual to sort out the anaesthetic and we discussed my idea of moving all of the medication – to such an extent that I forgot my disgusting drink before leaving.

The taxi turned up early for me, and we had to go off to Sartilly to pick up another passenger. We arrived at dialysis early, 13:40 to be precise, and I staggered off to my bed and waited to be seen.

And waited … and waited … and waited …

Sometimes I find it difficult to understand what goes through the head of the planning department at the dialysis centre. Who in their right minds would put two trainee nurses in a room of eight patients without the guiding hand of someone more experienced?

It was 14:50 when I was finally plugged in, in total agony with one of the pins. And I wasn’t the only one who suffered this afternoon either. And at least I was left pretty much alone after that.

The doctor came to see me and asked if he could do anything for me. "How about making me better?" I asked. He didn’t stay long after that.

As I mentioned the other day, they have decreased my dry weight and are taking out the excess water bit by bit. At least, that was the plan. But today, they took out a whopping 2,000 grammes. I’m not sure if that’s all of it, but I’m now down to below my ideal non-active weight. Since I’ve been having dialysis, I’ve lost 8,000 grammes in total, but much of that is down to not eating so much.

When my session of three and a half hours was over, I waited to be unplugged. And waited … and waited … and waited, while the two nurses cleaned up the empty machines from the other people who had left.

Eventually, one of them wandered over. "Has it finished already?" she asked.

"Yes, and for quite a while too" I replied.

"But surely … ohhh! It’s only three and a half hours, not four!" and she carried on cleaning the other machines.

Eventually, I was unplugged, and as I was preparing to leave, she suddenly remembered that she should have taken a blood sample. So here we go again.

It was 19:00 when I was finally ready to leave and 19:10 when the taxi arrived. “That’s what time it was booked for” said the driver, and I could believe him.

Consequently, it was 19:50 when I returned home, having left at 12:50 for a session of three and a half hours. And I bet that the senior doctor, who follows these pages and tries to pull me up if I say anything bad about the service, will have “missed” this entry and nothing will happen about it. But it’s really getting on my nerves.

Tea tonight was the rest of last night’s pizza with birthday cake and home-made ice cream for pudding. And now I’m off to bed, hoping for a better day tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about ships … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends told me that in the High Arctic, they once encountered a ghost ship.
"How did you know that it was a ghost ship?" I asked
"There was only a skeleton crew on board"

0

Thursday 5th March 2026 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I first told them at dialysis that I’d cut down dramatically on the food that I ate?

It all started after a couple of sessions of chemotherapy when all of the food began to taste of nothing but salt, so let’s say “August 2025”.

Anyway, as usual, no-one took any notice of anything that I had to say, and so little by little, the quantity of liquid to be extracted from my body has diminished and diminished. Today, for example, it was just 200 grammes – a far cry from twelve months ago when they were extracting well over 2,000 grammes at each session.

But today, we have finally had a reaction. When the figure of just 200 grammes came up, they fetched the electricity resistance meter to measure the water in my body, and they came up with a staggering 3,800 grammes. In other words, since they last used the meter on me, and I really can’t remember when it was, I’ve lost 3,600 grammes in weight.

What they have been doing is calculating the liquids to be removed based on the previous “dry weight”.

If you had asked maybe a year ago, losing 3,800 grammes of water in a dialysis session would have been OK, but not having had that much to remove for quite a while, my body wouldn’t withstand the shock all at once. And so they are going to remove an extra 1,000 grammes per session until I catch up with where I ought to be.

But what a performance! No wonder I’ve been feeling so tired just recently.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

Last night, I managed to be in bed before 23:30. But only just, as it was 23:15 when I finally crawled under the covers. Not as early as I would have liked, because I’m trying to be in bed before 22:30 to give me eight hours’ sleep, but most of the time, that proves to be an unrealistic target.

So once in bed, it didn’t take long to go off to sleep, and while I remember waking up a couple of times, I was soon back to sleep again. And there I stayed until the alarm went off at 06:29.

Eventually, I managed to stagger off to the bathroom where I had a good scrub-up and a shave – I’m not sure why because Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more – and then I went off for my hot drink and medication.

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

We were living in some kind of house with people of every nationality in it. My room was just across from where the Russians were. Every time that I went out, I had to take my crutches from against the wall and they used to bang on the latch of the Russian door. I’m sure that they were annoyed by it, but this was happening every time. We’d been using our rooms as kinds of sales places for selling our national products. Books were one of the most important things and I’d been having book fairs in my room, but on this particular occasion, I picked up my crutches and they banged on the latch of this door, and someone came to the door to see what was happening. It wasn’t anyone from the Russians but it was a friend of mine from the UK. I went in and apologised, but I could see that the Russians were in one part of the room and someone else, much younger, was trying to sell a book to an ordinary person. It seemed that there had been an evolution in how trading was taking place for books and I hadn’t noticed. Then, they began to talk about this other book, and the person, or the victim, I suppose, couldn’t seem to find it so I pointed it out to him. It was above his head on a shelf, but it took him a good few minutes to realise that. There was also something else about other people there who were needing some kind of help when it came to buying and selling books. They were sitting more like passengers in a motorcycle combination, which was at the side of everything rather than behind it.

This is another dream that seems to have come out of nowhere at all. There’s nothing in this dream that seems to relate to anything that I’ve been doing or thinking just recently.

Having said that, though, I did spend about ten minutes last night trying to remember some of the Russian that I used to know and practising a few of the words that I used to know.

Isabelle the nurse was very late arriving today, so I had made a start on the next radio programme while I was waiting. And when she finally did turn up, she was in such a rush that she couldn’t hang around and was soon gone.

That enabled me to make my breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

The Frankish Crusaders have now arrived in Greece and are busily dividing up the country between the leaders of the Crusade, creating small duchies that alienated the local population and led the locals to make some rather strange alliances in order to try to drive the Franks out – something that created a period of disorder for a couple of centuries.

Back in here, I carried on choosing the music for the next radio programme. Some of it took some finding too, but it’s now all collected, remixed, reformatted, re-edited, paired and segued, and the notes started. Where has all this energy come from?

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and then the taxi turned up, early again. Mind you, there were two other people to pick up on the way, so we weren’t any earlier arriving.

And I was really impressed by the number of flowers that have appeared by the roadside these last few days. It’s all looking impressively beautiful out there now.

At the dialysis session, we had the pantomime, as I mentioned earlier, and then I was left pretty much alone to complete my shopping list.

There was, as usual, a delay in unplugging me from the machine, and by the time that the nurse had finished compressing my arm, the taxi driver was here. He wasn’t particularly chatty, so we had something of a silent voyage home.

And isn’t it nice to be back home in the daylight?

My cleaner was waiting for me and she helped me into the apartment.

Tea tonight was going to be a vegetable korma out of the freezer, but while I was rummaging around in the freezer, I came across an aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit dated, would you believe, November 2023. I decided to eat that before it walked out of the freezer on its own

So right now, I’m off to bed, ready for a good radioing morning tomorrow. I have my shopping list to send off and a pile of washing to do. I hope that I remember to do them all.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the stuff in my freezer … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends once said that she had problems taking something out of her freezer.
"Why was that?" I asked
"Because every time I opened the freezer door, something in there reached out and closed it again"

0

Monday 2nd March 2026 – ANOTHER EXCITING DAY …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Monday 23rd February 2026 – I AGAIN FELL …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So here goes –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Monday 16th February 2026 – JUST FOR ONCE …

… things seemed to go my way at dialysis and I was back home by 18:20 – a good fifty or so minutes earlier than usual. And if it were like that every session, it wouldn’t be so bad at all.

Mind you, it was rather embarrassing. When the taxi came for me, a good twenty-five minutes early, I was … errr … busy riding the porcelain horse and the driver had to wait a few minutes for me.

In fact, I’ve had many a worse twenty-four-hour period than this last one, that’s for sure.

Things brightened up a little last night, for once. For a change, I managed to complete everything that I needed to complete without being drawn too far out of my way by some kind of distraction, and I was actually in bed just before 22:30, and I wish that I could do that more often.

And once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly, and although I had one or two vague recollections of being less-than-asleep at certain points during the night, I was still flat-out when the alarm went off at 06:29.

As is usual these days, though, it took me a good while to summon up the force to stagger off into the bathroom, where eventually I had a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I headed off into the kitchen.

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

I was living in a different apartment building and the one to which I’d moved was much more modern than this. But when someone was cleaning away at the electricity supply there was a breakdown, a complete nervous breakdown … fell asleep here … and in this apartment building, we found that there were extra rooms behind the technical room. Apparently, we should have one of these rooms each, presumably for storage, but no one had known about this. The people who owned my apartment before I did had probably lived here on and off five hundred metres before the present tew could make his objection.

Whatever this was about, I have no idea. It’s hardly surprising that I was in a deep sleep in the middle of it because it makes very little sense at all.

We’d started back at school and we’d only been there a couple of days when we found out that there was to be a huge reorganisation. Of course, we had no idea what this reorganisation was all about or why it was even necessary and there were all kinds of speculation and rumours floating around. In the end, we were called into our class assemblies and we were introduced to two new students. One was someone who lived in New York and the other one – we didn’t really catch where he came from – but it turned out that they were being trained in espionage duties and were to work on the Communist Party in Eastern Europe. But while we were waiting to be spoken to and the speculation was going on, I made quite a few witty comments, in particular in the question of a discussion about keeping your own petrol tanker lorry as a way of hedging against inflation, and the teacher asked me where I’d picked all these up. I replied “well, I had a strange father”. Anyway, these two guys, they didn’t really fit in, and they disappeared quite soon. But someone said that she saw one of them in prison in Den Haag. Apparently, he’d been collecting all of the information and feeding it back to the Russians. There was also a story about a boy in our class who lived in a motor caravan. He’d been given notice to quit practically the same day, so he was digging his heels in, making the field something like his own with his car tyre ruts and so on until he could find a compromise with the girls in the girls’ fields who were playing hockey during the winter.

The part about training for espionage relates to a book that I’ve been reading on and off about the creation of the British Secret Service, and the schoolboy living in a mobile home is presumably a reference to a John Le Carré book that I read years ago about a teacher at a public school who was living in a caravan at the back of the school playing field.

However, there was not much likelihood of our school having a huge reorganisation during the period when I was there. Steeped in tradition going back centuries.

There were a couple of other dreams too, but you don’t need to know about them, except that in one of them, I was still working a couple of years after retirement age, something that seems to be a regular occurrence in a dream these days.

The nurse turned up as usual but he didn’t stay long. He had his blood kit with him so I imagine that he must have had a queue of patients at his office waiting to give blood samples.

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

Not that I advanced very far, though. I came across an interesting report that told us that last year, advances in radiocarbon dating techniques revealed that the battle-scarred dead in what Mortimer Wheeler called “the War Cemetery” didn’t all relate to one incident. It seems to show that there were at least three, and maybe more distinct phases of warfare, only one of which might possibly fit in with Wheeler’s theory of a Roman attack.

Incidentally, the new report doesn’t fit in completely with Sharples’ interpretation either. Nevertheless, he’s not above taking another sly dig at Wheeler, commenting that he was making "a subjective impression which conveniently suited the historical interpretation applied to the evidence."

Back in here, I revised my Welsh, even though there’s no lesson tomorrow, and then began to track down the music for the next radio programme.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and as I mentioned earlier, the taxi was really early to come to fetch me for dialysis.

The wind outside was such that I had to leave by the back door, where the cars can pull up right outside the building in the alley reserved for the fire brigade. That’s much more convenient for me than being bowled over by a gale-force wind.

We had to pick up someone else along the way but even so, I arrived at dialysis at 13:25. There was quite a queue of cars but luckily I was in the small room with only four beds, of which three (including mine) were occupied.

The nurse was busy finishing off the first arrival when I went in, but the lady who was second wanted more time to prepare so I was seen straight away, which was nice. There was no time for me to apply the ice pack, but I didn’t care. The sooner I start, the sooner I finish, even if it was one of my favourite nurses.

Once I was up and running, I was left pretty much alone, although the doctor on duty turned up to see me just as I was about to be unplugged. Of course, I wasn’t going to stay around to talk.

The taxi was waiting for me, which was also nice, so I was back here really early.

But once more, there’s chaos in the building. Yet another proprietor, fed up with the inability of the House committee to organise this fibre optic installation, has gone ahead and had his walls drilled, even though, in a historic building such as this one, it’s streng verboten. I decided to throw some oil onto the flames by writing to the committee. It probably won’t galvanise them into action, but we can live in hope.

Tea tonight was the rest of the pizza, followed by jam roly-poly and vegan sorbet. That will keep the lupus from the porte for a while, as they might have said in Ancient Rome.

So right now, I’m off to bed, early, I hope. A good sleep will do me some good if I can manage it, but this decent twenty-four-hour spell can only last so long.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the nurse and his blood-sample kit … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of back in the old days in Transylvania –
"Blood samples should be taken at the office between 08:30 and 09:30. If you are unable to attend, please let us know and we will send a bat."

0

Monday 9th February 2026 – AFTER LAST NIGHT’S …

… little excitement, things are back to normal now, or, at least, as normal as they can be. Mind you, I’m not ruling out crashing out once more before I finish today’s notes.

As to what happened yesterday, I really don’t know. I was actually feeling quite perky but then, all of a sudden, this dramatic wave of fatigue came out of nowhere and swamped me completely. Three times, I’d gone off with the fairies … "although not in a manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine" – ed … and I simply couldn’t carry on.

At that moment, bed was the best place to be, and so off I went.

It didn’t take long for me to go off to sleep, but I’m sure that you are aware of what happened next. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … and I’ll leave you lot to fill in the rest of the sentence.

So there I was, at 04:00, wondering what to do next. I tried to go off to sleep but to no avail, and at 05:30 I was up and about.

Off I staggered into the bathroom and from there into the kitchen, even though it was so early, where I made my hot drink and took my medicine.

Back in here, determined not to waste the morning, I dictated the outstanding notes that had built up over the last week or so for a couple or three radio programmes.

Well, almost, anyway. As I was dictating the third and last set, the ZOOM H8 stopped recording, and I hadn’t noticed until I’d finished dictating.

Consequently, I re-dictated the notes and once more, it stopped without me noticing until I’d finished this lot.

Subsequent enquiry revealed that the memory was full. I needed to upload the contents of the memory onto one of the backup discs, and do you have any idea how long it takes to upload 64 GB of data?

While it was being busy, I made a start on finishing off last night’s notes, and now they are online for you to peruse.

Isabelle the Nurse interrupted me in mid-flight and I had to wander off to have my feet and legs receive her tender ministrations. It’s her last day today for a week so she was quite happy.

In fact, she’s off for eight days because she and her friends have a float at Carnaval and they will be parading on Tuesday.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

He’s still discussing pottery, and not just pottery discovered at Maiden Castle but all over Europe. While it’s nice to have the scene well and truly set, it can be overdone and we can drown in a wealth of unnecessary detail.

Once breakfast was over, I came back in here and finished off my notes and then transcribed the dictaphone notes.

There was a Jewish family summoned into the town from out in the countryside. They didn’t really know why but they were obliged to come all the same. One family set out to arrive but the eldest son had to stay somewhere along the road with one of their vehicles that had developed a flat tyre but the rest of the family arrived. The father, who was a little suspicious of the sons noticed some kind of army convoy around in the city and as it set off, he decided to follow it to see where it went. But somewhere in the middle of this, there was something about being in a library where there were all these books on different medicines. It was interesting to note that of all of the different recipes, there was only one company that made its recipes completely open to the public. They were for the three medications that I used to take regularly back in the past so I took the recipes and went to have a read of them. Then this family decided to go out and they had to leave a glass of water behind, so what they did was to drop a couple of drops of ink into it and it went a horrible light brown colour, so they left it. When they returned to the apartment later, they couldn’t find their butler. They had to search for him. Suddenly, they found him sitting on the sofa disguised as a pile of old rags. They asked him for an explanation, and he said that seeing as they hadn’t invited him to go out with them earlier, he took a couple of hours off to go to the local museum but the museum was closed so he came home and dressed up in the hope of giving everyone a really good surprise and a good laugh.

As to where this came from, I have no idea. It doesn’t seem to relate to anything that I’ve been discussing, except, of course, the three medications.

When I’d finished that, I had a few things to do and then I prepared for my Welsh course tomorrow. It does no harm to try to forge ahead while I still can.

My cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic on my arm, and after she left, I waited for the taxi.

And I didn’t have to wait long either. He was ten minutes early and he already had one passenger on board. We stopped off at Sartilly to pick up another passenger who travels with me sometimes, and we arrived at dialysis a good twenty minutes early.

Now here’s a thing. Even twenty minutes early, I was last to arrive in the room but another woman, having arrived before me, was still applying an ice pack in preparation, so she let me go first. It’s very rare that that happens, and I appreciated it a great deal.

The doctor came to see me too. He wanted to discuss my cough which, having gone away while I was on antibiotics, is now back again. After some kind of chat, he prescribed yet another course of antibiotics and a couple of other medicaments. After that, they left me pretty much alone.

Having been connected early, I was unplugged early too and the taxi was waiting for me, so I was actually home early. But with the howling gale and driving rain, I was dropped off at the fire escape round the back.

My faithful cleaner helped me inside and after she left I had a few other things to do, and then I went and warmed up my half-pizza, which was followed by fruitcake and soya dessert.

Right now, though, I know that it’s early but I’m off to bed. A good sleep will do me good with my Welsh course tomorrow, but whether or not I actually have a good sleep remains to be seen. Still, if I’m up early, I can always finish off the dictation.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Carnival… "well, one of us has" – ed … one year, they were giving helicopter rides at €10:00 per person.
The pilot was an ex-Air Force pilot and he told the passengers "if you manage ten minutes without screaming, I’ll give you €100:00."
He puts on a show to end all shows and all of the passengers were screaming, except for one little old man who was totally silent.
When they landed, he gave the man €100:00 and said "that was astonishing. You’re the first person whom I’ve ever taken who managed not to scream. How did you do it?"
"It was actually really difficult" replied the man. "I was going to say something when my wife fell out, but €100:00, it’s €100:00."

0

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 – THEY SAY THAT …

… wiser counsel comes overnight. And that’s certainly true in my case, especially last night. And that’s because I had plenty of time to consider it.

Going to bed at about 22:00 is all very well, but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s a pretty pointless exercise if you wake up at … errr … 01:05.

Last night though, I really was ill. Not in a medical sense, I suppose (even though I am, of course), but my morale had dropped through the floor and it was carrying on sinking. There’s only one place to be when that happens, so I dashed through my notes at an incredible rate of knots, finished off everything else as quickly as possible and then headed for the hills.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, because I really was wasted. However, as I said just now, I didn’t stay asleep for long.

So there I was, tossing and turning for hours, trying to find a comfortable position without much success, but I must have eventually fallen asleep because some company or other sent me a text message at 04:25 and that awoke me.

Nevertheless, I did manage to go back to sleep and there I was when the alarm went off.

As usual, it took an age to summon up the courage and the strength to go to the bathroom, and then I came in here. No medication this morning.

The first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

I had some Welsh homework outstanding, and the tutor came to see me – a male tutor, this particular one. I explained that I’d had that many medical appointments recently that it was difficult for me to find the time to do several things that I wanted to do, including the Welsh homework. But I was surprised that he was hardly sympathetic at all. He said “you seem to be putting much less effort into your course just recently”, to which I replied that I was putting most of my effort into my medical issues and it can’t really be helped. He told me that he’d give me until Monday and that would be the final cut-off for the homework period. I had to sort out all of my paperwork after he’d left. I took some bread and cheese and things and went to sit in my van with the paperwork out, but I just couldn’t concentrate at all, time was dragging on and I hadn’t even begun to make any progress. Some of my friends were back in the building and wondered where the butter had gone. No-one knew exactly where it was so I said that I had it. They came over and brought me a little note or something to get well, which was nice of them, but I was just sitting there and couldn’t really function and was doing absolutely nothing whatsoever towards this homework.

This is the story of my life, isn’t it? Being paralysed with inaction when I should be doing things. I can go for weeks like this and then have a sudden burst of energy during which I not only catch up with everything but actually soar ahead.

Round about 07:45, I decided that I’d better go into the kitchen to wait for Isabelle the Nurse who should arrive at any moment. Instead, though, it was the taxi driver who had come early, so I had to quickly put on my shoes and stuff my socks into my pocket.

Halfway across the courtyard we met Isabelle the Nurse. She was on time, but with the taxi being early, she was confounded. And so we ended up with the undignified spectacle of me sitting in the car, feet outstretched outside in the cold and rain with Isabelle the Nurse oiling my bare feet and sorting out my socks while the taxi driver, a passenger that she had picked up earlier and a whole crowd of people waiting for the 08:10 bus looked on with interest and amazement.

You can’t say that I don’t live an interesting life.

So Part One of today’s adventures began, with a trip down to Avranches. We dropped off the other passenger at the clinic and then my driver took me to the hospital. She found a wheelchair for me, and then we played “hunt the doctor” until we finally found her.

This doctor, I think she’s wonderful. She’s a tiny woman of “a certain age”, and while she’s examining your arm and your dialysis implant, she’s complaining all the time about the standard of work that the surgeon did and a lot more besides. Just like my favourite taxi driver, she puts a lot of ambience and atmosphere into her work and I think that it’s great. Today, though, she was rather restrained and I was somewhat disappointed.

It was the same driver who brought me home, although there was someone else to drop off along the way. The driver had to help me into the apartment because my faithful cleaner was with one of her other clients this morning.

Back in here, I grabbed a quick bowl of porridge and a mug of coffee and then headed off for my Welsh lesson, arriving rather later than I intended.

One thing about the lesson, though, was that it went really, really well and I was quite impressed. Spending a couple of hours over the weekend reading through the notes and checking the vocabulary seems to be paying dividends with my course, although I wish that I could remember it afterwards. That’s the problem with having a Teflon brain – nothing sticks to it at all.

So Part One of my day was at Avranches. Part Two was my Welsh course. Part Three was my shower. My faithful cleaner turned up and organised the bathroom for me so that I could have a nice, hot soak. And I needed it too. And I felt much better afterwards, that’s for sure. I wish that I could shower more often, but I’m not allowed to do it unsupervised.

However, all this might change. The handles and restraining bars to be installed in the shower arrived a couple of weeks ago and with them, I’m much more independent. My cleaner and I decided that on Friday, we’ll go round the apartment to make a list of things that need doing, and then I’ll contact the carpenter to see if he’s available.

If anyone else who has visited the apartment can think of anything that I ought to have done, don’t hesitate to let me know because this will be the only chance to do it.

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … shower, I suddenly realised that I’d been trying to walk out of the bathroom without my crutches. If only …

Part Four of my day came later. That was at about 16:30 when my favourite taxi driver came to pick me up for an appointment with the heart specialist down in the town. That was quite a hike to his office too but I managed it, just about.

He was running behind time too, so I had to wait for quite a while, all the time standing up because, with no armrests on his chairs in the waiting room, I can’t stand up afterwards. And that’s an interesting fact – since I’ve become disabled, I’m seeing the World in a totally different light than I ever did before.

Eventually, he saw me and gave me a good going-over. And apparently, there’s an improvement since the last time that he examined me. Everyone is worried, and I’ve been having these tests since the announcement that the chemotherapy has failed. It’s nice to have some good news for a change, even though it doesn’t explain why I’m so out of breath these days.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … with a lower red blood count than usual, my heart is having to work correspondingly faster to pump enough oxygen around my body. Even so, there’s no circulation in my feet (hence the daily visits of the nurse, to massage them and rub oil in) and at times, there’s a loss of circulation in my fingers. But as long as the heart can keep up with the pressure, I can keep on going (in that respect, but maybe not in others).

When the taxi dropped me off, my cleaner helped me into the apartment and sorted me out.

In between all of that, I’d been working on the next radio programme. I’d managed to collect all of the music that I need, reformat, remix and re-edit it, pair it off and segue it ready for me to write the notes tomorrow. I’m trying to break the back of at least two every week so that I can build up a pile in advance for when the inevitable happens. I intend to live on, long after I’ve begun to push up the daisies.

For the very first time since I don’t know when, I managed a full meal today. It’s probably due to all of the exercise that I’d had with all of these medical appointments, running here, there and everywhere. I had the leftover Chinese food, from when I tried unsuccessfully to make those spring rolls, in a stir-fry with noodles. And it was delicious too, if rather salty (but then again, everything that I eat tastes of salt since the chemotherapy).

My neighbour, when she came to visit the other day, had brought me some fruit – they might have been apricots – so I had a few with some of that vegan sorbet that I’d ordered for Christmas. And that was quite lovely too. So much so that I’m seriously contemplating ordering a few tins of fruit for pudding in the future, especially as I now have some custard powder.

Back in here, I started to write up my notes, but the effort was far too much for me after everything that I’d done today, the early start, the two medical visits, the shower etc. I fell asleep twice before I’d even finished the first paragraph and even then what I’d written was a load of gibberish anyway … "so what’s new?" – ed … so I called it a night and crawled into bed. I can finish it off in the morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the heart specialist … "well, one of us has" – ed … while he was running his machine over my chest, I asked him "have you found my heart, doctor?"
"Oh yes" he replied. "It’s still there."
"Thank heavens for that!" I said, relieved. "I’ve not turned into a Conservative yet."

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Monday 26th January 2026 – AS I SUSPECTED …

… when they weighed me at dialysis this afternoon and calculated the figure against the dry weight figure the last time that they calculated it, there were just 19 grammes to remove today.

Telling them that I’ve eaten next-to-nothing this last week or so cuts absolutely no ice with them. Their calculations must be correct, and that’s all that counts. It’s a far cry from the days when they were taking out 2,500 grammes three times per week.

Last night, though, as I said, I did manage to eat something, even if it was only half a small pizza. And I still managed later to end up being late finishing off everything. Nothing that I seem to do makes any difference.

So it was not far short of 23:00 when I went to bed, and once again, it seemed to take forever to go off to sleep.

Even then, I remember it being something of a turbulent night, not being able to settle down. However, I was asleep when the alarm went off at 06:29.

Isabelle the Nurse told me to stay in bed this morning but, with so much to do, I left the bed … "eventually" – ed … and headed off into the bathroom. And I do have to say that I was feeling rather better than I had just recently.

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

On a eu un deuxième .. – what am I doing, talking in French? We had a second lockdown and everyone was confined to home again. The first couple of days, it didn’t bother me at all and I had plenty of things to keep me occupied. But after a while, I began to feel that I had cabin fever, so I thought that I’d take advantage of the calm by going out for a walk. So I left my house, which was a little terraced house in a pedestrian area and began to walk towards the village square. The first thing that I noticed was a hairdresser’s, with the bust of a woman in a window, with some long, flowing hair on it and a sign “with sadness after 109 years”. However, the hair didn’t resemble at all anything of any woman of that kind of age and even in the 1960s when this style had been the rage, that woman would still have been well over forty and that didn’t look right at all to me. There was another terraced house with a white stucco front and no window, with newspaper cuttings on the front. While I was reading these newspaper cuttings, a couple more people came past so I ended up following them, only to be sidetracked again by some more press cuttings pasted on the end wall of a house as we turned the corner. Having turned this corner, I walked about another hundred yards and found myself in the village square. Across in the corner was a building that I recognised. Although it looked like the village hall, it was in fact the local supermarket. People were queueing to go in, with several people loitering in the vicinity, looking as if they couldn’t make up their minds whether to join the queue or not. I was debating whether to join the queue, to go into the supermarket just for a walk around and maybe pick up a packet of biscuits just for some comfort food when suddenly an enormous dogfight broke out between two big dogs. Neither of the owners of these two dogs could seem to control it. In the meantime, there was a radio broadcast about some event that had taken place. It was on the Saturday in September, a week before the cup final involving Seraing. But there would be no cup final taking place in September – the new season should be well under way so I wondered just what this news broadcast on the radio was all about.

This reminds me of the first lockdown. I had a medical appointment that morning so had to go out, and I’ve never seen the town so deserted. I was half-expecting a tumbleweed to roll out of an alley. And do you remember having to queue to be allowed into a shop?

But leaving aside the question of a cup final in September, there would be no chance of Seraing competing in it. It’s one of the professional football clubs in Liège, although its fortunes have been such that it’s played in the amateur leagues on several occasions just recently. As for Seraing itself, it’s the home of the old Cockerill-Sambre steel mill, and it’s probably the grimiest, dirtiest industrial place that I have ever known

We were coming back from the Auvergne towards Brussels and we ended up going round the bypass of some small town or village in the middle of Burgundy. I pointed out one or two buildings to my companion as we were going past, and I was surprised that I hadn’t driven through the centre, because the centre was extremely old and decayed but was really mysterious and weird at the same time. It was a town that I really loved. At some point, a group of us, who were together by now, stopped and being accompanied by one or two other people, walked through the town and came to some kind of bar or café. My companion made as if to go into the bar so I opened the door for her. However, she stood there at the door and glared at me with some kind of really evil look in her face so I made a laughing remark that “some people don’t like having the door open for them these days”. The guy who was with us gave my companion €2:00 and asked him to buy her a can of pop. She went in, still glaring at me, ordered two small bottles of some kind of alcoholic spirit and another drink. As soon as she had these bottles, the ripped the tops off and drank them both at the same time, followed quite quickly by this glass of beer or whatever it was. I had to remind her about the can of pop, which she eventually bought, and we made our way back. I carried on walking and ended up in the town centre of this really large city. I was on my own and that began to suit me much better because I’d seen a side of my companion that I didn’t wish to see. I began to walk, but then I had some kind of epileptic fit and was bouncing around on all fours on a patch of grass at the side of a pavement. One or two people came over to see that I was OK. One of them was this companion, and she made some kind of crazy remark about taking the wrong acid, but all that I wanted to do was to be there and calm down and let this fit pass, then gradually be able to get up and carry on with my walk. I was in no mood for company at that moment.

We’ve been to this small town or village before, in a previous dream quite some time ago. It’s not actually a real town, although when I was asleep, I was convinced that it was. “It was a town that I really loved”, probably because I’m “extremely old and decayed” too.

And what was going on with my companion was really strange and unnerving, especially when I had this epileptic fit.

I was back somewhere around the centre of France last night. I was in another small town. When I parked the car, I had a walk around the town to find out where the strongest radio signal was. It turned out to be right outside this doctor’s surgery place so I went in there to sit down, thinking that this would be a good place to wait in case anyone wants me on the radio. There were a couple of other people in there. The doctor came out and instead of inviting them into his room, he began to give them a medical examination right in front of me. I thought that this was totally wrong. He tried to make me move so that this patient could lie down where my chair was so I told him that there was another chair over there that he could use. He took this woman over to this other chair. All the time that I was sitting there with this mug of coffee and a young girl came in. She was looking for a place to sit so I asked her to sit next to me, and we began to chat. At that moment, my brother came in and he began to make some really sarcastic comments about me and what I was doing and why I was chatting to this girl. In the end, I just stood up, picked up my mug of hot coffee and threw some of it into his face. Everyone stopped and looked, including my brother, but I just sat down and carried on talking. After a while he came over and apologised but I took absolutely no notice whatsoever and carried on with what I was doing. Then, this girl and I decided that we’d go for a walk together. I found out then that the reason why she’d come into the doctor’s surgery was also because of the strongest radio signal. We went for this walk and it went just around this particular area where the radio signal was. But shortly later, we found ourselves out of the town, sitting down in a lay-by. We were having something of a picnic. My brother came up again and dropped some kind of map on the table. He said that the next day, he was going on a tour around the power stations of Yorkshire, and mentioned one or two. I pretended to be interested, but I wasn’t really, and carried on talking to this girl. After a while, we decided that we’d both get on my motorbike and head back into town and make plans to do something extremely similar the next day

So not only do I Get the Girl last night, I manage to put the family in its place too. That’s a rare event for a dream and I wish that I could do it more often.

The bit about the medical examination in the public waiting room of the doctor’s surgery is interesting, and I would love to know the significance of it.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in on her last day before her week’s break. She took my temperature, and it’s now down to normal. She wasn’t impressed when I told her that I hadn’t taken the doliprane, but I stuck to my guns all the same.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

It’s not just pottery where the developments have been quite surprising. Talking about wheelwrights for example, he tells us that "at the bottom of Pit LXX, which, from its pottery, had evidently belonged to the later period, lay the remains of a large wheel. It had been, on the whole, coarser and heavier than the wheels found in Pit XXIII,"

It really is surprising, this. Two possible explanations may be that the potters and wheelwrights had so much work that they were obliged to recruit less-trained assistants or, chillingly, some kind of cataclysm in the Western Empire had seen the wiping out of the skilled craftsmen, leaving their untrained assistants behind.

There are probably a dozen other explanations too.

Back in here, I had a radio programme to review before I sent it off, and then my Welsh homework followed it into the “out” box.

Finally, I could revise my Welsh but here wasn’t much time.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, followed by a neighbour who was also having a lot of trouble trying to have a fibre-optic connection installed.

There wasn’t much I could do for him, and after my cleaner left, I awaited the taxi.

It was early for once, but it made no difference as we had other people to pick up and drop off, so we were still pretty much at the same time as usual.

Here, I had my discussion about the weight. They were pretty much unmoved by my pleading, although in the end I managed to have it increased to 300 grammes – not a lot but nevertheless …

They left me pretty much alone today, although Emilie the Cute Consultant came to give me a prescription for these antibiotics – the original, presumably, being lost.

The taxi was waiting for me when I finished and, after dropping off someone in Sartilly, we came home. My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and she helped me into the apartment. After she left, I warmed up the other half-pizza and ate it, even if I didn’t feel like it. And now, I’m off to bed. I’m absolutely exhausted and I’ve fallen asleep twice already

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pleading … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once asked a friend why my pleading never seemed to work.
"Let’s face it" he said. "You’re such a miserable pleader."

0

Thursday 22nd January 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day it’s been today.

And for a change, I’m not going to start with “As I have said before …” because you are probably just as fed up of reading it as I am of typing it and as I am of it happening.

But I really was quite ill yesterday. As I mentioned, it was some time shortly after 20:00 (and had I not fallen asleep in the chair after I’d finished my notes, it might well have been not so long after 20:00 too) when I climbed into bed, fully clothed, threw the bedding over me and went straight to sleep.

And there I stayed until all of … errr … 02:30.

After that, I lay there, trying to make myself as comfortable as possible and, if possible, go back to sleep but, I thought, without much success. However, it certainly wasn’t four hours later when the alarm went off at 06:29, so at some point, I must have dozed off to sleep for a couple of hours without realising it.

It took quite a while, much longer than it ought, to extricate myself from underneath the covers, and then I staggered into the bathroom. At least, I was feeling a little better than I was last night.

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

I was in the USA last night and had ended up in a motel where I was waiting for my friends to arrive. The receptionist was a rather simple boy who couldn’t speak very well and I had a great deal of difficulty understanding him. There was an old black-and-white film on the television about a group of people, men and women, who were escaping from somewhere. One or two of them were caught and were rescued. The film was probably from the early 1930s and it was an interesting one so I was trying to watch it but this boy kept on interrupting me. He mentioned something and I said “well, that’s pretty small beer really” to which he said “yes, we have nine of those”. Then he had to open the door for the stairs up to the rooms to let a dog out but the dog came down, looked around, and went back upstairs again so he closed it. At some point, I’d left the motel and ended up in Montreal. I went to look at this huge basilica that was built of brick and was going to photograph it but I couldn’t find a place to park the car. Everywhere was “no parking” and there were one or two police patrols so I thought that I would have to come back and do this on foot again, but I couldn’t think when I’d be able to. I drove a little out of town to try to find a place to see if I could have a good view with a telephoto lens but I noticed that time was running on so I had to abandon that idea too. Then I was walking back to the railway station. The streets were crowded and I was trying to watch this film as I was walking but the film kept on freezing and when it began to move again, it had actually finished. It was really disappointing for me that I’d missed the end. But outside one of the big stores in Montreal was a guy with a barrow with all kinds of things on it from the store such as pencils, paper, writing pads, sweets and everything. As I walked past, I thought that maybe I’d buy a bag of sweets or something to take with me on the train. I thought that I had five minutes so I nipped into the store. It was something like Woolworth’s or British Home Stores. Despite a good search, I couldn’t find where all of the sweets were and I began to feel rather disappointed that I’d have nothing to take with me on the train.

There’s a story about a motel in Flagstaff, Arizona, where I stayed in 2002, that relates to this, but the World isn’t ready to hear it and I doubt if it ever will be. As for the basilica, the big brick-built basilica is actually the Basilique Nationale du Sacré-Cœur at Koekelberg on the northern edge of Brussels and although the view of it and its situation that I had in this dream is nothing like its actual situation, it’s very similar to its situation in a dream that I had a few months ago.

I’d been to Manchester with my niece’s eldest daughter. We’d been roaming around the different TV studios. We’d seen several performances being recorded and we’d even seen a football match taking place in one of the studios there between Llanelli and Y Barri. On the way back, we bumped into one of my father’s friends from Winsford who asked us if we’d had a good time, what we’d done and where we’d been. I noticed that gradually he was separating my niece’s daughter from me and having a very intimate chat with her at the other end of the street. I wondered what was happening between the two of them and what was going on.

This is a kind of situation that I could easily imagine, had it been a different girl (not a daughter of my niece) and a different friend of my father. But the indoor football match is “interesting”, to say the least. There are very few full-size indoor stadia in the World, and certainly none in the JD Cymru League.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual to sort out my legs. She was her usual chatty self but didn’t stay long. I could then go on to make breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE

James Curle is still telling us about pottery – it seems that there’s a long way to go in this. And I’ve learned two interesting facts about Roman pottery –
Firstly, pottery from the earlier period of the occupation at Trimontium (up to, say, 120 AD) is of better quality than the later period (from, say, 140 AD until 180 AD). That’s unusual. You’d expect it to be the reverse.
Secondly, even in 1909, the examination and cataloguing of Roman pottery had reached such an intense degree that even without the potter’s stamp on his wares, they were able in many cases to identify the potter, his workshop and even the period during which he was working.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I made a start on writing the notes for the next radio programme. But I had noticed that my health was starting to slip back again and my cough, which had calmed down for a moment, had now returned with a vengeance.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and after she left, I waited for the taxi to take me to dialysis, all the time feeling weaker and weaker.

It was actually quite a struggle to walk to the car and even more of a struggle at the other end to walk to my bed. By now, I was freezing cold and eventually, they were obliged to bring me a blanket.

That made very little difference, so they took my temperature – thirty-seven point seven degrees. The nurse telephoned the doctor, who told her to check it again in an hour.

After an hour, during which I became even worse, she checked the temperature again. This time, it was thirty-eight point four degrees. She telephoned the doctor again and Emilie the Cute Consultant came a-running.

She performed various examinations (including a Covid test, which was negative) and took several samples and said that she’d let me have the results tomorrow and that she’d send any prescription necessary directly to my chemist.

When the taxi came for me, I could barely walk out to it. It was a most undignified stagger. However, I made sure that the driver wore a face mask because I don’t want to infect her with whatever I’ve caught. When I sent my message to my cleaner giving her an idea of when I’d be back, I told her to wear a face mask too.

While I was at it, I sent a message to Isabelle the Nurse to tell her to wear a mask when she calls tomorrow. I don’t want her to spread my viruses around her patients.

When I arrived back here, it was 19:20, and by 19:25, I was in bed, fully-clothed yet again. There was just time to take off my shoes, but no time (or desire) to make any food. Once in bed, my cleaner threw the quilt over me and went on her way, and I went straight to sleep.

Round about 23:30, I awoke, and thought that it might be a good idea if I were to post an entry to say that at least, I’m still alive. Alison must have read it quite quickly because we ended up having a little chat about our health problems. She has a few of her own right now. We’re all growing old and it’s sad.

After that, I settled down again and waited to go back to sleep.

But before I doze off again, seeing as we have been talking about face masks … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once asked someone why it was that doctors and nurses always wear face masks around the hospital.
"Is it to prevent the spread of infection?" they asked.
"Oh no" I replied. "It’s that if ever they make a mistake or do something wrong, you can’t identify them and bring them into Court."

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Tuesday 13th January 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… why they send me on these wild goose chases halfway around the country and back so that some specialist in some hospital somewhere can tell me exactly what I already know and have known for several months.

As if I don’t have enough to do with my time.

And especially if it means crawling out of bed at some ridiculous time like 05:00.

Yes! 05:00! So last night I went without any food for tea, dashed through my notes, which were on-line at 20:27 precisely, the earliest time … "and by a long way too" – ed … that they have ever so been. And by the time that I finally made it into bed, it was just coming up to 21:00.

And when was the last time that I’d been in bed that early when I’ve not been feeling unwell?

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s an absolute waste of time going to bed early, because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. So there I was, tossing and turning in bed, trying desperately to go back to sleep at just before 02:00.

That was a waste of time too, and I lay there, semi-comatose, until the alarm went off at 05:00 when I hauled myself out of bed and staggered off into the bathroom to make myself look pretty.

And that was also a waste of time.

The taxi came a few minutes early and luckily, it was one of my favourite drivers, the one who “presses on” like an old-school taxi driver and always has plenty to say for herself. She helped me finish my packing and then we set off.

So far, I’d been without food for almost twenty-four hours and without drink for about fifteen hours. I work on the principle of “what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out during the journey” — after all, four hours or so in a taxi is a long time. Nevertheless, I packed a couple of slices of my “energy flapjack” and a small bottle of water in case I have a diabetic crisis along the way.

We had a good run and a good chat all the way as far as Mantes-La-Jolie, in between Rouen and Paris, and that was where we hit the traffic and the farmers’ demonstrations. A wrong turn on the prif led us out on the autoroute towards Rungis and Orly further complicated affairs, and what was looking at one stage like an easy 09:45 arrival for my 10:30 appointment turned out to be a panic-stricken 11:25.

Having to find me a wheelchair (it’s a different building so I didn’t know where the doctor was and how far I’d have to walk, and we were already hours late) and having to understand the unnecessarily complicated system of lifts didn’t help matters.

While we were stuck in traffic, I’d telephoned the doctor to say that we’d be late, so he let in several patients ahead of me, which was quite natural. Consequently, it was 12:25 when I was finally seen.

He poked and prodded me, put all these needles into my muscles and passed an electrical current through them to test my nerve reactions, and then examined the results.

Before he began to test me, he asked me how I was feeling and whether there was any sign of improvement. I told him that I was feeling lousy as usual and I was sure that there was a definite deterioration since my examination last January.

His conclusion was "I’m very sorry to say that there is no improvement, and you are right about the deterioration."

As I said just now, I could have told him that without having to go all the way to Paris. What a waste of a day!

While I was there, I asked him about the stabbing pain in my foot. He told me that as my nervous system is slowly breaking down, things like this are to be expected and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. He actually put it into a more scientific explanation, but that was the gist of it.

My chauffeur was waiting for me when I came out, and after I’d been to warm my feet, we headed to the car. Getting out of the wheelchair was exciting, but in the end I managed it and we headed for home.

On the way back, I fell asleep twice, which is no surprise considering my bad night, and we arrived home to disappointing weather. In Paris, it had been bright sunshine, beautiful clear blue skies and quite warm for the time of year. Here in Granville, it was overcast, raining, windy and cold. At least we’d had no hold-ups on the road to delay us.

My faithful cleaner was waiting to help me into the apartment and instead of a disgusting drink, I had a caffeine-packed energy drink. And I needed it too after over twenty-four hours of nothing to drink.

Having disposed of that, I came in here to listen to the dictaphone notes. I was actually surprised that there were some.

I can only remember fragments of this dream but there was something about being at home. We were in Vine Tree Avenue and there was something about the weather, but I can’t remember what. Then, my mother came into the living room to find out what we’d been doing. In this little box, I had a very, very small puppy. My mother asked about it and I replied that I’d found it somewhere. She had a look at it, and she agreed that it was really small, and because of its small size, we could keep it. There was much more to it than this, but I can’t remember anything once I awoke.

What interrupted my reverie, as I found out later on, was that in reaching for the dictaphone, I dropped the battery charger and all of the spare batteries onto the floor from off the little table behind the bedhead I shall have to pick that up in due course. But me with a puppy? Not that that’s ever likely to happen. Dogs and I just don’t get on. Give me a cat or two … "or three or four" – ed … any day.

Tea was the other half of Sunday’s pizza, which I wolfed down because there was football on the television, Y Barri v Llanelli. Y Barri scored a goal after two minutes but surprisingly, Llanelli, well-adrift at the foot of the table, managed to equalise.

It was only delaying the inevitable though, as Y Barri scored four more before the hour was up. You could see than Llanelli had effectively abandoned the game after that because their heads went down and they lost interest in chasing the ball, but Y Barri, once more, refused to turn the screw and played possession football for most of the rest of the game instead of going for the jugular.

That was disappointing.

And so, with aching foot and totally exhausted, I’m off to bed.
granville
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my trip to Paris and the Neurology department … "well, one of us has" – ed … the doctor told me "there’s some good news and some bad news#34;
"What’s the bad news?" I asked.
"The bad news is that you are going to be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of your life"
"And what’s the good news?"
"I can get you a fair price for your crutches."

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Monday 12th January 2026 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … a good night’s sleep is the cure for all ills.

And so this morning, on awakening, I was feeling rather better than I was yesterday. And it kept on going for some considerable time too, something that surprised me.

Last night, though, I wasn’t well at all and fell asleep as soon as I’d finished my notes. And there I sat on the chair for a good half-hour, dead to the World before I awoke. Consequently, I was rather late going to bed.

Mind you, I managed to sleep right the way through until about 06:10, and I could, I suppose, have forced myself out of bed and had an early start. However, I decided to make the most of the extra twenty or so minutes in bed and lay there until the alarm went off.

It was, as usual, a struggle to leave the bed and to stagger into the bathroom; however, I had a good wash and a shave just in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

In the kitchen, I sorted out the medication and made my hot drink and then put into the fridge the vegan pie and the half-pizza that remained. They had been cooling overnight on the worktop.

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

There had been some kind of meeting going on in Granville and we all ended up in the local town entertainment hall place. There was an enormous number of us, probably one hundred and fifty people all crammed in, and the woman in charge said that she would telephone our next-of-kin so that they could come to pick us up. This was late at night so we all sat there and waited. Time began to drag on and by the time that it was daylight, no-one had left and we were all sitting there waiting, a huge crowd of us. Round about 08:30, a girl came in to pick up another girl whom I knew. When she picked her up, they somehow managed to cram into this really small container like a vacuum cleaner thing and drifted off towards the door. I got down on my hands and knees and wished her good luck, because I knew her, and asked if there was any room inside for me and she could drop me off at my place, but she didn’t reply and drifted round to the door. Then I felt that I couldn’t stand up again and it took me an awful amount of effort to pick my way back to the chair on which I had been sitting. The two people sitting next to me were discussing the situation. They felt like no-one was going to come for us at all and that we’d end up being taken to lunch somewhere in the vicinity and it was all part of the plan, which totally confused me. I didn’t understand what was happening. I tried to attract the attention of the woman who seemed to be managing the affair to ask her if she’d telephoned for my taxi because they were usually fairly reliable to come to pick me up, but no matter how hard I tried to attract her attention, she wouldn’t come over, and I couldn’t stand up to go along to see her because of all of my mobility problems, so we were all just sitting there.

Once more, I meet a girl whom I know but can’t think of who she is. This seems to be becoming a recurring feature too these days. However, the rest of the dream is rather surreal and obviously means something somewhere, but I’ve no idea what.

Isabelle the Nurse was early today, and she had time for a little chat. She’s off now for seven days and she’ll be working on her costume for Carnaval. I don’t want to know what it is though. I prefer to be surprised when she takes photos of herself and her float out in the parade.

After breakfast and my nice nut bread, I came back in here to do a few things and the rest of the morning, I spent doing my Welsh homework. It’s a shame that I won’t be at the lesson tomorrow but Paris calls.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to wait for the taxi.It was late arriving today, mainly due to there being a new driver who hasn’t been here before and so had lost the way.

Consequently, we were late arriving at dialysis.

It was the new girl who attended to me and in the end, she needed help to plug me in. I told her not to worry because we all have to learn somewhere and somehow. And then they left me alone.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me, but she didn’t stay long. There wasn’t even time to tell her of all my problems, which was sad. However, I doubt if she would have been willing to soothe my fevered brow.

The taxi was late coming to pick me up too, but it can’t be helped. It was one of my favourite drivers so we had a nice chat all the way home.

My cleaner was there to help me into the apartment, and after she left, I came here to write up my notes. No food tonight though. With an 05:00 start and an 06:00 pickup for four or so hours on the road (and then four or so hours back) I’m going straight to bed when I’ve finished this.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about vacuums … "well, one of us has" – ed … a girl from Crewe was appearing on “Mastermind”.
One of the questions was "if someone made a sound and you were in a vacuum, would you hear the sound?"
She replied "would the vacuum be switched on?"

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