Category Archives: doctor

Monday 21st July 2025 – THAT WAS THE …

… quickest drive to Paris that I have ever had.

We left Avranches at 18:30 with an estimated travel time of 3.06 which is what it tells us almost every time, although with the heavy traffic around Caen and particularly around Paris, it’s much closer to four hours Today, though, we pulled up at the Haematology Department here at the Hospital Pitié-Salpetrière at 21:24 – a trip of less than three hours.

The first time that we actually had to slow down for traffic (never mind stop) was on the Prif about two miles from the Porte d’Italie, and then it was only a momentary braking and we kept on going.

And we won’t ever have a trip like that again.

Not that I was looking forward to it either. Last night was another one of those nights that went on and on and I wasn’t able to make much progress. I was hoping to be in bed early but once more, it ended up being round about 23:45 when I finally crept into bed.

Not that I stayed asleep for very long either. For the past few weeks I’ve been having one of these heavy summer colds and I awoke with a streaming head and a stuffed-up nose, feeling very uncomfortable indeed.

Despite all my trying, I couldn’t go back to sleep and in the end I abandoned the procedure, left the bed, and had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been. A friend of mine was out there walking his dog last night amongst a crowd of people but that’s all that I remember of this dream. The rest of it seems to have evaporated as soon as I went to pick up the dictaphone and I wasn’t able to dictate any more than that.

That’s all there was, which is hardly a surprise because if you don’t go to bed until 23:45 and you are up and about at 03:30 the following morning, there hasn’t been all that much time to go very far

Having dealt with that, such as it was, I had a listen to the radio programme that I’ll be sending off for broadcast this week. I didn’t like the voice at all so I re-mixed and re-edited it. It’s not much better now but I sent it off anyway.

Having done that, I wrote the notes for another radio programme that was in the middle of the queue for which I’d sorted out the music quite a while ago, and then I sorted out the music for another one and began to write the notes It was what one would call a “productive morning”.

It’s Isabelle the Nurse’s last morning today for a week, so she was extremely busy with blood samples and injections that folk don’t want her oppo to do, so she didn’t have time to hang around.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK

Our author is still on his prowl around the churches, but also mentions the situation where "the houses of London were built of stone for defence of fire, which kind of building was used for two hundred years or more " but lately, "houses of timber set up in place".

You can see the seeds of the Great Fire of London already being sown.

After breakfast, I made some sandwiches for Paris and packed my backpack, fitting in all kinds of goodies to keep the lupus from the porte as they would have said in Ancient Rome … "well, puer amat mensam!" – ed … and then I was back in here to carry on with my radio programme.

However, I did have a brief power nap of about 10 minutes. This early start is playing havoc with my body clock.

My cleaner turned up on time to fit my patches and then we had a chat about moving stuff about. While we were at it, she moved the two boxes that I had packed yesterday and took them downstairs where I’ll empty them on Wednesday or Thursday.

While she was here, I told her about the very uneasy feeling that I have about this trip to Paris. I can’t explain why, but I’ve been uncomfortable about it all day and all last night. And I’m spoiling for a fight, but for no good reason, and I’m not there yet. Things are not going my way.

The taxi driver wasn’t very helpful today. He’s clearly not used to dealing with the elderly and the infirm, but he’ll have to learn, and quickly too.

At Avranches, once more I was one of the last to be coupled up and it was as painful as I have ever had. And one of the punctures missed its aim, and that made it worse.

What with this early start, I wanted to go to sleep, but no such luck. The doctor who doesn’t like his work, he was on duty and he shook me awake. They are afraid that I’ll have another crisis, I reckon.

He stayed around so we had quite a chat. I told him about the uneasy feeling that I’ve had all day but he wasn’t much help on that score. In the end, he left me to it and I could crack on.

Unplugging me was complicated too and once more, I was one of the last to leave, not helped by confusion at the weighing machine. However, we thrashed through the autoroutes with its accidents and overturned artic lorry (and I’m sure that you are thinking that I’m making this up) and arrived nice and early.

A nurse eventually took me to my room and my driver could leave, and then they took a blood sample. I valiantly resisted the idea of a perfusion and rehydration (why take two litres of water out at dialysis and then immediately put half a litre back in?) and they even brought me some food – of sorts.

So now I’m off to bed, ready to fight the good fight in the operating theatre tomorrow morning, and then the chemotherapy begins.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the nurse here … "well, one of us has" – ed … he looked at my notes and said "you have acute anaemia".
"Thank you" I replied. "I’m so glad that you like it"

Thursday 17th July 2025 – MY KITCHEN DOWNSTAIRS …

… is looking wonderful, it really is.

It’s not finished yet – it probably needs another full day’s work – but even so, it’s quite impressive as it is. The oven and microwave are installed and the hob will be next, and then it will just be a case of the final touches. But it really is impressive.

It will be another five weeks or so before I’ll be moving in. It seems that the weekend round about 22nd, 23rd and 24th of August is when a few volunteers have offered to come along to help, although I’ll be hoping to move a pile of stuff before then, if I can. So if anyone is at a loss for a few things to do one week or one weekend in the near future…

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, it was another late night last night by the time everything was finished. Or, rather, it wasn’t finished because I had forgotten, would you believe, the backing up of the computer.

But anyway, once I was finally in bed, there I stayed until 06:27 precisely, two minutes before the alarm was due to go off, and I managed to struggle to my feet to beat the alarm. But if that’s not impeccable timing then I don’t know what is.

After a good wash and my medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was having some kind of injection because of all these foreigners who were coming to play football around here. Many people were disillusioned by the fact that they had signed a lot of the youth players from English clubs because they were thinking that the academies of these clubs were of absolutely no useful purpose at all – it was simply a paperwork exercise to show that the club has some kind of development certificate and there was no possibility of these young boys ever being included in some kind of first team round-up and some kind of Premier League involvement in due course. Most of these lads were destined to have the job when they reached the end of the age group.

This actually refers to a discussion that some of us were having on a football news forum yesterday, talking about how many under-17, under-18, under-19 etc football academy players, even youth internationals, are now playing part-time in non-league or minor league football, saying that these football academies are really nothing but window-dressing for the clubs concerned, simply to abide by certain rules and regulations with absolutely no intention at all of promoting local youth talent.

Isabelle the Nurse came in to see me and gave my knee some heat treatment, and then she attended to my legs.

After she left, the kitchen fitter put his sooty foot in the door. I organised him and he wandered off to start work. I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Our author is still giving us the conducted tour of various churches. He tells us that in the Church of St Mary Woolnoth there is a memorial to"Thomas Roch and Andrew Michael, vintners, and Joan, their wife." And I’m definitely eager to find out more information about that cosy set-up.

Interestingly too, he tells us that "in divers countries, dairy houses or cottages wherein they make butter and cheese, are usually called ‘wicks’.". A “wich” is quite often associated with a salt town and has other meanings in Norse and in Anglo-Saxon too, but Stow’s interpretation of the ending is certainly food … "groan" – ed … for thought.

After breakfast, I came back in here to sort out the radio notes that I dictated yesterday. In total, there is about twenty-five minutes’ worth and that’s going to take an age to edit. I shall be here for the next two months doing that, I reckon, and miss the actual programme dates if I’m not careful.

My faithful cleaner came along and sorted me out with my anaesthetic patches, and I came back in here to carry on working.

The driver who came to pick me up was the Belgian girl and I like her very much so we had a lovely chat all the way down to Avranches, except for the time when she was having an argument with one of her children on the telephone. I suppose that a pair of eleven-year-old twins would be a handful for anyone.

My luck was in at the dialysis centre. I was attended to by Julie the Cook who showed me some photos of her latest culinary creations. And wonderful they are too. But she had a lot of trouble coupling me up to the machine today and for quite a while, my machine kept on sounding the alarm.

One of the doctors came to see me today to ask me how I was. I told him that it’s pointless asking me because they don’t do anything about what I’ve told them already. So he departed with a flea in his ear.

The dietician was next to come along, with a prescription for forty-eight samples each of four different varieties of a new protein drink. I wonder what all of that will be like.

And then all Hell let loose. There’s a patient who has a four-hour dialysis session who is currently in hospital at Granville. His session is due to start at 14:00 but the ambulance didn’t bring him until after 15:30, meaning that the girls have to stay until about 20:00 this evening. It goes without saying that they were not too happy about it, and they expressed their displeasure quite forcibly to the ambulance crew.

There’s another person there who is … errr … well, he <DOESN’T HAVE BOTH PADDLES IN THE WATER. He was an endless source of trouble and stress to the nurses this afternoon and in the end, one of them had to sit with him for quite a while to keep an eye on what he was up to.

For once, I was unplugged quite quickly and the taxi was waiting for me too so we were soon on our way home. We came back via the town centre so that we could have a look at the chaos with the rebuilding paused for the summer, and then the driver dropped me off at home where my faithful cleaner was waiting.

First thing that I did was to go to inspect the kitchen and to chat with the kitchen-fitter and his wife who was helping. And my kitchen does look lovely. He’s done a really good job and I’m well-impressed. It will be even better when it’s finished.

Mind you, I had a very late tea tonight because I had to wait for an age while he finished off and packed up his tools.

He also presented me with a bill to date, and after I’d paid it, I had to go to lie down in a darkened room for a while.

Tea tonight was just like The Carmichaels, as SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN. It was too late to cook a proper meal.

So now I’m off to bed, later than I would like. And I need to be on form as there’s a lot to do tomorrow. There’s the Sunday Woodstock notes to continue to edit and also June and Catherine are coming round to see me before they head off back to South Germany.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the kitchen fitter … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked him if he would like to install a mirror for me in the kitchen.
He thought for a while and then replied "ohh yes, why not? That’s just the kind of job that I could see myself doing."

Monday 14th July 2025 – I DON’T THINK …

… that Marion loves me any more.

The last time that she was on shift when I was at dialysis, she was nagging me to do my own preparation.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly why I am simply unable to do it and so it doesn’t do any good at all to insist. It’s simply impossible.

And so this afternoon, she tried a new tactic. When my machine pinged to say that my session was over, she half-uncoupled me and then wandered off to do other things, leaving me hanging around like Piffy on a rock for twenty-five minutes.

If she thinks that that is going to galvanise me into action, she’s mistaken. I simply can’t bring myself to touch this pulsing, throbbing vein that they installed in my arm a year ago and that’s the end of it.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, last night, for a change, I actually finished early. After taking the stats and performing the back-up, I went and sorted myself out and ended up in bed by 22:40 which made a very welcome change, and how I enjoyed it too.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s really pointless going to bed early because all that it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. So quickly to sleep once I was in bed, but wide awake this morning at 05:20.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … being awake is one thing, being up and about is something else completely and you have to wait until 05:40 when I finally crawled out of bed.

The ice pack had slipped from my knee during the night and was flapping about in the breeze this morning, so that hadn’t been of very much use, but nevertheless, I was moving about a little easier, which was a surprise.

First thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was dreaming that I was going into hospital so I was checking everything that I had and that I needed to take with me. I took my ‘phone. When I was finally in bed, I strapped an ice pack onto my knee and just lay there. At a certain point a little later I heard my ‘phone making noises as if there was an alarm or something going on. After several minutes I realised that it was one of the chat programs on my telephone that had received a whole series of messages with the usual message tone but I hadn’t realised it prior to that.

Packing ready for hospital is something to which I look forward very much (I don’t think), knowing that in the immediate future I have to go back to Paris for the next session of chemotherapy, when I shall be insisting upon knowing why they are giving me the same chemotherapy that my body rejected violently nine years ago.

As for the ‘phone “making noises”, this morning, when I looked at my ‘phone, I found that I had indeed received a whole series of messages and photos from the kitchen fitter who had clearly been burning the midnight oil.

Later on, I was with my cleaner and my former friend from Stoke-on-Trent. There was a big group of people and we were connected in some way to a chevreuil which of course is a small deer. There was some issue about this deer and it had escaped, so everyone was out looking for it. We had other things to do but we couldn’t stop to look. Instead, we were going somewhere in a Mini. We were driving through a field and we had to perform a “U-turn” somewhere at the side of the road. There was this little turn-round place into a small field there but the only way out was on a blind corner so I went across the field in the Mini. It turned out that there was a really steep drop in this field so I told everyone to hang on and I went down in this Mini. We came across some traces of where these people had looking for the deer. There was some old pet’s bed there that had probably belonged to it. We continued to drive until we came to a huge set of gates where a lot of people from this search party were congregated. One woman was incensed about seeing the three of us together. She was complaining about how there were only two of her – she and someone else – in their group, how there ought to be more of them and how we ought to help. We explained how we had much more complicated and difficult things to do but she carried on and on and on. At these gates, she was struggling to open them with a key, this complaining woman, so I took a key and managed to open it straight away. It was a car scrapyard like McGuinness’s in Stoke-on-Trent. Inside was a “K” registered Škoda parked round by the door which I recognised as belonging to this woman. Once I’d opened the door, my friend from Stoke-on-Trent with his car and caravan drove inside. I went for a walk inside but it was totally empty. There was hardly anything at all in there. That disappointed me intensely because I was expecting it to be full of old vehicles as it usually was. Instead, I had a little walk, just looking at the wasteland while my friend drove around in his car and caravan. He came back, parked it up next to the Škoda and stepped out, looking as if he was walking away and leaving it. He asked me if I had my camera so that I could take a photo and asked me if I knew what kind of year the car was. I said “It’s ‘R’ registration so that puts it at about 1976”. However he thought that it was something different but he didn’t say exactly what. I went to fetch my camera to take a photograph of his car, the caravan and the Škoda, which were about the only three things in this entire scrapyard.

Now, there are loads of mileage in this dream. For a start, is this the first dream in which my cleaner has appeared?

As for my former friend, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … he was the kind of person who would do absolutely anything for you, but after his accident 25 or so years ago, he became a totally different person and I couldn’t handle the stress. I had enough trouble dealing with my own problems at that time without having to deal with someone else’s, and when he left his car to go, on his crutches, to thump the person in the car behind who had just beeped at us, the writing went on the wall. There were several other incidents too that convinced me that things had run their course by that time.

Where this “U-turn” place was situated was at the corner of Warmingham Lane and Groby Road in Crewe, across the road from the depot of the coach company where I worked in winter when there was no tour work at Shearings.

The “Škoda” was actually a gold FSO “Polonez”, but much more slimline than the car would have been in real life. They were strange cars, a nice design but the quality was appalling. When they finally sorted out the quality issues in the early 1990s, they were wonderful cars but by then the damage had been done. They were powered by a clone of a FIAT engine, and when importation into the UK stopped because of emissions issues, the aforementioned friend and I were thinking of buying one and fitting a FIAT diesel engine in it.

The highlight of the dream would have been wandering around McGuinness’s scrapyard. I’ve had many a happy weekend in there and the stuff that I’ve had from there was unbelievable – even an old Jaguar 420 that I wanted for spares for my Daimler. I once saw a Rolls-Royce in there, only the second that I have ever seen in a scrapyard after the one that I saw IN A SCRAPYARD IN BRIDGEWATER, MAINE, IN 1973

But mountaineering over mountains of scrap cars in scrapyards looking for exciting bits and pieces. Those were the days. You can’t even go into them now, thanks to “Health and Safety”.

After a wash and my morning medication, I came back in here and dealt with the last of the outstanding correspondence and paid the bills that I didn’t pay yesterday. And then I had to sort out some money for the kitchen fitter who had bought some wood and so on for the kitchen that he’s installing.

The nurse was early again? He applied some more heat treatment to my knee and then after having dealt with my legs, he cleared off quite rapidly.

He was closely followed by the kitchen fitter who came to do another day’s work. I gave him the money for the purchases he had made and he and his son went downstairs to carry on.

After they had left, I could carry on with making breakfast and to read MY BOOK.

Our author start off today by talking about the Bedlam (or Bethlem, as he calls it) Hospital for "distracted people" as he quaintly puts it, and tells us that "in this place, people who are distraight in wits are, by the suit of their friends, received and keep as afore."

All that I can say is that if that kind of situation were to persist today, I would have nothing to fear because quite simply, I don’t have any friends.

He goes on to talk about some works being undertaken at Spitalfields, and we have a gorgeous eyewitness account of the discovery and unearthing of a Roman cemetery and an account of the contents of the graves. It’s one of the most fascinating accounts that I have read.

Something else that he mentions is a land dispute between the parish clerks and a local nobleman who had been gifted some monastic property after the Reformation that had been gifted previously to the parish, and "the parish clerks having commenced suit … and being like to have prevailed, the said Sir Robert Chester pulled down the hall, sold the timber, stone and lead, and so the suit was ended.".

After that, I came back in here to attend my Welsh Summer School but it wasn’t a real success because I couldn’t stay here for long, having to go after ninety minutes to prepare for dialysis.

When my cleaner had fitted my patches, I didn’t have long to wait for the taxi, and we whizzed down to Avranches.

It took them forty minutes to couple me up today, leaving me sitting around for quite a while as they dealt with other people. I really felt quite out of it today.

However, the good news is that my friend from Ulm and her daughter will be on their travels and they plan to pass by later in the week to say “hello”. As well as that, my friend from Macon with whom I was on a student exchange in 1970 will be in the area at the beginning of September. He and his wife are planning to come to see me, and that will be nice too. I seem to be in great demand these days.

It was the je m’en foutiste doctor on duty today and he passed by to see if I needed anything, but when I spoke to him, he didn’t seem to be interested.

At one point, I dozed off for five minutes but Marion awoke me. I really think that she has it in for me at the moment, what with waiting around at the start and at the end. She also “forgot” the cold spray when she coupled me up, so all of this cannot be coincidence.

However, as I said just now, it’s not going to change a thing.

The poor taxi driver had to wait around for an age while we had the shenanigans at the end of my session, and I didn’t return home until 19:00. I stuck my head in downstairs to look at the kitchen and it really is impressive. I shall enjoy working with that when it’s ready.

Tea tonight was something cobbled up out of a handful of mushrooms and a small tin of kidney beans with pasta and tomato sauce. But now I’m off to bed, ready for my Summer School tomorrow. I have a feeling that tackling this course is not my wisest move, but we shall see.

But before I go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about Bedlam Hospital … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s a little-known fact that I once served on the committee of the hospital.
One day we had to interview a patient who wasted to be liberated, so we had to go to see him to find out why.
"God told me that I was no longer crazy and that I could go home" he explained.
The man in the next bed shouted up "I said nothing of the kind!"

Saturday 12th July 2025 – HERE WE GO …

… again.

For once, the taxi came early and the other passenger who travels with me on Thursday and Saturday was already on board.

For once, we arrived quite early

For once, they were ready and waiting

For once, I was coupled up quite quickly and quite early

For once, it was only a three-and-a-half hour session

For once, as the session slowly drew to a close, I was looking forward to an early escape and return home

And so regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happens next in circumstances like this.

In fact, it was a pretty miserable day all round, what with one thing and another, and I wonder when I might be able to step off this treadmill.

Despite my best efforts, last night was another late night when once more I failed miserably to make any impression upon the idea of having an early night.

This pain in my chest was also playing havoc with me. I couldn’t cough and I couldn’t sneeze because I was in total agony every time I tried to expand my lungs. I’ve no idea what’s happening now.

Anyway, I settled down in my lovely clean bed thanks to my faithful cleaner … "huh?" – ed … Yes, I suppose that I’d better explain. It wasn’t she who settled me down in my lovely clean bed, but in the afternoon she had changed the bedding as part of the plan to make my bedroom/office/recording studio look nice, clean and comfortable, as indeed it proved to be.

It didn’t take long to go off to sleep either, however, when I awoke, it was still dark. I tried to go back to sleep but I wasn’t able to do so, and so I gave some serious thought to raising myself from the Dead. However, a glance at the time on my ‘phone dissuaded me. 03:10 is far too early to be up and about, even if I can’t sleep.

Consequently, I decided to lie there semi-comatose until a more realistic time, but the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29. Bane of Britain has struck again, asleep when the alarm went off.

When I awoke, I was dreaming about something to do with the Welsh Premier League and Y Bala FC. As usual, it evaporated so quickly from my mind before I could take hold of the dictaphone.

It’s not difficult to guess what it might be, though. Having failed to qualify for Europe for a couple of years now, the money has run out, the budget has been slashed, and according to the FAW’s squad lists, at least twelve of their star players, more than an entire team, have voted with their feet. As far as I can tell, to date they have signed just four, and none of them would be what I would call “significant” signings.

Over the past few years we’ve seen several clubs in the same position and it’s usually always ended in tears and involving relegation. But the future of Y Bala looks more bleak than all of the others right now and I reckon that unless they pull something magical out of the free transfers elsewhere, it’s going to be a very long and hard season.

It took a while to come to my senses yet again and to unstrap the ice pack, with which I went to sleep, from my right knee. And with the pain still wreaking havoc in my chest, I went off to the bathroom for a wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

While I was in the bathroom, I set the washing machine off. With loads of bedding and everything else, there were probably about three machines-worth but one will suffice for now, with the bedding and the hospital stuff seeing that I might be back for chemotherapy in ten days time.

The kitchen was another really slow, leisurely affair while I took my time with the medication. I just couldn’t find the motivation today. As I said earlier, it was a pretty miserable day all round.

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

Nerina and I had to go to see a sports scientist kind of person for my knee. We were sitting in the waiting room and we heard him sawing a child’s foot to even off the bone. We could hear her screaming and it was absolutely horrible. Then we had to go into the room and it was freezing cold so the first thing that I did was to light the gas fire. Nerina was busy arranging everything and tidying it up. She made some kind of remark to me about why I wasn’t helping. I replied “I can’t possibly help because I’m so slow to move around these days on my crutches and you are very much quicker than me in doing everything”. However, she wasn’t very happy with that kind of answer.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not my usual habit to post distressing dreams like this. Some of you will be eating your tea right now, others will be turning the page, and I will be feeling extremely uncomfortable. In fact, I can’t understand why I did post it because “distressing” really is the correct word to describe it.

And why this kind of dream should occur when Nerina is there, I don’t know that either, but Nerina and I ended up just as we would end up after coming back from holiday

However, there was something in there about a group of musicians being on tour. They had a Volkswagen Microbus and there were so many of them that half of their group, the smaller ones, were sleeping on the floor with a series of camp beds above them. That was where the elder ones slept, all inside this VW caravan. The heat generated by these people must have been intense and the smell of bodies overpowering. I seem to remember it heading towards Barry Town in order to be there for the special day a week next weekend when hopefully the gates might be hung.

As for what this may be about, it’s a pretty good description of that trip I mentioned a few months ago when a group of people piled into a J4 van in Crewe in 1973 and drove all the way down to the Windsor Free Festival, blowing a tyre and almost overturning on the way, while my friend from the Wirral and I went down a different way on a Triumph 350cc motorbike.

The nurse turned up early yet again. He applied this heat treatment to my knee and dealt with my legs, after which he left. I could then push on with breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Our author has been talking about the various “Undershafts” in London, and explains how the name came about, "because that of old time, every year on May-day in the morning, it was used that an high or long shaft or May-pole was set up there … which shaft … was higher than the church steeple."

He goes on to describe how it was stored "laid along over the doors and under the pentises of one row of houses" and mentions its ignominious end when the curate of St Katherine’s Christ Church denounced it as idolatrous and "whereon it had rested two-and-thirty years, they sawed it in pieces, every man taking as his share so much that had lain over his door".

After breakfast I took the washing from the machine and hung it up in the living room window to dry. And that’s a task that’s becoming harder and harder as time goes by.

There were things to do after that and I was in the middle of doing them when my faithful cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches.

She was still here chatting when the taxi arrived and so I descended to the vehicle and we cleared off into a glorious, hot summer’s day. Far too nice to go to dialysis.

At the beginning, I spoke about some of the events at dialysis today, but one thing that I haven’t mentioned is that the connection was the most painful that I have had for a very, very long time and I was in agony throughout the entire session.

The je m’en foutiste doctor came to see me during the afternoon. I told him about my complaints so he put his stethoscope to my chest and totally ignored my knee yet again.

There was plenty of work for me to do and I was advancing quite well, looking forward to a really early finish with just ten minutes to go, when another patient had a crisis and all of the nurses went a-running. And I was simply left there, sitting like Piffy on a rock while the nurses dealt with the emergency.

Eventually, Sarah came back to deal with me and to unplug me, for which I was heartily relieved. Mind you, she dropped the pipe and there is now blood all over my shirt. The good news is that I am now below my “inactive” weight which suits me fine.

In the hallway my co-passenger and I waited for the taxi. And waited. And waited. Twenty-five minutes later, he turned up.

It’s the busiest weekend of the year this weekend, and we’d seen the enormous queues on the motorway as we came down. There had been plenty of breakdowns in the afternoon and as the taxi company holds the contract with the Highways Authority for dealing with repatriations, they had a whole pile of vehicles out of the area, so those who remained were rushed off their feet.

Consequently, we were no earlier coming home than we might otherwise have been.

My cleaner was waiting for me and watched as I struggled upstairs, and then I collapsed into a chair, totally worn out.

Tea was a breadcrumbed quorn fillet with salad and baked potato, all very nice, but I struggled to eat it tonight. My appetite still hasn’t come back and it’s only ten or so days to my next chemotherapy.

But I’ll worry about that another time. Right now, I’m going to bed and I can’t say that I’m sorry.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Nerina … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me "what did you like especially about Nerina?"
"I liked the fact" I said "that she could see both sides to every argument."
"Could she really?" he asked.
"Indeed she could" I said. "Both sides – her side and the wrong one."

Thursday 10th July 2025 – I AM FED UP …

… of the dialysis centre and the je m’en foutiste of the doctor who always seems to be at the centre of any dispute that I may have.

Once more, we’ve “had words” and it wasn’t a very ideal situation. I’ve made my point but it will have made absolutely no difference at all.

In fact, it’s been a bad day all round. It started off badly by me being asleep yet again when the alarm went off. How many days is this? A far cry from the heady days when I was up and working at 04:30, things like that.

It wasn’t as if it had been an early night though. It was quite close to midnight when I finally crawled into bed, but once in bed, there I stayed without moving.

It was actually difficult to move because my right knee was covered in this heat treatment and I had an ice pack strapped to it too. “Kill or cure” is my motto for right now.

When the alarm went off, it took a while for me to gather my wits, which is a surprise seeing how few I have these days, and then I had an undignified stagger into the bathroom for a wash and scrub up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

It was a very slow early morning in the kitchen sorting out my medication too. It seemed to take an age before I was back in here.

First task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with a football club that was preparing for a series of pre-season friendlies. The match that was coming up was against Manchester United and so everyone was quite nervous about how the score would unfold. However, when we took to the field we found that it was against another club and that the Manchester United game had already taken place. However, no-one could remember the result of that game. Then the whistle sounded for the kick-off but it wasn’t the whistle, it was the alarm sounding at 06:30.

There are so many pre-season friendlies going on right now that this could refer to just about anything, although it was interesting to see me having yet another bout of confusion.

The nurse turned up early again. I asked him if he could have a look at my knee so he gave it a cursory examination and reckons that it’s simply bruised rather than broken or chipped or anything. This heat treatment and ice pack is the way to go, he reckons.

After he left I made my breakfast and had to deal with a volcano in the microwave, because the surveillance of my porridge was interrupted by my faithful cleaner arriving to check on me, to see how I was.

After she left, I cleaned up the mess and sat down to eat breakfast while reading MY BOOK.

Today, we have been talking about the wealthy people whose donations to various charities enabled the poor of London to have a less mean existence. And when you see the amount of money donated by some people, you can see immediately, with the Margaret Thatcher "Who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.", that modern-day society has collapsed, with the rich squirrelling away as much as they can in their offshore accounts.

Our author gives us a lovely example of how things were in the Sixteenth Century. There "were some small cottages … for some bed-ridden people … devout people … were accustomed oftentimes, especially on Fridays, weekly to walk that way purposely to bestow their alms."

What price that now?

Back in here, I read through my notes for the “Saturday Woodstock” programme, making a few corrections and additions ready to dictate the next time that I’m up early, whenever that might be. But the way things are going, it will be a while yet.

My cleaner turned up and fitted my anaesthetic patches, and after she left I came back in here to work. However, unbelievable as it may be, I dozed off.

The taxi awoke me and I staggered out into the lovely warm afternoon to drive down to Avranches. It was the chatty young female driver who took me so we had an interesting chat along the way.

At the centre, I was met with the bad news. Having insisted that I was losing weight and they denying it and insisting that these 200 grammes here, 300 grams there was correct, they performed another scan on me to determine my dry weight.

As I suspected, I have lost about three kilos just recently and I’m now officially below my preferred “inactive weight”. This also means that I had about four kilos of water to lose that they hadn’t extracted over the period that my weight was decreasing, and that means a stay of four hours.

All of the messing around meant that the procedure didn’t start until late either.

My blood pressure was horribly low so every fifteen minutes when the machine checked it, it sounded the alarm and the girls came running.

The je m’en foutiste doctor was there on duty so I complained to him. As usual, he didn’t seem to care so I expressed myself in somewhat … errr … forthright tones, but it made no difference.

While he was there, I also told him about my dizzy spells and the fall, but he didn’t seem to be too bothered either. He didn’t even examine me. He’s definitely in the wrong job.

The dietician came to see me too. They are all concerned about my loss of weight and in particular, the loss of protein. She was trying to persuade me to adopt a carnivorous diet, even though my body can’t digest animal fats and that I had a recurrence of my pancreas issues back in April.

These people really have no idea.

In the end, she told me to take as many as four disgusting drinks per day, and gave me several recipes to make it more palatable, including a recipe for a banana and orange milk shake, which totally threw me, seeing as about six months ago, she banned me from eating bananas and oranges because of the potassium.

The nurses came back and gave me some kind of electrogram test, although I don’t know why and neither did they.

During all of this, I was fighting off wave after wave of sleep but in the end I succumbed and poor Alexi had to awaken me to disconnect me.

Horribly late again, there was another passenger in the taxi and we had to drive miles through the Normandy countryside to drop him off, meaning that it was long after 19:30 when I returned home.

On the way in, I stuck my head inside the new apartment to see the work that the kitchen fitter had done, and it was so impressive. I can’t wait for him to come back and crack on.

My faithful cleaner has been busy too. She had been through my apartment here, tidying up and cleaning and it looks wonderful. Tomorrow, she’s going to blitz my bedroom so it all looks good for this photography session.

Tea was bangers and mash with vegetables. I don’t know why, but I had had a craving for them all-day. However, as is usual, they tasted much better in my imagination than they did in real life.

So now it’s bedtime, ready for a good day’s work tomorrow. There’s a lot to do and I can’t hang around. It won’t be done on its own.

But seeing as we have been talking about the je m’en foutiste doctor … "well, one of us has" – ed … during our chat, he told me "if you are really becoming fed up with being here for four hours, you can ask to be unplugged and then go home".

"If I could go home whenever I became fed up with dialysis" I retorted "I would never arrive at all"

Monday 7th July 2025 – MISERABLE FAILURE …

… that I am yet again, I was once more asleep when the alarm went off this morning. How many times is this now?

It’s not as if I had a late night either. It wasn’t 23:00, that’s for sure, but it wasn’t as late as 23:30 either. That means that for once, during the night, I had seven hours of uninterrupted sleep, and it’s been a long time since that has happened.

And “uninterrupted” it certainly was. I remember nothing whatsoever about anything at all during the night.

When the alarm went off, I struggled to sit on the edge of the bed, and that’s where I stayed for a good few minutes while I waited for the bedroom to stop spinning around.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then went off in search of my medication for the morning.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at the local technical college last night and there had been some kind of meeting in the great hall. Everyone had waded through there to fetch their meal, this meeting had taken place and slowly, everyone had left. We were some of the last to go. We were having a look around the place, looking to see where would be the best place to put some kind of permanent stage for holding meetings, but we noticed on the wall some small button-like things and realised that these were micro-camera lenses. The wall had been covered in micro-cameras to film what had happened at this meeting. As we walked out of the hall we walked down the front of some kind of supermarket where there were some military people investigating things with machines. We wondered whether they were using these unidirectional receiver things to pick up what people were saying on their mobile ‘phones from a distance. As we walked out, there was a commotion at one of the cash desks. It seemed that some soldier and some civilian were having an argument, the soldier had pulled his gun but the civilian was not backing down and was haranguing this soldier. Quite a crowd had gathered around to watch.

With no recollection whatever of this dream, I have no idea about what must have been going on in my mind … "neither have we" – ed … during the night and it certainly doesn’t seem to relate to anything that is currently or has recently been ongoing.

My only forays into the Technical College at Crewe were at nights where I learned paint spraying and welding, and where I did my first computer courses back in 1974 and 1975.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and returned my “War and Peace”, making a few comments as she did so. After she fixed my legs she disappeared off into the sunset for her week’s rest, but not before we’d talked about Alvin Tofler and SOME OF HIS MOST ASTONISHINGLY ACCURATE PREDICTIONS.

Once she’d left I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Today, we covered an extraordinary amount of ground, discussing many different subjects such as medieval games, including primitive ice-skating where "some tie bones to their feet and under their heels". I could write pages and pages about the sports that he mentioned and their descriptions, and so could he, apparently, for he mentions how the maidens would "dance for garlands hung athwart the streets, which open pastimes in my youth being suppressed, worse practices within doors are to be feared."

He talks about alms for the poor and gives several examples, including "Ethelwald, Bishop of Winchester, … about the Year of Christ 963, he in great famine sold away all the sacred vessels of his Church for to relieve the almost-starved people, saying that there was no reason that the senseless temples of God should abound in riches.". Contrast that with the Church today with their works of art, silver candlesticks and the like.

Another thing that he mentions is the rise in traffic in London at the end of the Sixteenth Century, commenting that "the World runs on wheels with many whose parents were glad to go on foot.", a quote that I have added to my little library because I have rarely heard a truer word spoken.

We’ve also had the accounts of several large households, sums that would be extravagant even by today’s standards.

In fact, I can say without fear of contradiction that this has been the most interesting day’s reading that I have had for quite some considerable time.

After breakfast, I began the arduous task of sorting out the kitchen. I’ve gone through the boxes with the plastic containers in and binned about 90% of the contents. Well, not actually “binned”, but earmarked for disposal. My faithful cleaner can then distribute them amongst the needy. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m doing my best to go over to glass and have amassed quite a collection of the big olive jars which I am now pressing into service.

Back in here, I made a start on editing the radio notes and by the time my faithful cleaner arrived, I’d edited about a quarter of them. This is going to be a very long job, I reckon.

After she had fitted my anaesthetic patches, we went through the medication and anything that is not actually in use went into an old box ready to go downstairs. We need to crack on with this emptying and tidying up ready for the estate agents to photograph the place on Friday ready for re-letting

The taxi was late arriving, we had to go to pick up another passenger (making three as there was already a passenger in there when it arrived) and what with one thing and another … "and until you’ve started, you have no idea how many other things there are" – ed … we were really late arriving.

There were also three ambulances there in front of us, one of which was a new patient. And they all were destined for my ward. Consequently it was 14:40 when I was finally connected.

Once I was finally off and running, I dozed off, to find myself being shaken awake by a panic-stricken doctor. Not, unfortunately, Emilie the Cute Consultant. Anyway, we had a good chat about chemotherapy and Paris. His idea as to why they are starting to give me the medication that my body rejected in 2016 is that they have now run out of other solutions. That makes for some grim reading.

He agrees though, and so does everyone else, that I ought to persuade them to send me to Rennes, closer to home and more relaxed

When I was finished, the taxi home was already waiting, but it was still 19:30 when I returned. And I wasn’t sure if I’d come to the correct apartment. My faithful cleaner had shifted a couple more loads downstairs.

It took me a while to recover and then I made a stuffed pepper, even though I didn’t feel like it. I have to eat.

So now, much later that I would have liked, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’ll crack on with the radio notes and see if I can’t complete the first run of the programme, to give me an idea of what I’ll need to edit to cut it all down to an hour.

But seeing as we have been talking about medieval games … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the most popular medieval games was “hide and seek”.
John Stow asked me if we played “hide and seek” in modern times, so I assured him that we did.
"Is it still an enjoyable game?" he asked.
"Maybe so" I replied "but I never really enjoyed it."
"Why was that?" he asked.
"Because I would always be the one who would have to hide" I replied "but no-one ever bothered to come to look for me!"

Thursday 3rd July 2025 – REGULAR READERS OF …

… this rubbish will recall that when they pass by during the night, those from the far-flung corners of the Globe (and a few from closer to home too), they usually find that the latest instalment has managed to crawl on-line at some point, and they can sit and peruse it at their leisure while those readers closer to home are still in the Land of Nod.

And so last night, or this morning, they are probably wondering what has happened that there was nothing on-line for them to read.

The truth was that I was in bed, and had been since 19:30 in fact, for at dialysis yesterday afternoon I had another malaise and went into a coma again.

Not that any of that is a surprise. It was well after midnight when I finally went to bed last night, and I was awake again at about 02:40. This time though, I didn’t manage to go back to sleep and lay there tossing and turning until about 05:30 when I finally gave up the struggle and arose from the Dead.

It’s dialysis day of course, so I went to have a good scrub up and shave just in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I went into the kitchen to take my medication so that I would be ready to Fight the Good Fight.

Back here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, but as I was expecting, there was nothing on it. That’s no surprise, seeing that I only had two and a half hours’ sleep. Instead, I found a few other things to do while I awaited the arrival of Isabelle the Nurse.

When she arrived, she gave me the next of this series of injections. If it is indeed to stimulate the red blood cells in their fight against the carcinogenic protein in my blood, it’s a mystery as to why they are only giving it to me for five days, without any other kind of control. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when this cancer was first diagnosed back in the winter of 2015-2016 when I was also taking this Retuximab, they were injecting me twice per day

After she left, the plumber turned up and we had a lengthy discussion about my plans. He seemed to be much more amenable to my ideas so I gave him the keys and let him loose downstairs to do his thing.

Now that he was downstairs, I went to make breakfast, but I found myself confronting a major problem. The fridge door was part-open, an enormous mound of ice had grown inside and the door wouldn’t close. Add to that the fact that the soya milk inside had “turned”.

Fearing all other kinds of problems, I turned off the fridge for the moment and made breakfast, and then sat down to eat it and read MY BOOK.

Our author tells us that "Henry I built his manor at Woodstock, with a park … He placed therein … divers strange beasts to be kept and nourished such as were brought to him from far countries, as lions, leopards, linces, porpentines and such other" – presumably, the UK’s first safari park.

He goes on to say that "King Edward II … commanded the sheriffs of London to pay to the keepers of the king’s leopard in the Tower of London sixpence the day for the sustenance of the leopard and three halfpence a day for the diet of the said keeper … More, in the 16th of Edward III, one lion, one lioness, one leopard and two cat lions in the said Tower were committed to the custody of Robert, son of John Bowre."

So London Zoo has a very long history indeed.

After breakfast, I had to empty the fridge and attack the ice mountain with an old hair-dryer, but I couldn’t do it for long because, with my head upside down, I was losing blood pressure and my head was spinning round.

There were several interruptions while I was trying to work. First, the plumber came up to give me a progress report, and then Rosemary ‘phoned about a problem that she was having with a tyre on her car.

After half an hour I had to give up the cleaning of the fridge until my head cleared, so I came back in here to do some work on the radio while I calmed down, but I could feel a wave of ill-health slowly sweep over me.

When my cleaner came to fit my anaesthetic patches, she noticed the mess in the kitchen so after having sorted me out, she waded into the kitchen, took all of the food off the worktop, and said that she’d be back later.

The taxi came early for me, and I was soon at Avranches with a very chatty driver entertaining us (we were two passengers) with conversation almost all of the way down to Avranches.

For a change, I was early at the dialysis centre, and for another change, I was connected up quite quickly. However, I didn’t even have time to switch on my laptop before I’d gone into a coma – blood pressure down at 8.8, apparently.

When Fleurette noticed, it brought her running and she quickly flattened my bed and raised my feet, and that was how I found myself ten minutes later, totally unaware of what had happened.

Everyone was, as usual, quite concerned about me and did their best to do something to help the situation, but I just wanted to go to sleep, which I did for about ninety minutes. But one of these days, I’m going to go into one of these comas and not wake up out of it.

The doctor came to see me and changed my prescription, telling me to cut out the blood pressure medication on the grounds that it’s working too well, and to see what happens over the next few days. I don’t know why they even gave it to me in the first place.

When it was time to unplug me, they were all worried once again and tried to make me use a wheelchair but I refused yet again. And for once that I was ready quite early, the taxi was quite late. I had to wait over half an hour before it turned up and that was just about the end.

It was the young, chatty guy who brought me home to where my faithful cleaner was waiting, and we went to have a look at the bathroom in the new place.

And what a shambles it is. Behind the bath, the plasterboard hasn’t even been skimmed – it’s just bare hydrofuge. The floor under the bath hasn’t been made good either, never mind tiled, and the pipework is all non-standard size, as if someone has wanted to use up a batch of ancient out-of-date pipe.

On the wall behind the bathroom cabinet, the plasterboard hasn’t even been skimmed and in places, not even painted.

All in all, I don’t think that my Barratt House of 1979 was as poorly-prepared as this.

Not that I’m complaining, of course. When I work out how much I paid for the place, I still have a bargain, and the work to put everything right is work that I would have had done anyway when the shower unit is built.

By now, I was feeling so ill that I could only struggle up the first flight of stairs, and I failed dismally on the second. I ended up having to go up from the half-landing in the lift and come back down the stairs from the half-landing above.

Once back in here, I had a brief look at the nice clean fridge that my faithful cleaner had cleaned while I’d been in dialysis, and then I went straight to bed. That was about that for the day.

Seeing as we have been talking about my bathroom … "well, one of us has" – ed … I shall have to bite the bullet and have it painted, I suppose.
And when I see the cabinet-maker who is going to paint everywhere, I shall have to tell him to put on two coats.
"Why two coats?" he asked.
"Well, it needs to be ready for winter."

Monday 30th June 2025 – WE ARE NOW …

… alone, STRAWBERRY MOOSE and me.

At lunchtime, The Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off into the sunset and the last that I heard, they were sitting in a hotel in Le Mans eating plastic pizza, ready to go for a blast down the Mulsanne Straight first thing tomorrow morning.

It’ll take me a while now to adapt to the quiet in the apartment and my accustomed solitude.

There was plenty of solitude in my bedroom last night, although I didn’t notice it. By the time that I’d finished my notes and gone through the usual routine, it was 22:30 when I finally crawled into bed, dead to the World, and I remember nothing whatsoever after that.

It was about 06:15 when I awoke this morning, with no memory of anything that might (or might not) have occurred during the night. There was nothing on the dictaphone either, so I took advantage of the situation by reviewing the radio programme for the coming weekend and sending it off.

Round about 07:00 everyone else began to stir so I went to join them in the living room after having had a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

We sat around chatting and drinking coffee for a while until the nurse came to see me. It’s the last day of his round today – tomorrow Isabelle the Nurse begins her round so he reminded me to tell her about the injections that start tomorrow. I can tell that he was pleased that he doesn’t have to do them.

The Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies and I stayed around to sort out a few things. When they returned, we had breakfast and then my friend packed away all of his gear into the car ready to leave.

My cleaner turned up as usual to fit my patches but spent more time saying goodbye to the Hound of the Baskervilles than she did attending to me.

After she left, we did a quick lap around the apartment to make sure that there was nothing left behind, and then we went downstairs to wait for the taxi.

It was my favourite driver today, which was nice, so we said goodbye to everyone and the two of us set off for Avranches.

Just for a change, we were early although it took quite a while to be coupled up. It was Alexi, the baby of the team, who dealt with me today. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her so we had a really good chat to catch up with events.

She told me that she’d just come back from holiday – in Japan – and that her father had bought her an olive tree for the garden at her new house now that she’s finished arranging it.

The bizarre news is that although it’s evident that I have some water retention, the amount of weight to be lost was “nil”. This lack of appetite seems to be having a good effect on my weight.

Alexi set it to 350 grams all the same, but when the doctor came by, he set it to 1kg, so Alexi came back to set it to 1,200. If I can push ahead, I will.

While he was here, I spoke to the doctor about the chemotherapy.

He thinks that fifteen sessions is far too many, so I asked him what he thought about going to the University Hospital at Rennes for the chemotherapy.

They could do the Retuximab at Avranches, but not the overnight chemotherapy. However he seems to know for a fact that they would do it all at Rennes.

The way I see it, it’s four hours in a car to Paris, four hours back that’s killing me off, on top of the treatment itself which is vicious, and the climb up the stairs here which, I hope, will soon be a thing of the past.

The idea about going to Rennes is that it’s only 90 minutes away so it’s far less travelling time. Then, if I’m really feeling dreadful, I can stay for a Wednesday night to recover and then come back on Thursday. And as Avranches is in between Granville and Rennes, I could be thrown out at Avranches for my dialysis on the way past.

That makes much more sense to me.

That’s how the doctor sees it too, and he told me to chat to them at the hospital in Paris about it when I go back for the next session.

Alexi unplugged me and compressed my implant, and when I weighed myself, I was the lowest weight that I have been for several years – only 700 grams above my “non-sporting” target weight and only 5.7 kilos above my athletic weight.

Alexi accompanied me to the taxi to hand the driver my bag, and I was disappointed that I couldn’t persuade her to come home with me to pander to my every whim. "I’ve too much work to do" she said, which I suspected was something of a cop-out.

The driver who brought me home was the one who spends all this time texting on his ‘phone as he drives. He’s going to come a nasty cropper one of these days, and I hope that it’s not when I’m in the car.

My cleaner was waiting for me back here, and she helped me stagger up the stairs into my apartment, and I have never felt less like doing it than today. It took me a whole half-hour to come round afterwards.

Although I wasn’t feeling hungry, I thought that I’d better eat something so I made a handful of pasta with veg and a vegan burger. And it was a struggle to force it all down, even though there wasn’t a lot of it.

So right now, early as it may be, I’m off to bed to sleep the Sleep of the Dead. I need it tonight.

But seeing as we have been talking about losing weight … "well, one of us has" – ed … a girl from Crewe went to the dietician to talk about losing weight.
The dietician told her "it’s not really a problem. Just take three sesame biscuits with a cup of mint tea at mealtimes."
And so the girl goes off home but half an hour later she rings up the dietician
"These sesame biscuits and cup of mint tea" she said. "Do I take them before or after the meals?"

Saturday 28th June 2025 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about this weight gain thing on Thursday.

The doctor seemed to think that there was something dramatically wrong with my metabolism that had caused the weight gain, and wanted me to come in early today for a four-and-a-half hour session to try to bring it under control.

On the other hand, I don’t know what she was expecting, but if you have 2 litres of chemotherapy fluid pumped into you, then your weight will naturally increase, but nature will take care of that over time. That was my opinion.

Anyway, what do I know about it all? I’m just a mere patient, so I bowed to her superior wisdom. I didn’t have any choice.

But anyway, last night, what with one thing and another, and once you make a start you have no idea how many other things there are, it was almost 01:00 when I finally made it into bed. It was not a very successful night either, because I spent much of what there was, tossing and turning about trying to make myself comfortable

Round about 05:42 I gave up the struggle to go back to sleep. There was this disgusting taste in my mouth (it’s still there by the way) and, as usual, I was feeling quite dreadful. It took about ten minutes to rise to my feet and had I had my way, it would have taken a lot longer.

The first thing to do was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from last night. I was back in Paris last night, preparing myself for another session of dialysis at the hospital. Fortunately the dream didn’t last long because I managed to awaken quite quickly but it really would have been my nightmare, I suppose if it had gone very further but luckily I awoke before the dream had progressed very much into it

Then I was preparing to go to dialysis again. I had organised my session for 12:00 so the taxi came and picked me up to run me down to the centre. There, sitting in the trees was a parrot that was clutching one of my large peppers. I thought to myself that I’d hoped that I’d ordered some peppers from the supermarket this week so that I’d still have some for next week

Finally, I was back in dialysis yet again. They were going to couple me up to the machine. My body weight was quite light there but they had this huge, heavy ball of things. I had a feel of it and it was really heavy and they told me that this was the amount of water that they had to take out of me today. It was enormous. Once again it was at that moment when I awoke.

There isn’t anything of the foregoing – the trip to Paris, the dialysis, the pepper from the supermarket, the rapid panic-awakenings to cancel out the dreams; that needs any explanation at all. Neither does the fact that it’s all preying on my mind when I’m supposed to be asleep and relaxing.

It seemed to be a rather late awakening for everyone this morning. Almost 08:00 when I heard signs of stirring coming from the kitchen, so I staggered off to the bathroom for a wash and brush up.

As you might expect at moments like this, the nurse arrived early today. He caught me in flagrante delicto and had to wait around for a few minutes while I finished whatever I was doing.

After he left, we had a coffee and then I made a little breakfast. I would ordinarily have done without this morning seeing how I was feeling, but they would only go berserk at the dialysis centre when they check my diabetes level.

One thing that I wanted to do was to write out my letter of notice for this apartment. I know that I said that I wouldn’t run the risk of the one downstairs not being finished. However, as I said yesterday, I can’t go on much longer like this, and I’ve lived in worse circumstances than what there would be down there, even with no kitchen. I’ll manage much better down there as things are rather than continue to struggle on trying to climb up here.

All of this called for more coffee (well, I didn’t) and a chat until my faithful cleaner came, earlier than usual because of my extended appointment, to fit my patches and to have a chat.

At 12:30 we went downstairs to meet the taxi driver, whom we met at the foot of the stairs just as he was about to come up, so we were away quite quickly. We picked up our other usual Saturday passenger and then I slept all the way down to Avranches. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … sleep is my “doliprane”.

For a change, I was one of the first to be coupled up. It was Anaïs and Océane who dealt with me today and Océane held my hand again. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I don’t know what she is after, but I don’t have it any more.

But I’m not going to complain under any circumstances. She can hold my hand as much as she likes … "and so can Anaïs, Alexi, Julie the Cook, Justine, Héloise, Amandine etc etc" – ed …

When they weighed me, they found that there was just 1.8kg to lose today, well within my three-and-a-half hour limit.
"But the doctor said four and a half" said Océane.
"The doctor doesn’t know what she’s talking about " I replied.

In the end, we agreed on a compromise of four hours.

However, when the doctor in charge came round, he took one look at the figures and reduced the time to three and a half hours.

This meant that I would have been able to be home early, and had the taxi been there instead of twenty minutes late, I would have been. Instead, we had to fight our way through all of the crowds going to the start of the town’s 10km road race just round the corner from here.

It was another struggle up to my little apartment, but at least my friend made me some tea, which was very nice.

We had a play with this recording desk afterwards, and then I sat down to write my notes for the day.

Now that they are done, I’m off to bed, and I can’t say that I’m not sorry. I’m still suffering the effects of the chemotherapy and I’m going to have to do something about it.

But seeing as we have been talking about losing weight … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a girl from Crewe whom I knew who wanted to lose weight.
The dietician told her "it’s simple really – just eat normally for two days, skip a day and then eat for two days, skip a day and so on"
After a couple of weeks the dietician sees the girl from Crewe and asks "how’s it going?"
"I had to stop" replied the girl from Crewe
"Why was that?" asked the dietician
"On the sixth day I wore out the rope."

Thursday 26th June 2025 – REGULAR READERS OF …

… this rubbish will recall that I usually upload my daily notes round about 23:00 (Central European Time) or thereabouts just before I climb up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire.

And so those of you who pass by during the night (because, of course, the time in Australia, Canada, the USA and other places where some of my regular readers hang out is totally different) will have come here in vain, and for that, I apologise.

The fact is that by 23:00 I had been in bed for at least three hours. We’d had yet another “health issue”. And now I’m beginning to understand why, when they sent me to the Universitair Ziekenhuis Leuven in 2016 for the first round of chemotherapy, they insisted that I stay within arm’s reach of the hospital and in a hostel where, at least, breakfast would be provided so that I would be assured of at least one meal per day, if I were too ill to make myself some food.

There was absolutely no indication this morning of any of this (or, rather, yesterday morning, but let’s not let ourselves be carried away with semantics here).

It was, as usual, a late night as I seem to have lost all of my motivation for pressing on for an early finish. However, for the first time since I don’t know when, miserable failure that I am, I was still asleep when the alarm went off at 06:30. And it took me a good ten minutes to find the energy to throw back the covers and rise up.

Whatever went on yesterday must have totally worn me out and I can see me being like this for the next couple of weeks … "prophetic words, those" – ed …

When I awoke, I had a thirst that you could photograph and an incredibly dry throat. And no water in my room. Whatever I’d brought in here last night I’d drunk before going to bed. And so this is going to be a real problem if it carries on.

The pain in my foot is still there. It’s becoming beyond a joke and I’m going to have to grab hold of the neurologist to see exactly what they intend to do about it, seeing as I’ve mentioned it in passing on several occasions and no-one seems to be taking any interest at all in it.

The first task was to check the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was doing something at work, looking for an address for a guy called “Address”. I couldn’t find one anywhere so in the end I wrote to him at the address that I had for him. It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I found out that his name was “Naddress” beginning with an “N”. Once I’d found out exactly his real name I then went and found his address so I thought that I was going to have to start this all over again. Then one of my colleagues from work came over and asked if I’d found anything for this “Address” person. For some reason I didn’t want to say that it was a mistake so I just said that I’d sent a letter out to whatever address that I had. She decided that she would do the same. I thought that I really ought to tell them the exact position and save everyone else a lot of work but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

So here I am, dithering about once more, trying my best to make a simple job turn into something much more complicated than it ought to be. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that seems to be the story of my life.

It might have been something of a lie-in for me, and it seemed to be for everyone else too because it was 07:30 when we all assembled in the kitchen for morning coffee. My taste buds are still distorted after that last bout of illness and so I’m having what they call, a café allongée – half coffee, half boiling water.

A café allongée is still stronger than the kind of coffee that you find served up in petrol stations in the USA. I remember the first time that they gave me a complimentary coffee at an American petrol station. "What do I do with this?" I asked. "Wash the car’s windscreen?"

However, I digress… "yet again" – ed …

The nurse came along, having ‘phoned to see if I were back (despite me telling him that he should come on Thursday as usual jusqu’à nouvel ordre). I told him the bad news, which was that starting on day 6 after my chemotherapy, there will be a series of injections to carry out for a week.

He didn’t seem impressed at all, as I expected, until he realised that it would be his oppo, Isabelle the Nurse, whose tournée it all fell into.

For a change, I wasn’t feeling like breakfast (and if I’m off my food, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I really am ill) I still felt that I ought to eat something, otherwise the diabetic register reading (as if I don’t have enough medical problems) will be below the floor and that will lead to many more problems at dialysis.

So half a bowl of porridge and a thin slice of toast found its way down. And, as subsequent events were to reveal, I’m glad that they did.

We’ve run out of bread again, (at least, I thought that we had) so I kneaded some dough for a sunflower-seed loaf and set it to bake when it was ready.

In between everything, in view of the fact that the freezer up here is full to the brim and has been since eternity, we sorted through it and chose a pile of stuff that could go downstairs into the new freezer, seeing as it has now been plugged in for a couple of days. We may as well see how it works, and take the opportunity to try it out.

That was when we found three well-frozen lumps of bread in the freezer

And that reminds me – we have to change the doors over on it because they are the wrong way round, hinged to the right instead of hinged to the left as I would like them to be.

My cleaner turned up rather later than usual to fit my anaesthetic patches, and so obviously the taxi turned up much earlier than it should.

My arrival at Avranches was much earlier than my appointment so I had to hang around for a while, but it was a combination of Justine and Julie the Cook who coupled me up, and it was one of the most painless that I have ever had. "fait avec l’amour" – “done with love” they said, and now I really am becoming worried, what with the secretary at the hospital the other day too.

When they had weighed me, they found that I was the heaviest that I had been for a while, which was no surprise with the two litres of liquid that they had pumped into my veins at Paris. And so they told me that I had to stay for four hours today. That was disappointing, but not unexpected.

The doctor on duty was the one with whom I had the argument the other week. She came and took my papers from Paris to go through them, and asked me several questions. She seemed to be quite satisfied, and then I could press on and work, preparing an order for LeClerc as we are getting through the supplies quite rapidly.

But I didn’t work for long.

After about two hours, I began to shake, shiver and tremble, and went deathly cold. And shortly afterwards, my machine’s alarm began to wail. The wailing went on intermittently for a while, with nurses coming to check and to switch off the alarm – until after about three hours, it shuddered to a halt.

That brought all the nurses running. Apparently, I’d been having a fever, my temperature had soared to 38°C (just 0.3°C below the critical limit when they have to summon the emergency services) and the blood in the needles had coagulated, blocking the circulation.

After a lengthy discussion with the doctor, they decided to stop the procedure and send me home (not that it would be any earlier, what with all of the discussions). “Could I come back on Saturday much earlier and have a session of four and a half hours?”.

Well, if I must, I must, I suppose.

It goes without saying that I was asked the six-million dollar question "would you like a doliprane?"

The taxi to pick me up hadn’t arrived so I had to wait ten minutes, during which period I saw Emilie the Cute Consultant. But she clearly doesn’t love me any more (in contrast with Justine, Julie the Cook and the secretary at Paris) because she found the greatest difficult in mumbling a bonjour. Nothing like our intimate chats last year in hospital, with her perched coyly on the edge of my bed. How times have changed!

Back here, I had a great deal of difficulty hauling myself up the stairs and into the apartment. And then into bed, with no food and no disgusting drink to console me. All I wanted to do was to sleep. Sleep is my “doliprane” – the miraculous cure for everything.

But seeing as we have been talking about my high temperature … "well, one of us has" – ed … when they were feeling my forehead, they mentioned to the doctor that my temperature was raging out of control.
"Well, don’t just stand there!" said the doctor. "Go and fetch the kettle! I could really do with a cuppa right now.".

Monday 23rd June 2025 – I HAD A …

… special visitor during the night last night – someone who hasn’t been to see me for quite some considerable time.

But more of that anon. This time tomorrow I shall be … well … not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting in a hospital bed in Paris where they will be starting this Rituximab cancer treatment.

Or, rather, restarting it, because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that was the product (or Mabthera, a generic thereof) that they gave me right at the beginning back in February 2016 after the chemotherapy failed.

And it worked at that moment too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was unable to walk and so ill that I had to live with friends because I was unable to cope by myself, yet six months later I was in Canada. I’m not expecting the same miracles this time, but any little help and relief that it might give me will be most welcome.

And in other news, it looks as if this apartment move will be taking place during the week of 18th-25th of August. That seems to be when the usual suspects are collecting themselves together, and I’m recruiting further volunteers if anyone else would like to join in. All are welcome and I do not practise any kind of discrimination at all. I hate everyone equally, regardless of race, creed, colour or sexual orientation.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, had I exerted myself last night I could have been in bed well before 23:00 but as usual, dillying and dallying about, it was about 23:30 when I finally crawled in underneath the covers.

When I awoke at 05:20 I was somewhere about in the dialysis centre but whatever it was that I was doing evaporated from my mind immediately … "not that there’s much in there to hold it in" – ed … which is just as well because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I don’t like to dwell on that place when I’m not there. It’s bad enough that I do when I am.

The first task that I undertook when I finally settled down at the desk (at … errr … 05:50) was to listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. And, as I said earlier, I had a special visitor come to see me. There was a group of us in a house somewhere and who should come in but our old friend (or mine, anyway), Zero. And what a long time it’s been since she last put in an appearance. I wanted to say “hello” to her but she walked right through the front of the house all the way to the stairs. I pretended to chase after, and she saw me, let out a squeal and ran upstairs. Her mother said something about going to frighten her away and that I had to look after her at that end of the room. My brother was upstairs in his room at the time and I could hear him and Zero talking to each other. I thought “how am I going to look after Zero at this end of the room if she has already gone upstairs?”. I thought in any case that he was supposed to be busy doing some things that he needed to do rather than sit around talking, but apparently not.

So here we go again. Zero having far more sense than to hang around chatting to me, and a member of my family turning up in my nocturnal rambles to spoil all my fun. I thought that we’d put all of that behind us, but apparently not. Presumably, some psychiatrist somewhere would come out with a few interesting remarks about this kind of situation, but it would all be news to me. There’s no other logical explanation for it, although whatever logic would have to do with what went on in my head during the night would also be news to me.

Round about 07:00 everyone else began to surface so I went for a good wash and scrub up ready for dialysis and Emilie the Cute Consultant, although I forgot to shave. And then we sat around waiting for Isabelle the Nurse to come to see me.

Almost as soon as she left, the taxi came round to take me to the Medical Centre to see the doctor about my heart.

At first, I saw his assistant who coupled me up to an echograph machine with a rapidity that took me quite by surprise.
"That’s not the first time that you’ve done this, is it?"
"Oh no" she replied. "Only a few thousand times.".

When she’d finished, she took me into the doctor’s room where he gave me a thorough examination.
"It’s not your heart that’s causing your problems" he said. "That’s working fine."

And that’s just as well because it’s only my heart that is keeping me going. With my low blood count and low blood pressure, my heart is having to beat about twice as fast as anyone else’s. Anyone’s heart can do that for a while, but mine’s been doing it for almost ten years. When it gives out, I’ll be gone in an instant.

But at least he found my heart and I still have one. I’ve not turned into a Conservative yet.

"Where’s all your paperwork?" he asked.
"No-one told me to bring any" I replied. "The dialysis centre arranged this appointment. I imagined that they would have sent you whatever you needed"
"You should always bring all of your medical paperwork with you when you come" he said
"I’ll remember that" I replied. "Do you know where I can hire a fork-lift truck?"

But as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock once said, "it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

Back here (in the rain) I was halfway through eating breakfast when the ‘phone rang.
"What are you doing tomorrow?" a voice asked
"Not a lot" I replied.
"Good. Come to Paris and we’ll start the Rituximab"

So there we are. Now a frantic ringing-round to book taxis and obtain permission from the Securité Sociale.

My cleaner turned up as usual to fit my anaesthetic patches and then we waited around for a while. As the weather was now back to sunshine, we went downstairs to wait outside.

The taxi was bang on time with our other passenger already in, and we shot off to Avranches at the Speed of Light, me with my eyes closed. It’s not very often I feel nervous as a passenger these days.

And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s no point being ten minutes early anywhere if you have to spend that ten minutes washing your underwear.

When we arrived there were three ambulances ahead of us unloading the horizontal patients so I knew how this would pan out. And when one of those ahead in the queue had a crisis and everyone had to rush to help, I knew that that was that.

Having a trainee didn’t improve my morale much, and my 13:30 arrival turned into a 14:30 coupling up.

The doctor came round to see me to ask me how I was.
"OK at the moment but it won’t be for much longer if you keep on prescribing me these" and I showed him one of the boxes of tablets that I’d been prescribed on Saturday, a product that contained lactose.
"And your doctor moaned at me a few weeks ago when I had that attack of pancreatitis"

He didn’t stay very long after that.

The dietician came to see me too, to ask how I was getting on with the disgusting drink that she prescribed for me.

When I told her that I was taking it as instructed, she replied "Good" and renewed the prescription for another three months. I should have said nothing.

Julie the Cook was back from her holidays and she had ten minutes to come to sit on my bed for a chat, which was nice. She’s a really nice, bubbly, cheerful girl and always has a smile on her face. She can also perch on my bed any time she likes.

When I was uncoupled, I went out to the taxi but we had to wait (and wait, and wait) for another passenger who needs a lot of assistance. And who is dropped off first so it was at 19:37 when we finally arrived home.

My adjustable stool had arrived this afternoon and so things are looking much more positive downstairs. The stool will certainly ease my cooking issues, as I can now sit down while I’m at the worktop cooking, and take the weight off my knees.

Tea tonight was baked potato, salad in balsamic vinegar and a mix of falafel and veggie balls. It was delicious as usual.

Tomorrow I have bags to pack, sandwiches to make and food to rustle up, seeing as I don’t know how long I’ll be staying. They say that I’ll be back on Wednesday, but we shall see. I’m really grateful that my friend is here to deal with the kitchen that will (hopefully) arrive.

But first, I’m off to bed in the hope that Zero will come back.

Seeing as we have been talking about the doctor’s surgery just now … "well, one of us has" – ed … the patient before me was complaining about having a very sore throat
"Right" said the doctor. "Go over to the window, stick your thumbs in your ears and stick out your tongue as far as you can."
"Will that make me feel better?" asked the patient
"Oh no" replied the doctor. "My wife’s standing on the pavement outside."

Saturday 21st June 2025 – I KNOW THAT …

… many of you spend the whole of your day gripping the edge of your seats in eager anticipation of the next instalment of my memoirs, and so I can imagine that those of you who made repeated visits here throughout the night to catch up with the news will have had a sense of dismay and disappointment on finding these pages performing a rather passable imitation of Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.

The fact is that I have spent almost the whole of the last twenty-four hours in bed. Alone, unfortunately, but it was probably just as well and it might even have done me some good.

There wasn’t the slightest indication of this last night when I went to bed. And so much has happened subsequently that I can’t even remember what time it was. It wasn’t early, I’m pretty sure of that, but I do remember that I was tired and that I didn’t stay awake for very long once I was under the covers.

It was 06:15 when I awoke, which is probably one of the latest times yet since my sleep patterns have been so disturbed, and the first task that I undertook was to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been. I was at school last night, in the final year of my sixth form. We should each have been doing some kind of independent work on our own during our free study periods. However, I had been doing something, something to do with the football. At first, I considered it to be a waste of time and tried to forget it and do something much more academic but in the end I went back and carried on doing these statistics and organisation of this football league. Then I thought that it’s just as good an education as doing anything else. However, I was talking to someone about it because we were living in Belgium at the time. The question of Georges Simenon came up and I explained that this is all about the metro station at Simonis. Where the name came from for Simonis was a derivative of the Belgian family name “Simenon” implying that their family in the past and maybe even today as far as I know had some kind of connection with the place.

Simenon was of course the author of the “Maigret” novels but he is probably more famous for his somewhat entangled web of relationships with which his long-suffering series of wives had to cope. The metro station “Simonis” which is the one to which the local bus would take me when I lived in Jette is named after Eugène Simonis, a Belgian sculptor who lived in the immediate area in the 19th Century.

There were some kind of works going on at Southampton Docks last night so all of the containers and container traffic for all the ships for export and the tunnel across the estuary there had to go north to a small port somewhere higher up the estuary. They had a video surveillance of the port to keep their eyes open for anyone who didn’t understand the message that everyone had received, and they noticed that there was a lorry that had been queueing for a couple of hours at the entrance to the port. They sent him a text message asking him what he was doing there. When he replied that he was trying to wait for the ferry, they asked him whether he had received the letter or not, or the e-mail, and he’d have to push on and go north to wherever this was. There was a long line of HGVs and containers heading north up this road towards the mouth of this tunnel and the little port that was there.

This doesn’t seem to relate to anything that I recall and as far as I can tell, has no significance.

I was about to go to a doctor’s appointment somewhere in South London. It was a complicated place to find, and in the end I ended up climbing over a wall of the hospital into the hospital grounds, finding the correct building and having the appointment. Next, and shortly after that, one of the girls in the house where we were lodging had to go. She was rather a sad girl so I decided that I’d go with her to cheer her up and one or two others did, so we had a minibus instead of the usual taxi to take us. This took us to the hospital, down a hill and into the car park. There, once in the car park, we had to swing out across the road, blocking the traffic, nearly hitting a green Ford Cortina and then reversing backwards in through the gates over these concrete teeth things. The girl climbed out and I wished her luck. I was hoping that she wouldn’t ask me where I went and how I arrived there but she didn’t. She seemed to know her way. One of my friends who was in there with us made a remark about having been here too. While we were waiting for her to come back, we were talking about one of our friends from school. Someone was talking so I asked “what was his place like?”. Someone said that he had three telephone coins just outside the side door. I asked “what on earth was he doing that for?”. He replied “that was how he came in and went out of his jail, by that way” so we were discussing that for a couple of minutes.

This area of South London is one that we have visited on numerous occasions during our nocturnal voyages, and one that I can’t understand because the only area of South London in which I’ve ever lived in is Wandsworth when I was working in that Italian restaurant one winter, and it’s certainly not there.

Everyone else began stirring at about 07:00 so I went for a wash and a good scrub-up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today, and then went in for coffee.

Isabelle the Nurse was soon along, and we had another example of her hidden side when she began to talk about why I wasn’t here the previous day. She keeps this side of her character well-hidden but just occasionally, a little glimpse of it is revealed.

By now it was about 09:00 and I could feel myself beginning to slide away. By 09:30 I couldn’t keep on going any longer and decided to go to lie down for a while. And just to make my day, the stabbing pain in my foot began again, and it’s still going on.

There I lay in bed, dead to the World, until The Hound of the Baskervilles barked to let me know that we had a visitor.

My faithful cleaner had come down to do her stuff and found me in bed. Nevertheless, she enticed me out and fitted my anaesthetic patches, then telephoned the dialysis centre to tell them that I was having another one of my crises.

She waited with me until the ambulance came, gave the driver his instructions, and we went down to the centre.

Because we’d been standing outside our building waiting, we were early arriving and although I was far too early for my appointment, they let me in and I was coupled up quite quickly.

They kept a close eye on me today, checking my blood pressure every 15 minutes, and I just slept right the way through the session – except when the doctor came to see me. And to my disappointment it wasn’t Emilie the Cute Consultant who had come to soothe my fevered brow but the doctor with whom I’d had that argument a few weeks ago.

There’s no point being early at the dialysis centre if the taxi is late coming to pick me up, and with a prescription issued by the doctor we had to go to two chemists before we managed to find all of the medication that we needed, so we were no earlier arriving home than we might usually have been.

It was a desperate stagger up the stairs and a desperate fall into bed, and that was how my day ended. And why you’ve had to wait until this morning to read this rubbish.

But seeing as we have been talking about the doctor … "well, one of us has" – ed … when she came to see me, I told her "I don’t know what’s the matter with me but I looked in the mirror and I looked absolutely dreadful"
"I’ll have to examine you to find out" she said "but I can say that there’s nothing wrong with your eyesight".

Friday 20th June 2025 – WE NOW HAVE …

… a plumber to do the shower. He charges much more than I was expecting but he’s available and willing to do the work. The only thing that I have to watch is that he wants to do his project in my bathroom rather than my project in my bathroom. That’s the kind of thing that irritates me intensely, so I shall have to keep a close eye on him.

And on Wednesday next week we shall have a kitchen – well, at least, a delivery of all of the flat packs that will need to be assembled and fitted. It’s all ordered and paid for, and paying for it was an adventure in itself, more of which anon.

So, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, last night I was totally and utterly wasted. I don’t think that I’ve ever been so tired. I staggered through the notes, the back-up and the statistics etc, feeling less and less like it as time went on.

In the bathroom I fell asleep while I was … errr … riding the porcelain horse and it took some effort to make my way beck here where I fell straight asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow. It was only 22:45 too, which makes a change.

And there I lay, fast asleep and didn’t move a muscle until all of … errr … 05:20.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … being awake is one thing. Leaving the bed is quite another thing completely. It was about 05:50 when I finally dragged myself out from under the bedclothes and saw the light of day.

First task was to transcribe the dictaphone notes. There was some drink that I was supposed to be drinking and its chemical composition was really precise. I’d stir it every day with a metal spoon. One day, I’d left the metal spoon in there. When I went to pull the spoon out, I noticed that half of the spoon had dissolved into the liquid and wasn’t there any more. I was wondering “what on earth is this caustic substance that I’ve been prescribed that I’ve been drinking two of these each day?”.

This sounds like the disgusting drink of which I’m supposed to take two every day. I shudder to think what it might be doing to my insides if its chemical reactions are as bad as its tastes.

Everyone seemed to wake up early this morning so I didn’t have long to spend in here. I went and had a good wash and then to drink some coffee and have a chat.

However, we were all interrupted. A taxi turned up to take me for a medical appointment.

Don’t ask me why, because I was convinced that the appointment is on Monday, but apparently not. So I quickly put on my shoes and went downstairs with the driver.

It was nice to be outside in an early summer’s morning so I wasn’t complaining, although I did wish that there had been someone there to greet me at the doctor’s when I arrived. And after waiting half an hour and having tried the doors and found them all locked, I telephoned the dialysis centre. They confirmed that it is indeed today.

When the driver turned up to take me home, one hour later, the doctor still hadn’t arrived. We went back downstairs anyway to speak to the receptionist of the medical centre. She told me that the doctor wasn’t in today. She checked my appointments on the central medical website and there it was – for Monday, as I had thought. And so we went home.

It goes without saying that I’d missed the nurse. I did ring her up but it was the answerphone that answered the ‘phone.

At least, I could now eat breakfast and drink some more coffee. I certainly needed it.

The next task was to contact the kitchen fitter to remind him that we were waiting. I gave him a gentle nudge with an e-mail and he rang me back as I hoped that he would.

We had another lengthy discussion about everything that we needed and he promised to send me a final schedule later in the afternoon.

The postie turned up in the middle of all of that and dropped off a couple of parcels. All that I seem to be awaiting now are the microwave oven and the kitchen stool. The kitchen stool will be a boon because I really am now struggling to stay standing up for any length of time.

After lunch, the cleaner turned up, closely followed by the plumber. We showed the latter round the bathroom and he seems to think that it’s straightforward, although somewhat complicated.

He doesn’t like my idea of a wall and thinks that I should have a glass panel, “so that there’s more light” – not that light has ever bothered me, and that I should run the pipework behind a false wall rather than embedded in the new wall. He also wants me to change the toilet for a new one.

However, unless there’s a very good reason (which we won’t know until we remove the bath) my plans are staying put.

It took him a while to sort out everything that he needed to know, and then we agreed a price. Or, rather, he told me his. It’s useless giving me an estimate because we don’t know what’s involved until we remove the bath but I know his daily rate. Had I had any more time left to find someone else I would maybe have thought twice, but if he can do the job by the middle of July, which he thinks is eminently feasible, then I shall have to bite the bullet. Each month longer that I stay here, I’m having to pay an extra month’s rent.

With it being such a nice day, my friend and I went for a walk outside afterwards. I went over to the clifftop and watched the sea and the boats for a while until the heat drove me back inside again.

By this time, the kitchen fitter had sent me the list. He’s going to order the stuff from the DIY shop, but I need to order the stuff from IKEA.

That took a while and I blanched at the price that came out of it all, but it has to be paid. I’m probably over-engineering the kitchen But I’m only ever going to do this once and it has to have an island, if, for the only reason, to stop me falling over.

When it came to pay it, the struggle for position of The Worst Bank In The World took a new turn as the Crédit Agricole refused to make the payment.
Consequently, I telephoned them, and they told me "it’s over your transaction limit".
My reply was "I don’t care about the transaction limit. I want to make the payment. What are you going to do about it?"
"We’ll send you a form. Sign it and send it back and we’ll raise your limit temporarily"
"So I have to wait for the post to bring it, and the post to return it?"
"I’m afraid so" she replied.
"How much money do you have of mine in your bank?"
So she told me exactly
"Good. I’ll take it all out and find another bank who wants it and who will do what I want"
"I’ll have the manager call you back"
It goes without saying that the manager has yet to ‘phone.

However, I have been in this position before and it’s not for nothing that I also have bank accounts in Belgium, the UK and Canada. Consequently, the kitchen is all paid for and the things will be here on Wednesday.

In between everything else, I was editing the radio notes that I dictated the other day. They aren’t quite half done but I’ll keep on going with half an hour here, an hour there until they are finished. But it’s difficult to work when you have visitors.

There was also some time somewhere for me to make a loaf of bread, seeing as we had run out. I don’t know where all of this energy came from – or all of this time either, but I’ve certainly been busy today.

Tea tonight was sausage, beans and chips. And very nice it was too. I certainly enjoyed it and so did my friend.

And now I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow I don’t think.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Crédit Agricole … "well, one of us has" – ed … an old farmer went into the bank to speak to the manager
"I need to take out a loan" said the farmer. "I need a new tractor and trailer and a few other bits and pieces"
"And how long will you need it?"
"I can pay you back over fifteen years"
"We can’t do that" said the banker. "To be honest, I doubt that you’ll live that long to repay it."
"Well, if I die" said the farmer "God in his Heaven will reward you when I arrive there."
"And what if you don’t go to heaven but go to hell?"
"In that case," said the farmer "I can give you the money myself when I see you."

Monday 16th June 2025 – I AM WASTED …

… tonight. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt as tired as this. I certainly won’t need much rocking tonight, that’s for sure.

Much of it is probably due to dialysis – it always takes it out of me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but some of it is probably also due to last night.

By the time that I’d finished doing what I needed to do, it was quite late. Once more, I was side-tracked considerably during the course of the evening writing my notes, and by the time that I went to bed, it was once more long after midnight.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly, but not for long. The Hound of the Baskervilles in the next room was dreaming and he spent about five minutes having a very tired and feeble barking session. Perhaps I should have lent him my dictaphone so we could have found out what it was that was going on.

After he’d finished, I did manage to go back to sleep but once more, not for long. At 05:10 I was awake again and at about 05:40 I hauled myself out of my stinking pit.

There was something that I needed to do as soon as I awoke but back in here afterwards, the first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was doing a coach trip to Canterbury. Somewhere round about Canterbury I was giving a talk to the passengers but I hadn’t managed to have the coach totally clear of the road. It was in a kind of dog-leg up against the kerb. A road-train of coaches, a machine pulling along a couple of carriages, coming past caught my mirror up, tangled it in its mirror arm and with the mirror arms tangled together, mine snapped and the other coach disappeared, taking it away … fell asleep here … although I could see the look of regret on the driver’s face. Later on, after my party was installed in their rooms, I went down the corridor to the room where this other coach party was lodged. I opened the door and was just about to step in when I realised that I should have knocked so I knocked and stepped in. There were people sleeping everywhere on the floor of this room. One or two people moaned and said something. At the very head of the table, at the top in the dark were all of the important people, and one of them must have been the coach driver. I asked if any of them had seen what had happened to the mirror arm that had become entangled up in the arm of their coach. A voice replied that as far as he knew, according to what had happened in the past, the mirror is still on the bus wrapped up in the other one’s mirror arm. It’s still there on the bus and tomorrow they will go down to pick it up and bring it back to me. I was hoping that at least it was still going to be there because anything could happen in a couple of hours overnight in a strange country.

At one time I was spending quite a few nights driving coaches in my sleep, but the incident of losing a mirror and arm on the road actually did happen to me once when I was taking a coach party to Llangollen. It’s also true that anything can happen in a couple of hours overnight in a strange country, as I explained to a group of Austrian policemen once when I had to take the European Union’s lorry to Vienna once in 1998 and they wanted me to park it at the side of the road a mere cock-stride from the Slovakian border.

There was also something about a pair of shoes last night. Someone had bought a pair of shoes from me when I was running a shop. They were one of the last pairs that I had and they wanted a guarantee that I’d reimburse them if they were to bring them back unused, which I gave them. But they needed a lot of convincing that it would work. Sure enough, a few days later, she was back and spoke to me in pidgin French like “theeeese ….. shooooes ….. noooooo ….. gooooood”, pointing that she wanted to bring them back. I don’t know what was the matter with her but I gave her back her money. Then she saw another pair of shoes and asked if she could take those instead. Those shoes were €153 so she could take them if she paid me €153. It ended up with quite a lot of discussion and argument but eventually she gave in and took the new shoes at the appropriate price.

This also reminds me of an incident that took place years ago in real life, but the World isn’t ready yet to hear it.

When everyone was awake in the other room I went to sort myself out and then join them for a coffee and a chat, interrupted by the arrival of the nurse who once more failed to take into account the Hound of the Baskervilles. Consequently, he was in and out in a matter of a couple of seconds and we could make breakfast.

After breakfast, the Hound of the Baskervilles took his master for a walk and I listened to the radio programme that I’ll be sending off this week for broadcasting at the weekend.

When everyone came back we sat around making plans until the cleaner came to fit my anaesthetic patches. She hung around, chatting for a while, and after she left we went downstairs to wait outside in the glorious sunshine for the taxi. And wait. And wait.

13:45 was when it turned up, 45 minutes late, with another passenger in it. It was a quick drive down there, but even so, it wasn’t until 14:45 that I was coupled up, with the usual second pin being much more painful than the first.

Once more, I was left pretty much alone except for when they thought that I’d gone into another diabetic coma and they all came a-rushing over. It seems that I’m not even allowed to have a little … errr … relax these days.

However, Emilie the Cute Consultant came over to chat with me for a while which was nice, and Anaïs sitting on the foot of my bed chatting for five minutes was nice too. I think that they did it just to make sure that I stayed awake.

While I was there, I replied to the edition of WAR AND PEACE that my kitchen fitter sent me, and I hope that we can sort it all out now so that I can push on with the ordering while I have someone here to accept delivery. I’m in a rush to be started.

When i’d been uncoupled, I had to wait for the taxi to arrive. There was another passenger in there too who required dropping off at Kairon so we weren’t back here until after 19:30. I’m certainly seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed, thanks to these new Social Security rules.

There was quite a reception committee waiting for me, and they all helped me upstairs. And I needed it too.

Tea tonight was broccoli stalk soup with fresh bread – another delicious meal. We really are eating well here.

Right now though, I’m off to bed. I can’t keep my eyes open. I’m really exhausted tonight.

But seeing as we have been talking about buying shoes … "well, one of us has" – ed … a woman from Crewe went into the shoe shop one Saturday to buy a pair of shoes, and chose a nice pair.
As he was cashing her up, the assistant said "you’ll find these a little tight at first. You might have a pain in your foot for the next couple of days."
"Well, that’s no problem" said the woman from Crewe. "I won’t start wearing them until Wednesday."

Monday 2nd June 2025 – WHAT AN ABSOLUTE …

… debacle this afternoon was. Almost anything that could have gone wrong did go wrong and I ended up being one extremely tired, unhappy bunny.

You are probably thinking that I seem to dwell on the depressing side of life, but that seems to be all that’s happening right now. The solution to this would have been, in the past, to changer les idées as they say around here, but how do I do that when I can’t go anywhere or do anything?

Last night was another one of those nights where I seemed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and what should have been an early night ended up being much later than intended. I just can’t seem to concentrate on anything right now and it’s driving me berserk.

When I finally made it into bed though, I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed until … errr … 05:50. It took me a few minutes to gather my wits, which is a surprise seeing just how few I seem to have these days, and then, in a magnificent fit of enthusiasm, I dictated the radio notes for the eleventh track of the radio programme that I was organising yesterday.

Having done that, I wandered off to the bathroom to sort myself out and make myself look pretty in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. And in the kitchen, as well as the medication, I cut the bread that I’d baked yesterday and put half of it into the freezer.

After the medicine I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And no-one was more surprised than me to discover that there was actually something on there from the previous night when I was convinced that I hadn’t been anywhere at all.

First task therefore was to transcribe those notes and add them in to that day’s entry. If you’re interested, you’ll have to go back and have a look.

Having done that, I could turn my attention to last night’s notes. There was a girl I knew who had been staying as some kind of paying guest at a house somewhere in the countryside. She’d taken with her some of her urban habits to which they were not particularly accustomed. On one occasion she had to go to try to find a job somewhere. She went for an interview of which she seemed to take control, and when she returned, she told the owner of the house all about it. She told me later that she was horrified that she’d been behaving like that because it was not the kind of behaviour to which he was accustomed, although of course she and I had a joke about it and a laugh. After staying there, she came back to live in temporary accommodation in the town again where she could pick up with her usual habits and way of life, and not be out there on a limb in such an extraordinary position.

This reminds me of a girl whom I used to know in Brussels. She was a free-lance worker for one of these NGOs and her work was interesting, but irregular. On one occasion she had no money to pay her mortgage so I agreed that she could come to stay with me for twelve months and let out her place to a tenant on a short let in order to catch up with her arrears of mortgage.

She would have been the type to have taken control of an interview, and she was also the type who seemed to do nothing but complain about how far out of town my apartment was. I did offer to push it closer to the city centre for her but the humour went right over her head. After she left, she didn’t speak to me after that and I’m still waiting for her to make some kind of “gesture” towards the accommodation. Not that I was expecting any but a gesture would have been nice.

The nurse turned up and organised my legs, with more of the banal talk that gets on my nerves. Luckily it’s Isabelle the Nurse for a week starting tomorrow, which will cheer me up.

After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re now on a whistle-stop tour of various castles as we dash towards the end, not hanging around long in any of them. Our author seems to be losing his interest in them, judging by the lack of clear description, and I can’t say that I blame him.

He tells us on page 490 that for Taunton Castle, "The inner court is further subdivided into two parts, of which the eastern half seems to have been raised into a sort of platform upon which probably Ine’s actual residence was placed.".

Just a handful of lines further down he tells us that "The walled part is roughly triangular, the base being the east side, arid the truncated part open to the west. This area seems further to have been divided by a cross wall into two parts, the keep, hall, and gatehouse being in the western, and in the eastern, the earthworks, which favours the notion of this having been the old English citadel.", totally forgetting that he mentioned that just a few lines previously.

On page 498, with regard to Tickhill Castle, he tells us that "The outer front of the first floor is ornamented with four stiff rude pediments". I don’t know about you, but my imagination is working overtime.

Back in here I attacked my Welsh homework and finally finished the outstanding unit ready to send off. I also reviewed the radio programme that will be broadcast this coming weekend and sent it off. It’s a concert that came from Germany in 1982 and it’s certainly interesting.

My cleaner put her sooty foot in the apartment and sorted out my patches, and then I waited for the taxi. And waited. And waited. And waited.

It was 13:11 when it finally turned up and I was not in a very good humour. We arrived at Avranches at 14:00 and it was, would you believe, 14:45 when I was finally coupled up.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had vowed to “have a discussion” with them about this fiasco of changing the dates, and so regular readers of this rubbish will recall that, knowing my luck, it would have to be Emilie The Cute Consultant on duty today.

She explained basically that it was only an idea, apparently not understanding that it’s the kind of decision that involves not just me but half the town as everyone else has to shunt their appointments around. She definitely doesn’t love me any more now.

No-one else bothered me at all. They were far too busy organising a new visitor who was not co-operating with them. I tried to revise my Welsh but I couldn’t keep going and drifted off into oblivion, to be shaken awake by the little student who told me that things were finished.

Nevertheless, they took their time sorting me out and the little student drew the short straw so uncoupling me took longer than it should. Weary and exhausted, it was 18:50 when I finally staggered out to the taxi and it was 19:35 when I finally sat down in my apartment.

And so I’m just about done for the day. It’s an afternoon that I would like to forget, and the quicker the better too.

Right now I’m off to bed where I would like to sleep for a hundred years but I’m up early tomorrow to go to Paris. I am not looking at all forward to this trip. Not in the least. But before I go to bed, I’d better check on my stiff, rude pediment and make sure that it’s OK.

But this idea of moving my apartment towards the city centre reminds me of the American tourist who staggered into a pub in Dent and asked the landlord "why did they build the railway station so far from the town?" (it’s three miles away).
After thinking for a moment, the landlord replied "they probably thought that it was a good idea to build it at the side of the railway line."

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: doctor

Monday 21st July 2025 – THAT WAS THE …

Thursday 17th July 2025 – MY KITCHEN DOWNSTAIRS …

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Thursday 10th July 2025 – I AM FED UP …

Monday 7th July 2025 – MISERABLE FAILURE …

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Monday 16th June 2025 – I AM WASTED …

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