Category Archives: doctor

Monday 17th February 2025 – I AM DEFINITELY …

… sickening for something, and it’s going to be tremendous, I reckon. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … when I am off my food then you know that I’m ill, and this evening I struggled even to eat a kiddies’ portion of food

This burst of energy that I had yesterday, of course it was far too good to last but at least I made the most of it while I had it.

After I finished doing my night-time chores I watched Stranraer beat Elgin City by a goal that, if it had been scored in the Premier League, YOU WOULD BE WATING FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIVES. It really was that good.

It was after midnight when I finished letting it all hang out and went to bed, ready for a good sleep. At 04:40 I gave up the struggle and raised myself from the Dead. No point lying in bed being unable to move or unable to do anything, drenched in perspiration.

Instead, I went into the bathroom, had a wash and a shave, washed my undies and then went into the kitchen to have my medication and to have a little think

Back in here, then as a matter of form I checked the dictaphone but there won’t be anything on it if I haven’t been asleep. Instead, I found a few things to occupy my time, forgetting maybe the most important, which is to check the radio programme that will be broadcast this coming weekend.

And that reminds me – I hope that you enjoyed the one that was broadcast last weekend. You won’t hear that anywhere else.

Isabelle the Nurse was early, which was a surprise. It’s her last day today before her oppo takes over so I expected her to be snowed under with blood tests and injections and so on. But apparently not.

Nevertheless, it was only a brief chat and then she cleared off, leaving me to my breakfast and MY NEW BOOK.

Our author is at it again. On page 351 he tells us "There was therefore no necessity for any high road leading to, or even very near to, the villa. A road of some sort there naturally was, but probably not often a high road. … The existence or non-existence of a Roman road hard by has little to do with the distribution of Roman villas"

On the following page he tells us "It is exceptional for the vestigia of villas to be unearthed save at long distances apart, but exceptions do occur, and naturally some parts of the island were more sought after than others. Around the shrunken remnants of Somerton, once the capital of Somersetshire, lie or lay the ruins of a dozen or more of villas … all served more or less immediately by the road from Ilchester through Street and Walton"

Back in here I began my Welsh homework and hadn’t quite completed the first half of it that I had intended to do when my cleaner stuck her head in the door ready to deal with my anaesthetic patches

After she left I waited, and waited quite a while for my taxi to arrive. Today it was the 12-seater minibus for just me and someone ese, and he left halfway through the journey at the Aqua-gym.

And the ambulance nearly left me behind too because we had another pantomime with me trying to climb into the vehicle. Eventually I managed it, only to have another one as I tried to climb back out again.

But there is something that I noticed – and that is my body instinctively rejects certain methods which, on reflection, I know will fail and instinctively tries to look for solutions which, on reflection, I know will succeed. That’s the strangest thing about all of this.

Hours late for my appointment, the system of “what doesn’t go in won’t be there to come out” seems to be working because there wasn’t as much as usual that needed to be removed. I was hoping that they could still leave the machine turned up full so that the process would be completed quicker and I could go home sooner, but apparently it needs to be apportioned equally over the allotted time.

The doctor in charge of the unit came to see me today. He didn’t mention this extra session, so neither did I. However I did tell him about my health problems right now and so he told me that if I bring in my details from Paris for him to read, he’ll contact the hospital there to compare notes.

My nurse today was Julie the Cook so we had a good chat about baking and she showed me a photo of the cake that she had baked for her birthday the other week

So after another painful four hours they let me out and my taxi, a normal one this time, was waiting to take me back home.

We did however have a complication in that my phone hadn’t fully-charged during the night. The battery was now flat so I couldn’t warn my cleaner that I was on my way home. Consequently she had a desperate scramble to come downstairs to meet me.

The climb back up here was agonising in this current state of health, and I collapsed into a chair on arrival. I couldn’t loiter around because I had bread to make and then to sort out tea.

Luckily the pepper wasn’t very big today so with a handful of pasta and another handful of frozen veg that was all that I managed. And that was a struggle too.

So now I’m off to bed in the home that I’ll be able to sleep, and maybe I’ll feel better in the morning.

Some hope though. It reminds me of how I was feeling a few years ago and just happened to bump into someone who I hadn’t seen for ages.
"Eric" he exclaimed. "What a surprise to see you. Someone told me that you had died"
"Well, you can see for yourself that I am not"
"I’m not too sure about that" he said.
"What do you mean?"
"I know the guy who told me" he said "and he’s much more reliable than you."

Saturday 15th February 2025 – I REALLY AM …

… off my food. And that can only mean one thing – and that is that I am going to be ill. It’s quite simply not normal for me to be off my food.

That’s something that I can well do without because I have far too many other things going on right now to worry about that.

Sleeping is one of them. I was not unreasonably late in bed last night after I’d finished what I had to do, but now for the howevermenyeth night in succession I could count the minutes of sleep on one hand

Once more, tossing and turning in a perspiration-laden semi-comatose state waiting for something to happen. I might have been asleep at some point but I was wide awake when the alarm went off, actually planning on raising myself from the Dead..

In vast contrast to the other more recent nights, I was wide-awake too on leaving the bed and I was thinking “this can’t be correct at all. I can’t have had as little sleep as this over the last few days and still feel rather sprightly (well, comparatively sprightly)”

Not just washing myself this morning but washing my clothes too. It’s Saturday so the night attire and undies go into the sink for a good scrub around so that I can keep on top of the wash. With so few clothes in this apartment, that’s important.

In the kitchen I had the medication, including the sunlight solution, and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. No Zero, no Castor, regrettably. They have probably gone for a rest to prepare themselves for the next time that I’ll need them

Instead there was a young person at home on its own in the house so it decided that it would go to have a shower. As it was stripping off its clothes and putting on a dressing gown ready to go into the bathroom it noticed that the window in the dining room was slowly sliding open and could see a shadow outside. The person screamed. Whatever it was outside also screamed and ran off screaming. A couple of minutes later the parent turned up with a small child in tow, obviously scared to death. What had happened was this this was the younger sibling of this other child that had come home and because it couldn’t open the door it decided to climb in through the window. But just at that moment its elder sibling had seen it while in a state of deshabille, had screamed and the younger sibling had run off to find its parent. The mother ordered an enquiry about who hit who and who screamed at who and who did what. In the end the truth was brought out but no-one claimed to have hit anyone else although someone claimed to be hit. In the end the mother took an SD memory card and went to download the information onto the SD card but the child who had told the story wanted it left where it was rather than moved and was then having to find a way to think of either distracting its mother or trying to persuade its mother not to do it.

Putting in an SD Card in order to extract a memory – if only it were that easy. It would save me a lot of time but it doesn’t really happen like that. I’m impressed that I’m dreaming in French though, even if I don’t have a clue as to what this dream might be referring.

And then I walked into a pawn shop last night and was having a look around. I noticed on the wall there were two really long boxes with a well-known make of amplifier written on it, a bass amp. The boxes were bent, implying that their contents inside were bent, but the price was €269:00 for one of the amplifiers. I knew that that probably wasn’t a tenth of the price that it was worth because these were proper stadium amplifiers of the type that you would have on the stage in a stadium when you are playing bass to thousands of people. I went and had a look and opened one of the boxes. It was certainly bent but it was exactly what I was thinking. I thought that maybe I was onto something here. I asked if they had a bass guitar that I could use. They said that it comes with a bass guitar and produced a very bent and battered Fender clone. It was completely blank of any name so I wondered “it couldn’t possibly be … could it?”. I had a look at the pickups and they were called “Mercury” which didn’t ring any particular bell and any importance. Of course as soon as I opened all of this everyone began to crowd around wishing that they had seen it first but I wasn’t going to let this lot go out of my hands without some kind of a fight.

This of course relates to the Genz Benz combo amp that I found in a pawn shop in Ottawa when I’d gone in there with my cousin Sandra to look at something else. And the Jaguar bass came from a pawn shop in Montréal. I used to have hours of endless funs in pawn shops in Canada, but not in the USA. The hundreds of guns on open display in an American pawn shop is enough to put the willies up anyone

Finally, I awoke again, right in the middle of this next dream and lost half of it but it was something to do with increasing the size of the keyboard by having two new characters to increase the scope of names that were available but I can’t remember any more about it than this. I really did awaken too, and it was all of this that was going on when the alarm went off.

Isabelle the Nurse was in another big rush today. Plenty of blood tests to carry out today. Yes, her oppo is back in a day or two so everyone is having them done right now beforehand.

After she left I made breakfast (I did have breakfast) and read MY NEW BOOK.

And never have I been so confused as he probably was either. On page 291 he tells us that "the habit of accidentally losing things is no special peculiarity of modern days, and a Roman was as liable to lose his purse as any other man. He might lose also his hunting-gear, brooch, ring, or pocket-knife, and the chance discovery of any single article of such personal character is no more proof of a ” site” than it would be to-day."

However, when talking about a site at Masham in North Yorkshire, he tells us that "it is absurdly called a Danish Camp in the vicinity. The late Mr. Lukis had a statuette of Diana in silver, 8 inches high, which was ploughed up in the field next to the camp."

So why is the statuette of a Roman goddess, not actually at the site but “in the field next to” it, proof or disproof of anything?

Back in here I had bills to pay. It’s that time of the year again and I can’t see why one particular bill, a failed monthly standing order, comes up every month as regular as clockwork when, each time I go to pay it on-line, the payment order automatically inserts the bank account details that they say I haven’t supplied?

My cleaner appeared on time to fit my anaesthetic patches and to help me prepare my bag, and then stayed and chatted for a while until the ambulance turned up.

Yes, an ambulance. Saturday is a strange day when timing goes out of the window, and an ambulance dropping people in Granville and its next pick-up back in Avranches means that I don’t have to wait as long as otherwise I might.

My way of clambering into the rear has them all bewildered though and although it is their natural instinct to try to help me, there’s only one way that it works and only I know that particular way.

Leaving the vehicle is just as bewildering but it does work and I was eventually safe and sound in my bed.

Connection wasn’t as painful as some have been, but once the anaesthetic wore off then I knew all about it, to be sure.

They took a blood test today, the miserable doctor came round to ask what he could do for me (“nothing, thanks”) and then I was left pretty much alone. I revised my Welsh and spent the rest of the time doing some research into something that I had wanted to do for a while

When I was unplugged the taxi to take me home was already here. It was the driver who usually brings me home on a Saturday but once again, he wasn’t as talkative as he used to be. I have the impression that this is really his usual self and when he was more talkative, it was to probe me about some of the other drivers.

My cleaner was waiting again and she watched as a very weary me stumbled upstairs and collapsed into a chair.

A small tea, write my notes, then I’ll do my dictating and go to bed. I hope that I’ll feel better in the morning.

But seeing as we have been talking about tha ambulance … "well, one of us has" – ed … they were telling me that they had taken someone from last night’s football to the Accident department because of an injury that he had suffered during the game.
When he saw the sign he said "not there! not there! You’re taking me to the wrong place!"
"What do you mean?" they asked
"That basket back there who did this – he did it on purpose!"

Thursday 13th February 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… about anyone else around here, but I reckon that I’ve had enough now and I wish that I would be somewhere else right now. Even shovelling coal into the fires down below can’t be any worse than this.

A few days ago I mentioned that I can’t do with too many more days like the one that I had then, but today I reckon that we’ve reached the stage where there’s no longer any pleasure left in anything any more. As I said right back at the start of all this ten years ago, I’ll keep on going as long as there is something left to enjoy.

It might have been something to celebrate, I suppose, that I had a night last night where I was in bed at something like a realistic time. Not 23:00 of course, because those days are long-gone, but something not too far unadjacent to that.

Once I was in my bed it didn’t take too long to go off to sleep and if only Id have stayed asleep it wouldn’t have been so bad, I suppose, but another mobile, perspiring night. Although I might have slept longer than the ninety minutes of the previous one, it didn’t seem much like it.

When the alarm went off this morning I was just as wasted as yesterday morning and it was yet another undignified stagger into the bathroom. A wash and a shave later, I was in the kitchen taking all of my medication and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night too.

And so it happened, I had. But these continual bouts of awakening had interrupted any sequence of anything important. There was something about Prehistoric man and about being in bed in comparatively modern times but as soon as I awoke, whatever it was that was going on at that particular moment just evaporated and I lost all of it. But I was certainly in bed and it was certainly something of particular interest.

No prizes for guessing where this idea about Prehistoric man comes from. I’ll really have to stop reading these books on ancient architecture. But I wish that I knew where this dream was going.

There was also a woman with whom I used to work once making an appearance last night. She was visiting this prisoner-of-war site at the west end of Crewe where people were incarcerated after the fighting had passed by. She’d gone there to check on their needs etc but the Belgian Government wanted an assurance from the British Government that any changes would not be applicable and were to be backdated but the British Government would not agree to do this so the prisoners were held and she was to check on them but there was much more to it than this and I can’t remember a thing now.

Why this woman should be there I really don’t know because I can’t have thought about her even once since I moved on to pastures new all those years ago. But I’ve no idea where the prisoners of war fitted in. However in the South Cheshire area there were two prisoner-of-war camps, which later became Displaced Persons camps

There was also a group of us in work having a good time passing the time working, chatting to each other. The question of what we were going to do that evening came up because it was a Friday. I said that if I could find someone to go dancing with me I’d be off to the nightclub. “How are you fixed?” She said one or two words and then said “yes, why not?”. So we left the office and walked hand-in-hand down the street, skipping and laughing, down to the nightclub. But there was never anything serious about it. She spent most of the time telling me about her boyfriend and how ever since they had met they had only spent three days away from each other so I knew that this was just the whim of a moment and that it would be all over in a couple of hours by the time the nightclub closed but it was one of those things that you have to seize the moment as it goes by.

This was my Irish friend again, the one who had far more sense than to hitch her cart onto my star, and who can blame her? But almost Getting The Girl is a darn sight better than what usually happens in my dreams. But even in a dream, I realised that it was just something ephemeral, and that’s interesting

Isabelle the Nurse turned up late and in a whirlwind of a rush. Apparently everyone is making their requests for blood tests before her oppo comes back at the weekend and I can’t say that I blame them. I will almost inevitably do the same.

After she left I made breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK. We’ve finished hillforts and now discussing dwelling houses. But he can’t leave off hillforts for long and we’ve had a delightful ramble through Caer Seion near Conwy

This is a fascinating place because it consists of two forts, one inside the other, but there is no internal communication between the two parts. You have to go back outside the one and come back into the other.

Digging around on the internet, I found an archaeologist’s report from the 1950s. His conclusion went something along the lines that "all dates are inconclusive and capable of several interpretations".

Back in here afterwards I had tidying up to do and I didn’t accomplish anything like what I wanted to do because a text message told me that the taxi was coming early.

Once I was in it, we drove all around the town, to areas that I didn’t know existed and then the four of us, driver and three passengers, set off for Avranches.

They weren’t ready for my at the dialysis centre so I had to wait, but once I was seen it was another painful session where I was in agony.

It wasn’t just four hours either. A nurse came along and said "we’ve seen your weight graph, and the doctor says that you have to stay for an extra half-hour". And by this time the stabbing pain in the sole of my foot had started up..

A doctor appeared shortly afterwards so I complained. "Are you going to make me sit here for four and a half hours in this agony and do nothing about all of the tests that I’ve had on this arm that show an anomaly?"
"I’ll prescribe an anaesthetic spray" she said
"An anaesthetic spray isn’t going to do me much good" I said. "I’m not going through all of this every time I come here for the rest of my life. It needs to be dealt with"
"I’ll have a look in your file" she said, beating a hasty retreat.

When they came to unplug me, they brought me more bad news. The weight graph shows no signs of stabilisation so as of next week I may well have to come in four days per week.

Having arrived early, I was hoping to be home early but with the extra half-hour and the delay at the start it was even later than usual by the time that I returned, totally and utterly exhausted, and completely fed up.

There was no energy left in the tank to make tea. A baked potato and some salad was the best that I could do, and now I’m off to bed. And if I don’t awaken in the morning I couldn’t care less. “Tomorrow is another day” they say, but it will be just like this one.

All of this reminds me of the story of the man who goes to see the doctor about his (the man’s, not the doctor’s) chronic alcohol problem
"If you keep on drinking like this" said the doctor "you are going to die"
The man turned to the doctor with a smile on his face and said "when?"

It’s better, I suppose, than the doctor who announced to his patient "I can’t find what seems to be the matter with you. It must be due to drink"
"That’s no problem" said the patient. "I’ll come back when you are sober".

Monday 10th February 2025 – I’M FED UP …

… of asking people questions and having a completely different response to that which would have answered the question and terminated the discussion.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall when in Québec I encountered Spruce Beer for the first time, so I asked "is this beer alcoholic?"

The response was neither “yes” nor “no” but "that’s over there"

Today at the Dialysis Centre I asked the doctor "have you prescribed me a sleeping pill?"

The response was neither “yes” nor “no” but "do you want one?"

Leaving aside the ethical question of patients self-prescribing their own medication with the connivance of doctors, what’s wrong with anyone answering a question simply and straightforwardly?

As you can tell, I’m in a foul humour this evening. And it started out so well too.

Last night, by the time that I’d finished my notes and done what I had to do, it wasn’t all that late so I headed to bed at something like a reasonable time for once. And that cheered me up.

Once in bed I was asleep fairly quickly and there I stayed until all of about 05:30 when I heard the phantom doorbell. At least, that’s what it said on the dictaphone round about that time. I have no recollection of that at all.

When the alarm went off I was away with the fairies (although not in any situation likely to bring forth comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine) and it was a very weary me who staggered off into the bathroom

It’s Dialysis Day today so I had a good clean-up, a shave and so on ready for if I encounter Emilie the Cute Consultant and then went for my medication, remembering not to take the medicine that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had a girlfriend at school. She used to come into school later than we did so when I came in I would go to my classroom and about 08:25 she would turn up. But one day there was a load of people in our classroom who didn’t belong in there, some kind of managers or something like that. I imagined that they would have an awful lot to say about this girl coming into a different classroom in the morning. I was there waiting for her and round about 08:20-08:25-08:30 she hadn’t turned up but I had some things to do so I went into the boss’s office next door. I caught a glimpse of her and she smiled at me and went into our room. I took these things for the boss and went back into our room. There was my girlfriend on the scales weighing herself. Really disappointedly she’d reached 325lb this week and was very disappointed by that. I noticed that she’d filled out this white dress suit that she was wearing, filled it out rather too much. We basically agreed to see each other at lunchtime and then she cleared off. The teacher looked at me, looked at the people who were surveying the class, looked at me again and asked me some comment about the girl, then looked at these people again as if to say “just be careful what you say because they’ll be writing it down and noting it”.

Weighing yourself as you go into a room? What does that remind you of? It certainly does to me.

To each his own of course, but attraction is a very personal thing – as they say over here des gouts et les couleurs on ne discute pas – but my ideal kind of girl would be one whom I could throw over my shoulder and carry off to bed. Strangely enough, apart from once at school, I have never ever ended up with anyone at all like that. It just goes to show that life and fate sometimes deal out some very strange hands and you have to play them as best as you can. Whoever would have thought 30 years ago that I would have ended up in a relationship where there was a child present?

It’s true nevertheless that our school bus, which was the prolongation of a service route, always used to arrive first and a couple of girls with whom I spent some time used to travel on the last one to arrive. As for the rest of the dream, it rings a vague bell somewhere in the back of my mind that is best left there.

Having finished that I made a start on finishing off the radio programme that I’d started yesterday. However, Isabelle the Nurse interrupted me. We talked about Carnaval and her float while she sorted out my legs, and then she cleared off, leaving me to make my breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.

We’ve moved on now to discuss the construction of an earthen fort, with helpful plans and diagrams. That will come in useful if the Romans ever attack us here, I suppose. But joking apart, it’s extremely interesting and I wonder what I’m going to discover next.

Before we leave the general pages, he mentions that "It would seem to be a legitimate inference from such a priori reasoning that, subject of course to exceptional circumstances, a camp is later in date according as it is less irregular in plan, less elaborately defended, and constructed upon a less elevated and less defensible site"

Anyone who has ever seen a Norman or Edwardian castle will know that this is far from the case. And while many of the forts that we visited in the USA were built accordingly, when Fetterman and Curser dug themselves in against the rampaging hordes of Native Americans, they both chose hilltops and promontories

Regular readers of this rubbish will also recall that in 2014 we WERE AT MONTSEGUR, the last refuge of the Cathars, and that is probably the most inaccessible, difficult-to-reach castle that I have ever visited, and I knew all about that climb for several days. None of your “constructed upon a less elevated and less defensible site” with Montségur.

Back in here I finished off the radio programme, chose the final track and wrote out the notes ready for dictation on Saturday night. Then I made a start on the remainder of the Welsh homework. That’s not yet finished, and heaven alone knows when I’m going to find time to do it.

My cleaner took me by surprise yet again as I was nowhere near ready, and she fitted my anaesthetic patches. We talked about cats, and it seems that I’m not going to find it as easy to adopt one as I might think. These days, these refuges are very picky and choosy as to who can adopt a cat and she reckons that I would fall down near the end of the queue.

If that’s not enough bad news for the moment, the taxi didn’t turn up until 12:45. It’s the school holidays of course and many drivers have taken time off. The car that came to pick me up was the wheelchair-carrier and we hadn’t gone half a mile before his ‘phone flashed a message “next job, wheelchair from the Centre Normandy – at 13:00”. So he had 15 minutes to undertake a 90-minute round trip to Avranches and back.

It wouldn’t have been quite so bad had we not encountered just about every problem possible on the road. And then when we arrived, there were seven vehicles all trying to unload at the same time – and we were sixth, so we had to wait our turn.

With everyone arriving at once and me being next-to-last I had to wait an age to be seen

The connection was as painful as it could possibly be and I suffered throughout the whole session. But the nurse did confirm to me that once the machine does start up, it’s not uncommon to have a wave of fatigue. It’s to do with the drop of blood pressure and strain on the heart.

The doctor came to see me as well, the unsociable one. We had our little discussion as I mentioned earlier and eventually he did confirm to me, as I suspected, that they had prescribed a sleeping pill. It has several other uses too which they think might be useful, which was why they prescribed it in the first place.

My response was that I was going to stop taking it as of now. He replied that I might find it difficult all at once and I should “taper off”, but if it’s a medication like that then I don’t want to be on it anyway so as of earlier this evening it’s off the list.

And so, incidentally, is the medication that they prescribed to counter some of the side-effects.

Unplugging me was just as painful as plugging me in, and then I had to wait. The driver who was to take me home had stuck her head in earlier but I told her that I would be fifteen minutes so as she had someone to pick up at the Clinic across town she decided to go there first.

She hadn’t come back by the time that I was ready so I waited. And waited.

Not that I minded because Emilie the Cute Consultant came past.

"Wiating for your taxi, Mr Hall?" she asked
“No, I’m waiting for N°11 bus to Marble Arch and Trafalgar Square” I would have said had it been anyone else but Emilie the Cute Consultant
"Yes I am" I replied "You don’t fancy taking me home, do you?"
"I don’t live in Granville any more" she said. "I live in Marcey, just around the corner"
"Well, you could always take me to Marcey with you"

She had the decency to laugh, but she wasn’t all that impressed. Ahh well …

A car suddenly screeched up outside, but it wasn’t my driver who hopped out. Nevertheless he had come for me.

He was one of the ambulance crew who was in the depot washing the vehicle when the call came through. Apparently my driver who had gone to the clinic discovered that there was a major problem there with the other passenger and she was obliged to wait. It’s a good job that I hadn’t gone with her.

We had a good chat all the way home, so much so that I forgot to warn the cleaner that I was on my way, and she had a mad scramble to meet the car. 19:45 when I finally arrived home.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta followed by apple cake and soya dessert. But then I cut up the date bread that I had made, and if the rest of it tastes as good as the crumbs that I tasted, it will be absolutely excellent.

So fed up, in pain and glad that the day is almost over, I’m off to bed ready to fight the good fight tomorrow. I can understand what they meant in Leuven back in 2016 when they said "save your strength for the battle that lies ahead" because I can’t do with too many more days like this one.

But talking about going home just now … "well, one of us is" – ed … it reminds me of a guy in a pub in Nantwich.
He would sneak a photo out of his pocket, glance at it, put it back and then order a beer.
After three or four times curiosity got the better of the and he asked the customer about the photo
"What’s about the photo?" he asked
"It’s the wife" replied the man
"Do you always look at it just before you order a beer?"
"Yes I do" he replied. "When she starts to look beautiful, that’s when it’s time to go home"

Thursday 6th February 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I have had today!

Or, more importantly, what a horrible afternoon. Everything that could conceivably go wrong this afternoon has gone wrong. It seems that I’m destined to have this albatross hung well-and-truly around my neck like the Ancient Mariner.

"Ah! well a-day!"

Last night, as I expected, I was horribly late going to bed. I’m surprised that I kept on going as long as I did though because I was absolutely exhausted. And again I’m not sure why either because it wasn’t as if I’d done that much.

Once in bed though, just like Maréchal MacMahon, "j’y suis, j’y reste" – “here I am and here I stay”. No danger whatever of me moving under any circumstances.

And there I did stay too. When the alarm went off I was still in exactly the same position as I had been when I went to sleep. And no-one had it any more difficult than me to leave my bed before the second alarm. I know that I’ve had a few struggles in the past but this one beats all of them.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, forgetting to have a shave for a moment, and then went into the kitchen to sort out the medication for the morning, remembering not to take the medication that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back into the bathroom to remember to have a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there this afternoon, and then back into here to sort out the details of any voyages last night. I was at a school somewhere. One of the teachers was at the entrance to the school chatting to a few people. He had a green sports car like a 1930s Bentley only smaller. I happened to glance at the registration number. It was WEE and then three numbers (or maybe the other way round). Whatever it was, if read in a certain way it made something quite indecent. It was obviously not the original number of the car so I was first of all surprised that the Department of Transport would allow such a registration number to be issued and secondly, surprised that a schoolteacher would buy it and fit it on his vehicle.

It really was surprising too to see this registration number, and I wish that I could remember now what it was. But I know exactly where it took place – in between the canteen and the steps up to the front of my old Grammar School. I can still see it now.

The nurse came round and I asked him about this prescription whether it should be done before breakfast before I have anything to eat. "Don’t worry about that" he replied. "They’ll do it anyway".

What I’ll do is to ask Isabelle the Nurse and see what she thinks about the affair.

After he left I made my breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK.

We’ve finished promontory forts and are now tackling contour forts, those that encompass a hill, with defences all round. These are really difficult to date as their position, commanding a wide expanse of countryside, means that they may well have been used by many different waves of civilisation.

Before leaving the promontory forts though, he makes an interesting observation. While they may be good at keeping invaders out, they aren’t much good at keeping cattle in, and many of them have no interior fencing of any kind.

His supposition is that people don’t abandon their possessions lightly, so if they were designed for defenders, the defenders must have been in desperate straights to have to take flight there leaving all their beasts behind.

The alternative suggestion that he puts forward is that they were built as strongholds by invaders who had yet not had the opportunity to recruit any cattle, and the speed at which a promontory fort could be built when compared to a contour fort, is certainly suggestive.

Back in here again I carried on writing the notes for this radio programme, and they are almost finished. Half an hour tomorrow will see them done and then I can push on with the next lot.

It wasn’t my cleaner who interrupted me today either. I noticed (for once) that time was rolling on so I went into the dining area and began to prepare things for leaving.

My cleaner was running late today so we were in something of a rush. But she was soon off out to her next client, and I wait here to wait for my taxi.

And wait. And wait.

At 13:00 I rang them up to find out where they were and it seems that they have cancelled (I hope) the Wednesday taxi that shouldn’t be coming but forgotten to reinstate the Thursday one. So they’ll arrange for someone to fetch me.

The car that turned up (20 minutes later) was one from St Hilaire du Harcoët on its way back from the Centre de Re-education, with three passengers already inside. So it was a rather cramped car that made its way down to Avranches. But needs must.

It goes without saying that my anaesthetic patches had long-since lost their efficacity by the time that I was finally seen and I’m sure that everyone in the street down the hill knew about it, because I certainly did. I’ve had some painful issues, but not quite as painful as this one this afternoon.

Once I was settled into my bed, plugged in and wired up, I had the crash-out to end all crash-outs. Well into the bad old days of last summer. I’m not sure why that should be either, unless it’s something to do with the fact that I’m in a bed, semi-recumbent.

But it was terrible. During the whole session I couldn’t concentrate on anything at all, I was so tired. Even so, I performed the major back-up that I wanted to and the travelling laptop is now as up-to-date as it can me. That’ll last for about a week, I reckon, before it will fall by the wayside once more.

But that did remind me – there’s still the laptop that I bought IN NORTH DAKOTA to update too. I haven’t used that since I fitted the 1TD SSD into it and it could do with some updating. Still, that’s one more task to add to the list of things that won’t ever be done.

Unplugging me was just as painful as plugging me in. I could see that the girls were edgy about things, wishing to leave in a hurry and I can’t say that I blame them. I was by far and away the last patient in there tonight. And I was glad to be out of there too.

It was this senior driver who was waiting for me tonight but he wasn’t in a talkative mood again this evening. I don’t know what I have done to him to upset him.

Mind you, in some ways I was glad because I wasn’t in any real mood to converse. Tired, exhausted and in pain, I’d had enough for the day.

The climb up here was difficult tonight and I only just about managed it, but there was no time to relax because I had bread to make.

After making and kneading the dough I made tea while it was proofing. It was another “Mr Carmichael” moment when SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN. I was way past caring by this point. At least my loaf of bread is the best that I have ever made, and I mean that too.

So right now I’m off to bed. I’m shattered and I can’t keep on going like this. One day my luck will have to turn, and I hope that I will still have time to enjoy it.

But going back to the story about promontory forts, a group of Belgae natives were holed up inside a promontory fort as several hundred people were advancing on them
The captain of the fortress couldn’t make out at the distance who they were so he asked his lookout "are they friends or foes?"
"Friends, I reckon" said the sentinel
"You must have wonderful eyesight" said the captain. "How can you tell?"
"Well" replied the sentinel "they are all laughing and joking together and look as if they are engaged upon a common purpose"

Monday 3rd February 2025 – THAT WAS NEVER …

… four hours under the thumb of the dialysis machine today.

This evening I was back home even earlier than on many occasions when I was only having three and a half hours. There was something quite strange about that today and I wish that I knew what it was.

But at least I had a visit today. Not Emilie the Cute Consultant unfortunately but the doctor with no bedside manner whatever. He asked me if I was OK so I replied that I was, and so in the best traditions of the reporters of the much-lamented and very-much missed “News of the Screws”, he “made his excuses and left”.

But last night, even though I didn’t have many excuses to make, I still had difficulty leaving my comfortable chair and once again it was a rather late night by the time that I finally managed to tear myself away

After having had a bit of a scrub up and so on, I came back in here, fell into bed and that was the last that I remembered.

When the alarm went off, I was still absolutely dead to the World and it was quite an effort to raise myself up and stagger off into the bathroom. But all cleaned up, and ready to go, I went into the kitchen to attack the stores in the European Medication Mountain, when I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to take the anti-potassium stuff. Ahhh well …

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone and, to my dismay, there was nothing on there from the night. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I depend on my nocturnal peregrinations to supply me with what bit of excitement is ever likely to be present in my life.

Having been someone who has led a very lively and exciting life, I’m finding a great deal of difficulty adjusting to being housebound and disabled. Not that I am contemplating it, not by any means, but I can see why many disabled people (and healthy people too) resort to artificial or chemical means of stimulating the senses.

The nurse was early today. He had the usual couple of minutes of banal chat and then wandered away leaving me to go to make my breakfast.

Before I began to read my new book, I read a recent leaflet about a discovery of what would seem to be the camp of Caesar when he came ashore in 54BC, right near to my old stamping ground as a child at Pegwell bay.

Whilst the leaflet is of considerable interest, it’s even more interesting to see what the writer, a researcher at Leicester University, has to say about our old friend T Rice Holmes, because this latest discovery calls into question Rice Holmes’s theories.

The author tells us that Rice Holmes was "concluding vigorously that ‘it has been demonstrated that he did land in both in 55 and in 54 B.C. in east Kent’ ", although “vigorously” is hardly the adverb that I would use

He goes on to quote Rice Holmes’s theory, complete with his gratuitous commentary that Caesar landed firstly, "between Walmer and Deal Castles, in the latter north of Deal Castle. That some will still for a time dispute these conclusions is likely enough, but not those whose judgements count. For them, the problem is solved’", commenting that "The thoroughness of Holmes analysis was matched only by the confident abrasiveness of his critique. He brooked no argument. "

Never mind “confident abrasiveness”. “Arrogance” would have been a good word to emply.

So having moved that out of the way, the next book on the list to read is EARTHWORK OF ENGLAND, written by Arthur Hadrian Allcroft and published in 1908.

The book has been said to be “a standard work of reference” of its type but it’s probably well-out-of-date now. Nevertheless, it’ll be another one of the type that we have read recently, with hopefully plenty of interesting facts and, hopefully, a bibliography.

But how times have changed. Talking about some remains that were uncovered in Northern England, he tells us that "the erection of a new factory near Allendale -Town, causing the heather upon the adjacent moors to perish, revealed the perfectly preserved outlines of a great camp"

Can you imagine that today? Allcroft’s comment was quite matter-of-fact as if that kind of thing was perfectly normal, and it probably was too.

Back in here, I had a listen to the radio programme that I would be sending off for broadcast at the weekend and found, to my horror, that I’d made something of a pig’s ear of this one. I don’t know what on earth I must have been doing.

So while the computer was backing up onto the memory stick, I was chopping and changing the radio programme. It was really complicated to reassemble and ended up being sixteen seconds over, but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I can soon lose sixteen seconds.

When I’d finished, I made a start on the Welsh homework but didn’t go all that far before my cleaner came to fit me with my anaesthetic patches.

And we were taken by surprise by the taxi arriving. These new Social Security regulations are playing havoc with everything. There was another passenger having to go to the big clinic so I was thrown in with him and as his appointment was before mine, I had to have the round trip.

Not that I’m complaining though, because it was my favourite driver, although she was rather subdued today and I don’t think that she raised her voice to another motorist once. Someone else who seems to be losing her touch.

However, she did confirm my suspicions about one of the other drivers and told me to guard my tongue. I’d worked that out the other day when he’d asked me one or two questions about one or two of the other drivers.

In the Centre we had to wait for a while before we could be let in so it can’t have been that early that I was plugged in and wired up.

Today, the first puncture hurt just slightly and the second hardly at all, but all of that changed as the anaesthetic wore off.

Today, I tidied up the laptop’s directories, backed up most of the files and then dealt with the sound file that I’d recorded for the concert.

It’s not by any means easy to edit sound-flies on the laptop but I managed it, which is good news. I shall have to persevere because if I can use the time profitably while I’m there, then so much the better.

After they unplugged me I walked outside to find my taxi waiting, and I had a very taciturn driver who gave me a very quiet ride home. Not that I’m complaining, because I was in no mood to chat. I feel as if I’ve been sucked dry by a vacuum cleaner after all that they crammed into what was surely a shorter session.

My cleaner was surprised to see me, but she was there and watched as I strode all the way up to the top of two flights of stairs to arrive here, and promptly collapsed into my chair.

later on I made a stuffed pepper with pasta, tomato sauce and veg followed by apple cake and soya dessert, and now I’m off to bed, totally wasted, but hoping for a better night with a lot of mileage to cover during the hours of darkness.

However, seeing as we have been mentioning the unsociable doctor … "well, one of us has" – ed … he was the one who was dismissed from the fertility clinic .
The clinic itself was in Paris, and at one certain moment he was in charge of the sperm donor section, but it was a total failure, so I heard.
"Why was that?" I asked the nurse
"They only had three candidates and there were, apparently, transport difficulties." she said. "Two of the donors came on the bus but the third one missed the tube"

Thursday 30th January 2025 – ANOTHER FOUR HOURS …

… coupled up to the machine, and I’m not sure which hurt the most – the pain in my arm once the anaesthetic wore off or the stabbing pain in my heel that arrived mid-session. It was another one of those days.

And can you guess the medical staff’s reaction to both? Of course you can. "Would you like a Doliprane, Mr Hall?". Yes, this whole country seems to float on a lake of Doliprane.

But seeing as we are talking about floating … "well, one of us is" – ed … I don’t know what I was floating on the other night when I managed a fairly early night but I wish that it had come back to float me off last night.

Even though I’d finished at a not-unreasonable time it was still a good while later when I could manage to find the courage to rise up and go to bed. It was probably only the hope that in bed would be the only way that I would be able to see Moonchild again, or one of the other Fearsome Foursome, that drove me on.

Once in bed though, I didn’t hang around and was soon asleep. And there I stayed until the alarm went off in the morning at 07:00.

It goes without saying that I wasn’t in any kind of mood to raise myself from the Dead but I did manage to beat the second alarm into the bathroom where I had a good wash and scrub up. While I was there I also applied plenty of deodorant and had a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

In the kitchen I had the morning’s medication, remembering not to take the medication that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day. But the bad news is that I’ve run out of my anti-cancer portable chemotherapy stuff that’s been keeping me alive for the last couple of years. I hope that there was a bottle in the last batch of medication that my faithful cleaner brought me. If not, I’ll be pushing up the daisies much quicker than even I think.

Thinking about it though, I should have asked for a new prescription when I was in Paris just now (they can’t prescribe it in Avranches) but I was hoping that I’d manage to see my consultant when I was there. But with the results not being anything like ready (they had hardly finished all the tests) I’m having to go back some time soon.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I’ve no idea of anything at all about anything out of this. We had another phantom alarm at 02:50. It sounded so real that I did actually rise up and begin to leave the bed. But I’d been in some kind of folk group and had been playing an instrument and it had been the case of hitting my knees with my hand in the rhythm of the music, something like that. Anyway they stood me up and took me and we just – Rick – and at that traffic lights that was that hippo that was Rod Wayne’s and at that meeting I had to drive all the way back to Crewe when I could be posting but then having to think about disposing of her. Where will I dispose of her and then I said “if you are going to take me to this troublesome bear-y and dispose of Linda at the end of the programme so that we could have a little life? We had a girls’ school at first and looked after it. It was a very shabby and run-down area (…fell asleep here …)

Apart from the fact that none of it makes any sense … "so what in your dreams actually does?" – ed … I can’t remember a single moment of it. However, the utter gibberish and falling asleep indicate that I must have been really tired while all of that was going on.

Isabelle the Nurse is counting down the moments until her ski holiday. She’s promised to show me the photos but that’s no good at all. I need to see the real snow, and feel in under my skis. It’s probably a dozen years since I’ve last been skiing and how I really used to enjoy it.

After she left I made my breakfast and then began to read my new book.

To most of you, it’s probably not very exciting. And it’s not a book either. In 1936 an archaeologist named William Jones Varley excavated an Iron-Age Hillfort at Eddisbury in Cheshire. Although he had made a couple of initial reports, he died in 1970 with his in-depth report unfinished.

In 2006 when his wife died, a box in her caravan was examined and found to contain some very rusty pieces of iron which, judging by the quality of the ironwork and welding, were believed to relate to the Iron Age.

These were passed to a group of researchers who, comparing the pieces with Jones’s written notes, believe that these pieces of ironwork are the pivot points of the gates of Eddisbury Hillfort.

They published their own report a few years later after an extensive examination of the pieces and a re-examination of the site, and I’ve managed to lay my hands on a copy. So far I’m on about page 26 and no-one has managed to insult or abuse anyone else, even if the authors do disagree with some of Jones’s conclusions, so it makes some nice, calm reading

Back in here I had things to do, such as to finish off the missing notes from the next radio programme. So that’s all done now and it’s ready to be dictated on Saturday night.

The rest of the morning was spent on this question of backing-up that’s going to be the bane of my life over the next few weeks because there isn’t enough room on the USB key that hangs on my keyring.

“So why not use a portable drive like I used to in the olden days?” The question that I need to ask before that is “can I make a portable drive work with one hand?”. Remember that when I’m in the Dialysis Centre I had pipes and tubes going into one arm and the arm is clamped into a mould to hold it still, clamped to my leg

My cleaner was rather late coming to fit my patches, so as you might have expected, the taxi was rather early. He didn’t like having to wait for me, which was no surprise seeing as he had someone else in the car with him.

It was a slinet drive down to Avranches and we were really early there so I had to wait 20 minutes. Still, the earlier we start, the earlier we finish I suppose.

My bed was down in the far corner today which is always something of a struggle, especially when there’s almost 5kg of water to remove today

In the end, they agreed that they would only remove 4.5 kg. What they are going to do with this excess water, now that they are already on the maximum (1.1kg/hour at a maximum of four hours), I really don’t know. And neither, I suspect, do they

Once I was comfortable I began the back-up but then had one of those dramatic crash-outs that I used to have in the bad old days. But there I was a little later, being shaken awake by none other than Emilie the Cute Consultant.

"Mr Hall!" she said. "I thought that you were having a crisis!". She obviously doesn’t know about these diabetic comas.

And you should be even more proud of me that you were a few days ago. It took a great, immense effort but I managed to avoid saying "next time you want to awaken me, don’t shake me. Just roll over and give me a gentle nudge."

Before I was plugged in, I reminded the nurses that I needed a prescription of all of my other medication. They’d printed it off on Monday but there was no doctor there to sign it. Anyway, while she was hovering over me, I reminded Emilie the Cute Consultant that I needed it.

Ten minutes later one of the nurses came back waving a prescription signed by one of the doctors, and five minutes later Emilie the Cute Consultant came in carrying one too.

"Ohhh" she said. "I see that you already have one" and began to turn on her heel.

"In fact, I’d rather have yours" I replied. "It has your nice handwriting and signature on it" and she blushed again.

Once more, I was the last to leave. I hadn’t lost all of the liquid, which is no surprise. But it’s not going to help. What’s the betting that within a year I’ll be permanently coupled up to a dialysis machine?

The taxi was waiting for me when I came out. There was another lady to travel with me who lived in Avranches but this time we went up the old road that is probably one of the steepest roads that I have ever travelled. And then I had a lovely view of the old city walls and castle on the way past after we’d dropped her off.

She had mobility problems so I’d sat in the back of the car … "as if you don’t!" – ed … and after she left, I didn’t have the energy to move into the front. It was a very quiet and subdued drive home.

My cleaner was waiting for me and she watched as I climbed all 25 steps to my door – the stair handrails are now fixed.

We had a little chat and she promised to have the prescription framed, with Emilie the Cute Consultant’s signature in full view

After gathering my breath and having my protein drink, I made tea. Steamed vegetables and vegan sausage in a vegan cheese sauce. It was absolutely delicious. And my apple cake and caramel soya dessert was magnificent. The cake is as good as I thought it would be.

Bedtime now, and more work to do tomorrow. It’s a never-ending cycle, isn’t it? One of these days it will stop, but only when I’m pushing up the daisies.

But going back a little, seeing as we have been talking about archaeologists … "well, one of us has" – ed … have you ever noticed how so many of the people on the site are female?
On day I was passing an archaeological site and noticed this so I asked the team leader.
"We always engage women when we can" he replied. "And usually married women"
"Why’s that?" I asked
"Because they are so good at it" he explained. "There is nothing like a married woman for digging up all the past"

Friday 24th January 2024 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not exactly sitting in a rainbow but sitting at my desk in the comfort and safety of my own apartment (well, someone else’s but I live in it) after without any doubt the quickest drive home that I have ever had.

It was an ambulance that brought me home, and there are a couple of advantages of being in an ambulance in Paris. Those two advantages are blue and they flash. Hence we didn’t have too much trouble fighting our way through the rush-hour traffic.

One of the big advantages of having thrown in my lot with the biggest taxi, VSL and ambulance company in Normandy is that they have vehicles everywhere. So when the hospital administration ‘phones them to say that I’m ready to go home, it’s not “okay, I have too find a driver first and then it’ll be a four-hour wait while he drives there”, it’s “we have an ambulance in Paris already, dropping off someone at another hospital, so when they are free, we’ll send it round”.

And so they finished with me at 16:40 and by 17:40 we were just about on our way home

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Last night after I had finished my notes it was late – very late. But never mind. I went to bed, put my headphones back on and listened to some more good music for hours and hours.

Eventually I fell asleep, awoke again and switched off the computer, and then went back to sleep.

But it was a horrible night. It was as if my left shin had caught fire and eventually I had to give up and I called for the nurse. She smothered it in cold cream and that seemed to ease the pain for a while, and eventually I went back to sleep.

At 07:00 I had one of those dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. I decided nevertheless to stay in bed and tease the nurses again, but it was a different crew today. They were nice and cheerful too, and that really makes a difference.

It was breakfast in bed yet again but I restrained myself from asking if the young student nurse would feed me with grapes.

After breakfast I went and had a good scrub up in the bathroom. I asked for a chair for the bathroom so that I could have a shower and eventually it turned up, just after I’d given up waiting and dressed. Never mind – I’ll have a shower later.

Back in the bedroom I transcribed the dictaphone notes. It’s a surprise that there actually were some, the way that the night had gone. And look at this! Moonchild came to see me last night. She came DANCING IN THE SHALLOWS OF A RIVER to see me in a folk music group. We were playing at Dungeness at the extreme south-east of Kent. I was playing some instrument or other. She wanted to come along and see what happened and see what went on and so of course I agreed to take her. Although she was in this dream she was very much in the background and it wasn’t really about her at all, more about this group I suppose.

But I’m still shaking my head in bewilderment about what’s going on here. Not that I’m complaining of course – in fact regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Moonchild has been rapidly promoted into the top tier of favourite nocturnal invitees along with Castor, Zero and TOTGA, and hasn’t worked anything like as hard as the others to be there, but I don’t understand why her dramatic appearance should have taken place at all. At the actual moments in real life when Moonchild was present, they was of no significance whatsoever. The folk festival is of some significance and so is the idea of taking her somewhere, but her fading into the background is, shall we say, disappointing at the very least.

And not playing bass? This probably relates to a decision that I made a day or so ago, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have been to Dungeness ON A COUPLE OF OCCASIONS, including the famous occasion when I had to repair a Spitfire, and I bet that you think that I am joking too.

Later on we were talking about – there was a girl from work. Another one with long, blond hair. I’d been chatting to her for quite a while and it seemed that she had been becoming much more attached to me than perhaps she ought, not that I was objecting but she had a boyfriend. There was some talk about work, going away on a mission somewhere. Of course she was going, and I was going too. Our conversation developed into something quite intimate and it was suggested that this was one way that our employers could save the cost of one room. We were going home from work and ended up walking around Frank Bott Avenue, Underwood Lane area of Crewe. As we walked up towards West Street and the old railway works we began to discuss how close we were going to be. It was quite obvious that both of us had plans. The talk came round to how nervous people are the first time that they take each other to bed, how things never worked out as they were planned to do etc. So she just stopped, looked at me and said “does your weekly budget run to the cost of renting a room in a hotel for a night where we could go?”. I was stunned by this, but of course I replied “if it didn’t, I would make it”. At that point we walked hand-in-hand down West Street. We came past a hotel and we noticed that the side door was open. We walked in through the side door, walked upstairs, found an empty room and went in. A couple of weeks later, still before this trip, we were organising a party at work and were having fancy dress clothes etc. Of the costumes, there was only one left when I went into the changing room. It was something that I don’t suppose was particularly appropriate and it was small but I had to put it on. She was sitting on the top shelf of a cupboard laughing and joking. I asked her if I could change my clothes in there because there was nowhere else. She wondered why I had asked her and no-one else. I explained that I thought that she was part of the organising committee like me, although with an undertone that implied that she was probably much more friendly with me than anyone else there. She was with her boyfriend at the time, laughing and joking. In the end she climbed down from her shelf and went off. I climbed into her shelf and began to change. Then I was thinking that has what happened just now changed anything that might otherwise have happened at the place where were going away. Have I once more managed to rip defeat from the jaws of victory?

Getting the Girl? How often does that happen in a dream? It can’t have been more than a handful of times during the 26 or so years that I’ve been undertaking this project. Where are the members of my family who usually come along and stick le baton dans la roue at the crucial moment? They always used to do that in real life and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, they do it quite often in my dreams too. But I’m impressed that I can remember phrases like to “rip defeat from the jaws of victory” in my sleep although, of course, “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” as I did right at the end here in this dream is also par for the course.

I was having a really long, complicated dream when all of a sudden at 07:00 exactly I awoke and sat bolt-upright and the whole thing disappeared except for right at the end when I was sitting at a table about to give a presentation. One of the women sitting at a table sideways on to me also on the stage asked if she could close the curtain so that she could be hidden from view. I told her that that would be fine provided that I could use the plug at her feet to plug in one of the machines that I needed for my presentation. Then I was thinking that perhaps I ought to make some kind of flying lead so that I could plug that into the floor at my feet and plug in a couple of appliances to that.

In the past I’ve given several presentations, like the one on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR when I talked about the changing shape of maps in the High Arctic due to the melt of the Polar ice-cap and the one in France when I gave a lecture on my drive around THE TRANS-LABRADOR HIGHWAY but they’ve usually passed off with the same amount of polite and genteel passive disinterest

One task that I had set myself, TO PROVE MYSELF WORTHY was to deal with the outstanding correspondence, of which there was more than enough.

So no-one should be waiting for a reply from me now because I hope that I’m up-to-date. If you still haven’t had a reply to anything that you have sent to me, then drop me a reminder. And if you haven’t written to me but want to drop me a line, there’s a “contact me” button down at the bottom-right of your screen. I love to interact with my audience

My nice cute Romanian doctoress came to see me and reminded me of the biopsy, which will take place at abut midday. So no time to take a shower.

Lunch came on time, and considering that I had signed a form to say that I was a vegan, lunch today was fish –
IT’S FISH EVERY FRIDAY
IT’S FISH TWO FEET WIDE
IT COVERS UP YOUR PLATE
AND HANGS OVER THE SIDE

Round about 13:00, waiting for the biopsy, I began another project which was to track down *.pdf copies of some of the books that I downloaded years ago when this Gutenberg/Google project wasn’t as organised and it was all in *.txt format.

Some of them haven’t as yet been converted but others have so I was downloading those that I could find. It’s important to have the *.pdf copies if they are available because the *.txt copies didn’t, obviously, include the maps and illustrations.

Round about 14:00 my cute little Romanian doctoress came to tell me that the biopsy will be at 15:00 as the person who performs it is busy. So no time for a shower right now.

It was 16:00 when she finally put in an appearance, with my cute little Romanian doctoress trailing along behind. She wanted a slice of a saliva gland from my lip so first she gave me a local anaesthetic.

The actual sectioning of the gland was totally painless thanks to the injection, and they were very happy with what they had taken. They wandered off, leaving me lying on the bed waiting for someone to come back and sort me out.

Eventually my cute little Romanian doctoress came back with a huge pile of paperwork, and told me that I was free to go. They won’t have the results now until Monday and there’s no sense my staying there. The senior doctor in charge of my case will call me back for a discussion in due course.

Thinking that “at last I can have my shower because there will be four hours before the taxi arrives” she told me that they’d be here in half an hour. So no time for a shower.

Most of my stuff was already packed so I put the rest away ready for when my driver turned up. Only it was two of them. What had I done to deserve an ambulance?

This was when they told me about the person whom they were bringing. No shower then, but at least I’ll be home at some respectable time.

And so I was too. We dashed through the rush-hour traffic and then sped down the motorway. I have an app. on my ‘phone that can follow a route and it displays the speed at which we were travelling. Down the motorway in the pouring rain at 139kph will put hairs on anyone’s chest.

When we arrived and I told them that I was impressed with the speed, the driver apologised and said "I couldn’t go as fast as usual because of the conditions". I’ll travel with him next time in the sunny daylight them and compare notes.

Getting in and out of the ambulance is fun though. To climb in, I have to sit on the floor, swivel my legs in, press them up against the bulkhead and use the force of my arms and shoulders to lever myself up into the seat in the back. Exiting the vehicle is the reverse of the procedure

Back in here my cleaner helped me unpack and here I am, ready to fight another day. I’ll have the results of everything in a few days and then we’ll know where we are going with all of this.

But the story behind this ambulance is that someone called the Emergency Service.
He said "send an ambulance to 6 rue Monseigneur Aethelbaldric Essioriaeth. My wife has been taken seriously ill"
"Certainly sir" said the operator. "How do you spell the street name?"
"Wait a minute" said the caller. And then there was silence
"Are you still there?" asked the operator
And a heavy-breathing voice replied "Yes I am"
"Where have you been?" asked the operator
"I couldn’t spell the street name" said the caller "so I dragged her around the corner and she’s now on the pavement in the Rue Haute."

Monday 20th January 2025 – YET ANOTHER THREE …

… and a half hours under the dialysis machine today, and that might soon be changing. They are talking about increasing the dose to four hours. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … we seem to be moving slowly towards a climax and the overall prognosis isn’t that good.

In fact, things must be even more serious that I imagined, because they sent Emilie the Cute Consultant to break the bad news to me. And considering that she has been doing her best to steer clear of my bedside these last few weeks, that must have been some effort.

It was some effort for me to go to bed last night too. It was even later than normal when I finally hauled myself out of my chair and went into the bathroom to prepare for the night. I was definitely not feeling like sleeping and I lacked the motivation and energy to haul myself out of my comfortable chair.

Eventually I managed to make my way into bed and there I lay trying to go to sleep and trying to chase the black thoughts from my mind. And as it happened, I did neither. So there I lay, being tormented, for several hours.

When the alarm sounded I was fast asleep so I must have dropped off at some point. And what an effort it was to haul myself from my bed. It’s a good job that the nurse is coming, for I could quite easily have stayed in bed until I don’t know when.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and shave and even applied the deodorant in case Emilie the Cute Consultant should come to see me, and then went to take my medication.

Back in here I went to listen to what was on the dictaphone but to my dismay there was nothing at all, and that’s really disappointing. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the only excitement that I have these days is what goes on (or comes off, but I should be so lucky) during the night.

Isabelle the nurse came around, her last day for this round. She had a few things to say, but nothing of too much importance. She’s going to spend the week packing for her ski holiday soon and also working on her Carnival float.

After she left I made my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Our author has spent probably 100 pages attacking the idea that Wissant was the port from which Caesar sailed to Britain (not that it matters much, as the book is about Britain, not Caesar), insulting the people who believe that it might have been, and lampooning the people who have changed their opinion over time.

And here we are, on page 579; with a statement "for I myself once argued that the Portus Itius was at Wissant. But my knowledge was then imperfect.". Not a word about why his knowledge was imperfect, not a word about why he once believed that Wissant had been Caesar’s port, not a word of the factors that he had considered at that time, not a word of why he had rejected them, not a word of criticism of his own ideas and not an apology to those whom he had lampooned for changing their mind.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I shan’t be sorry to reach the end of this book. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of interesting facts in there but by God! What a struggle it has been to wade through the mass of invective, insult and abuse to find them.

It seems to me that he is working himself up into a crescendo and I wonder how it’s all going to finish.

Back in here I had things to do, like my Welsh homework for example. I like to do half of it in one week and the other half the following week so as to spread it out. But what I’m going to do at some point is to read through all of the homework that I’ve done, and make a dictionary of words that I have already forgotten. As if I don’t have enough work to do.

My cleaner took me once more by surprise. She was late but I’d lost track of time anyway. And we hadn’t even finished when the taxi came for me. There was someone with an appointment at Avranches at 13:00 so these new Securité Sociale rules means that because my trip falls within this 45-minute window, I have to grin and bear it.

Not that I am complaining, because as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s all free, and this is the only country in the World as far as I am aware where such a service is provided for the likes of me.

One advantage of being there early was that not only was I the first of the afternoon shift to arrive, I was first in bed and consequently first to be plugged in. And strangely, the first pin didn’t hurt at all and the second only marginally so, even if they had to take out the pin and reinsert it.

Having said that though, I began to know more about it as the anaesthetic wore off.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me, and we had an interesting chat. "How are you today, Mr Hall?"
"Very well now that I’ve seen you" I replied. And she had the decency to giggle and blush

So we chatted, all about work though, not one of those intimate personal chats that we had last summer, and she broke the bad news to me. But at least she confirmed that Saturday’s dialysis is no different than any other day so it’s not that which is disrupting my sleeping patterns.

"Would you like me to prescribe a sedative for you" She asked.

It seemed to me that that referred to my earlier comment so I restrained myself, with great difficulty I promise you, from saying something like “what I really need is someone to keep me warm and cosy in bed. When’s your next day off?”. You should be proud of me.

Instead I replied "no thanks". All that I have left these days are my dreams and they seem to be fading right now which is a shame. And never mind restraining myself, it will be other people restraining me if I carry on like this. But ask me if I care.

While we’re on the subject of dreams … "well, one of us is" – ed … I crashed out as usual once the pump started sucking my blood out and went away with the fairies (although I did nothing worthy of any comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine)

There I was, in some building in which I’d been before. Someone came to pick me up and when he took me outside I found that he was to take me away on a motorbike. He had left the engine running so I told him that that had been a very dangerous thing to do around here

The building reminded me of somewhere in (I think) either Cleveland or Buffalo … "IT WAS BUFFALO" – ed … in the USA where I’d passed through on my mega-voyage around North America after having dropped off Kit at her University at Windsor.

And as for motor bikes, we’re either talking about motorcycle taxis again or else it’s to do with crossing the Atlantic on a motor bike, something else that we’ve mentioned recently.

When I’ve been awake, I’ve been tidying up a long-forgotten site on the internet. That all started with a search for someone whose name cropped up there and when I followed it up, I was surprised at how out-of-date this site was. So I did some of it, and there’s plenty more to do.

Don’t you ever become fed up of finding all of these tasks that you need to do that totally distract you from what you were trying to do in the first place?

With starting early, that usually means finishing early. And I was certainly unplugged early. But all of the rest went haywire as the compression burst and we red-washed the entire wall of the Clinic by my bed.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the taxi that came for me had to wait another ten minutes to take someone else too.

So once more I ended up being late home but at least it was the nice female taxi driver, the one with twins at the school here, so we had a nice chat. I hope that she’s the one who takes me to Paris, either her or my favourite lady taxi driver who gives me a running commentary throughout the whole route.

It’s freezing outside again here so I was glad to be indoors again. With about 20 minutes to spare I edited some more of the outstanding radio programme that I should had completely dealt with on Sunday.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg followed by chocolate cake and soya yoghurt. Plenty of stuffing left, but I’ve no idea when I’ll finish it, what with going to hospital in Paris later this week

So now it’s bedtime, ready for my Welsh lesson tomorrow. And hoping that I’ll have pleasant dreams involving Castor, TOTGA or Zero, or Moonchild whom I shall add to the Terrible Three and make a Fearsome Foursome.

But before I go to bed I’ll give you an exclusive scoop, one that you’ll hear nowhere else, on the handover discussion between Trump and Biden in the Whitehouse (and that’s not a spelling mistake, although that will soon change) this afternoon
"You just watch" said Trump. "I’m gonna be a goddam Emperor"
"You can’t do that" said Biden. "An Emperor is someone who rules an Empire, and the USA isn’t an Empire"
"Well in that case" said Trump "I’m gonna be a goddam King"
"You can’t do that either" replied Biden. "A King is someone who rules a Kingdom, and the USA isn’t a Kingdom"
"Actually" continued Biden "with you in the White House, Donald, the USA will be just fine as a country"

Saturday 18th January 2025 – ANOTHER THREE HOURS ..

… and thirty minutes of sheer, unadulterated agony this afternoon as once more, one of the nurses managed to find the “sensitive spot” in whatever it was that they did in that hospital in the summer.

Whatever else happens in this hospital, I can’t go on like this. I’m sure that dialysis isn’t supposed to be this painful.

At least I can console myself that I’m not suffering as much as the guy who usually comes with me on a Thursday and Saturday. I asked why we hadn’t seen him for a few days and was told "he comes in an ambulance now. He’s had a bad fall"

The only fall in which I’m interested right now is to fall from my chair into bed as I’m exhausted.

It was another late night last night. Just as I was going to bed, a “Traffic” concert came round on the playlist and that’s another “must” to stay up and listen to, especially when there’s an 11-minute version of SOMETIMES I FEEL SO UNINSPIRED and almost 10 minutes of DEAR MR FANTASY.

Anyway, once we returned to normality I crawled off to bed, with the words of Steve Winwood echoing around my head –
"sometimes I feel like my head is spinning
Hunger and pain is all I see
I don’t know who’s losing
And I don’t care who’s winning
Hardships and trouble are following me".
My head is definitely spinning, I can certainly feel pain and while I’m not suffering any hardship – those days are long gone – I’m definitely being followed by a heap of trouble right now. What is worse is that it’s all of my own making too.

Those troubles kept me awake once more and it seemed like an age before I finally drifted off to sleep.

When the alarm went off this morning. I was away on my travels, with a shower that I had to repair so the first thing was to drain the tank. I profited from that by having myself a nice hot shower. I disconnected the shower hose so the pump was on the wall in the bathroom so I took off the pump from the wall and lowered it down a little. This forced the water out of the pump which then drained into the bath. I put the shower pump down, about halfway down the wall so that it was about halfway down to the level – so the water in the tank was halfway down, and put the pump there so that it was drained off the top half. I was sitting there contemplating what to do next when the alarm went off. I was really disappointed because I was enjoying that.

So don’t tell me that all of my nocturnal skills, about which I have so boasted in the past, have deserted me during this crisis through which I’m going right now. It’s the one thing on which I could rely in the past and with the right kind of support, I could have made millions from the skills that I never knew that I had

It was a desperate struggle to rise to my feet and go into the bathroom before the next alarm went off but I just about made it. And then a desperate discovery – that I’ve run out of clean sweaters. Nothing else for it but to put last week’s back on. I have just about enough of other clothes to have a good change but I really am going to have to overhaul my wardrobe. What am I going to do with all my Arctic clothing for a start?

Having washed and shaved, I put the bedding from last week into the washing machine with a selection of other dirty clothing and let the machine do its stuff. Then I wandered off for my medication, remembering to take my “sunlight” Vitamin D.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what else has been going on during the night. There was something about an extremely valuable – well, not valuable but a historic plate that was of great significance between me and some young lady and I don’t know who she was. I had to keep it safe so I hid it under my coat but as I moved, I broke it. A V-shaped piece fell out of it. I was thinking “how am I now going to repair this so that it will be the correct type of plate and that no-one will notice that it’s damaged.

In fact, I really didn’t know who she was. She didn’t resemble anyone whom I might know at all

There was also something about people who were working in Crewe Works. They had to cycle a certain way around the Queen’s Park and would reach a point where someone was waiting. When they reached that point they would have to turn round and cycle back towards the Works. They couldn’t take a short cut by turning around earlier but they all had to go to where this particular guy was standing in the middle of the road.

“Queen’s Park”, or, at least, the road around the back of it by the Golf Club, and “Crewe Works” – that is, the Railway Works – are playing something of a role in what’s going on right now in my mind so it’s inevitable, I suppose, that they should put in an appearance at some point. No sign of Moonchild though. She didn’t come dancing through the shallows of the river into my dreams last night

But what’s sad about this is that I can remember when half of the town was covered in the various branches of the Railway Works and when every boy in the town was destined to become an apprentice in either “The Works” or “Royce’s”. The town was flooded out with bicycles at chucking-out time, and how much like a ghost town it was during “Works Week” – all that was missing were the tumbleweeds. Nowadays Crewe is a ghost town all the time, but for different reasons. There is nothing whatever left of its railway heritage and even the big multi-storey “Rail House” is empty and threatened with demolition

Isabelle was in and out in a new world-record time today. She doesn’t seem to be so keen on stopping and chatting as she used to. Perhaps word about me is filtering around the town

After she went, I made my breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK.

For a change, I’m not going to post any selected comments because firstly, I don’t know enough about the subjects that he’s discussing – it’s all conjecture unsupported by any evidence anyway, and secondly, because his invective and abuse has become tiresome to read and even more tiresome to repeat. I shan’t be sorry to finish this book and start the next one.

Back in here I carried on with the radio notes and they still aren’t finished. Once more I was caught in flagrante delicto by my cleaner who surprised me by her arrival when I wasn’t expecting her. She fitted my anaesthetic patches and we didn’t have long to wait for the taxi to come for me.

Just me in the car today with the driver. Apparently the other passenger who usually accompanies my on a Saturday has had a bad fall and goes to dialysis in an ambulance now.

Everything was running horribly late at the Centre today and it took hours to plug everyone in. That can’t be why it hurt so much because the first pin went in much less painlessly. Anyway, I didn’t enjoy it at all.

As usual, once the pump started up I crashed out and I was away for quite a while. So much so that my coffee that had been brought to me while I was asleep was stone-cold.

Before crashing out though, I was hallucinating again as I did the other day. This time there was something about me being on board a Spanish Galleon but I didn’t stroke it this time to see if it was real..

That miserable doctor was on duty today and he managed a brief “hello” as he passed by my bed. And that was my lot. I must be thankful for that, I suppose

Unplugging me was just as painful as plugging me in and how I wish that it wasn’t. The same driver who brought me was waiting to take me back and we had a guided tour of his Head Office at Marcey les Grèves on the way home. I’m convinced that he is in some way charged with the running of the place in some capacity.

Anyway, he’s confirmed that I’ll be picked up in principle at 07:45 on Wednesday for my trip to dialysis followed by my taxi to Paris at lunchtime afterwards.

It’s freezing outside tonight, literally freezing, at 0°C so I was glad to be in the warmth indoors even if climbing up these stairs doesn’t seem to have become any easier just recently.

Tea tonight was a breaded quorn fillet with baked potatoes and salad, which was nice as usual, especially when followed by chocolate cake and soya yoghurt.

So now i have to dictate what I wrote earlier in the week and then finish off the lot that’s half-way done sometime. I need to go back too and review the couple of weeks that are missing and have another think about what I’m going to do. I can’t leave it until the last moment to come up with a plan.

So I’ll do that and then go to bed – to make the most of my little lie-in

But in the radio programme notes that I was writing, I was writing something about Caravan’s album A BLIND DOG AT ST DUNSTAN’S
St Dunstan’s was a Charity in London created to care for Blind People and is famously known for its hotel in Brighton which was praised for its "magnificent views over the Downs and out to Sea" – the sense of irony being totally lost on the writers.
But the title of the album relates to a story that one day a little boy saw a male dog mount a female dog.
"What’s that big dog doing, daddy?" asked the little boy
"Well," stuttered daddy nervously, "the dog at the bottom is blind, and the one on top is helping him, pushing him along to St Dunstan’s."

Thursday 16th January 2025 – MY VEGAN PIES …

… are delicious. At least, the one that I had for tea tonight was. I had to leave them to cook for a lot longer than recommended because of the inconsistency of my little table-top oven, but the end result was well-worth it.

And for some reason, being in bed last night was quite interesting too. It was yet another very late night, but I think that we are all becoming used to this. Tea seemed to take ages to make and then when it was finished I wasn’t in much of a mood to do anything, and whatever there was to do took an age to be done. That seems to be becoming something of a habit too.

It was long after 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed and going to sleep was also something that took an age to be done, and it’s dangerous for me to be left alone in the small hours with nothing but my dark thoughts to keep me company. I have a lot on my mind right now, and it’s nothing about which I can do anything at all.

And seeing that it relates to something that happened (or, more to the point, didn’t happen) over 45 years ago, there’s not much point brooding on it. I’d chase it out of my mind if I possibly could but then, deep down, I don’t really want to. I’m in a bit of a mess at the moment and have been for several days.

Eventually though I did go off to sleep and there I lay, dead to the World until the alarm went off.

It really was “dead to the World” too. In bed I wear a tubigrip bandage over the plasters on my arm to keep them in place, and inevitably, when I roll around in bed, the bandage rides up my arm. But this morning, when I awoke, not only was I in exactly the last place and position that I remember before going to sleep, the bandage was exactly where it had been put the previous night. I can’t have moved an inch.

When the alarm went off I found it difficult once more to raise myself from the Dead but eventually I staggered off into the bathroom for a good wash, scrub and shave. After all, you never know. Emilie the Cute Consultant might be there.

In the kitchen I sorted out the morning’s medication and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. And to my dismay, there was nothing on it from the night. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the only excitement that I have these days is what goes on at night.

At least though, it really WAS “dead to the World”.

Isabelle the nurse was in a rush yet again and didn’t even have time to listen to my change of programme. She was in and out like a flash today.

And then I made breakfast and read MY BOOK.

We talked about the critic who said, and with which I am in complete agreement, that "a flurry of argument and counter-argument". Seriously, there is no place in any Academic publication for remarks that he uses to say that someone’s "argument rests upon a doubtful ‘perhaps’, an obscure ‘apparently ‘, a desperate ‘ must have been ’, and the baseless assumption that the Belgae had established dominion in Britain in the time of Pytheas".

Had I been his editor or publisher, I’d have long-since excised his remarks.

But turning to some more of his arguments, he’s puzzled as to why there is no evidence of tin production from Cornwall in the first two hundred years after the Roman conquest. Plenty before and plenty subsequently. "Yet if the tin trade had then been flourishing they would hardly have stopped"

In the period leading up to the Roman invasion, the inhabitants of Cornwall and the Roman Empire were at peace with each other. Then it took two hundred years of fighting for the Romans to establish themselves that far West and gain control of all of the mines for themselves. It’s hardly likely that during the period of the war and fighting, the Cornish tin merchants would be trading with the enemy.

Another issue that he’s having today is why, if Cornwall was where Cassiterides was and the shipping point led to an overland voyage all the way across Gaul rather than by sea direct to the trading port of Massilla, "The argument based upon the fact that the overland journey lasted thirty days implies that the merchants would have deliberately preferred a longer to a shorter route"

The answer to that is the “Voyage of Himilco”, that we mentioned a couple of days ago. He was the Carthaginian sailor who found his trip to the tin mines by boat so frightening that he wrote a book talking about attacks by sea-monsters and generally scaring his contemporaries to death.

Back in here I finished off my radio notes at long last and began to choose the music for the next radio programme. However, I hadn’t finished when I was once more take by surprise by the cleaner who came to fit my patches.

Once more it was a long wait for the taxi but it was the girl who brought me home last time so I didn’t mind at all. There were just the two of us and we had a nice, chatty time down to Avranches.

Plugging me in was painful as usual but nothing as painful whatever as last Saturday. I don’t think that anything could ever be. However, when the anaesthetic wore off I began to know about it.

During the last couple of days I’ve accumulated a lot of water, so much so that the machine doesn’t have the means to remove it all. I’ve no idea what they will do about that. But there was quite a crowd around me giving me an examination. Unfortunately, not including Emilie the Cute Consultant. She can come and examine me any time she likes.

There was something of a wait for a taxi home, and when it turned up it already had a passenger. But the driver was a history buff who knew, would you believe, all about the stuff that I’ve been reading, menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed …, Cartier and Champlain, the exploration of North America, and so we had a lively chat on the way home.

My cleaner was waiting for me and she watched once more as I strode up the stairs to the lift. The handrail still isn’t fixed up to here and it probably never will be. They don’t seem to be in too much of a rush

Back in here I made myself tea. I baked the three pies in the oven and steamed a lot of veg in the electric steamer. I’ve not used that for ages.

Everything was really nice, especially the gravy, which I made with the steamed veg water.

So now it’s bedtime and tomorrow I have a Day of Rest when I’ll be doing some more of this radio stuff so that I have another programme ready if I can.

But in this gaggle of people around my bed this afternoon someone was talking about life in the Nephrology Clinic, when a sailor had been admitted and they had examined him
Apparently the Ward Matron had gone into the Nurses’ rest room, saying "there’s a sailor just been admitted to the Nephrology Ward and he has the word ‘Ludo’ tattooed on his private parts"
Of course, all of the nurses dashed out to have a look for themselves
A few minutes later the pretty young student nurse came back. "It’s not ‘Ludo’" she announced. "It’s ‘Llandudno’"

Monday 13th January 2025 – I AM HORRIFIED …

… by how much *.html coding that I have forgotten.

It was almost 30 years ago that I wrote my first web page and after a couple of years of practice I was even teaching *.html 4.0 until new technology evolved faster than I could absorb it.

Nevertheless I soldiered on, upgrading to *.html 5.0, and both of my websites and the thousands of pages therein are entirely written by hand, with the only templates in there being those that I designed and wrote myself.

The design of the sites was last changed in 2007 and not since, because there isn’t much point. *.html 5.0 has long-since reached the peak of its development and still works fine. All that I have done is to introduce elements of Javascript as I have gone along, once I’ve mastered parts of it.

But today, I was on the point of adding in a couple of new features and do you know, I couldn’t even remember how I’d actually designed my site. Despite making the coding abundantly clear, with plenty of notes, I still had to pick the coding of a page apart to give me some idea of what I did.

And then I ran aground over a simple piece of Javascript.

But it’s slowly coming together and here on my blog, on the right-hand side, you’ll notice a “buy me a coffee” button. Something that has also happened today is that I’ve had the bill for my web-hosting and domain name registration so I’ll be passing around the begging-bowl. Renting my own piece of cyberspace is not cheap.

Something that didn’t happen last night was going to bed early. It was, as usual these days, much later than usual. It might, and indeed ought, to have been a little earlier but just as I was on the point of going to bed, a “Curved Air” concert came onto the playlist.

The first piece of music that I ever played in public was the piano riff to BACK STREET LOVE and Sonia Shaw can come and sing to me any time she likes, so the song, and the group, have a special place in my memory.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep and although it was something of a mobile night, I don’t really remember anything much at all, and I was certainly asleep when the alarm went off.

Once I’d hauled myself to my feet I staggered off into the bathroom and sorted myself out, including having a shave just in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there this afternoon at the Dialysis Centre, and then I went into the kitchen to take my medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was taxiing last night on a motorbike. I picked up someone at the station in some town or other to take to the University. He sat on the back and we set off. When we came to the first bend, which was a turning on the right at some traffic lights, the lights were against us so we had to stop. When they changed to green I’d forgotten how to turn corners on a motorbike and I had a panic attack. In the end I managed basically to manoeuvre us around which was all an inconvenience but all my knowledge of riding a motorbike had been shot to pieces. I was on the wrong side of the road, the bike wasn’t sounding very nice. In the end the guy tapped me on the shoulder and said “if you just pull up here and drop me off, I’ll walk the rest of the way”. The Fare was £1:40 but he gave me £2:00, asked for the change from £1:60 and wanted a receipt that said “Fare £1:40, damages £0:15” and I’ve no idea why. I felt really embarrassed that the motorbike was showing me up today. It really really was a shame.

In Paris and many big cities there are motorcycle taxis that are available to hire. It’s much quicker for them to filter in and out of the traffic. In North America it’s illegal for a motorcycle to filter down through the traffic, which rather defeats the point of any motorcycle taxi, or any commuter motorcycle if it comes to that. And bearing that in mind, it’s amazing just how many quite common and normal things you aren’t allowed to do in “The Land Of The Free”.

But suddenly realising that you’ve forgotten how to ride a motor bike is not an ideal situation in which to be when one is halfway down the road. But at least it wasn’t a road in Crewe. I can still see the image of the road and it was down a hill at some traffic lights and a right turning underneath a railway bridge, something similar (but not identical) to coming down Wood Street towards King Street in Longton.

Thinking about it all though, long afterwards, this sudden panic attack about forgetting how to ride a motor bike is something similar to forgetting all about how I built my website, isn’t it? Bizarre, hey?

The nurse came round for his last day for a week. He was soon in and gone which was fine because I could push on and make my breakfast.

So armed with porridge, toast and coffee, I attacked MY BOOK.

We’re having a splendid argument about the name of the Isle of Man … "Isle of PERSON" – ed … today. Our author notes that Pliny called it Monapia and Caesar called it Mona and so the argument that is currently raging is whether it was the Brythons or the Goidels or the Belgae who so named it.

However, the “local” Welsh name for the Isle of Anglesey is Mona, and what both places have in common is that they are islands. Could it be, maybe, that Mona is simply an old word in an extinct language for “Island”?

He doesn’t seem to consider that possibility at all. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the word afon pronounced “avon” is Welsh for “river” so one could easily imagine a Roman or a Saxon or a Norseman asking a local “what’s the name of that place?” and the person replying in his own language “it’s the River”. And so we have the “River Avon” in several places in England.

Could the same thing not have happened when Caesar asked a local “what’s the name of that island?”. “Ohh, it’s just the island” he might have replied in his own language. Maybe I’m barking up a gum tree too, but I’m surprised that in all the 805 pages of his work, our author never even considers the possibility for a single moment despite everything else that he considers.

Back in here I attacked this website amendment that I wanted to do – a task that shouldn’t have taken me more than ten minutes. But when my cleaner came along two hours later to fit my patches, I was still far from finished. I have something that works in principle, but it’s not how I want it.

The taxi was late again, and once more it had these other two women in it. There’s no doubt that these new Social Security regulations are making everyone tighten their grip. No more squadrons of taxis streaming along the road between Avranches and Granville, and I can’t say that I’m surprised. In any case, we didn’t have a taxi today but the little Ford wheelchair carrier. And if I were back taxiing again, that’s what I would have now.

Being late at the clinic meant that everyone else was plugged in so I didn’t have to wait. The first pin was quite painless but the second, although not painless, was much easier and much less painless than Saturday. Mind you, as the anaesthetic wore off, then I knew all about it.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me today. She asked if I needed anything, and I thought that it was a shame that I was in a public ward and not in a private room. She did bring me a prescription from the dietician for more of this awful drink. I suppose that I’ll just have to keep on going and learn to like it.

But a strange thing today – I was off having more of those hallucinations that I used to have all those months ago. And during one of them I felt as if I was stroking a cat. The “fur” felt so realistic too. I’ve no idea what that was about.

Once I was unplugged I had to wait for a few minutes for my car. But that was OK because it was the chatty blonde girl – the one with the long straight hair – who brought me home and I like travelling with her.

But it was freezing when we arrived back here and my poor cleaner was frozen to the marrow waiting for me. She watched as I climbed up the stairs, and now another part of the handrail is coming loose. It won’t be long before I’ll be stuck in this apartment for good.

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper with pasta, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. Plenty of stuffing from the pepper left over for a couple more meals. And then I’ll hopefully have my vegan pies ready by then, if I remember tomorrow to soak the lentils overnight.

So Welsh lesson tomorrow. And I’m not in the mood. However I suppose that I’ll have to do my best.

But while we’re on the subject of motor bikes and hospitals … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of the nurses today told me about a woman who had been rushed to hospital as an emergency.
Her husband had been riding a motor cycle and the police stopped him a few miles down the road.
"Excuse me, m’sieur" said the Gendarme. "Your wife fell of the pillion a couple of miles back"
"Thank heavens for that" said the man
"Thank heavens?" asked the Gendarme with a puzzled air
"Yes" replied the man. "I thought that for the last few minutes I’d suddenly gone deaf"

Monday 6th January 2025 – BACK AT WORK …

… as of today, and more of the same old stuff that characterised last year – namely that I wasn’t able to do anything because the medical issues interfered with my progress.

What interfered with my progress last night though was that a good concert appeared on the playlist just as I was thinking of going to bed. Shame as it is to admit it, I can’t remember which one it was now, but last night I enjoyed it to such an extent that I stayed up to listen to it, consequently it was quite late when I went to bed last night – again!

We somehow managed to survive the night without any phantom alarm calls upsetting our rhythm, although I do recall being awake once or twice at some point. However, when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was deep in the Arms of Morpheus

It was quite an effort to haul myself out of bed in order to beat the second alarm but I went nevertheless fairly rapidly (for me, anyway) into the bathroom to sort myself out.

As well as Yours Truly, there were some clothes to wash and a shave to have just in case Emilie the Cute Consultant comes to see me. I even applied some deodorant after the events of Saturday in the taxi when no-one spoke to me. You can’t ever be sure.

Into the kitchen next to take my medication, and it’s nice to do that – in fact it’s nice to re-adopt my old habits – without having to rush around at all. I’m fed up of always being in some kind of panic.

Back in here, I transcribed the dictaphone notes to see where I’d been during the night. It was something like the end of the month and there was an inventory of surgical interventions so everyone had to meet at the centre of the place where they had been hospitalised in the past and declare their reason for going. I was there waiting to be called when I heard a couple of girls say “there he is. Let’s take him and we can deal with him”. They came straight for me. I wondered whether they were the two twins whom we’d met on that island a few months back. These girls certainly meant business so I had to try to hide. After a while they worked out where I was and they stood outside saying things like “if you really are serious about waiting for the things that come you should go to Route Départementale n°9” – something like that, but itemising these lists, capitalising them and deals with them accordingly to make them all work as much as possible.

Returning to your place of business or place of origin sounds rather Biblical to me. But what twins did I meet on which island a few months ago? I have no recollection of any of that. But I hope that those twins bore a very close resemblance to THE FAMOUS TWINS OF AUSTIN POWERS. And if they did, I’m sorry, really sorry that I can’t remember them. And as for Route Départemental n°9, if there is one, it’s nowhere near anywhere where i have ever lived or travelled, but the RD 2009 is the road from Riom to Vichy which I have driven on many occasions.

I wondered why I awoke again quite dramatically and had this horrible feeling that no alarm had been set for Monday and I was going to miss my taxi that was going to take me to Dun Laoghaire and then Dundalk. I have no idea what I was going to do now. I just went to make sure that the lettuce was OK. I put some lettuce in the icebox so that it will keep and will be crisp when it comes round to deal with it and I should be able to place them on a map with no particular problem

If I did awaken dramatically, I have no recollection at all of it, and I’ve no idea why I might be going from Dun Laoghaire to Dundalk. However, it was a project of mine, long-abandoned, to profit from the collapse of the ferry network to the UK after Brexit and the positive flooding of the seas from Cherbourg, Caen and St Malo direct to the Republic of Ireland by catching a ferry direct to the Republic and, armed with a rucksack, a bus pass and a train ticket, to go to explore the island.

It was interesting nevertheless to see in the newspapers the whole raft of different redundant ferries being given berthing trials on those three French ports and in the Irish ports in the run-up to Brexit. This was to see which ones would be suitable for the Irish companies to buy so that they could run them direct without having to pass through a British port. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we even had one given a try-out in the port down here.

However – “icebox”? I’m dreaming in American – or maybe Canadian – now. Probably a reminder of happy times staying with my relatives, either with my niece in New Brunswick or my cousin in Ottawa. And that reminds me – I have a Fender bass and combo amp over there somewhere that I must repatriate.

Then there was a dream about orcs moving all around the countryside causing all kinds of chaos so I had a look at my arm to check on what the nurse had done and stayed done but I found that my little kitchen place and rest room had been wiped out by the rest room and checking, or the moist of the checking that what they had now was a really big car park (…fell asleep here …)

It’s no surprise that this dream, based on LORD OF THE RINGS that I’m currently watching disintegrated into a pile of nonsense. But for the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few these days, I don’t actually fall asleep because I’m already asleep when I’m dictating. What happens is that my dictation tails off into silence and then you’ll hear a snore. And I’m sorry for doubting you, Percy Penguin.

Did I dictate that dream … "no you didn’t" – ed … about me being in Gresty on my way back home and going to bed and there was some kind of discussion somewhere about someone’s homework? In the end I decided that I was going to help that person, whoever it was, to do that homework because there was something in there that interested me. So next morning I was in bed and someone came up to see me and asked about something. I replied “the reason why I’m still here was because I’m hoping to give you a hand with the homework” so whoever it was who came to see me asked “would you like a cup of tea?” to which I replied “yes” so they wandered off presumably to make the tea

Helping someone with their homework? What help would I be? And tea would be no use for me either. However, note once more that I’m “back in the family”. I wish that they would leave me alone.

There was no-one here to fit my anaesthetic patches so, regrettably, I had to do it myself. And that was the most disagreeable task that I have done for a while. I couldn’t look at my arm at all. I had to close my eyes, tear off the plasters that they had fitted on Saturday and put these patches on with my eyes closed and hope that I had found the correct place.

The taxi was on time for me. It was the young chatty guy and he already had a lady in the back, so the three of us had a lovely, lively ride down to Avranches. And it would have been even livelier had the driver of a car at a roundabout not switched his indicator off at the very last minute just as we were about to pull out.

So they took me to the clinic and dropped me off where I discovered that I’d forgotten to bring all my paperwork with me. It didn’t take them long to call me in but the process lasted for an age. We had an interesting chat though while it was all going on.

Back outside, I had to wait and wait for the taxi to come. he had another person with him and we had to pick up a third too. They were going to Granville but I was being hurled out at the Dialysis Clinic as they drove past.

It was 13:00 when I was finally plugged in and that’s long after the anaesthetic patches have ceased to have any effect. You don’t need me to tell you how the plugging in went.

The good news is that Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me and we had a chat for a while. I even gave her a demonstration of how to access a password-protected file on a website – not that I would ever do such a thing in real life, perish the thought and all that. But what a wonderful course T223 was.

She asked me if there was anything else I wanted. I could of course think of a few things, but that wasn’t the moment to mention them, I reckon. Not when one is plugged into a medical machine.

Some other good news was that I struck gold again today. I was looking for something on the internet concerning the Norse voyagers and came across a whole pile of literature that I had missed. Most of it is available on MY FAVOURITE SITE but some is only available to Academic researchers and my Academic connections have long-since lapsed.

As I said yesterday, this pile of stuff that I have to read is growing longer.

The taxi that was to bring me home kept me waiting for a while before it turned up, with the result that I was only about 45 minutes ahead of where I would usually be. And that’s after spending almost a whole day out. It hardly seemed worth it.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. There is plenty of stuffing left over which is good because many regular readers of this rubbish will recall that they have suggested that I want stuffing, and now I have plenty.

So bedtime ready for my Welsh course that restarts tomorrow, not that I’m looking forward to it at all. But I have to keep up.

A few weeks ago I mentioned the story of the Fertility Clinic. Emilie the Cute Consultant mentioned the story about a woman who went to the Clinic because her husband had lost interest in her.
"Here" said the doctor. "Take these pills. Slip one in his coffee and he’ll soon be back to his teenage years "
A week or two later he saw the woman walking down the street. "How did you get on?" he asked
"I slipped one into his coffee" she said "and it was wonderful. The sparkle came back into his eyes, he threw me across the table, tore off my clothes, tore off his, and gave me a really good seeing-to just like he did years ago"
"That’s wonderful" said the doctor. "But are there any side-effects?"
"I don’t know if it’s a side-effect" she replied "but they won’t let us go back into that café."

Monday 30th December 2024 – REGULAR READERS OF …

… this rubbish will recall that HIS NIBS and I have been to the town of Lech in the Austria Tyrol ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS.

It’s a town that has some kind of significance for me. When Nerina and I were on our way to Italy on our honeymoon to see her family, we passed through Lech. We thought that the place looked lovely but being pushed for time – the story of our lives – we didn’t stop. However we vowed one day to return.

Of course, the lack of time and other factors intervened and then circumstances changed. However, I kept my vow and have been back a few times. I often wonder if she ever went back.

It wouldn’t be a good idea to go back today though. Apparently someone took nine hours just recently to dig his car out of the overnight snow that had fallen. All of that snow would have been great if I had been already there and wasn’t planning on going anywhere. It would have been like that time that I was SNOWED IN IN ANDORRA

However, I’m right here at the moment having a good think about what went on today.

Last night was quite easy. After I’d finished my notes and backed up the computer I loitered around for (quite) a while, and it was about 01:00 when I finally crawled off into my stinking pit.

Once I was in there, that was that. I remember absolutely nothing at all until the alarm went off at 08:00 (I’m still in “holiday” mode here). It was quite painless. No-one was more surprised than me that I’d slept like that.

When the alarm went off though, I was in the middle of a dream about elephants dancing in a circus and someone beating a kind of drum with a hand. Someone had offered to teach me how to dance in time to the music too but unfortunately we never came round to that because the alarm went off and that was that.

It’s just as well too. Seeing me dancing would not be a very pleasant sight and I’m glad that we were spared that.

In the bathroom I’d only just begun to wash myself when the nurse put in his appearance. Nothing else for it – he had to wait for me to finish what I was doing and so, like the White Rabbit, he would lose the time he’d saved.

We had the usual banal questions that so irritate me and then he cleared off. It’s his oppo now for the next seven days so things might be looking up.

Breakfast was next, and I read MY BOOK.

A couple of days ago, I talked about the location of specific Neolithic (or otherwise) stone circles and menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … in Britain and how it looks to me as if succeeding waves of invaders have pushed the previous wave further into the less favourable areas of the British Isles and so on in further waves.

This morning he was discussing these waves of invaders (without mentioning the stone circles etc) and saying "It would be surprising if these conjectures did not attain some measure of truth ; but those who will not accept guesses even from the highest authority without testing them will perceive that they bristle with difficulties"

He seems to think though that new waves of invaders pushed their way through the existing settlers and headed freely and willingly to the less-favourable areas, something that, knowing human nature, I consider most unlikely, and he pours heaps of scorn on a writer who tell us that the latest invaders "were last in the held, were not forced to seek distant abodes, but conquered the best parts of the country which were nearest to the Continent.", a scenario that I consider to be much more likely.

Not two paragraphs further down, he speaks of the Belgae – the final wave that arrived in Britain – and says "The Belgic conquest, which brought Britain into closer connexion with the Continent, gave a powerful impetus to the spread of Late Celtic art.". Now how could they do that if they had pushed through all the others and gone to the more remote parts of the island?

After breakfast, I tidied up. I cut up the cake and the flapjack into individual helpings and put them all in tins and boxes. But I really need to make toom in the fridge. having resolved all of the difficulties about the freezer, it’s the fridge about which I’m worrying these days, wishing that I could make more room in it.

While I was at it, I started to put away the washing up from yesterday, but I need much more time than I had available to do that this morning.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches, and it’s a good job that she was prompt because my 12:30 taxi turned up this morning at 12:18. There were two passengers already in it – from the Centre de Re-education on their way home to the back of beyond near Rennes, and I was being picked up and dropped off en route

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … whilst I’m not complaining about these new Social Security regulations, I’d love to know what will happen if an infectious disease springs up amongst the clients of a taxi service because of all of this.

Being early to be picked up, I was early to be dropped off too and was actually second to be plugged in, which made a change.

And while I was undergoing treatment I was reading up on the various periods of the Stone Age (Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic) and the change in existence from hunter-gatherer to settled agricultural community. As I said yesterday, the site at Hallstatt begins right at the very, very end of the Neolithic period and takes us through the Copper Age, the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age.

What had piqued my interest was the existence of Hearne’s Copper Indians – still living clearly in the Copper Age from a tools point of view but a Palaeolithic Age from the point of view of hunter-gathering.

But this takes us back to another point I raised from a couple of days ago about the survival of Palaeolithic Communities in isolated upland areas of Britain well into Neolithic times. They did it for the same reason that the Copper Indians had one foot in either of their camps – because that represents the best use of the resources that are readily and locally available.

The doctor, the uncommunicative one, came to see me too. He asked me a few more questions about my foot and later on, handed me a big envelope full of papers to hand in at Paris. Maybe he’s asking them to follow up this issue. I’ll have to have a sneaky look.

Almost-first in means almost-first out so once Alexi had unplugged me, I was out of there like a ferret up a trouser leg and a rather uncommunicative driver brought me home.

My cleaner was astonished to see me home so early, just as I was astonished to be here so early, and having climbed up the steps and used the lift, I was back in the warmth of my apartment. It was freezing outside.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta in tomato sauce followed by ginger cake and soya mince. Tomorrow, I’m having my New Year’s Eve dinner so I shall have to work up an appetite.

But before I do, my dream today made me begin to think of the time at school we were discussing the sexual reproduction of worms.
We were looking at works through a microscope, examining their reproductive organs, and it struck us that something was missing
"There is no testicular substance there" we exclaimed
"Worms are devoid of testicular matter" explained the teacher
"What does that mean?" asked little Johnny at the back of class.
"It means" I shouted "that worms don’t have any balls!"
"Please Sir" asked little Johnny "why don’t worms have balls?"
And the teacher sighed. "Because they can’t dance, you fool!"

Saturday 28th December 2024 – I NEARLY CAME …

… home by myself this afternoon – without a driver from the taxi company.

When I came out of the building, the car was there but the driver wasn’t. He’d had to dash off as an accompagnateur in one of the ambulances to take an ill person home. So there I was, sitting in the car like Piffy on a rock waiting for things to happen

But I can promise you – had the chauffeur left the keys to the car behind him, that would have been the last that either he or his company would have seen of the vehicle.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, I was up yet again until 02:00 – in full holiday mode. No rush at all to go to bed. After I finished my notes and backing up, I had a little project to do, about which I’ll talk in due course.

Eventually though, at 02:00 I struggled off to bed and there I stayed until 08:00, when the alarm rang and I fell out of bed.

The nurse caught me in the bathroom doing my washing. He’s coming earlier and earlier these days, not giving me time to do anything.

We had the usual banal questions and then he left, leaving me to make breakfast, and to read MY BOOK.

We’re discussing stone circles at the moment, and he tells us that "stone circles are to be seen in the northern counties of England, in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire, Somersetshire, and Cornwall; and also in Glamorganshire, Orkney, the islands of Arran and Lewis, Argyllshire, Perthshire, Inverness-shire, Banffshire, Aberdeenshire, and Kincardineshire"

However he also reminds us that "menhirs, or isolated standing stones, and stone rows are found in this island only on Dartmoor, in Cornwall, Northumberland, Scotland, and Wales"

It’s interesting to note that there’s a very strong geographical separation between the location of stone circles and the menhirs. The menhirs … "PERSONShirs" – ed … seem to be situated in the areas that are either more isolated, further from the sea or further from the south-east of England, the traditional place of arrival of invaders from the European mainland. Those stone circles in the North of Scotland would be in places more easily accessible by sea.

And yet again, the areas close to the South-East are devoid of anything.

It seems to me that it may be possible that the population in the isolated areas has been pushed there by the weight of numbers of whoever arrived and who brought with them their own traditions of stone circles, followed by another wave of invaders with a different culture again but who didn’t spread out so far.

What’s more unusual about all of this is that these really isolated locations where we find menhirs are the areas where 200 years ago the Celtic languages (Gaelic, Welsh and Cornish) were strongest. Could it be that the “flight to the west” of the Celtic people generally attributed to the arrival of the Saxons took place a couple of millennia beforehand and took place under threat from a completely different invader?

And is that why we have all of the hillforts from this era? To defend the area from these new invaders?

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I’d been taken by the dwarves, a bunch of whom lived in the valley nearby, and was taken to their main stronghold in the mountains. There I was imprisoned, at least for several weeks, but the start of a great layman offensive cooled the spirits of the nuns somewhat and after a few minutes of fighting they put me on a scale and weighed me outside the village hall, that everyone could see that in fact I’d gained 3kg since I saw them last and that brought this rescuing party to a dead stop while they configured out what would be the next move.

So we were out with the Hobbits again last night. I must stop getting into these bad hobbits. But yes, I really did say “nuns” just there in that dream. The weighing and gaining 3kg – that’s just like in the Dialysis Centre at the moment. But by the looks of things, I seem to have merged two dreams together somehow.

And then I noted that “so far we’ve had two phantom alarm calls tonight, one at 04:25 and the other one at 07:05”. And I remember nothing whatsoever of those. I certainly can’t recall dictating those notes

My cleaner turned up and fitted my anaesthetic patches and then stopped for a chat for a while.

We had a new taxi driver today – one from Villedieu-les-Poèles – and she had difficulty finding my address. But once we were in the car we had a lovely chat all the way down to Avranches.

At the Dialysis Centre I wasn’t the last to be plugged in today, which was a change. But although the first pin went in totally and absolutely painlessly, the second one more than made up for it.

The unfriendly doctor came for a prowl around and didn’t have much to say for himself. He asked if it hurt and when I told him that it did, he said that he would prescribe some Paracetamol for me. I suppose that it’s different than Doliprane, and in any case I forgot to pick up the prescription.

After I’d had my customary doze, I had work to do. In fact, I’ve been undressing women so that they were totally nude

The project to which I referred earlier came about as a result of a conversation with Rosemary the other day, and in particular the manipulation of photos and voices by Artificial Intelligence to represent something that they are not.

Back at the ran … errr … apartment I’d managed to find a voice clone on the internet and I’d been experimenting with it. Even with the free version of this clone, I came up with some pretty impressive results.

This afternoon though, I tracked down an Artificial Intelligence photo manipulator designed simply to remove someone’s clothes to reveal what the AI robot might think the person wearing them looks like underneath.

This manipulator is dynamite. It was the freeware version, like the voice clone, yet the results are stunning.

In just a few hours of practice with a freeware set-up I could produce enough “evidence” to dynamite someone’s entire life and career, so heaven alone knows what an experienced operator with a “paid version” could produce.

This is terrifying for everyone. No-one is now safe and if this Artificial Intelligence is the future, I’d rather go back into the past, or "past into the back" as Bush once said, and promote a return to Natural Stupidity. I’ve had years of experience of dealing with that and am quite used to it.

When they unplugged me I wandered off to look for my taxi. One of the other drivers pointed it out to me and so I climbed in, and there I waited. And waited.

Eventually the ambulance returned and my driver climbed into the car and we set off. And for the first time with this company, I had a driver who made me feel uneasy. I’ve driven with thousands of other drivers and no-one has been less at home behind a wheel than the one this evening.

My cleaner watched as I strode upstairs with purpose, and after she left I had a slice of Christmas cake, delicious as always.

Tea tonight was a breaded quorn fillet with baked potatoes and vegan salad followed by ginger cake and soya dessert – really nice as it always is, and I could certainly eat it again.

There’s nothing to dictate tonight as I’ve had a week off, so I’ll lounge around and then go to bed.

Tomorrow I’m baking – a new cake for pudding and another flapjack. Supplies are running out.

But before I clear off, while we’re on the subject of removing clothes … "well, one of us is " – ed … Milady crept into the garage late one night and sidled up to the chauffeur
"James" she said "take off my blouse"
"And now, take off my skirt"
"Now, James, take off my bra"
"And now, take off my panties"
"And now, James, if I ever catch you wearing my clothes again, you’re fired!"

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: doctor

Monday 17th February 2025 – I AM DEFINITELY …

Saturday 15th February 2025 – I REALLY AM …

Thursday 13th February 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

Monday 10th February 2025 – I’M FED UP …

Thursday 6th February 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Monday 3rd February 2025 – THAT WAS NEVER …

Thursday 30th January 2025 – ANOTHER FOUR HOURS …

Friday 24th January 2024 – HERE I ALL AM …

Monday 20th January 2025 – YET ANOTHER THREE …

Saturday 18th January 2025 – ANOTHER THREE HOURS ..

Thursday 16th January 2025 – MY VEGAN PIES …

Monday 13th January 2025 – I AM HORRIFIED …

Monday 6th January 2025 – BACK AT WORK …

Monday 30th December 2024 – REGULAR READERS OF …

Saturday 28th December 2024 – I NEARLY CAME …

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