… my extra hour in bed last night. Even though I didn’t make it into bed for 23:00, it was still before midnight and when the alarm awoke me at 08:00 (or 09:00 in Summer Time) I had had over nine hours of uninterrupted sleep.

And it’s been a long time since I am able to say that. Perhaps they ought to change the clocks every weekend.

Mind you, how I’m going to cope when the clocks go forward next Spring I have yet to work out.

Last night after I’d finished writing my notes I had some dictating to do. And I decided, in a mad fit of enthusiasm, to attempt the two programmes that had been giving me great difficulty.

The other day I’d reviewed the notes and re-written them a couple of times, so now was the time to put my efforts into some serious work. After all, they’ve been hanging around for several months and I need them out of the way and finished otherwise time will over-run them.

By my estimation there would be 10.5 minutes of speech in one and a little under 4 minutes in the other so that means that before I edit, the rough dictated notes will be about 20 minutes or so.

Not that I was far out. I had just about 21 minutes of dictation that I can edit in the morning. On that note I went off to bed.

There was no rush to awaken in the morning, and it was rather a struggle to tear myself out of the bed.

Especially as it was absolutely freezing. So once I was finally up, I gave in and switched on the heating for the first time this winter. I had been hoping to hold out until November but that’s just not possible.

After I’d finished washing I came in here but I’d hardly sat down when Isabelle the nurse came in.

She asked how I was feeling after my ‘flu injection so I told her that I’d felt no side-effects at all. She went to have a look at my legs and was really pleased with the left one that looks as if it’s almost well again. The right leg still needs attention so she saw to that, chatting away as she did so.

After she left I made breakfast and read my book. The members of the Woolhope Naturalists have finished their discussion on funghi, which included dozens of recipes that showed just how time-consuming and labour-intensive work was in the kitchen in Victorian Days.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the Society is famous for its attempts to incorporate mushrooms into the cuisine of the British kitchen and the country owes its members a great debt, because much of our use of mushrooms stems from this historic. meeting.

The meeting concludes with "Burke had said that the man who had made only a blade of grass grow on a spot where it had never grown before, was a benefactor to his country, and so was any man who added to its store of food. Dr. Bull did not indeed profess to grow Agarics, but he showed where they did grow, how they could be distinguished, and the advantage of using them as food at the season when they appeared in profusion. He had thus not only approved himself to the Woolhope Club, of which he was so indefatigable a member, but humanity might ultimately be indebted to him in calling their attention to a cheap additional supply to the daily resources of life."

And they were right too!

Back in here I finished off the dictaphone notes that I had barely started when the nurse arrived. It was Joe Walsh’s birthday shortly so the other members of the James Gang and I collected together and bought him a tankard. We collected some kind of verses that we needed to edit to make them more personal. I did that, and then I had to review them. When I was quite happy I remember throwing down my pen onto the desk. Someone picked up their head and asked “are you OK, Eric?”. Someone asked me if I had finished so I replied “yes”. They looked quite bewildered at me having finished. Someone else asked me if I was OK and I replied “well, the situation is not OK – it’s all to buggery” which caused a great deal of mirth and merriment around the table. Then we had to copy out these amended verses onto a piece of calligraphy card, cut it out and put it inside the bag. Seeing as no-one else could do it, I volunteered which was quite the wrong idea because my writing like that, this processional writing and doing things for birthday cards is bound to go all wrong. There’s bound to be a fault in it but as no-one else had volunteered to do it I said that I would

Firstly of course, what am I doing with Joe Walsh and the James Gang? And why would they appear now? However, the latter part is about par for the course. No-one else wants to do something so I do it and then everyone blames me when it all goes wrong. Been there, done that etc etc.

And then I was in Shavington. There was some issue about some payment there that someone should have made on Paypal. The interest hadn’t been added in. We made loads of enquiries about it. It turned out that for some unknown reason I hadn’t made the payment, at least, that’s what I thought. The local pub was the Paypal agent for here so I thought that I’d go to see it. I went on this old bike to the local pub, couldn’t find anywhere to leave the bike. It was a quick journey too, but in the ice I was convinced that I was going to fall at some point but I didn’t. I reached the pub but couldn’t find anywhere to leave the bike and the guy on security duty didn’t look too keen about me bringing it in. The bar was packed with people so I didn’t think that I’d be welcome there to start talking about Paypal. I heard someone going on about their illness, the things that they had to do. I dismissed it at the time. From there I had to travel onwards. I was in a train. I heard some people talking, and someone was saying that they’d heard this guy in a pub who had a terminal illness but he’d organised himself because he had so much to do and was dashing to do it all. Someone who was listening said “that happened to me” so I piped up and said “that had happened to me too”. We continued this lengthy discussion. I can’t really remember what happened after this. The rest of the dream seems to have been pretty much wiped out.

Going back to that dream later on I can remember now that when I returned home there was a woman there who gave me something that was a few thin layers of something or other. She asked me if I’d peel a layer off for her. It turned out that they were false fingernails so I began to peel back a layer but it broke. She was extremely upset about that. I couldn’t see why because these false fingernails were particularly cheap. They didn’t look expensive and certainly weren’t very durable so they can’t have cost very much.

At some point I was with a group of people. There ended up being four of us out of this group. We’d been taken down a ramp and walked out onto a river which was frozen solid with ice. I couldn’t think of where we were for a moment but someone told me that this was the Danube. It didn’t look like the Danube at all to me but when I walked out into the middle of the river on the ice I could see right down in the distance, the mountains, and I knew then that it was the Danube. It turned out that this was a talk about investing in Slovakia. I listened to this and became convinced that an investment here might actually pay off so I agreed to invest £1000. One or two other people were rather hesitant. They asked me why I wanted to invest. The idea is to spread your money about in different places because while one is down the other is up, and I think that Slovakia might be going up. That’s all that I remember about that dream too.

Slovakia is actually a country that is taking off in a big way thanks to its membership of the EU. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been there before ON ONE OF OUR VOYAGES and I’ve been there on several occasions in the past, whether with coaches or even on our honeymoon when Nerina and I passed through Bratislava in the good old days of the Iron Curtain as we followed the Danube home on our way back from Hungary.

Finally someone died and there was some child’s clothing that was being thrown away. A friend of mine who had a couple of small children was quite badly off and was looking for some clothes for them. I told these people who were clearing the house to bring the children’s clothing round to my house so that my friend could come round to look through it. I’d take the rest of the stuff to the tip. On Friday night I was trying to find something to do. I’d rung round one or two friends and no-one was available so I thought that I’d have this stuff sent round and have that organised this weekend. I telephoned the woman and she agreed to bring the stuff. I must have been distracted because when I came downstairs I couldn’t believe my eyes. I could not move for children’s clothing, all over the ground floor of the house. The sheds and everything were completely and utterly filled. It was impossible for me to move about. I didn’t understand first of all how they had come here. I thought that they should have stopped bringing them a long time before this. This was absolute chaos. There was no way that I was going to move any of these, never mind my friend sort through them. I was looking at all this and thinking “what on earth am I going to do now?”.

This is probably one of the most confusing dreams that I have ever had. I’ve no idea what’s happening here. I think that had I been awake and this had happened, I’d have gone out for a meal and left it all there while I thought about it. But there’s no doubt – there’s some strange goings-on in my head during the night and I wish that the time when I was awake was as exciting as this.

Football was next – the highlights of last night’s games when we had another “let’s play it out from the back moment” and then the Scottish Cup when Stranraer took on Threave Rovers, four divisions lower in the pyramid.

It’s fair to say that Stranraer have not had a very good time over the last few seasons, but no-one expected them to be 2-0 down at half-time. However they pulled a goal back during the second half and as Threave tired towards the end, Stranraer scored two goals to save them some serious embarrassment

But here we go again. In the closing stages of the game, the superior fitness of the senior side pulls them through. I’ve seen this dozens of times but no-one else seems to have noticed it.

Then we had the notes that I dictated. That was how I spent the rest of the day.

They were complicated to edit and to sort out, and I had to move bits and pieces around, and eventually my estimates of 10:30 and 3:52 turned out to be 10:50 and 4:11 so my estimates aren’t far out.

For the first one I had to find an additional track and dictate (and edit) some notes but for the second I just had to merge the speech that I’d edited, fitting it to the front of the music that I’d prepared months ago, and edit out a few bits to make it fit, and there I was, by 16:30, all up and running with two of the most complicated programmes that I’ve done to date.

There had been a break for my salad butty at lunchtime, and now I went for hot chocolate and chocolate cake. I deserved it.

I spent an hour or so doing more of my Jersey stuff and then went to sort out the pizza – I’d taken the dough from the freezer at lunchtime.

While it was rising, I went into the bathroom. There had been some ginger beer and some Kefir fermenting in there for a couple of years. I opened it and tasted it, and it was all excellent.

What I did was to bring the kefir into the kitchen and filter it through a coffee filter. That’s in the fridge settling and I might drink it tomorrow. In the afternoon I’m at the hospital so if I have any unpleasant side-effects from the Kefir the hospital can deal with it.

But I’m really keen to start up my drinks production line again. I had a good thing going a few years ago, especially the ginger beer.

Tonight’s pizza was excellent. Another roaring success. I really ought to make more of them and have them more often.

So now that I’ve finished my notes, I have a few things to do and then I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about mushrooms … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of the time that a mushroom walked into a bar and ordered drinks all round.
"Why are you doing that?" asked the barman
"No particular reason" said the mushroom. "I’m just a funghi to be with"