Category Archives: France

Sunday 14th September 2025 – THERE ISN’T MUCH …

… at all on the dictaphone from last night, unfortunately. But then, that’s hardly a surprise. If you don’t go to bed until 23:30 but then are wide-awake again at 03:15, you don’t have all that much time to go very far.

Yes, it wasn’t as early as I was hoping last night, once again. And that was despite making an effort, for once. But as usual, I was one of the ones who fell by the wayside.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly but, as I said earlier, not for long. By 03:15 I was wide awake again and, try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep, despite trying my very best.

Round about 04:30, I threw off the covers, but it took me another good fifteen minutes to find the energy to rise to my feet.

After a good wash and scrub up, I went to take my medicine and then I came back here to listen to the dictaphone, which didn’t take long as I said earlier. I was back having a dream that I had a few nights ago where I had some kind of robot that was going to act as my servant. I had to train it to listen to my voice and understand it, and also I had to program it so that it would do what I wanted and do it efficiently. It’s quite similar to one that I had a few days ago.

That was what I dictated, but now that I’m awake, I really can’t recall any such dream in the past. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were dreams that I’ve had that, for some reason or other, I haven’t recorded. That wouldn’t be a great problem, except if they were to concern TOTGA, Zero or Castor, and then I really would be annoyed.

For the past few days, I’d been wishing for an early start so that I could dictate the radio notes that have been building up. No time like the present, seeing as it was quiet outside and the wind had died down, so I set to work.

As it happened, I was glad that I had plenty of time to dictate them, because for some reason, a whole pile of notes had been missed off the front of one of the ones that I had dictated, as I found out when I checked, and I had to re-dictate those notes.

Uploading them to the computer seems to take a lot longer than it should, and I hadn’t quite finished when the nurse arrived. It really had taken me much longer than I had thought.

He was in his usual good humour, which is nice these days, much better than he was before he went on holiday the other week, and as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I hope that he keeps on going. It’s his last day tomorrow, I believe, and then Isabelle the Nurse will be back for her week’s duty.

Round about this time, I had a message on the ‘phone from the taxi company – "confirming your pick-up for Rennes on Wednesday at 07:00.". Seeing as it’s no more than 90 minutes to Rennes and my appointment is at 09:00 it looks as if I’ll be sharing a taxi with someone who has an earlier appointment.

Not that I’m complaining, of course. Because I’m a terminally-ill patient, these trips in taxis to my medical appointments cost me nothing at all, something that I wouldn’t have anywhere else in any other country, so I’ve no right to complain.

Once the nurse left, I made my breakfast and read some more of Carrington’s BATTLE MAPS AND CHARTS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

We’ve passed through many interesting battles, some through which I travelled and visited on my trips around Upstate New York, and we’re now coming up to the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, the event that effectively sealed the fate of the British in what was to become the United States of America.

Back in here, I had a very leisurely ramble through the radio notes and edited them. One of the radio programmes is completed ready for broadcast – except that there’s a glaring error in the text that I shall have to change before it goes out.

As for the second programme, the two halves are prepared, the joining track has been chosen and I’m in the middle of writing the notes for it. It won’t take long to finish, always assuming that I can find the motivation.

In fact, I might have been able to finish it today but my early start caught up with me and I had a little half-hour curled up on my chair. I didn’t begrudge it today either. After all, I can’t be expected to keep going when I’ve had less than four hours sleep.

There was a break to make some bread and a pizza. The bread was magnificent – once I put it in the oven it went up like a lift and it looks really good. The pizza was excellent too, as usual.

And so I do have to say that this new oven really is the business, and I wish that I’d had one like it a long time ago. It would have made things so much easier when I’d been baking, and it might even have helped with my sourdough experiments, which were a dismal failure in the tabletop oven upstairs.

So right now, totally exhausted after my long day, I’m off to bed. Dialysis Monday, Chemotherapy Tuesday and Wednesday, dialysis Thursday. I’m just going round and round from one medical appointment to the other, so there’s not a great deal to which I can look forward these days.

But seeing as we have been talking about loaves of bread … "well, one of us has" – ed … the other day the local priest walking to church saw one of his parishioners walking towards him, one hand nonchalantly in his pocket and the other clutching a baguette.
"Ahhh " said the priest "Luke Chapter 11 Verse 3 – I see you have the staff of life in your hand. What do you have in your other hand?"
"Why, a baguette, my Father."

Saturday 13th September 2025 – JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT …

… last night, I suddenly awoke, with another one of these quite dramatic awakenings.

And about five seconds after I awoke, I received a message on the telephone. It really was an astonishing coincidence, almost as if awakening five seconds before the message was in anticipation of its arrival.

It wasn’t all that much beforehand that I’d actually come to bed, after another one of the slow, depressing evenings that I seem to be having these days. And I was so tired, yet again, that I must have gone off quite rapidly to sleep. It’s a shame that I couldn’t have remained asleep, though, but then that’s what usually happens.

It took an age to go back to sleep too, but once I’d slipped into the arms of Morpheus, there I stayed until the alarm sounded. And that woke me up quite dramatically too, I can tell you.

At that moment, we were back in World War I when the Germans were storming a trench full of Greek soldiers. They had launched a few shells into a few Greek pill-boxes and stormed the trenches. There were piles of dead people around, so they went through, identified the wounded and shot them on the spot. There was one person who was a British officer leading a Greek troop. They questioned him about a few different things but as he didn’t have the correct answers to what they wanted, they shot him too. But we were working somewhere behind the lines, watching a captive balloon or Zeppelin or something that had escaped from its moorings and was flying at a very low height around the edge of the cliffs. We were worried that it would collide with the church steeple, so we were trying to work out a way, if we could, of diverting it away because if we were to fire at it, it would explode and that would make more damage. In the meantime, we had been repairing a few watches and things like that. We actually had one working, but then we decided that we weren’t happy so we dismantled it to have another attempt. At this moment, the girls came along and looked at what we were doing. They couldn’t understand why we had decided to do it a second time. I was talking to one of the guys about new technology and how powerful it was. He was saying that how he wished that he had bought a new 2GB memory stick while their prices were low, because a new 2GB one these days would cost $64. I replied that a 64GB one would only cost $2, the way that technology is going these days.

There’s a bit of everything in there. The bit about colliding with the steeple relates to a discussion that I had the other day with one of the taxi drivers, when we were watching the Nazguls flying around near the spire of the Eglise Notre Dame de Lihou. As for the rest, it seems to relate to little snippets of conversation that I’ve had now and again with different people.

After the bathroom and the medication, I came back in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes, but as you have already read them, I needn’t have bothered mentioning it.

The nurse was next, still in his cheerful mood, and then it was breakfast and a new book.

While I was reading COLONEL CARRINGTON’S TESTIMONY, I noticed that he had written several others and so I began today to read his BATTLE MAPS AND CHARTS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that IN 2013 and 2014 I roamed up and down the Hudson Valley in Upstate New York visiting the sites of the battles of the Revolutionary War and also of the Seven Years War of 1756-1763, including the site of Fort William Henry, the fort that featured prominently in Fenimore Cooper’s LAST OF THE MOHICANS

One of the places that I visited in 2013 was Fort Ticonderoga, and I noticed from Carrington’s description of the siege of the fort that "The Americans neglected to fortify Sugar Loaf Hill", a prominent eminence overlooking the fort, ⁣strong>"deeming it inaccessible.".

You probably noticed just now that STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I walked quite comfortably to the top, and so did several other people. And there’s still a British cannon up there that the British Army managed to drag up the hill.

After breakfast, I came in here to begin a new radio programme, and in fact I’m currently working on two of them right now because, halfway through choosing the music for one, I realised that I’d missed one. Still, variety is the spice of life.

When my faithful cleaner came down to apply my anaesthetic cream, she brought with her my electronic drum kit. That was a one-day wonder, that was. I bought it as a challenge, something to do during lockdown, but my legs gave out before I was able to master it.

It was the boss who came to fetch me today and we had quite a quick drive down to Avranches. I was connected up quite quickly too and then I could concentrate on Y Barri v Y Bala.

Y Bala had only conceded four goals all season up to date, but Y Barri doubled that total with comparative ease and could (and should) have had a bagful more except for the inspired performance of former Salford City goalkeeper Joel Torrance.

It was nevertheless an exciting game and you can see the highlights HERE if you are of such a mind.

Although I finished my dialysis earlier than usual, I had to wait to be unplugged, and then finally the boss brought me back in the most astonishing rainstorm that was engulfing Avranches.

Ironically, it wasn’t raining at Granville when I returned. It was a nice, leisurely walk back to my apartment in the howling gale, which has now been blowing for several days.

For a change, Tea tonight was a burger with baked potato – one of those luxury burgers that are really delicious. And now, I’m off to bed in the hope of a good lie-in tomorrow. I need one after all of this.

But I forgot to mention my ‘phone message from during the night. It reads "(we) will see you Friday November 7 for a few days fly back on November 11.". This visit from Canada looks as if it may well be happening.

But seeing as we have been talking about Ticonderoga and The Last of the Mohicans … "well, one of us has" – ed … it was at Ticonderoga where I told my famous story to one of the American tour guides.
Sent on a spying mission by Colonel Munro to find out about the French forces in Fort Ticonderoga, Hawkeye and Chingachgook approach the fort very carefully
"How many soldiers do you think there are in the fort?" asked Hawkeye.
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground. "About 300" he replied
"And how many cannon?"
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground again. "About 30"
"And how many horses?"
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground yet again. "About 60"
"And how many native allies?"
Chingachgook lay down and put his ear to the ground once more. "About 200"
"That’s incredible" said Hawkeye. "Can you tell all that by just lying down and listening to the ground?"
"Ohh no" replied Chingachgook. "If I lie down here like this and turn my head so that my ear is to the ground just like this, I can see right underneath the gates of the fort"
The response of the tour guide was "that’s incredible! I never knew that Hawkeye and Chingachgook came to Ticonderoga. I shall have to amend the tourist leaflets."
Which just goes to show, as Alfred Hitchcock and Kenneth Williams once famously said, "it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

Friday 12th September 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… why I bothered buying an apartment. I may as well have saved my money because it seems to me that these days, I’m being passed around from one hospital bed to another and it’s all getting completely out of hand. There has been another message today – "please present yourself at the aforementioned at 09:00 in the forenoon" – and all that kind of thing.

That’s the last thing that I need right now because I’m not doing all that well at the moment. It was another wretched evening when I couldn’t seem to find the motivation to finish rapidly what I was doing. Although I had the notes from yesterday online at some kind of reasonable hour, it still took an age to finish everything off and crawl into bed.

It was a bad night again, where I spent most of the time tossing and turning and not being able to sleep. At one point, I was thinking of leaving the bed and dictating the radio notes that I’d prepared during the week, but the howling, roaring gale and the sound of the waves crashing onto the cliffs out here rendered that idea a waste of time. No-one would hear me over the noise.

By the time that 05:50 came round, I was wide-awake so I switched on the light ready to leave the bed. However, the spirit may be willing but the flesh was quite weak this morning again and it was … errr … somewhat later when I finally had my feet on the ground.

After a good wash and the medication, I had some jars of spices to fill. And woe is me! I’ve run out of cumin. I’ve seen the price in the local supermarket too and how I wish that I could go back to Leuven where I can buy enormous bags for next to nothing.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I dreamed that I was in chemotherapy again – dialysis again last night and had to plug myself into the machine. There was some big, aggressive, domineering type of nurse who was surveying me, seeing if I had done it properly, but it took several goes before she was satisfied with what I’d done, and I’m not surprised that I awoke at that point.

This is something else that is going beyond a joke. It seems to have become a nocturnal obsession with me, dialysis and connecting myself up with tubes. It’s bad enough being confronted with it during the day but dreaming about it too when I really want to be dreaming about other things … "like TOTGA, Zero and Castor" – ed … is too much.

When I awoke just now, I was convinced that I’d been sitting down somewhere talking to a girlfriend of mine, discussing four different options of piles of clothes, one of which was supposed to be wet but I couldn’t see which one was wet when I touched them. This evolved into talking about the dictaphone. I was going somewhere so I was planning to leave the dictaphone with her. I had to show her how to work it but she said not to worry because she’ll have plenty of trials with it to make sure that it was working fine for when she actually needed it.

As it happens, I remember this. And I really did think that I had been sitting down too. I’m not sure why I would be letting anyone else use my dictaphone though. It usually accompanies me if I am away from the house.

At this point, I went and put my fleece jacket on. I forgot to say that yesterday, I put on a fleece in the apartment for the first time this year. It’s gone quite cold this last couple of days. "Winter is acumen in. Lhude sing Rudolph."

The nurse turned up again, in a very good humour yet again. I hope that he keeps it up for the rest of however long it will be that I’m here. I have a sneaky feeling that it won’t be long at this rate.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of COLONEL CARRINGTON’S TESTIMONY. In fact, I’ve read all of it now because it wasn’t that long.

Apart from the usual facts that were chiselled out about the running of the forts and the deaths of Fetterman and his party, there were the gruesome details about how Fetterman and his men were mutilated – in many cases before death. And it doesn’t make very pretty reading. In respect of Lieutenant Daniels, who was killed a few weeks before, Carrington tells us that "Lieutenant Daniels, a little in advance, was shot, scalped, and barbarously tortured with a stake inserted from below." That is nothing compared to the fate of some of Fetterman’s men.

However, to give you some idea of the constraints under which he was operating with his 375 men against a war party of at least 3,000 Sioux, he reports to his General that "One contract train with supplies for Fort C.F. Smith"; one of his outposts further down the Bozeman Trail "(thirty-one wagons) had but five arms with the party. I had to furnish an escort, especially as I had to send ammunition to Fort C.F. Smith, then reduced to ten rounds per man."

In his own case at his own fort (Fort Phil Kearny), the chief location along the Bozeman Trail, "I found Spencer ammunition at Reno and thereby am relieved from some trouble on that account, but having drawn, en route, all I could, I have not now for my Springfield rifles, fifty rounds to the man.". How on earth he was expected to hold at bay a whole Sioux Army is a total mystery.

Rather ominously, in view of the disaster that befell Fetterman and his troop, just six weeks before the dismal affair, Carrington assures his General that "In no case will any rash venture be made". Carrington did indeed give instructions to Fetterman, in the presence of witnesses, "Under no circumstances pursue over the ridge viz; Lodge Trail Ridge, as per map in your possession" i.e. out of the line of sight of the fort. However, when I walked to the battlefield from the fort in 2019, I found it to be well over the crest of the ridge and halfway down the reverse slope, a long way (as in several miles) out of the line of sight of the fort.

Back in here, I had various things to do, and then I attacked the radio programme that I’d been preparing over the last couple of days. And now, after a Herculean effort, because I really wasn’t feeling much like it, it’s now finished and ready for dictation. I’m now going to have to find a quiet early morning with no storms when I can dictate the notes that are building up.

All of this was interrupted by a text message. "Don’t forget your appointment at the University Hospital of Rennes on Wednesday 17th September at 09:00."

My appointment is actually for the Tuesday so I rang them up to see if there has been a mistake or a change of plan. But to my surprise (and dismay) I was told "the chemotherapy goes on for two days. You need to come here for both sessions."

"So do I get to stay the night in between?"

"Ohh no" replied the nurse. "You go home and come back the following morning."

My cleaner turned up as usual to do her stuff in the apartment, and she’s been busy rearranging things. That means that I probably won’t be able to find a few more things for quite some time now, and when I do find them, the next day they will all be rearranged again.

After she left, I made some more vegan mayonnaise as I have now run out. And I shovelled loads of garlic into it to give it some added bite. Not in the sense of werewolves or vampires, because the amount of garlic in that stuff will keep them away. They don’t seem to come any closer to me than Transylvania.

Tea tonight was chips with vegan salad and vegan mini-nuggets, delicious as usual.

But now, I’m off to bed, all ready for dialysis, I don’t think. But I really am fed up with this endless series of visits to hospitals. Wouldn’t it be nice if it could all stop?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about keeping things away … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone in Shavington where we used to live as kids always planted garlic in with his strawberry plants.
"Why are you doing that?" asked his neighbour
"It keeps polar bears off my strawberries"
"But the polar bears are in the Arctic" replied the neighbour. "that’s 2,000 miles from here"
"Yes, it’s powerful stuff, isn’t it?"

Thursday 11th September 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what happened at dialysis this afternoon, but there are a couple of things that just aren’t correct.

Take the diabetes reading, for example. My blood sugar level is usually around the critical minimum level of 0.8, but today, according to their machine, it was at an excessive 1.29, and it’s never been that high.

And then there’s the blood pressure. I’m plagued with low blood pressure, usually around 9.0, often down to 8.0 and even sometimes down to 7.0 when they have to call for help. It needs constant monitoring at dialysis so they check it automatically every half-hour and if it’s less than 9.0 an alarm sounds, which it does with monotonous regularity.

However, today the alarm didn’t sound at all and the blood pressure hovered around the 11.0 mark.

So what on earth is going on? It’s not like me at all, any of this.

It might be something to do with the night that I had last night. I was in bed by 23:30 – not early by any means but earlier than some have been just recently – and I slept right through without interruption all the way through to 06:23 – one minute earlier than yesterday.

That was when I awoke. It was not necessarily when I left the bed, but let’s not argue about that. But once I was up and about, I went for a good wash and brush up, and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We had some kind of project going to re-equip an old supermarket with new shelving, racking etc. We had a lot of the stuff already so it meant going up to our warehouse and sorting out what we had. The trouble was that there were bits and pieces everywhere and it took a while to sort it all out. There was about half-a-dozen of us doing all this. It involved collecting everything together and making a start, but because of the difficulties of finding the stuff, we’d been working on one particular range of shelving for quite some time, and I thought that the people in the supermarket would be fed up, so we should prioritise having that finished. It meant collecting together all of the stuff that was lying around for that particular range, so I began to collect everything together. I had to find a box in which to put it all so I went into the storeroom in which someone was searching through, to ask if there was a box. However, one of the girls who should have been helping us was there fitting a new speedometer to her motorbike. I thought that this isn’t really helping the situation of pushing on with this job. This goes back to some kind of situation where I’d been shopping, trying to collect everything that we needed but I’d only ended up going round half the supermarket before I ended up somehow at the checkout, so the following day I had to go back and do the other half. That’s where the story of this renovation came in.

There is nothing that I have done recently that ties in with anything in this dream, except maybe to look for a few cardboard boxes, so this is a puzzle.

There was also something about driving my old red Cortina estate around the back roads and dirt tracks near the North Wales coast in the Prestatyn area, and at the end of one dirt track was a big abandoned building with a castellated roof, that I recognised as the headquarters of the old local electricity company so I took a few photos of it. The road stopped abruptly there but in the distance directly across the fields I could see the North Wales Expressway near Rhuddlan and the huge spire of the marble church near Bodelwyddan. Back home I went to show the photos to some of my friends but they all seemed to have failed, showing only a portion of the building in close-up instead of all of it.

Yesterday I was reading up about the Kinmel Bay riots in 1919, the camp at Kinmel Bay being just a short distance from Bodelwyddan. But again, I’ve no idea where the reference to some fictitious building supposed to be the MANWEB (Merseyside And North Wales Electricity Board) head offices (which were actually at Rhostyllen) fits in. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall however much discussion about my red Cortina estate, currently languishing in my warehouse in Montaigut en Combraille with a 2000E saloon and a Traction Avant for company.

The nurse was once again much more like his cheerful self this morning, which is good news. He didn’t stay long, and after he left I could make breakfast and read some more of ADVENTURES ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER.

In fact, I’ve read all of it now because our author has arrived in Montréal, which is where his story ends. But he finished it with a delightful anecdote. Discussing the “conjugal” arrangements between some of the Native American women and some of the officers of the fur-trading companies, he tells us that "Mr. J was transferred that autumn from the Columbia to the Athabasca department, to replace a Mr. C who was about quitting the country, and leaving behind him a handsome" Métisse "wife. J succeeded him both in bed and board".

Tomorrow, I’ll be starting on a new book, which looks as if it might be Colonel Carrington’s testimony in relation to the Fort Phil Kearny debacle. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the summer 2019 we went into the Powder River country to visit THE SITE OF FORT PHIL KEARNY and the battle site where Lieutenant Fetterman led an absolutely reckless pursuit of a group of Native Americans who led him and his men straight into an ambush where they were wiped out to a man, all eighty-one of them.

We spent a good couple of weeks roaming around Northern Wyoming, North and South Dakota visiting many of the sites of conflict between the Europeans and the Native Americans, including places like LITTLE BIG HORN and finishing up at SOUTH PASS where the emigrants on the Oregon and California Trail in the 1840s passed from the Atlantic basin to the Pacific basin and where you can still see the wagon ruts today.

Back in here, I carried on with the next radio programme. All of the music has been chosen, edited, paired and segued, and I’ve made a start writing the notes. With a little luck, I might be finished tomorrow.

My cleaner came round to apply my anaesthetic cream, and then I had to wait for the taxi, which was late. Not that I minded because it was the cute young driver who came to pick me up and we had a lovely chat all the way down to the dialysis centre.

Although it was a late arrival, I was attended to straight away so the connection was even earlier than some have been. But despite the lack of interruptions, I couldn’t concentrate on anything and it was rather a waste of an afternoon.

My Belgian friend brought me back home, so we had another good chat and I gave her the number of my plumber, because she needs some bathroom work doing. And although he was more expensive than I was hoping, he did a magnificent job and I’m well-satisfied.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry but it’s given me a wicked indigestion, so I’ll be glad to go to bed tonight and sleep it off.

But seeing as we have been talking about Colonel Carrington’s expedition into Native American territory … "well, one of us has" – ed … on one occasion he went to smoke the pipe of peace with one of the local chiefs.
The chief began to introduce his entourage to Carrington
"My name is Chief Running Buffalo"
"How" replied Colonel Carrington
"This is my brother, Laughing Spirit"
"How" replied Colonel Carrington
"This is my mother, Flying Eagle. She came from the Comanche Tribe"
"How" replied Colonel Carrington
"And this is my squaw, Shining Moon. I bought her for three buffalo skins."
"How" replied Colonel Carrington
"Never mind ‘How’" said Colonel Carrington’s aide-de-camp. "Where?"

Wednesday 10th September 2025 – I’VE NO IDEA …

… what’s happening right now, but I suddenly seem to have become very popular and it’s not like me at all. All kinds of people are contacting me these days and if I’m not very careful, I’ll end up needing a bigger engagement book to control it all.

Not last night, though. I was left pretty much to my own devices after tea and once more, I failed to push on with my work in order to have an early night. It was almost 23:30 when I finished everything, and there was no real reason why it should be that late.

The water heater hadn’t switched itself on so I switched it on manually in the hope that it might keep going through the night, not that there’s any way of controlling or checking it that I have found.

Back in here, I was in bed quite quickly, and asleep quite quickly too, but not for long because I had another one of these highly mobile nights where I’m tossing and turning without actually being asleep, but not actually being awake either.

There was another one of this dramatic “sitting bolt-upright” awakenings, at 06:24 this morning, five minutes before the alarm would usually sound. I managed to be sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor when the alarm went off, so that counts as an “early start” – only just, but it counts just the same.

On the way to the bathroom, I checked the fuse box. Although the fuse setting for the water heater showed “off”, it was still humming as if it was drawing current, so I switched it off completely. I hope that I remember to switch it back on again tonight.

After a good wash and scrub up, followed by the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. It was another dramatic awakening at about 02:50 that wiped this dream from my mind. It was something to do with sound files. I had various files with sounds in them and a few others with different other side effects of sound. I’d been trying to assemble something but someone came along to give me a hand but ended up dismantling what I had done. As they chose pieces from the first lot which were probably longer and better, it was much more difficult to find a piece from the second block that would actually match the sound. It was becoming extremely complicated.

This relates to what I was doing the other day when I had to re-dictate a part of the notes for that radio programme, and to make that which I dictated then sound like that which I had dictated previously.

At one point, I’d been on a sea voyage around the South-Central Atlantic somewhere off the coast of Brazil but I can’t remember that at all and … fell asleep here … but going back to that dream again, there was a little girl in an ambulance crew uniform with a portable x-ray machine who was waiting by the door. She was waiting there for ages until she was beckoned to come in to do her job on me.

As it happens, I can’t remember anything of this, whether I had a dramatic awakening or not. In fact, I’m always asleep when I’m dictating these notes, and when I say that I “fell asleep here”, what I mean to say, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is that my speech gradually slows down and is followed by a long silence with the occasional breathing and snoring.

But here we are again on a sea voyage in the first part, and I can’t see what the second part has to do or how it relates to anything that I dictated in the first part.

I was asleep later on and in my dream, I saw all the stuff that I usually take with me when I’m going to hospital, all scattered about the floor as if someone had been picked up the bag by the wrong end. And all this stuff was … no-one was making any effort at all to try to clean it up.

That sounds more like my kind of house, doesn’t it? Rubbish all over the place and no-one cleaning it up.

It was the male nurse who came today. And surprisingly, he’s still in the same good humour as he was on his return from holiday a few weeks ago. I hope that he can manage to keep it going, because I like him much more when he’s like this.

After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of ADVENTURES ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER.

Our author has now had enough of the Columbia River and has set out across the Rockies for “Canada” – which in those days was simply the combined Provinces of Ontario and Western Québec.

However, before leaving, he goes through a long list of animals that have been seen down near the coast and, to my surprise, he notes that "White bears are occasionally killed on the coast to the northward of the Columbia". Imagine that today – polar bears wandering around the streets of Seattle and Spokane.

Back in here, I had another go at sending off this radio programme, but the file transfer service is still playing up dreadfully and sent the file round and round in circles on several occasions and there was nothing that I could do to clear it. In the end, I uploaded it to my own web server and sent the link to the radio station.

And that was not without issues either. It took an age to upload, for some unknown reason.

After lunch, my faithful cleaner came round to do her stuff and I had a good shower – another lovely one in my beautiful new shower unit. However, I have encountered a problem that I never realised before, and that is that when I turn the tap on, the water is freezing cold for about fifteen seconds while I am obliged to stand underneath it.

Running the water through on the detachable hose doesn’t seem to make any difference either. I can see that I’ll soon be resorting to running a blowtorch up and down the shower column.

Back in here afterwards, I had a lovely message. "what are you doing for the Remembrance Day Weekend?"

As it happens, I’ll just be going to dialysis on the Saturday afternoon, but I was intrigued to know why someone wanted to know.

"My youngest daughter and I are thinking about coming to see you for that weekend" replied my niece from New Brunswick in Canada.

That will be a hell of a trip for a long weekend, but won’t it be lovely, really lovely if they actually do manage to make it here? I love my Canadian family and I wish that I could see them more often. I miss them terribly.

So having lived in splendid isolation upstairs for just over eight years, how many visitors is this that I have had in the couple of months that I’ve lived down here? And with ex-girlfriends planning to turn up, Rosemary and Ingrid discussing another trip, and now my niece thinking of coming over from Canada, the only person who has not so far declared for a visit is Nerina, and I’m half-expecting her to turn up on the doorstep any day soon.

The rest of the day has been spent radioing, and I’ve completed the one on which I’ve been working for a few days and have made a start on the next. This one is going to be complicated, I reckon, and will take some time, so the sooner I start, the sooner I finish. And then I can move on.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, and now that my notes are finished, I’m off to bed. I’m not sure if I’ll sleep tonight though, because it’s a very high tide and with the wind outside, I can hear the waves crashing into the cliffs.

It’ll be a while before the tide goes down so I’ll be hearing this for some time yet. Actually, it’s a lovely sound, the waves pounding the cliffs, and if it does keep me awake, I shan’t be bothered. I can always sleep at dialysis tomorrow afternoon.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my family … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me "do you miss your family in Crewe?"
"Yes I do," I replied. "I miss them terribly. But don’t worry. I’m trying my best to improve my aim."

Tuesday 9th September 2025 – I AM IN …

… Isabelle the Nurse’s bad books at the moment. Apparently, I said something at the dialysis centre yesterday that I shouldn’t have said, and she went through the roof.

It’s a shame really. She’s usually a very nice, chatty, friendly person, but I have noticed on more than one occasion that if you push the wrong button, she goes up like a four-bob rocket. I think that in future, I shall have to refrain from saying anything to anyone.

Last night, I didn’t have much to say for myself … "a mere 1600 words, that’s all" – ed … because it was another night where I was totally and utterly flaked out after dialysis and the effort of coming home. I was in a rush to finish my notes and crawl into bed.

Not that it actually worked out like that though because for some reason, I just can’t seem to press on. From what should have been an early finish, posting my notes online at 22:16 precisely, it was yet again after 23:00 when I finally made it into bed.

Once in bed, I slept right through until all of 03:40 when I had one of those dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have.

The first thing that I noticed was the absolute silence in the apartment. There was none of that steady, deep humming from the fuse box just outside the door to tell me that the water heater was drawing current. In the end, I left the bed to look and sure enough, it hadn’t switched on yet again.

For a change, I managed to switch it on manually so there was some heat going in there. And I went back to bed.

With an interruption like that, I didn’t think that I’d go back to sleep but when the alarm went off at 06:29 I was well-and-truly away with the fairies (although not in any fashion that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine).

As usual, it took a good while for me to summon up the motivation and energy to leave the bed but eventually I staggered off into the bathroom, having a quick glance at the fuse box, noticing that the water heater had at least switched itself off at some point.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was travelling through Austria and ended up on the border with Liechtenstein. The moment that I drove into Liechtenstein I was stuck behind a traffic queue with a huge articulated lorry with three huge tractors on the trailer, with a load of other vehicles in front. Gradually, we inched our way through the country until we came to the Swiss border. A Swiss border patrol man walked out in front of the van, and I wasn’t sure whether to swerve around him or stop, so I tried a bit of both. In the end, he came over to me so I told him that I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do. He asked me to lift up the bonnet of the van, so I did, and to my amazement it was covered in silt as if it had been swamped in a river or something. He poked and prodded around inside, and in the end, slammed down the bonnet. He came over to me and asked for my passport, so I showed him my identity card from France. He had something of a moan about that. In the meantime, someone else came over to talk to me, someone else in the queue, and asked what the engines in these vans are like. I said that they were great. The one in my van had done a quarter of a million kilometres and it’s still working fine. In the end, the Swiss border patrol guy waved me on, so I drove off.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have DRIVEN THROUGH LIECHTENSTEIN IN THE PAST and I also drove through here with Nerina when we were on our way to see her family in Italy during our honeymoon.

The incident at the Swiss border though is very much like the incident that I had CROSSING THE BORDER BETWEEN HUNGARY AND AUSTRIA in 2020.

The silt under the bonnet is something that defeats me though. Unless it’s a reference to that Rolls-Royce that I found in a scrapyard in Stoke-upon-Trent that had about a foot of silt inside, looking as if it had been caught in a flood somewhere.

As I mentioned earlier, Isabelle the Nurse blew in to deal with my legs, and blew out again in something of a storm. One very unhappy bunny here this morning. However, she’s gone off for a week’s rest and she’ll probably feel better when she comes back.

Then I could push on and make breakfast, and read some more of ADVENTURES ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER.

The other day, I mentioned that our author seemed to be very good at fortune-telling and predicting the future. Well, he’s at it again today. He’s discussing the spread of American settlers across the Native American lands of the West and concludes "Their anti-republican love of aggrandisement, by the continual extension of their territorial possessions, must sooner or later destroy the unity of their confederation"

His book, written in 1831, was 30 years ahead of its time.

Something else that he mentions that seems to have been missed by many historians is the question of tinned food. It’s generally assumed that the ill-fated Franklin Expedition to the High Arctic, 129 men of which there were no survivors, in 1845 was the first major use of tinned food, produced by Steven Goldner in London.

However, our author notes that in 1814, a supply ship brought a "quantity of prime English beef, which they had dressed and preserved in a peculiar manner in tin cases impervious to air ; so that we could say we ate fresh beef which had been killed and dressed in England thirteen months before"

That’s the earliest ever mention that I have seen of tinned food.

He also makes mention of a primitive Native American Sauna and an ice-plunge, both used by the natives as an excellent cure for rheumatism. I shall have to try that, to see if it works.

The tinned food is preserved by sealing it in a vacuum. That’s done by rapidly heating the liquid in which it’s stored. Hot liquid is much less dense than cold liquid so when it’s hot, you quickly ram down a lid onto it and seal it (or solder it with lead solder as Goldner did to the tinned food that he sent to Franklin’s men, thus killing them all by lead poisoning), when the liquid cools down, it shrinks in volume and the resultant empty space becomes a vacuum.

Back in here, I went through my LeClerc order and sent it off, asking for delivery between 15:00 and 17:00. And then I had things to do.

Now that I’m fully down here and the cleaning of the apartment is more-or-less finished, we no longer need the electricity up there. Consequently, I telephoned the electricity company to talk about them cutting the power to it and finalising my bill. The new tenant, whoever that might be, can arrange for the power supply.

And seeing as we have been talking about the new tenant … "well, one of us has" – ed … the letting agent rang me to ask if someone could come along and view the apartment tomorrow at 16:00. That’s not a problem.

After a disgusting drink break, I had another ‘phone call to make – this time to Canada. It seems that there’s an issue with my Canadian bank account, something to do with a change of account number that I need to note.

Having ordered my shopping for between 15:00 and 17:00, it turned up at 14:55 when I wasn’t ready for it. It was a large order too, seeing that I’d been letting supplies run down for a while, and contained lots of new stuff now that I have a place to store it.

There were also 2 kilos of carrots that needed cleaning, dicing and blanching, so that was this afternoon’s work sorted out for me

With what little time that was left, I had a listen to the radio programme that needs sending off for broadcast this weekend, only to find a glaring fault right in the middle. Consequently, I had to rewrite, re-dictate, edit and re-assemble the programme. I really need to take more care when I am doing these programmes.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper and now I’m off to bed, ready for a good sleep … "I don’t think" – ed … I’m having far too many wake-up calls awakening me these days – a sharp contrast to how things were a few months ago when I’d be up and about after a mere three or four hours’ sleep. What’s happening to change all of that?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about vacuums … "well, one of us has" – ed … a girl from Crewe was on one of these quiz shows on TV, and the presenter asked her "if you were in a vacuum and someone shouted, would you hear it?"
She thought for a while, and then asked "would the vacuum be switched on?"

Monday 8th September 2025 – WHAT A DAY …

… this has been. It’s been another one where almost everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong and I’m beginning to become totally fed up with days like this.

It all began to go wrong last night when I seemed once again to take hours to do the simplest of things. It ended up, from an optimistic start, being quite late yet again. It wasn’t far short of midnight when I finished everything that I had to do.

As the programmer for the water heater was due to fire up at midnight, I waited around to make sure that it did. And it was just as well that I waited around for it because, in fact, it didn’t start up. It took me an age to work out how to fire it up manually (and I still don’t understand how I managed it) and it was after 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

It was quite a turbulent night yet again with more long periods when I was unable to sleep, but when the alarm went off at 06:29 it caught me unawares, deep in the Land of Nod. And it’s been a good while since that has happened.

After breakfast, I came back in here to see where I’d been during the night. We were in West Street in Crewe, a group of us. We were again packing ready to go away. At the same time, a big box came and I had to unpack it. It was my Fender Jazz bass and amp. I picked it up and began to play, but realised that I could no longer play. I didn’t know how to. I was racking my brains about how I was going to start to play the bass. After a while, Nerina came up to me and said “we’re leaving in five minutes. You have to get a move on!”. I started quickly to pack everything away, and Nerina said that she was going for a shower, however the other girl with us had begun to pack and I had to give her a hand, and either put my boxes into a big box with handles or else cut handles into the sides of my own for easy manoeuvre. But then I noticed the moon. It was huge tonight, it was very close and was completely full. Away in the distance, I could see the sun that was quite full too. I thought that we would have a lovely sky tonight. But back inside the office of the service station where we were packing, the girl who was packing my stuff, I asked her how she was. She said that she was struggling to fit my things in. I had a look in the hold of the ship. The first thing that I noticed was an old pool table. I asked why it was there, why can’t we move it? She said that it weighs a ton. It was an old-style table and no-one can lift it. “We’ve asked the Council if they would lift it but they need an authorisation and my authorisation” she said “has expired a long time ago”.

So I’m going away yet again. This has become a regular theme just recently, and it must be my body telling me something. The Fender bass is another issue that I need to resolve. The bass and amp are currently languishing in Canada and they need to be brought over here quite soon before I forget. As for the ship’s hold, that is self-explanatory. If I’m going anywhere, there is inevitably a passage on board a boat somewhere.

At another point, we were walking down Chestnut Avenue in Shavington, looking at the new houses. I mentioned that the houses on one side of the street were built on the rubbish dump. Someone else pointed out that the houses on the other side of the street were built on a hill slope, but one that was secured with special material like a net. It was the best material that we had ever seen. So we had a look in the driveways of one of the houses. In one of them, on the side that had been netted, we actually saw a piece of net sticking out of the ground so we had a good look at it.

These hare hardly new houses in Chestnut Avenue. I remember them being built in the early 1960s on the field in which we played and over the brook into which we fell with monotonous regularity.

When the alarm went off, I was talking to a girlfriend of mine about another girl with whom I’d been in a relationship. But the moment that I changed apartment to buy a bigger apartment maybe for us all to move into, she suddenly developed cold feet and our relationship immediately fizzled out. But that’s all that I remember about that because the alarm went off.

Nothing new in this either. It’s something that has happened on a couple of occasions in the past.

Isabelle the Nurse came in to deal with my legs, and she gave me yet another dire warning about the dialysis at home issue. I promised her that I’d mention it today at dialysis, promising that I’d refuse it.

After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of ADVENTURES ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER.

Our author has arrived on shore and is busy setting up camps and trading posts. He describes the cruel and savage reprisals that took place during the inter-native conflicts, acts that defy description. And he also recounts his experiences in the forests with wild beasts when he becomes separated from his party for a couple of weeks.

It’s full of stories like that, all described with immaculate care and attention.

Back in here, the plumber had set me a few tasks to check the pipework, and that occupied me for quite a while. I had to break off because my cleaner arrived to apply my anaesthetic cream.

She was late arriving today so naturally, the taxi was early – although not before I’d fallen asleep for five minutes, sitting on my chair waiting.

There were three passengers all told, including me, with the driver, and we had to drop off one of them on the way. However, we arrived quite early and I had high hopes of being connected quite quickly.

And so I was, but one of the needles had missed its aim and had pierced me, making me suffer the most indescribable agony. It had to be replanted, and it wasn’t much better.

While I was lying there, I organised my shopping list for tomorrow. There’s some new vegan produce available and I’m determined to try it to see what it’s like.

The doctor came to see me, and amongst one of the things that I wanted to mention was that I intend to refuse the “dialysis at home”.

My explanation was that I’d spoken to people like the visiting nurses and they had strongly counselled against it. His response was "they don’t know what they are talking about".

That was, I thought, a very strange response seeing that one of the nurses was actually a nurse in the dialysis clinic in St Malo. However, that cut no ice at all. Instead, I carried on with my shopping list and, regrettably, crashed out again.

It took the nurses an age, unfortunately, to unplug me and compress the punctures, and when I boarded the taxi, I was told that not only was the closure of the autoroute this month responsible for a long nose-to-tail traffic jam through Avranches, a road accident at Marcey on one of the deviation routes had bottled that up too and it was chaos.

To rub salt into the wound, we had to go to the clinic at Avranches to pick up someone else. Going there, through the backstreets, wasn’t too bad but coming back was a nightmare. By the time that we reached the dialysis centre on our way back from the clinic, we’d already been on the road for over an hour.

So from one of the potentially earliest departures that I might have had, it was probably the latest ever that I returned home, totally fed up.

For tea, I just scratched something together quickly. I was going to make something interesting, but not at this time of night. For some reason that I can’t explain, I’m exhausted and so I’m off to bed. I’ve had enough for today.

But seeing as we have been talking about the wild beasts in the forests of North America … "well, one of us has" – ed … the amount of alcohol that they used to swig down while hunting was phenomenal.
That’s a characteristic of North American hunting that exists even today.
I was once with a group of hunters in the forests of Maine and it went something like this –
BANG! – "I got a deer"
BANG! – "I got a bear"
BANG! – "I got a moose"
BANG! – "Oh, sorry. You OK, Bob? Well, never mind. Throw him on the pickup anyway. No-one will notice the difference"

Sunday 7th September 2025 – WHAT A BUSY …

… afternoon I’ve had today.

It’s been one ‘phone call after another after another, all three of which lasted for hours, and for a very, very welcome change, they were all from people from whom I wanted to hear. It’s really been my lucky day.

Not so last night, though. It was another one of those nights where everything that I tried to do dragged on and on. I finished writing my notes unusually early but even so, "the best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley" as Robbie Burns once famously said, and all kinds of things came along to interrupt me before I finally fell into bed, much later than I had planned (as usual).

And as usual these days, it was a very mobile night. Although I was asleep quite quickly, I awoke soon after, round about 01:30, and then spent the rest of the night drifting in and out of some kind of weird semi-consciousness, without actually being awake but without actually being asleep either.

Round about 06:20, I have up the struggle and, even though it’s Sunday, a Day of Rest where I allow myself to have a lie-in until 07:59, I arose from the Dead.

At least, that’s one way of putting it. Hauling myself out from underneath the quilt is one thing. Standing up on my own two feet is quite another thing entirely.

Once I’d finally made it into the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up, and then went into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here later, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And it sounded as if I’d gone miles. All the way to Avranches by the sound of things. I was back at dialysis last night. Again, it was a pretty bad session and I noticed that I was nothing like as autonomous as I am now. I had to have all kinds of help for this, all kinds of help for that, and that really disappointed me. However, one of the aides infirmières there was in something of a panic so I asked her what was happening. She replied that for some reason she had been the only aide infirmière who had been rostered that afternoon when there were usually five or six so she was expecting to be run around like nobody’s business and wasn’t really going to have the time to do all that she was supposed to do during her working hours.

Losing my autonomy is my major fear right now. At the moment, I can still move about, cook, wash and so on. But one of these days, I won’t be able to and that will be the end. As for the aides infirmières, they are all very nice but there are a couple of them whom I find very sweet and who seem always to be the ones doing the running around.

Later on, we were going somewhere again, a great big group of us, and we had several old cars, Cortina MkIIIs, that kind of thing. We were slowly packing them with what we needed and making a list of things that we didn’t have that we ought to buy before we went. Then, into the place where we were loading the cars came my father with a wheelbarrow. In it was all the frozen food out of the freezer. He’d obviously had it out there for so long that it had all melted. I went berserk at this and called him all the names under the sun for being so stupid as to take the stuff out of the freezer but he didn’t seem to be bothered but I was really annoyed about this. We had to take it all out of one of the cars again, take it away and put it back into an empty freezer for now for a place to keep it until we come back and sort it through. We had to load up the car with things like an old car carpet and one or two other bits and pieces. One of the women with me was again really angry by something. It turns out that because of some way that we’d packed the cars and some way that we’d organised the passengers in each vehicle, it was now up to her to take out insurance for everyone as some kind of group leader rather than the cars themselves having their own individual insurances as usual.

This is another one of these weird dreams that would appear to have no significance. Of course, I made my money with MkIII Cortinas, running a whole fleet of them and their MkIV younger sisters on the taxis for a number of years. There are still a couple of MkIIIs, and also the newer MkVs, down in the Auvergne that will be worth a fortune to whoever has to clear out my farm and warehouse when I am no longer here.

One thing though is that I couldn’t ever imagine bawling out my father in real life. He certainly wasn’t stupid, not by any means.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in again, giving me another dire warning about accepting the “dialysis at home”. She really thinks that I ought to formally inform them that I’m declining the offer before I’m railroaded into accepting it. And she’s probably right too.

Once she had left, I made breakfast and began to read a new book. I started off by reading one of Nietzsche’s books. However, after about half a dozen pages, I found that it was like trying to wade through spaghetti so reluctantly, I abandoned it.

Instead, I turned my attention to ADVENTURES ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER.

In the late Eighteenth and early 19th Century, the fur trade of British North America was being effectively shared out between the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North-West Fur Company of Canada.

The American Jacob Astor wanted to break into the trade so he had to start off from a point that none of the other two had yet reached, so he sent a party overland to the mouth of the Columbia River in what is today the North-West USA but in those days was still part of British North America, and also a party by sea to navigate through the Straits of Magellan and up the Pacific coast.

This book is the story of the seaborne party, its voyage and its arrival and establishment ashore.

It’s a fascinating book, for a variety of reasons. For instance, when sailing past the Falkland Islands, the author notes "Although the Falkland Islands occupy in the Southern Hemisphere a similar degree of latitude to that of Ireland in the northern, still they possess none of the characteristic fertility of the Emerald Isle. Of grass, properly so called, there is none in those islands. In vegetable and animal productions they are also deficient ; and the climate, generally speaking, is cold, variable, and stormy : yet for such a place the British Empire was on the point of being involved in a war, the preparations for which cost the nation some millions !"

That’s what I call a “prescient” remark.

But to show that nothing has really changed since the voyage in 1811, in the Sandwich Islands, "Several quarrels occurred among the men, which were settled à l’Anglaise by the fist.". That’s a tradition kept up by the English even today, and it goes to show that it has long, deep roots.

He also mentions "stupendous enterprise lately set on foot of forming a junction between the Pacific and Atlantic by cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Darien.". How about that for predicting the future? This book was published in 1831.

What’s interesting about this comment is that he goes on to say "It is probable they will ultimately become tributary to Great Britain, Russia, or America; and in the event of war between any of these nations the power in possession of the islands, from their commanding position, will be able during the continuation of hostilities not only to control the commerce of the Pacific, but also neutralise in a great degree the advantages likely to be derived from the Grand Junction Canal.".

That was exactly the motivation for the Americans building their great naval base at Pearl Harbour in the Sandwich Islands, and the motivation for the Japanese to attack it.

Incidentally, see if you can guess the modern names for these places that our author records in the Sandwich Islands –
Whytetee
Whoahoo
Owhyee
Honaroora

After breakfast I did some more tidying up and then I had a task to perform. The water heater timer is all over the place and so I’ve been switching it on and off manually … "PERSONually" – ed … but the last two nights, I’ve forgotten, so I had to reprogramme it correctly.

That took quite a bit of studying and then quite a bit of trial and error but now I think that it’s working correctly – at least, I hope it is.

After a disgusting drink break, I came in here to begin to work on a radio programme at long last, but I hadn’t gone far when someone called me up on the computer. An unknown number, so I answered it and it was a former girlfriend of mine from my school days. At long last, she’s downloaded an internet chat service provider.

She’s talked in the past about coming up to see me sometime, and it looks as if it might be coming to fruition. She’s talking about some time the end of September, so we had a good chat about it.

After she had hung up, I had my next ‘phone call. And it was Liz, calling me for a chat. And how nice it was to hear her voice after all this time. We had so much to say to each other that the chat went on for almost the whole afternoon and, using the video attachment, I gave her a guided tour of the apartment.

But how nice it was to chat to Liz again.

Afterwards, no sooner had I put down the ‘phone than Rosemary rang. She’s just arrived in Italy to see her God-daughter who has recently had a baby, and so she told me about her drive down. As usual in a chat between Rosemary and me, a simple chat like that can last for … gulp … one hour and twenty-one minutes.

It’s hardly surprising that after all that and my bad night, I crashed out for half an hour later.

Tea was a delicious pizza, made in my wonderful new oven, and now, later, much later than I would like, I’m going to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about telling the future … "well, one of us has" – ed … two men met in the street.
The second man replied "yes I can"
And the first one asked him "can you foretell the future?"

Saturday 6th September 2025 – WE HAVE A …

… water leak here in the apartment, as I found out when I went into the bathroom after the washing machine finished its cycle to take out the washing.

It’s actually nothing serious really. It seems to be the waste water evacuation pipe underneath the sink unit – the only pipe in the whole apartment that it’s not possible to pressure-test. But that in itself is some kind of blessing because the water isn’t under pressure.

Still, that all that I needed today because I’ve not had a very good day at all.

For some reason or other, I was horribly late finishing my tea last night and consequently, I was late, very late, in going to bed.

Although I fell asleep quite quickly, I awoke pretty soon afterwards and then I couldn’t go back to sleep. I was lying there for hours, wondering whether or not it might be worth abandoning all thoughts of sleep and leaving the bed instead.

However, I did doze off for about half an hour or so, and awoke again at about 06:10n when I decided that I would in fact throw caution, and the bedclothes, to the wind and leave the bed.

In the bathroom, I had a good scrub up and shave etc just in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today, and then I loaded up the washing machine. It was a good job that I checked the water feed because it hadn’t been turned on. It would have been a strange wash had there been no water going into the machine.

After the medication I came back in here and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We had some kind of file set up about some kind of village with all of the plans etc in it. What I was trying to do was to work out the story behind this village by reference to the plans. It involved going through all kinds of files looking for all kinds of papers and going through all of the different surveys over the years. There were notes about something, a plan, and notes about something else that was covered by a different plan and there were probably ten different chapters. What I was trying to do was to assemble something just by using one set of plans without mixing them. That way, it would be much less complicated. Everyone thought that it was a strange way to go about doing it but this was how I wanted to do it and how I thought it would be best. It meant disturbing quite a few people with different parts of the file but in the end, I managed to do it and find all the papers that I wanted and slowly stitch them together to assemble this plan so that in the end I could write my report about the history of this village. I knew that it was going to be extremely interesting when I’d finished. However, it turned out that this village was a model, not a real village at all. It was really some kind of paperwork exercise but there were lots of other people involved in this situation too.

This has a bearing on MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES where we have spent some considerable time discussing Saxon villages and their evolution over time during the five hundred or so years that the Saxons had ascendancy over the south and east of England.

In the middle of it all, we were in Gresty Road by the YMCA place. Something that I wanted was in the garden of one of the houses of the Claughton Avenue estate opposite so the girl with me set out to cross the road. She went into the wrong gate so I had to go over the road to direct her to the correct gate but she managed to work it all out, picked up what we needed and we met at the correct gate again ready to go back across. However, there was a three-legged grey tabby cat on the side of the Claughton Avenue estate side. It was waiting for a gap in the traffic to cross. It hopped across on its three legs to halfway across the road and then just lay down and stretched out in the sun. I thought that that was extremely dangerous. The cat wasn’t going to last much longer if it did that.

Where this fits in, I really don’t know. It doesn’t relate to anything to which I can relate.

Finally, I was working in Chester and had to go off with one of the employees of the company. On the way back we went past a yard that looked as if it was a derelict railway marshalling yard siding and engine storage place. I noticed that one of the co-ordinates for this description a short distance further on was 53°15″ West … "he means ‘North’" – ed … but I couldn’t read the North … "he means ‘West’" – ed … co-ordinate. I thought that when I return home, I’ll have a look on the map to see where it is. Back in Chester again, I’d been off with a woman who worked in the area. She’d taken me down to her house which was at the back of Watergate Street, a really posh, nice house. On the way back, we came up Watergate street. I remember saying to her that right at the top there was a really nice bakery. She said that she knew the one that I meant but it had been closed down for a long time. Then the giuy who had taken me out earlier took me out again. It was early in the morning just after we’d signed in. We had to go round and pick up all these things that we had ordered for clients of the business. There were things like model cars and things like that from a particular shop. From another shop, it was a very expensive croissant and cake, and the baker signed his name on top with a soldering iron and molten syrup. It looked really impressive. The baker asked me if I needed anything but I replied “no, I’m only here to carry the stuff”. The baker turned round to the guy with me and said “well, in that case you should make him some kind of present”. As we were walking back past the first shop that we had visited, we noticed a display box with cars in it, a little round cardboard thing, very fancy. The guy asked if that should have been given to him in the previous load. The owner looked at his notes and said that it was. The guy said that he was glad that he came back this way to look. At the bottom of Watergate Street by the by-pass I had to climb into a lorry, an old Bedford TK. Climbing in there, being handicapped, was almost impossible. Several people tried to help me but I couldn’t manage it. The guy said that if I were to walk a little further on, there were some steps where I could climb in. In the end, I managed to haul myself in by hanging on to one of the mirrors and hanging on to something that was bolted to the roof. Then we set off. There was much more to it than this and I wish that I could remember it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I lived and worked in Chester for two years after leaving school. It was a very happy time, even though I had no money and was living in run-down bedsits. However, I learned a lot and made some good friends, although they seem to be among the people who have dropped off the radar over the last few years which is a shame.

There was a really nice bakery at the top of Watergate Street when I lived in the city. It sold beautiful Austrian pastries and when I could afford, which wasn’t often, I would treat myself.

The rest of the dream is rather confusing, although incidentally, 53°15′ North is the geographical co-ordinate of inter alia Tarporley in Cheshire, midway between Nantwich and Chester on a route that I know very, very well indeed.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and breezed out again, giving me another dire warning about accepting the dialysis at home; And then I could push on and read the rest of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES, which is now finished.

The final points that we have been discussing in the survey of the land, and I was astonished by just how accurate the Roman measurements were. The Domesday Survey, based on the Roman measurements, shows Middlesex as having 181718 Acres. The Ordnance Survey land measurements that are quoted by our author puts the total acreage at 181706. The Roman figures are astonishingly accurate and shows just how advanced for their time the surveyors were.

After breakfast, I sorted out the washing and then sorted out the bathroom, and then I wrote to the plumber to inform him.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic and then after she left I tidied up some more in the living room while I waited for the taxi, which was late today.

Once more, I was the only passenger, and as I was the last to arrive, I was dealt with straight away. However, it was still late.

There was football this afternoon, Cardiff Metro V Colwyn Bay. And the Bay were rampant, winning 4-1. It actually was an exciting game for a change and I enjoyed watching it.

After the football, my lack of sleep caught up with me and I crashed out for twenty minutes, which did me some good.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today but she doesn’t love me any more. She didn’t come to see me at all, and when I left I said “see you Monday” twice to her but she didn’t respond.

Back here, I had a relax for a while and then made tea, a breaded quorn fillet with vegan salad and baked potato. I didn’t feel much like food so it was only a very small meal.

The pain in my foot has started again tonight. It’s now down in my toe which is a change, but it hurts even more.

But on this point, I’ve had enough and I’m off to bed. A good sleep tonight, if I’m lucky, will do me some good.

However, seeing as we have been talking about geographical co-ordinates … "well, one of us has" – ed … a good forty years ago, a nudist camp opened in quite a secluded spot in North Staffordshire .
They were hovever bothered by a helicopter from the nearby RAF flying school that hovered overhead.
Afraid that their location would be exposed by the helicopter pilot, they wrote an angry letter to the commandant of the school. He then posted a note in the pilots’ briefing room "pilots should be reminded not to hover over the nudist camp, situate at (so many)°N and (so many) °W "

Friday 5th September 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a lovely afternoon this afternoon in the company of friends, and it’s not very often that I can say that. Or, at least, not often enough.

Back in 1970 when I was 16 I went on a student exchange and ended up in a small village in the Burgundy Hills at the back of Macon, and the poor boy went to stay with my family in the UK.

What with me living a very nomadic existence after that, we lost touch but A CASUAL ENCOUNTER WITH ONE OF HIS RELATIVES rekindled things and we’ve kept in touch ever since.

Anyway, the last few days, they’ve been camping in the area and today, in between all of my medical appointments, we managed to meet up and see each other for the first time for a couple of years.

While I was at dialysis yesterday, he and his wife sent me a photo of themselves outside the building here so they had found where I lived, and they arranged to call here today.

That gave me something to anticipate eagerly last night, because these days there’s not all that much in the way of eager anticipation. I could certainly do with more of it because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Especially when I was feeling as ill as I was last night. Apart from the pain in my shoulder, I was feeling quite awful everywhere else and flat-out tired to boot.

Despite finishing my notes early last night, somehow the time evaporated afterwards and it was after 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed, tired out, in agony and totally fed up.

When I awoke, it was 03:30 and once more, I couldn’t go back to sleep no matter how hard I tried. I was all for leaving the bed after an hour or so of trying, but I thought that I’d give it five more minutes.

The next thing that I remember, it was 06:18, eleven minutes before the alarm. I had apparently gone back to sleep at some point. But seeing the time, I thought that I’d better leave the bed quite quickly and claim an “early start”.

After sorting myself out in the bathroom I went for my medication, and then afterwards I spent a very pleasant twenty minutes … "I don’t think" – ed … tidying some more of the kitchen.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with some friends again. We went to some kind of luxury hotel for breakfast one morning. The place was crowded and we had a struggle to find a seat. I ended up having to perch between the two seats of my two friends. I went to find some soya milk for my cereal. One of the waitresses said that they had some soya milk and it should be on the table at the back. I looked, but it wasn’t there so she replied that someone must have borrowed it. I walked around the table looking for the soya milk and saw a bottle on someone’s table, but as soon as I started to look at it to see if it was soya milk, the guy grabbed hold of it and put it on the floor between his legs. In the end, I went back to see one of the waitresses. She said that she would try to find me some more. There was no vegan butter either so I had to have my toast with jam on it. But by the time I finally returned to my seat, still without the soya milk, everyone else had been finished but I’d had no coffee, no cereal, no toast or anything. I was perched in between these two seats. I thought to myself that for a five-star hotel, this is absolutely awful. But while we were sitting there, some kind of Reverend or Vicar came up to talk to one of the girls with us. It turned out to be her brother. They were doing something with a car. The Priest or Vicar handed her the keys, saying that their mother had said to just leave it around somewhere and it will all be sorted out but it’ll need the keys for it.

In the past, I’ve stayed in five-star hotels where vegan alternatives don’t exist, and where I’ve met some of the most arrogant people on the planet. I’m much more comfortable and at my ease in steerage than I am up on the First-Class promenade.

Later on, I was talking to a former friend of mine from Stoke-upon-Trent. He was talking about my van, saying that someone had seen me and I was driving too fast, recklessly, all of this kind of thing. He gave some kind of fanciful description of a route that I was supposed to have driven around the town that this other guy had seen. I said that I don’t recognise that at all, and didn’t believe that it was me. He had a really good moan about the state of my van, about how when I first had it, I used to really look after it. I was by this time pretty much fed up because I didn’t recognise the journey that he was talking about, I didn’t recognise the state of the van etc. This kind of thing is really getting on my nerves now.

There’s a long story behind this former friend of mine. One of the nicest, most helpful people on the planet, his character totally changed with the medication that he was obliged to take after a serious motorcycle accident. There were several occasions when I ended up in some quite uncomfortable situations and in the end I had to stop going round there. I had enough of my own problems with which to deal without having to deal with the consequences of someone else’s.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in, early for once. She was in chat mode once more and we spent a lively five minutes discussing this and that while she saw to my legs, and then she wandered off again, leaving me to make breakfast and to read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

In the past, I’ve often talked about the Local Government Act of 1888 that eliminated the hundreds, if not thousands of enclaves, counter-enclaves and even counter-counter enclaves of different Counties embedded within the borders of other Counties, speculating that the previous County boundaries an enclaves corresponded in many cases with ancient Bishoprics and Church lands.

Our author tells us that certainly in the case of Middlesex, the County boundary corresponded with the boundary of the Middle Saxons after the defeat of the West Saxons at the Battle of Fethanleah in AD584 but before the subsequent peace treaties in the Seventh Century. He goes on to quote from another author that the origins of these enclaves etc was during the reconversion of Britain to Christianity where "a lord had a parcel of land detached from the main of his estate, but not sufficient for a parish of itself, it was natural for him to endow his newly erected church with the tithe of those disjointed lands.".

This morning, I spent some time tidying up my office, rethreading cables etc, tidying boxes, putting things away and so on. But I’m really disappointed in how long it takes me to do even the simplest thing these days. It’s really depressing. Even picking up a box from the floor these days is almost beyond my capabilities.

After a disgusting drink break, my faithful cleaner appeared and set about today’s task of tidying up everything that I had not been able to do, but she was interrupted by the arrival of my friends.

They are Honda Goldwing owners and members of the Goldwing Owners’ Club. There’s a big annual reunion of the Goldwing Club up at Ouistreham near Caen, so they came from near Macon on the Goldwing to camp around here for a few days to see the area and to visit me before moving on to Ouistreham.

We had a good chat about all kinds of things, which was really nice. I don’t meet people anything like as often as I would like and I hardly talk to anyone these days. We ended up being here for hours drinking coffee and idly chatting.

After they left, I made tea – vegan nuggets, salad and air-fried chips.

Now it’s quite late, as usual, and I’m off to bed. Dialysis tomorrow afternoon, but I have washing to do in the morning which will be exciting. I’ve not had the washing machine going down here yet and I still don’t know where I’m going to put the clothes to dry. But as “It’s A Beautiful Day” once said, IT’LL ALL WORK OUT IN BOOMLAND

It better had, anyway.

But seeing as we have been talking about my student exchange visit, one of my sisters asked me afterwards "does their family say a prayer before they eat their meal like we do over here?"
"Ohh no" I replied. "His mother is a good cook."

Thursday 4th September 2025 – I AM HAVING …

… another bad day today. I’ve pulled a muscle or something in my left shoulder and it’s aching like Hades. I’m having trouble eating, typing, all kinds of things and preventing me from doing all kinds of things.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my painkiller is called “sleep” and I’ll be crawling underneath the covers before long, whether I finish this posting or not, in the hope that it passes during the night.

But not if it’s anything like last night, because I had another really late night, quite a way after midnight. I don’t know where the time goes but I just don’t seem to be able to push on with any sense of urgency.

Anyway, once in bed, it took an age to go off to sleep again, but I ended up being awake at 05:10. Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep – or, at least, I thought that I couldn’t, but the next thing that I knew was the alarm going off at 06:29 so I suppose that I must have done.

It took a while for me to leave the bed yet again and go into the bathroom where I had a really good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today, although that’s most unlikely because since my explosive discussion the other week with her boss, she’s keeping a more-than-respectable distance.

Once again, it was a very slow start to the day, what with the medication too. It was 07:50 when I came back in here, although some of that was probably due to putting away the crockery and cutlery from the last few days.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone, but Isabelle the Nurse caught me right in the middle of it all. She breezed into the apartment, sorted out my legs, gave me another dire warning about accepting this offer of “dialysis at home”, and then breezed out even quicker than she came in.

Breakfast was next, and reading some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Today, we are discussing Anglo-Saxon Charters, and how you can tell family trees and orders of importance in Saxon regal families by the order and the way that the signer and the witnesses to the signature are listed on the document.

There were loads of Charters signed in Anglo-Saxon times, some as early as 675AD, and it’s astonishing how many of them have managed to have been retained intact despite all of the upheaval and turmoil that has taken place since they were signed.

We’ve also begun to discuss assemblies, folk-moots and all of that kind of thing during the Anglo-Saxon period, and with men being bound in groups of ten to answer for any of their number who became delinquent. It’s all quite fascinating stuff.

Back in here, I carried on with the dictaphone and eventually managed to finish it. I was back driving taxis again. I had an ordinary saloon car. One of the cars being used as a taxi was some kind of convertible that looked really nice and futuristic but I didn’t have the chance to drive it. Owing to some kind of confusion I ended up not picking up a passenger who was destined to come to me, who went to the car behind which was this sports car. It was a woman with two children, two girls, and I thought “how I would have liked to have taken her for a drive and had a chat” but I was there, stuck in the rank without moving. Later on, I was in the sports car for the very first time but it seemed that everyone, all the public, was ignoring me and I was sitting there waiting. Then someone from our office came over to say that there was a job to be done. He climbed into the car with me and we went to pick up this couple to drop them off somewhere else. I thought that this convertible was really nice, a lovely thing to have in the summer. We dropped everyone off and then we went back to the office. The guy with me told the dispatcher but she said that it wasn’t supposed to have been done until 07:00 tomorrow but we couldn’t understand why it had been confused like this. The guy said that that probably explains why the passengers were feeling rather miserable and wouldn’t talk very much.

As far as a convertible goes, I have yet to meet any Council that will license one as a taxi. Someone once gave me a Cortina MkIII with a full roll-back canvas sunroof but the Council wouldn’t license it so in the end I broke it for spares. As for sitting there being ignored, that seems to be the story of my life.

Later on, I was in Newfoundland again last night, but it was not the Newfoundland that I knew. There was a large fishing port there and someone had the idea of running a car ferry across from there to Europe, so we went for a good look around the port. It was a small port, so we weren’t sure how they were going to fit a large ferry into it. We had a walk around all the same and saw the arrangements, which were very primitive to say the least. There was someone there talking to everyone, a visitor. They offered him a free hot chocolate, saying that this is a thing that they can do while they are in the harbour. I had to go to rewire some switches, but this was extremely complicated because the switches were rusty. I was putting the pins into the switch and then putting the contacts on which, on reflection, I thought was the wrong way round. I should have put the pins into the contacts and then pushed them in. When I decided to change it and do it the other way, I couldn’t get the pins out. I thought that if I couldn’t get the pins out, I’m not going to be able to put the contacts on it. Eventually we were ready to leave so I climbed on board a bus. I’d taken a magazine with me from somewhere, and I’d read it so I put it in the magazine net under my seat. Someone came up to me and asked me if he could borrow it. Later on, when I was walking around the streets outside, I came across the workmen mending the road. I asked them what time they were knocking off and they replied “about 12:00 for lunch”. However, I wanted to know what time they finished. They said that they usually finish at about 17:00 but they didn’t think that they would still be here by then. They would have finished and gone to another site. I asked them at what time they thought they might be finished here this afternoon but the guy couldn’t really give me an idea. He thought in the end that maybe they would spend half the afternoon here and half the afternoon on the other site, which wasn’t really as helpful as I was hoping.

It’s a little-known fact that there is actually A CAR FERRY OF SORTS BETWEEN EUROPE AND THE REST OF THE WORLD and at one stage I was making some serious enquiries about shipping vehicles over to North America. I actually ENCOUNTERED ONE OF THEIR CLIENTS on the Saguenay Ferry on the Forgotten Coast of Québec.

Then there was the issue of the Fleet Data Recorder. Thanks to the little video that I sent the Head Office yesterday, they have worked out that there’s a fault in the equipment so I had all kinds of incident reports to fill in. The upshot is that they will send me some new equipment to replace that which is defective.

For the rest of the morning, I was doing some more sorting out of boxes. Things are starting to look a bit more like home here, but I still can’t find whatever I need. I suppose that this will be a very long process of sorting myself out, but the way that I feel right now, I won’t ever finish it.

My faithful cleaner was late coming to sort out my anaesthetic, which was cutting things fine as the taxi company had sent me a message to say that they would be early. Once more though, my cleaner stayed chatting until it arrived.

The reason that the taxi was early was because there were two other passengers to pick up, and they lived right out in the back of beyond. I really am seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed.

The taxi was late dropping me off at dialysis but it wasn’t as ridiculous as on Monday. I was seen quickly, connected up, and disconnected quite smartly at the end of the session.

The downsides were that firstly, the internet wasn’t working today, pretty sad when I wanted to use the time to organise my shopping, and with a late start, it was a late finish.

It was during the dialysis that my aches and pains began and by the time that I was back home, I really was in no mood for anything.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry, of which about half of it went into the bin. I really wasn’t in the mood for anything. And washing-up was agony too.

So now, I’m off to bed where I intend to sleep for forty years. Crashing out for fifteen minutes at dialysis doesn’t seem to have done me much good at all.

But seeing as we have been talking about cars and suchlike crossing the Atlantic … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of 2010 when, just after the Trans-Labrador Highway, a muddy morass of a dirt-track, opened, I drove all round it IN A CHRYSLER PT CRUISER.
Right near the end, I encountered a very nice woman, whom I met on a few other occasions (but that’s another story) subsequently. She looked at the car and said "did you drive the Trans-Labrador Highway in THAT?"
"Ohh, it’s not the car, it’s the driver that counts" I replied. "And for my next trick, I shall be crossing the Atlantic on a motorbike"

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off at 06:29, I was already sitting on the edge of the bed – and had been for ten minutes – trying to summon up the force, the energy and the courage to leave the bed.

Well, in fact, the alarm didn’t go off at all. I switched it off when I rolled out from under the covers, but you get the idea.

It was quite astonishing that I was up so early because it was a horribly late night. Feeling rather depressed and miserable, a concert by the Phil Beer Band came onto the playlist and there are several songs on there that seem to affect me like that and I really don’t know why.

However, I’ll always make time for the group to play THE BORDER SONG and, as you might expect, when you want to go to bed and there’s a concert of one hour and forty-three minutes, that’s the song that they always play to close the show, so you have to wait up.

Once in bed though, I was soon asleep and although I was tired, I awoke on two or three occasions. When I awoke just after 06:00 this morning, I couldn’t go back to sleep again and for twenty-odd minutes, there didn’t seem to be much point so I forced myself out of bed.

After I’d had a good wash and clean up, I went for the medication and then, changing the habits of a lifetime, I quickly tidied up the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Isabelle the Nurse starts her round today and I expect that she’ll want to examine the apartment.

Back in here, while I waited, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, who had come with me. And to my surprise and delight, I’d had a special visitor last night.

There was a group of us going off again. I first of all had to go to collect one of the girls who had a shop in High Street in Crewe. So she locked up her shop and had to go to the nightclub next door for the keys, but then found that there was a light on further back in the shop so she had to run down there to switch it off and then run back to hand in the keys. Meanwhile, my brother went across the road and fetched Zero. She was coming with me. Eventually, we all gathered in the car park and climbed into the van that I had. There were a couple of girls sitting in the front and I was driving. Zero was sitting right behind me, leaning over my shoulder. As we were driving, I made the remark that she looked rather like a parrot sitting on my shoulder, to which she replied in a bad temper that she wasn’t a parrot at all. I asked her what she was to which she replied “a bad-tempered, rude-mouthed girl” which made me laugh. After we had been driving a couple of years … "don’t you mean ‘hours’?" – ed … we pulled up at the side of the road to sleep for a few hours. I curled up in the back and Zero came to curl up next to me.

So after having mentioned yesterday one of my special young ladies, another one came to see me last night. And what’s more, she curled up next to me in the back of the van and for once, my family didn’t intervene. But the story about curling up in the back of the van with a young lady reminds me of another occasion that is much more recent, and just about as ethereal as curling up with Zero.

Nevertheless, I’m not going to complain at all.

When Isabelle the Nurse came in, she inspected the apartment and promptly fell in love with it. I’m not surprised, because I love my little apartment too. She sorted out my legs and then we discussed this “dialysis at home”. She gave me a very stern warning against it, for a variety of reasons.

Apparently, the people at dialysis describe it in one way that makes it sound attractive, but Isabelle described the same procedure in a totally different way that made it totally unattractive to someone as nesh as me.

And that reminded me of my first introduction to propaganda. When I used to drive taxis, I would always drive at night and the BBC would finish its broadcasts at 02:00 with a news bulletin.

Turning the dial slightly, you would then pick up the English language broadcasts of Radio Free Bulgaria that would start at 02:00 with a news bulletin. They would say the same news, but by changing the stress and the pronunciation, they could make it sound exactly the opposite to the BBC.

So the same news, told the same way but with different stresses and emphases to make it portray the opposite viewpoint. Who was right?

After Isabelle left, I made breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

We’re now discussing the Saxon overrunning of Middlesex, with a highly fanciful account of the invasion that is backed up by almost no evidence whatsoever. Our author seems to like this flights of fantasy into unrecorded territory.

Modern research seems to discount almost all of his theories in this respect, but then again, modern research also seems to discount or deny the ethnic cleansing of the Romano-British population by the Saxons. However, ss I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the sudden and dramatic end of writing, of ironworking, of urban dwelling and of many other skills and habits cannot really be attributed to anything else. We have the classic example of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge, the Killing Fields and the “Back To The Land” movement in this respect.

After breakfast, I changed the habits of a lifetime and began to tidy up. Having spent hours trying to find certain herbs and spices yesterday, that was the focal point of my attack and eventually, I’d managed to sort them out as I would like them to be.

There were a few other things too but I didn’t go too mad in this respect. However, I am having difficulty finding things, like the power pack to drive the little Roland bass cube for example.

There was a disgusting drink break of course and then I came in here to deal with a problem concerning the data senders for the fleet monitor, the transmissions for which are not being received at the Head Office in Denmark. The warning lights seem to be flashing as normal, so I took a one-minute video of the senders and the flashing lights.

There followed an interruption by the usual Wednesday visit by my cleaner. First thing that we did was to sort out all the bedding and I found a quilt cover and sheet that I didn’t know that I had.

She arranged the shower for me and I went and had a really good soak too. You’ve no idea how nice it is to have a lovely, warm shower in a lovely shower cubicle. But it’s rather precarious and I need to sort out the handrails so that I can have a much better purchase for pulling myself into the cubicle.

After my cleaner left, I came back in here and crashed out in one of those sudden, dramatic crashes that I have sometimes. I was out of it for an hour or so, which was disappointing, but even more disappointing was that when I awoke, I didn’t know where I was or what time of day it was, and I was half-expecting to go for breakfast at that point.

Not that that’s any surprise. I don’t know where I am or what day of the week it is even when I’m wide awake.

At that point, Rosemary ‘phoned me for a chat. Just a short one today, only one hour and thirty-six minutes. It’s nice to chat to people like that and thanks to these internet chat applications, it’s all free too.

One of the things that we discussed was how good friends seem suddenly to drop off the radar and you never seem to hear from them again after a while. That’s something else that is perfectly true. Having said that of course, I still have a friend and a former girlfriend from Grammar School with whom I’m regularly in touch

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, and now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, late as usual. Tomorrow, it’s dialysis and I’m not looking forward to that at all.

But seeing as we have been talking about propaganda … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the greatest exponents of the art of propaganda was General Hindenburg of the Imperial German Army, who claimed all of the credit for the battles in Eastern Europe that destroyed the Russian Army in 1914, much to the disgust of General Hoffman who had actually led the German troops into battle.
Years later, Hoffman used to take official visitors around the battlefields there, and he would always point out three particular farmhouses.
Of the first one, he would say "here is the place where our Glorious Leader slept before the battle"
And of the second one, he would say "here is the place where our Glorious Leader slept after the battle"
But of the third one, he would say "here is the place where our Glorious Leader slept during the battle"

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 – SO HERE I AM …

… back at my desk well over an hour later than I ought to be, but I simply couldn’t get going this afternoon and evening.

I’ve had one of those days when I have done a lot of work but accomplished nothing at all and such enthusiasm that I still possess these days drained away as I watched it.

Having read again my rather intemperate and incendiary notes from last night, and read a few more of recent times, I can see that I’ve been sliding deep into the black pit again, and I’m not the only one to have noticed, as you’ll find out as you read on.

Not that it’s any surprise, of course. This time seven years ago, we were wandering aimlessly around the High Arctic of Canada looking for our ship that was icebound somewhere trying to work its way through the North West Passage.

And six years ago today, I was on the point of stepping ashore at the end of our famous traverse of the North-West Passage, having just spent three lovely evenings and nights in the company of a certain young lady who at one time figured frequently during my nocturnal rambles but has been conspicuous by her absence for much longer than I like.

All of this is enough to try the patience of a saint, and believe me, I’m no saint at all and never will be.

Last night was also a late night, although not as late as this one will be. After having finished my incoherent rant and been through the usual end-of-day routine, I went to bed, still seething with anger.

It was a very long night last night and it felt as if I hadn’t been to sleep at all, so wound up was I. When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was already sitting on the edge of the bed, having given up any thought of sleep a long time before.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t wind myself up to go and it took an age before I ended up in the bathroom. In the kitchen, I’d run out of more medication so I had to wander off in search of the aforementioned in my faithful cleaner’s lovely little box.

It wasn’t true that I’d had a night without sleep, because I found some notes on the dictaphone and I really can’t remember dictating them. A group of us was off to Germany, three or four of us. We ended up meeting a friend who lived on an island in the mouth of the river at Bremen. After we’d settled ourselves down, we thought that we’d go for a trip to Bremen so we dashed out of the house, climbed aboard the little train that was there but found that the train was going the wrong way. It reached the far side of the island and we could see part of the city way across the estuary there but that wasn’t where we wanted to be so we had to stay on this little train and go back across the island to the far side. However, the river was so wide that the ferry crossing was about two hours and it was already about 21:00 so we decided that perhaps we would save that for the morning so we all went off to find something to eat locally. Our friend who lived on there was packing her son off on a school trip and had lots of his things that she’d cleared out that she was going to sell. What she had planned to do was to give them to the school so the school could sell them on as a way of raising funds. She asked me if I wanted to go to have a look but I couldn’t think of a good reason to do that at the moment. Then we began to start making plans. There was a huge boxing match taking place down in southern Germany in a town not too far from the Czech border and we were all planning to go. I thought that I may as well go too, but why don’t we find a hotel in the Czech Republic so that we can say that we have done something different while we were there. We were busily sorting that out when suddenly one of my friends arrived. I’d told him ages ago about buying a motorbike, and he had turned up on a big 500cc motorbike and said “I have your motorbike outside”. I thought that this is going to become really complicated because I’ve come here in the van. How do I take this motorcycle home? This is the wrong time because we are all setting off in a minute for this boxing match. I could see that the friends with whom I had come to this island weren’t at all keen on this guy being here. I thought that this is going to create some kind of wrong atmosphere and I don’t want this to happen but I couldn’t think of how to avoid it.

Leaving aside the fact that Bremen isn’t situated at the mouth of a river, and even so, there’s no island in any mouth of any river in Germany that corresponds to this description, it was quite a dramatic dream. It’s been an age since I’VE BEEN TO THE CZECH REPUBLIC and it’s easy to understand why I’m feeling depressed when I keep on encountering things that I used to do with pleasure but am no longer able to do.

And that includes riding a motorcycle. My last motorcycle was a CZ175 but I had loads of fun on my old CX500 when I moved to Brussels. I really was at one point quite recently thinking about having another one but I was overtaken by events.

The nurse caught me in mid-transcription and sorted out my feet. He thinks that there are no oedemas in my legs, so maybe the situation at dialysis isn’t as desperate as I was thinking. I still think that I’ll be there for four hours though, which will fill me full of dismay.

As he left, I thanked him and wished him a good rest for his week off. It was nice to see him in such a better humour since his holiday.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

We’re now well into our discussion of Roman land division and the settlement of the individual parcels of land, and how the system of the occupation of the land that the Romans installed lasted until the Enclosure Acts of the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, and how the actual physical division of the land under Roman law lasted until the passing of the Local Government Act 1888.

However, our author implies that travelling the main roads must have been a bagful of fun back in Roman times. He quotes the author JWE Conybeare who tells us that "Intercourse was easy between the various districts, for along every great road a series of posting stations, each with its stud of relays, was available for the service of travellers.”". I’m not sure exactly what service the travellers would have obtained from the stud of relays, but I’m sure that the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine could tell us.

Back in here, I made a determined attempt to finish the installation of the office and although it took me all the rest of the morning and some of the afternoon, it’s now all up and running. I have all of the back-up drives and the array working … "hip hip array" – ed … and we have music again too, which is good news. I can’t stand the quiet – it drives me mad.

My faithful cleaner came down later with another pile of vegan cheese and also a pile of the yeast that I like and which has been out of s for a while. She was followed by one of the nurses from dialysis who inspected my apartment to make sure that I was living in sanitary conditions and who then proceeded to talk to me about dialysis at home.

That would be good if it worked, but merely talking about the procedure made my stomach churn and my muscles tense up. However, I did take advantage of her by making her give my faithful cleaner a thorough course in dialysis implants and how and where to apply the anaesthetic cream. That was worth its weight in gold, that course of instruction.

However, she did say something that surprised me. She asked me if I’d considered seeing the service’s psychologist. I haven’t, but I can’t see what good a psychologist would do. I’m dying, I know that, and I’m resigned to it. It’s difficult sometimes to come to terms with it but I can’t see how a psychologist would help me in that respect. And in any case, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’d hate to be the person who would draw the short straw and have to probe the depths of my subconscious mind.

After everyone left, I came back here where I regrettably crashed out for an hour. That’s disappointing, but with the wretched night that I had had last night, it’s not surprising.

For one reason or another, I was really late going for tea, stuffed peppers etc, so consequently I’m late going to bed. I can’t wait to be under the covers though because, once more, I’m exhausted. A good night’s sleep will do me good.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the lack of motivation … "well, one of us has" – ed … the nurse from dialysis asked me "what happened to your famous ‘get up and go’ then?"
"By the looks of things, it’s got up and gone a long time ago." I replied.

Monday 1st September 2025 – I AM ABSOLUTELY SICK …

… tired and totally fed up with this dialysis nonsense, and if there’s much more of it, I’m going to write my wills (because there will be three), call a halt to it and let nature take its course.

One of the doctors told me a few weeks ago that if I were to stop the dialysis, I wouldn’t last out the week. But at least I would have a week to myself without being dragged around from one medical appointment to another and totally inconvenienced in the process.

The taxi was early today – 12:45 instead of 13:15, and we arrived at dialysis at 13:20. So there I was, looking for an early start, a quick “in and out” and back home early for once. But ohhhh! Cruel, wicked fate! How you (and I suspect some human agency too) conspired to thwart my plans. And in spades too.

The way things went last night, I might have expected some problems today. Despite my best efforts, it was 23:40 when I finally crawled into bed, much later than I had been planning. But once in bed, I had a really good sleep for a change.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was actually on the point of throwing off the covers. Not actually out of bed though. And leaving the bed was not as simple as it might have sounded. It was a desperate struggle to beat the second alarm.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash, shave and clean up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant … "if anyone from the dialysis centre finds this objectionable, may we ask why you have invaded Our Hero’s private life by hunting him down on the internet, in defiance of the Patients’ Charter?" – ed… and then in the kitchen I had my medication.

Some of the medication in the drawer in the table had run out so I had to go to the supplies. And what a marvellous surprise. I’ve moaned and moaned about the medication all over my apartment, making it look like a Chemist’s shop and depressing me no end but my lovely cleaner has fitted out a cardboard box, complete with little curtains, to store everything. That’s one of the nicest things that anyone has done for me.

Once more, I’d hardly come back in here before the nurse arrived. Once more, he was in a really chatty, sociable mood and I hope that he stays like this because it makes things so much nicer.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Our author is now well into his stride about Roman surveying, and I’ve been having to rack my brains from my Primary School days in the early 1960s about rods, poles, perches, chains and furlongs. I suspect that tomorrow we’ll be discussing bushels and peck, and the difference between avoirdupois and troy weight.

However, it’s his comments that are the most interesting. When discussing the longevity of the Roman system of land division, he observes that "it is manifest that neither the rude Saxons nor their Norman successors were capable of designing or carrying out such a big undertaking."

It makes me wonder what the Saxons must have been doing, and did the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine know about it?

He also talks about the erection of wayside shrines at the intersections of Roman field trackways, and how Pope Gregory encouraged Christian missionaries to adopt these wayside shrines and convert them to Holy Christian places.

Anyone who has wandered around rural France as much as we have will have noticed statues of the saints at many intersections of rural trackways.

Another thing that he mentions is that on "Rogation days, when priests with the Cross went in procession round their parochia, and certain Gospels were read in the wild field among the corn and grass, so that wicked spirits which infest the air might be laid low to the extent that the corn may remain unharmed."

The ceremony of the Beating of the Bounds and of well-dressing is still carried on today in parts of the UK.

After breakfast, I came back in here to spend a brief fifteen minutes finishing off the connecting up of my office and all of the computer peripherals, and when my cleaner came to sort out my anaesthetic cream two and more hours later, I was still in here trying to sort it out.

No matter what I have tried, I can’t make one of the external back-up drives fire up. I’ve changed cables and everything, but the warning light is far paler than the warning light on another one and the computer won’t read it. I shall have to keep on trying. Everything else works fine.

Once my cleaner had dealt with my arm, she began to chat. And was still chatting when the taxi came. I really am flavour of the month around here these days.

There was only me in the car with the driver today – a nice young guy who has taken me to Paris before – and we had a good chat. But the fun came to an end when we arrived at dialysis because we arrived at the same time as seven other people.

Not only that, they weren’t ready in the wards so we had to wait. And when the doors were opened, it was a mad stampede to the beds. My bed was the farthest possible away from the door, as you might expect, and because I am the slowest, I was last to arrive.

It was not surprising that I would therefore be the last to be connected, but 14:30 – well over an hour after I had arrived – is really taking the mickey.

There was plenty of room to manoeuvre with the weight loss so I asked the nurse to wind it up so that I’d have a head start for Thursday, but for all the good it did, I may as well have saved my breath.

Once everything was under way I had a brief doze … "he means ‘half an hour of deep sleep’" – ed … and then I was in no mood to do any work. I really am over-tired these days.

Even worse, the chef de service came by, and said that one of the other doctors had made some remarks the other day about my overall health and how I seemed to be suffering under the strain of dialysis. And so, he cut right down to a minimum the amount of fluid extraction.

And the final straw – despite all my entreaties, he left me 700 grams short, which means almost inevitably that I’ll be stuck here for four hours on Thursday. People could be forgiven for believing that he’s deliberately setting me up in an act of revenge for my letter to his Head Office.

So the ridiculously low extraction came to an end at 18:00 precisely, but I wasn’t unplugged and attended to until 18:25. It was 18:50 when I finally walked out of the dialysis centre – the poor taxi driver had been awaiting me for over half an hour.

To cap it all, we had to drive right across Avranches to the private clinic to pick up someone else and run them to Granville, where they were dropped off first.

It was 19:40 when I finally came back here, as if I don’t have anything else to do, and I was totally seething. I really am fed up with all of this. I was away from home for almost seven hours for a three-and-a-half hour session and that is totally unacceptable.

If I don’t calm down soon, I’ll be the one blowing a gasket.

Tea was a quick pasta with chick peas and veg, and then I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe. I can’t remember who I was with but I was wandering around somewhere like Stoke-upon-Trent last night with someone. We came across a car that was for sale, a red Morris 1000 traveller and whoever I was with was trying to make up her mind whether to buy it or not. I couldn’t see how it would fit in with our plans but it was a nice vehicle all the same. We met a few other people wandering around there too and we had a talk with them. The next thing that I remember about this was that we were in Nantwich, having a look at the water pumps there and the system to distribute the town water. They were at the back of the Swine Market, at the back of one of the shops. We were talking about how they were installed and the controversy about digging up all of the streets, stopping the traffic from circulating for months but that’s all that I remember about this dream.

Nerina and I went to see a Morris Traveller once. It was for sale at a giveaway price because one of the spring hangers had torn out of the chassis. I would have had it and welded it up, but she decided against it, which was a shame. I’m not sure why we ended up in Nantwich though. In those days, Stoke-upon-Trent would have been much more likely.

So still fuming, still seething, I’m off to bed. I hope that I will have calmed down by the morning although I doubt it. But I’ll be interested to see how my dreams are tonight. However, knowing my luck, there won’t be any at all.

One thing that I am going to do at the dialysis clinic though next time, is to watch very carefully how the nurses operate the machines. And then, when their backs are turned, I can adjust my machine myself to how I would like it to be. Then we can watch the sparks fly!

But seeing as we have been talking about religion and Priests … "well, one of us has" – ed … a priest and a couple of parishioners were standing on a road with a sign saying "The End Is Nigh. Turn Round. Retrace Your Steps Before It’s Too Late"
However, a car drives past, with the occupants hurling abuse at the Priest and his parishioners.
Next moment the Priest and his parishioners hear a loud “splash”.
One of the parishioners turns to the Priest and says "Yes, I reckoned that a simple ‘Bridge Washed Away’ sign would have been a better idea"

Sunday 31st August 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY EVENING’S …

… drama, I suppose that I had better take a calmer look at things. We can’t do with having that kind of emotion day after day.

So last night, in the middle of what can be best described as “a bilious attack”, I left the desk and fell into bed. It was all of 22:10 as well, and you don’t have a finish much earlier than that every day of the week.

Once in bed, I was out like a light. I really was exhausted, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve felt like that too.

When I awoke, it was still dark, but I couldn’t go back to sleep so I really thought about going back to sleep. However, one glance at the time persuaded me to stay in bed. It was 01:24 and, much as I like to be an early riser, that kind of thing is ridiculous.

At some point I must have gone back to sleep again because I remember awakening a couple of times during the night. However, at 06:26 exactly (my body clock is working really well these days) I awoke again, and at that point I decided to leave the bed, even though it’s Sunday and I’m entitled to stay in bed until 07:59 or thereabouts.

Saying that I would be leaving the bed is one thing. Actually leaving it for real is something completely different and it was a real struggle into the bathroom. I decided against having a wash as I really wasn’t in the mood, but everything else that I needed to do took quite some considerable time.

So did the medication this morning, and then I had the disagreeable task of doing last night’s washing up. One thing that I really detest is waking in the morning to find a heap of dirty crockery awaiting me but I really was in no kind of state last night.

After all of that, I was hardly back in here when the nurse arrived. He sorted out my legs, did his accounts and then cleared off, and I could make breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Our author is laying the ground … "groan" – ed … for a chapter on the Roman surveying of Middlesex. I’m really looking forward to that because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we discussed Roman surveying or urban areas during one of my University modules, and I even built some Roman surveying equipment such as a GROMA.

Back in here later, there were the dictaphone notes to review. Back in the 18th Century there was a Native American raid on a village somewhere in North America. The residents succeeded in fighting off the invasion and killed several of the Native Americans. There was bound to be some kind of enquiry about it, and the settlers were concerned about what would actually come out in this, so the organised a collection of all of the arms that were in the possession of people. The aim was to try to find somewhere to hide them until the investigation was over. My plan was to put them in a coffin and bury it in the churchyard with the victims of the incident, then it could be dug up when the enquiry is over. However, for some reason, people seem to be reluctant about that idea.

Attacks by the Native Americans on settler communities on the frontier were commonplace in the 18th Century and there were terrible stories of atrocities – on both sides, it has to be said. But the burial of firearms in a coffin in the graveyard relates to an actual event in a village in north-east France just before the arrival of the Germans during their rapid advance of summer 1914.

Did I dictate the dream about me being with the old Ford Escort estate … "no you didn’t" – ed … My friend from Munich was there and he had borrowed it for a couple of days. He had taken my collection of small solar panels and installed them on the vehicle while he was borrowing it. When I went back to pick it up, he’d taken the panels off. I asked him how it went, and he replied that it was extremely good because he’s had a figure of 35 Kilowatts of electricity generated while he’d been borrowing the vehicle. I asked him where he’d installed them, and he pointed to the kind-of ladder rack on the back. He said that he had put them on there and they seemed to work fine. I had the panels and I had another attempt at installing them on there. It was complicated because the mounting blocks that I’d designed for it were fouling the nuts that held the ladder rack on. We had to be very careful about how we fitted everything. I thought in the end that rather than use a rubber sheet underneath the panels, I’d mount them on a sheet of wood or something that would be covered in the rubber sheet. That way, it would be much more solid and the mounting blocks would work better. We were there for quite a while, trying to fit these solar panels back on. He said that in the meantime, I’d lost two more of my volunteer drivers for this scheme. He said that Old man Sinclair was one. I said that I’d never really expected him to take part in it anyway. I said that I suspected that the other one would have been that little Jackie. he agreed that it was she who was the second, so I wasn’t really all that disappointed by those two because I didn’t think that it was likely that they’d take part.

It was the old Escort van that had the ladder rack, bot the estate that I had when I was with Laurence and Roxanne. And of course, the solar panels are on the roof of the Transit. But why Jimmy Clitheroe’s grandfather would be involved in this dream, and also “Little Jackie”, a girl whom I knew in Crewe in 1982/3, I really don’t know.

After that, I began the task of writing up last night’s notes and eventually, after quite a long while, I managed to post them on line, so you can all find out about my horrible day yesterday.

And so it was time for a footfest. There were the highlights of the rest of the games in the JD Cymru League, and afterwards there were the highlights of Stirling Albion v Stranraer. Stranraer had about 90% of the play and had a hatful of shots at the Stirling goal, but failed to make any of them count. Stirling only had one meaningful shot on goal, so I shall leave you to decide what the final score might have been.

There were bread and pizza to make later on too. The bread is cooked magnificently, and the pizza was one of the best that I have ever made. My new oven is marvellous and I am almost as impressed as I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

But right now, I’m going to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think. I really could do with a week off. But right now, all I want to do is to sleep. I might be feeling better but I’m still dog-tired.

But seeing as we have been talking about how ill I was last night … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of that church in Neston where we went once for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
At the entrance to the church was a box marked "For The Sick" and next to it was a note – "This Box Is Restricted To Monetary Donations Only."

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: France

Sunday 14th September 2025 – THERE ISN’T MUCH …

Saturday 13th September 2025 – JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT …

Friday 12th September 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

Thursday 11th September 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

Wednesday 10th September 2025 – I’VE NO IDEA …

Tuesday 9th September 2025 – I AM IN …

Monday 8th September 2025 – WHAT A DAY …

Sunday 7th September 2025 – WHAT A BUSY …

Saturday 6th September 2025 – WE HAVE A …

Friday 5th September 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

Thursday 4th September 2025 – I AM HAVING …

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 – WHEN THE ALARM …

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 – SO HERE I AM …

Monday 1st September 2025 – I AM ABSOLUTELY SICK …

Sunday 31st August 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY EVENING’S …

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