Category Archives: France

Thursday 10th July 2025 – I AM FED UP …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What price that now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These people really have no idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Wednesday 9th July 2025 – CAN YOU IMAGINE …

… anything as embarrassing as being in the middle of a conversation with someone and suddenly dropping unconscious at their feet?

The kitchen-fitter and his son who came this morning to start work don’t need to imagine it because they saw it for themselves as a conversation that I was having with them came to a rather dramatic pause.

That’s now the fourth of these little wobbles that I’ve had. There were the two that I mentioned last night, a third as I was going to bed, and the fourth which was the daddy of them all this morning.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday, I was becoming concerned about all of this. The one that I had when I was almost ready for bed made me even more worried, and then collapsing unconscious for a couple of minutes at the feet of a couple of visitors is extremely perturbing.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … one of these days I’m going to have one of these attacks and I won’t awaken from it. And the way that things are going, it won’t be long a-coming.

It was a late night too last night – I didn’t go to bed until about 00:15, what with one thing and another … "and until you’ve started, you have no idea how many other things there are" – ed … but I was soon asleep. And there I stayed until about 06:00.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … being awake is one thing. Leaving the bed is something else completely. It was about 06:15 when I finally saw the light of day and fell out of the bed.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up and then went into the kitchen for my morning fruit juice and medication. It was yet another slow start to the day while I slowly unwound.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We shared a holiday home with some people, a home in France. Eventually we decided that we were going to settle down there and stay forever. The other people who were sharing the house were not particularly happy about the situation of Brexit and all of that. In the end, one night after a rather heated discussion, they simply packed their bags and left, leaving us in charge of the house. Nothing much happened about that after a while except that one evening, just as we were moving some furniture around, someone knocked at the door. We had to rearrange the furniture quickly and let them in. It was some people who had come to see the house. Obviously the house had been put up for sale, no-one had said anything to us, and now there were people arriving to have a look around it. They took a big liking to our collie who was six years old but the cats took absolutely no notice of them. We ended up having something of a chat about the situation. One of the things that came out in the discussion somewhere was the question of the rateable value of the land. Someone had a big plot of land in a forest but they were only paying a small amount of tax on it. After they had had this campaign to try to equalise the tax payments, someone explained to them that if the land is not capable of being exploited, for example, it’s too steep, it doesn’t attract council tax. Here in this forest in the middle of the mountains, a lot of the land was far too steep to do anything with it so it had no rateable value.

This sounds rather like what will be happening here over the next few weeks. The estate agents are coming to photograph the place on Friday and from then on, there will be streams of people coming to look at (and to sight-see) the apartment while I’ll be in the throes of trying to tidy up and move house.

If anyone has a free weekend some time, I shall be needing all the help that I can find.

The nurse turned up, much earlier than usual, and sorted out my legs. And while I was making my breakfast, the kitchen-fitter and his son turned up to start work.

They needed to know where my new apartment was and what needed to be done so I went downstairs with them. And it was while we were in the bathroom discussing the shower unit that I hit the floor quite dramatically.

Eventually, I recovered and it was a very sad, weary me who struggled in vain up the stairs. In the end I had to take the lift from the first half-landing up to the next and then struggle downwards to my door.

Breakfast was next, and I read MY BOOK but I was so out of everything that I couldn’t begin to tell you what I read.

Back in here, it took me a while to recover and then I started on my “Friday Woodstock” programme. And that is now, at long last, finished and is just how I want it to be. It took an age and several retries to bring it down to exactly one hour but there it is, all done and dusted, and the only artists excluded are Ravi Shankar and Swami Satchidananda, but there again their performances aren’t really the style that will fit into our rock music programmes.

Tomorrow, I’ll start on the “Saturday Woodstock” programme and see how I go. That is going to be much more complicated because there is so much that needs to be omitted if I want to keep it down to one hour.

There were the usual interruptions, such as a couple of disgusting drink breaks and the arrival of my faithful cleaner, who, as usual, helped me into and out of the bath while I had a shower.

And bless her, she spent much more than one hour going through the kitchen and bathroom making everything look respectable ready for the photograph sessions on Friday.

While all of this was going on, my right knee began to swell dramatically and it hurts like Hades. I can hardly move without being in some kind of agony and it looks as if there is a balloon on my knee. I must have fallen with quite a thump.

The kitchen fitter came to say goodbye and to show me some photos of what he had done. It certainly looks impressive and I can’t wait to see the finished product. That’s likely to be in a couple of weeks, he reckons.

The shower room isn’t going to be so easy, he thinks, and he’s probably right. I’m already beginning to redesign it in my head and I’ll probably do that three or four more times yet.

Tea tonight was a burger with pasta. I wasn’t feeling up to much. And my faithful cleaner came by to pick up some things for downstairs and to take a few more photos of the work

But that’s everything now. I’m going to rub some heat treatment into my leg and then strap an ice-pack on, and then go to sleep. I want to see if this swelling and the pain will go down overnight. If not, I’m going to have an enormous amount of difficulty going to dialysis.

But seeing as we have been talking about my bad leg … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’ll have to be careful about hos this works out.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a bad fall a few years ago while I was out and about and hurt my knee quite badly.
Some guy walking by stopped to help me and offered his advice.
"Are you a doctor?" I asked
"Not exactly" he replied, "but I do have some kind of medical experience"
"So what do you think?" I asked him
He examined me and replied "I’d better go to fetch my gun"
"Your gun?" I exclaimed. "Why a gun?"
"I’ve seen that injury before" he replied "and I had to use it on the horse."

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Tuesday 8th July 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what happened to me, but twice, once in mid-afternoon and once in the early evening, I’ve had a major dizzy spell and I’ve had to hang on to something to stop me falling over.

It’s not the usual kind of light-headed dizzy spell that people have now and again, but a couple of really serious attacks that took several minutes to pass. So what’s happening here then?

It can’t be over-tiredness because I had another good Sleep of the Dead last night. I was in bed by 23:30 and there I slept, all the way through without moving, until the alarm went off at 06:30, miserable failure that I am. How many times is that now that I’ve failed to beat the alarm?

When I finally awoke I was in the middle of a voyage somewhere but it evaporated immediately and I can’t remember a thing about it. It took a few minutes to gather my wits, which is a surprise seeing how few I have these days, and then I went for a stagger into the bathroom to sort myself out.

In the kitchen I sorted out my medication and had a very leisurely start to the day. I didn’t really feel like doing all that much, for some reason and I’m really going to have to motivate myself much better than this.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what happened during the night. At some point I had thought that I’d heard the alarm go off so I left the bed and began to prepare myself for the day. No-one was more surprised than me when I awoke a couple of minutes later to find that I was still in bed and I’d been asleep. I was really surprised by that because I was definitely convinced that I’d left the bed.

And to tell the truth, I can’t even remember awakening and finding myself back in bed so I’ve no idea at all what was happening there.

The nurse breezed in this morning, fairly early, and didn’t stay about for long, so I could make a bright start with my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Today we’ve had a story about a certain “Robin Hoode” dated to the early years of the reign of Henry VIII, a story that I have certainly never heard before, and also an account of the 20:00 curfew that William the Conqueror imposed upon his subjects in his new realm, and how much chaos was caused when Henry I relaxed it.

There’s also a very lengthy and interesting description of the origins of the Lord Mayor of London’s parade.

In fact, the more that I read of this book, the more interesting it becomes.

After breakfast I began to tidy the kitchen and a whole heap of stuff that had been lying around since the Dawn of Time found its way into the rubbish bins, with probably plenty more besides. It certainly looks much better now and there also seems to be more room in there.

Back in here later, I carried on with the editing of the radio notes for the “Friday Woodstock” programme, and by the time that I’d finished this evening, they were all edited, the programme had been assembled and I’d even managed to do the first editing.

To make the programme as I wanted it to be, it ended up being two minutes and forty-five seconds short so I swapped out one song for another and rewrote a couple of the notes. That should bring it up to something like what I want, and then I can start on Saturday’s.

Saturday’s is going to be rather complicated as there will be so much to cut out. The music is well over an hour, never mind any commentary. That looks as if it might run to well over twelve minutes.

There was an interruption too. The estate agents rang me, asking if they could come to perform an energy survey on the apartment. We agreed that they could come on Friday 1st August in the afternoon.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve had a couple of these strange attacks and I’ve no idea what’s happening here. I’m probably adding another medical complication to the long list that I already have.

Tea was rushed tonight. It should have been a taco roll with rice but the tacos were looking definitely the worse for wear so it ended up being a curry with rice instead.

It was rushed because there was football on the internet, TNS v Shkendija in the Champions League. However, this time I couldn’t seem to manage to pass my way through the firewall. In the end, I had to watch an Artificial Intelligence simulation of the game, but it’s hardly the same thing.

So now, I’m going to go to bed and ponder upon these new health issues. The kitchen fitter starts tomorrow too, so I have to be on form. It’s not the time to be having any more health issues.

But seeing as we have been talking about Robin Hood … "well, one of us has" – ed … one day Robin Hood is walking through the forest and meets a poor beggar
"I am Robin Hood" he said. "I rob from the rich and give to the poor. Have this bag of gold." And he tosses a bag of gold at the beggar
The beggar looks at the bag and counts the gold. "This is more money than I have ever had in my life" he exclaims. "For once in my life, I’m really, really rich."
"What did you just say?" asks Robin Hood, drawing his sword

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Monday 7th July 2025 – MISERABLE FAILURE …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sunday 6th July 2025 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning at 07:59, I was sitting at my desk.

In fact I had been sitting at my desk for quite some considerable time. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s quite pointless going to bed early because all that it means is that I awaken correspondingly early next morning.

“Early” is one thing sure enough, but I’m not sure exactly where 04:10 fits into the scheme of things with regard to “early”. It certainly seems to be quite an extravagance to me.

Mind you, having said that, being awake at 04:10 is one thing. Leaving the bed is quite something else, and 05:01 makes it sound almost respectable by my standards. There was a reason for my lingering in bed for as long as I did, which you will discover anon.

So last night, feeling like death, looking like death and probably smelling like death too, I staggered into bed as soon as I had finished my notes, and that was the last thing that I remembered of the night.

There I lay, flat out until 04:10 when I checked the watch, but it was 05:01 when I finally fell out of bed.

The first thing that I did was to take advantage of the deathly silence and dictate the radio notes for the Friday of Woodstock. And what a marathon that was. The time ran to over 22 minutes, the longest recording by far for a rock music programme, and that is going to take some serious editing.

Once that was all finished (and that took its time, of course) I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And, more importantly, who had been with me. And I had a special visitor during the night. It was Zero who came to see me. We were on a train somewhere going into London. When we arrived, we had to come out of our station and catch a bus across London to Waterloo. I had my baggage and she had hers. She was right behind me and I stepped on the bus but it immediately pulled away and she was left standing at the station. I hoped that she had had the good sense to board the next one and follow me along. There were four British guys sitting on a seat, blocking the passage and making the conductor perform some hard work. He took my ticket when he came to me. I thought “what am I going to do now if I have to change buses?”. I asked someone and he replied “don’t be so worried. Just go with it”. So I just went with it. The bus pulled into Victoria Station … "not Waterloo" – ed … and I climbed out; and I had to look for the entrance. As I was looking for the entrance, Zero walked up. We went to sit down to wait for our train, but she said that she had handed in her luggage at the left luggage office, having put the wrong name on it. I told her to wait there for five minutes while I walked back around the corner. I walked into the first office and asked if they had a luggage reception centre. They replied “yes” so I explained what Zero had done. She replied “ohh, you want tithe railway office. This is the pub here”. I had then to go back out and begin to look for the railway office. Then I began to realise that time was marching on and I was going to miss this train if I were not careful so in the end I had to go back to her to tell her “well, everything is going to be OK” even though I knew that it wasn’t and we’d sort out the matter when we arrived at wherever it was where we were going.
I forgot to mention that in the dream where I was roaming around the station looking for the luggage office, there was a group of British people coming up to people to ask if they would like these people to give them a speech. I just ploughed on and when one stood in my way I just pushed him out of the way with my body. They were upset but I wasn’t in the kind of mood to be polite at that moment.

There is something of everything in that dream. First of all, we’re on a train again. And there I am again with Zero, some of the fates are pushing us together and others of the fates, such as my subconscious, are tearing us apart. Finally, I’m full of indecision yet again.

There are also connections to real-life events in this too. When Liz (“this” Liz, not “that” Liz) and I were in London in 2006, we actually had such an experience when she stepped onto a tube (the lady going first is always the most logical order) and the tube just set off. I followed on behind to our intended destination and luckily, she had continued on to there to await me.

The final part of the dream also has its parallel to a time IN LONDON IN 2007 when I was obliged to remind someone that he wouldn’t receive a performers’ licence if he were to have two broken legs.

Anyway, now you know why I lay a-bed until 05:10. I was hoping to go back to sleep and continue the dream with Zero but, alas, it was not to be.

Isabelle the nurse was late this morning and she hadn’t had time to read the hospital in Paris’s version of “War and Peace”. She had better return it to me tomorrow regardless, because she will be off-duty for a week and I need some information therefrom.

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

We covered a lot of ground today, starting by discussing the schools of London. And all of you teachers who are complaining about being understaffed, underpaid and overworked should spare a thought for the staff of St Paul’s School in 1512 where, "for one hundred and fifty-three poor men’s children, for which there were ordained a master, a surmaster or usher, and a chaplain".

We’ve also been discussing the position of men keen to learn the law who congregated in certain houses where they could lodge and share their experiences. He describes their customs and routines, and names their houses, and we can see straight away the origins of the Inns of Court and the modern-day legal traditions that are followed.

However, I had a very wry smile when I read his account of the houses, "built all of timber and covered with a thatch of straw or reed" and his accounts of the fires that took place in the city. He finishes his account by saying that the mayor then ordered "that all men in this city should build their houses of stone up to a certain height and to cover them with slate and baked tile, since which time, thanks be given to God, there hath not happened the like often consuming fires in this City as afore."

It goes without saying that Stow’s book, this edition being published in 1603, was 63 years prior to “The Great Fire of London” that destroyed an enormous area of the old City.

After breakfast I came in here to begin my Welsh class. And it went on until 16:30.

It was not a particular success but it was free and I need to take advantage of the few opportunities that come my way during the Summer. I forget so many things quite so easily that it’s the only way to keep it going in my head.

For a change, we were quite a small class, and I was the only male there. But everyone seemed to be friendly and keen and we had such a good time altogether.

Once the lesson was over I had things to do. Like bake some bread and make some dough for a pizza. There’s plenty of dough in the freezer but it’s in large man-sized … "PERSON-sized" – ed … lumps in the freezer and as I’m not eating so much these days, I just wanted a smaller size.

The bread is wonderful as usual and the pizza was really the best that I have ever made. The base was magnificent. I shall make a few more like this one, that’s for sure, if only I remember what I did so differently.

Right now though, I’m off to bed. I had an early start, I’m tired and I have dialysis tomorrow afternoon.

And as we have been talking about Zero … "well, one of us has" – ed … to dream of Zero returning during the night.
And if she does, I shall tell her "I dreamed about you last night, Zero".
"Did you really?" she will ask
"No" I will reply. "You fought me off."

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Saturday 5th July 2025 – MISERABLE FAILURE …

… that I am, I was asleep again this morning when the alarm went off at 06:30.

However, I had been awake earlier just as it was becoming light and I was lying there thinking about struggling to my feet but I must have gone to sleep at some point because the sound of the alarm in broad daylight was the next thing that I remember.

It wasn’t as if I’d had too much of a late night either. I was in bed for about 23:45, which is quite early these days, and I must have gone to sleep quite quickly too. I’ve no idea at what time I awoke but it wasn’t too early either, even though it was only just becoming light, and I wish that I’d summoned up the energy to look at the time.

Once I was up, I had a very leisurely start to the morning and it took me over an hour to be back in here after having had a wash and taken my medication.

First thing that I did back in here was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d signed up for a new team of something or other. The reason why I’d come there was because I knew some of the people there and they were really quite friendly. I soon had a change of opinion when I went in to start there. There was one particular incident where we were changing and someone came along and took the chair that I was using to put my clothes on so I simply went to fetch another one. The boss came roaring in, accusing me of pushing in front of other people to fetch a chair. I told him that that was nonsense. I told him what had happened and he pointed to someone else, saying that he says differently. I said that he was wrong so the boss asked if I was calling him a liar. I replied that I was saying what I did and not what anyone else says that I did. He replied “right, then we’ll ask him what this other person did” but the other person turned his head away. The boss wasn’t going to let this drop. He asked “where are your clothes anyway at the moment?”. I replied that they were on my body, so he asked “what do you need a chair for?”. I replied that they won’t be on my body for very long. He pointed to me and said “in any case, you have a broken back. What are you here for anyway?”. “I don’t have a broken back”. “Yes, you have” he retorted. I was about to say that I’d just had a medical and no medical had ever picked up anything about a broken back but he just went on and on and on. Then he turned to a girl who was there too and asked “what about your medication?”. She replied “I don’t take it while I’m at work”. He replied “you should take it while you are at work and it should be noted down”. She replied “if I were to do that, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be on sick leave”. He replied “it doesn’t matter. You note down all the medication that you take when you go on work”. I said to this girl “I can see exactly how this is going to turn out. Neither of us will be here by the end of the week”. She replied “yes, just after I’ve ordered a barrel of 400 litres of something to last me all through the year too”.

This is a combination of a couple of events. The first one was an interview with a new player at Stranraer, who said that what encouraged him to sign for the club rather than any other was the fact that he already knew several players who were already there and so it would be like being on familiar territory.

The second part is clearly a reference to that most disagreeable male nurse at Paris whom I bawled out in front of the doctor because of his arrogant, aggressive tone. And if he starts his nonsense next time I’m there, never mind the end of the week, I won’t be there at the end of the session. I am rapidly reaching the end of my tether with all of this nonsense.

There was also something about being at a hospital, but I have only the vaguest recollection and nothing was recorded about it.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in on the end of a hurricane. She couldn’t stop, and hadn’t read my “War and Peace” from Paris, but one thing for which she did ask was a copy of my photo from Paris, the one with the mouse on it. I’ve no idea what she intends to do with it, but it all sounds quite mysterious.

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

Today, we’ve been discussing the Barons’ War of 1215, its effect on Baynard’s Castle and the grievances of the Fitzwalter family but there was nothing particular of any interest.

The allegations seemed to be that King John had set his eye on Matilda, the daughter of Robert Fitzwalter, but both father and daughter refused John’s advances and when some kind of undercurrent against the Kings reign swelled up, Fitzwalter attached himself to it vigour in revenge.

After breakfast, I had some housekeeping to do in here on the computer, only to be surprised by my cleaner who caught me unawares.

The taxi came early too and despite ending up with three passengers, we were early arriving at Avranches.

For a change, I was coupled up early. There wasn’t much at all to extract so I persuaded them to go for 1 kg and bring down my dry weight. And then left in peace to carry on with my work. Not even the doctor came to see me, which was unusual considering the events of Thursday.

One interruption though was from the house agents of my landlord here. They have had my notice of leaving and want to come round to photograph the place in order to advertise it. We arranged for them to come on Friday afternoon

Connected up early, I was disconnected early too and for another change, the taxi was already waiting. The drive home, behind all of the arriving tourists, stopping every half-mile to admire the seagulls, took longer than it should and we had a drama when the driver drove right past the turning where we need to go to drop off my fellow passenger. We had to do a quick lap round the block to go back.

Back here, my faithful cleaner was waiting. We went into the apartment to rescue the lettuce and had a discussion about how we would try to make my place look presentable for the photographer.

Back here, I collapsed into a chair for half an hour, and then made some tea. Chips, falafel and salad. Not very much of it at all, but I still struggled to eat it all. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, if I’m off my food, then I really am ill.

It’s still quite early but nevertheless, I’m going to bed. I’ve had enough for today. I’m still not feeling very well, even after all of this time, and I now have one of those heavy summer colds that I have occasionally.

Tomorrow I have a Welsh class all day, so I need to be on the best form that I possibly can. God help me.

But seeing as we have been talking about doctors and other people telling me how ill I am … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time when I went to see the school nurse after an accident on the football field.
"You’ve broken your arm in two places" she told me
"So tell me which two places they are" I replied "and I shan’t go there again."

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Friday 4th July 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… where to begin today’s account. Bo I begin it when I awoke at 01:01 this morning? Or do I begin it when I awoke for definite at … errr … 07:59?

Well, anyway, after last night’s disaster when I fell asleep, fully clothed, into bed and didn’t move a muscle, I awoke at 01:01 exactly, according to the time on my ‘phone.

Despite trying everything that I could, by about 01:40 I gave up the struggle and heaved myself out of my stinking pit, never having felt less like doing anything in my whole life.

Once I was (sort-of) on my feet, I staggered over to the chair and when the World finally stopped spinning round, I began to plan my day.

The first thing to do was the statistics and then the backing-up. I can’t ever forget them. Next thing was to write up the notes for Thursday, and they are now on-line, with apologies to anyone who was disappointed when they came here looking for them.

There was nothing on the dictaphone from the night at that particular point, so I spent a while trying to concentrate on doing some stuff but in the end, round about 04:30, I gave it up as a bad job and went back to sleep.

When the alarm went off at 06:30, I’m afraid that I simply switched it off, set the alarm to 07:59 and then went straight back to sleep.

Once again, it was a very weary me that fell out of bed a couple of minutes after the alarm had sounded. I couldn’t hang about, because Isabelle the Nurse was on her way so I had to struggle into the bathroom as best as I could.

When Hurricane Isabelle blew in, she found me trying to take my medication. She couldn’t hang about long, for various reasons, but she took away “War and Peace” – the summary of my visit to Paris last week that had arrived in the post yesterday – for a read when she’s at home tonight.

And that reminds me – when it comes back, I need to scan it and send it to my health insurers because it’s quite comprehensive.

Incidentally, I note from the report that they confirm that I was given Retuximab and “some other product” twice back in early 2016 but they withdrew “some other product” because of the dreadful and insupportable side effects. However, here I am nine years on, much older, much more ill, much more unfit, and they are giving me the same “some other product” again.

So what’s happening here? Haven’t they realised what happened, or is this some desperate last throw of the dice? I think we should be told.

After Isabelle left, clutching my papers in her little mitt, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Today we are talking about medieval money, and there’s a beautiful paragraph or two about the history of the various coins of the realm of that period. It all ends with the delightfully modest statement "This much for mint and coinage, by occasion of this Tower (under correction of others more skilful)".

Why can’t modern authors be so modest? … "Why indeed?" – ed …

Back in here, it took a while to come round to my senses, and then I finished off paring and seguing the music for the radio programme that I’d been preparing.

My cleaner stuck her sooty foot in the door at some point to do her stuff for the day and after she left, I read through my Woodstock notes for the Friday, performed a few corrections, added this in, took that out, and that will be dictated at the next opportunity. Then I’ll do Saturday’s, and then Sunday’s.

At some point Rosemary rang me up for a chat. Just a short one today – one hour and twenty-three minutes. She’s offered to come all the way up from the Auvergne to help me if ever I need it and can’t find any more help else where. It’s a lovely offer, but it’s totally impractical for her.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I don’t have many friends … "and fewer and fewer these days" – ed … but those whom I have are the best in the World and no-one could wish for better.

At another point, I transcribed the dictaphone notes, and I was surprised that there were so many. I was down at Virlet. I noticed that there was smoke and a small electrical fire coming from one of the electrical anchoring points on the roof of one of the lean-to sheds. I was looking at it for a couple of minutes wondering “how on earth could this have happened?”. I filed up a bucket with some really dirty water and threw it onto the roof. It seemed to dampen it down somewhat so I threw another one or two on top too. I noticed that there was still a light burning in the upstairs part of the lean-to so I had to climb up an ad-hoc kind of ladder in the pitch black with a couple of the local kids wandering around, to stick my head in to see whether that had caught fire too. When I looked inside, I found that I’d left a light burning from all those years ago, so that was probably the reason for that. I climbed down and was back inside my garage where these two kids and their father wee wandering around. I was chatting to these two kids. Just to make sure, I took another big bucket of filthy water, told them to keep out of the way and went to throw it up onto the roof a final time but then I couldn’t see where the fire had been and from where the smoke was coming. There were a few bits and pieces of smoke but these were fumes from different kinds of things. They weren’t a fire-type of smoke. I looked on the roof but couldn’t see any sign of anything so I was sitting there pondering what to do with this bucket of water.

Whatever happens now at Virlet is long out of my hands and I need to forget all about it because I can’t ever go back there in my state of health and I’m not expecting any miracle from this treatment that will enable me to be mobile again. In fact, I’ve been wondering if this treatment isn’t simply a case of postponing the inevitable. Then it will be u to my heritees … "God help them!" – ed … to sort it all out.

Later on, I was on a train going somewhere – a German or French type of railway carriage. I noticed that it was measured. There were the little marks every so often, every 50 cms or something so we could see immediately where we were sitting because of the length numbers written on the ticket rather than the seat number. I can’t remember what happened after that.

So we’re back on the train again, are we? This seems to be something of a regular occurrence. Fans of these German psychoanalysts will doubtless say that it’s a subconscious wish to be away from my present mode of life, and who can argue with that?

And finally I was back on the taxis again. We had a fare to pick up at some medical centre at about 08:30. Nerina was with me and so was my step-brother. We went round to pick up these two people and dropped Nerina off at some place on the way – it might have been her mother’s – and then dropped off these two people in Sandbach but they just ran off. There was no point going chasing after them so we set out to come home. There were by now three of us – my brother-in-law was there. We were walking around a seaside town looking for a police station, looking at the yachts and everything. We’d had the freezer opened to sort everything out. We wandered around this seaside town but couldn’t find anything, and ended up throwing a ball at each other until someone broke his glasses when the ball hit him in the face. We climbed into the car and came home. The stuff from the freezer was still out on the shelf. I thought that I’d better put that away before everything melts. While I was doing it, there were loads of stuff in the fridge, sandwiches from several weeks ago etc. I was busy trying to sort out all of these. It seemed that the tidier I tried to make the fridge, the worse it became. Then I suddenly realised that there was a football match that I wanted to go to see, the final match of the season where TNS were playing at somewhere like Pontypridd. I was really hoping that I would have a chance to see it. Instead, I don’t know what happened. I was far too busy trying to sort out this fridge, I was driving a taxi too, I had the stuff to put back in the freezer. I reckoned that it was going to be one of those days when I’m going to end up doing nothing even though I had far too much of other things to do.

The motto of the long-departed and long-lamented “News of the Screws” was “all human life is here”, and this dream is certainly a microcosm of all of my life. I don’t think that it needs too much explanation or examination because you can see the parallels for yourself.

Tea tonight was a dish of left-overs. There had been some mushrooms festering in the fridge for a week and I’d been eyeing them keenly for a few days. There was also half an onion and half a tomato, so, with a little garlic … "he means ‘a lot’" – ed …, I chopped them all up and fried them in vegan butter.

And when they were nicely cooked, I tipped them out of the pan all over a couple of slices of thick toast. However they tasted nicer in my imagination than in my mouth. That’s not a criticism of the food by the way. Everything that I have tasted since chemotherapy has tasted as if it’s been laced with a shed-load of salt. I’m not enjoying my food at all right now, and that’s a sign that I am really ill.

But before I go off to bed, that medical report sounds like the old Kenneth Williams-Sid James exchange in one of the medical “Carry-ons”.
Dr Williams "give him a colostomy, an x-ray, a thoracotomy, a bioscope a … "
Patient James "what was all that?"
Dr Williams "and while you’re at it, wash his ears out."

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Thursday 3rd July 2025 – REGULAR READERS OF …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So London Zoo has a very long history indeed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Wednesday 2nd July 2025 – I HAVE DONE …

… something that I have only done once previously over this last few weeks, and that is that I was still asleep this morning at 06:30 when the alarm went off.

Well, actually, I wasn’t. I was awake – but only just, and I was thinking about looking at the ‘phone to see what time it was when the alarm beat me to it.

It might be a disappointment, but it’s not so much of a surprise, especially as I didn’t go to bed until later than I would have liked.

Not that I slept for long, though. At 02:20 I was wide awake and after half an hour of trying to go back to sleep, I was seriously thinking about leaving the bed and doing some work. However, at some point I must have gone back to sleep because when the alarm went off, there I was.

Trying to return to my usual habits after the bouleversements of the last few weeks, first thing that I did was to go to the bathroom for a good wash, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here afterwards, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was staying in a hotel or somewhere like that, right by the beach. I had to go for a walk every day. This walk was very realistic, walking around the edge of the sands and edge of the dunes etc, having to deal with seagulls, take my injections correctly at the correct time. It’s all very much like the way that things would be now if I were actually at a hotel staying somewhere.

Here we go again. Another hotel. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … with almost all of my dreams, I am asleep when I dictate them but when I’m transcribing them, I have some kind of vague memory or recollection. This dream is, however, one of those rare ones where I have no recollection of anything whatsoever.

And then I awoke at about 02:20. I’d been walking up and down the beach with a friend, a beach that had a very broad similarity with the beach at Donville les Bains. While he’d gone off to do something, I’d set out to walk along the coastline following the railway, the electric overhead railway that was there. I didn’t meet him until his car turned up quite a while later. I seemed to have walked for miles. According to the map, I had. When I awoke, I was carrying on this conversation with my friend for quite some time before I went to check the time and found that it was now 02:40.

Leaving aside the fact that there’s no railway line, overhead electric or not, at or near the beach at Donville-les-Bains, nor has there ever been, it’s an interesting phenomenon for me to awaken in the middle of the dream and to carry on dreaming. I know that there are some people who can climb up into the dozens of layers of dreams, but I can only rarely make it as high as two layers. I wish that I could do it more often, especially when Zero comes to see me during the night.

This walk continued and we ended up at a really nice stone house, a typical “Midi” low-pitched roof. We ended up talking to the owners. One of them was British but the other one, we weren’t quite sure. They were talking to us about all of the work that they had done. What I had noticed was a car tyre on a wheel awaiting being prepared for the dustman to take it away. It was a cheap copy-tyre and had been worn down way below the tread limit. That made me wonder whether these people had any money, seeing a car tyre in that condition. Anyway after we had had a chat for quite some time, we were invited to take a walk around the garden. One of the women said to me “it’s OK. Someone has sent for a wheelchair for you”. I replied “no thanks. I’m intending to walk”, and walk I did, although I took my time … fell asleep here … all over the new stones etc. We went to sit in the shade in what must have been a chapel building. Slowly, everyone moved away but my two friends and I stayed there talking. Later on, I heard one of them on the ‘phone giving directions to where we are. When I asked what was happening, he said that we can’t go back via the railway line because they’d had a huge delivery of something or other and they were working there, so we had to find an alternative way and someone else was coming to pick us up.

Stepping back into a dream later is something that I would also like to do more often, especially when Zero etc. etc. And the number of times that I’ve been offered a wheelchair. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … when you are really ill, you have to keep on fighting, because that is what keeps you going. I’ve seen far too many people give up the struggle and a few months later, they have gone the Way of the West.

Isabelle the Nurse came around to give me my second injection and to deal with my legs. She tells me that the oedemas are almost gone, which is good news, and I hope that she is right about that. I need to find a way to bring down the creatinine in the bloodstream so that I can do something about this dialysis which is the bane of my life right now.

She told her family about the mouse in my hospital room and they were outraged. Just to underline the point, I showed her the photo that I had taken. But now that the dust has settled and I’m not quite so angry, I’m going to go on the offensive … "”offensive” is the correct word where you are involved" – ed … and write a scathing letter to the hospital administration. I’m not sure how they will respond, but if I mention that I’ll be writing to the Press and the Sécurité Sociale. In the words of Hugh Latimer, as he was being burned to death, I "shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, as I trust shall never be put out".

After Isabelle the Nurse left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re undergoing a tour of all of the gates through the wall into the City of London, including the water gates. And I do like the cynicism of the author, which makes quite a change from the gullibility and naïveté of most medieval authors. He tells us, for example, that "in the west is the next gate … called Ludgate, as first built (saith Geoffrey of Monmouth) by King Lud … in the Year before Christ’s nativity … wherefore I pass over it … referring the reader to that I have before written out of Caesar’s Commentaries."

When he’s writing about Billingsgate, he tells us "Geoffrey of Monmouth writeth that Belin, a King of the Britons, about four hundred years before Christ’s nativity built this gate, but is seemeth to me not to be so ancient but to have taken that name of some later owner of the place. "

Back in here, there was football to watch – a friendly between Hurlford and Stranraer last night. Despite the gulf in league positions, Stranraer made really heavy weather of a 1-0 victory. They never really looked in much danger but their attack just wasn’t at the races and the Hurlford keeper didn’t have much to do.

Unless Stranraer find a striker from somewhere, they are going to struggle this coming season.

Following the football, I made a start on choosing the music for the next radio programme but I didn’t go far because I hadn’t realised how late it was. My faithful cleaner burst in onto the scene while I was having a disgusting drink break.

She spent most of her time tidying up the living room and vacuuming up dog hairs, in between finding time to shoo me into the shower for a good scrub up, and I have never felt less like doing anything, never mind a shower.

But a nice clean me came out and I came back in here to carry on working.

However, something else that I haven’t done for ages until this afternoon, miserable failure that I am, was to crash out in my chair. And it was another one of those crash-outs that I didn’t realise that I’d crashed out until I awoke, all of an hour later. So don’t tell me that we are starting these all over again after all of this.

But what this tells me is that they aren’t extracting enough fluid and impurities from me – in other words, this lack of eating is working better than I anticipated and my “dry weight” has fallen dramatically. They are still extracting fluid based on my previous “dry weight” which means that they aren’t taking out enough. It’ll be interesting to see what the blood test reading tomorrow will show.

There was time to finish choosing the music and to begin to pair it off before I went to make tea – a small stuffed pepper with a handful of pasta and veg and I didn’t feel much like eating that either.

So tomorrow, the plumber comes. I hope that it’s good news when he rips out the bathroom. But we’ll know that tomorrow. Right now, I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about London’s City Walls … "well, one of us has" – ed … John Stow tells us that he found that someone had knocked a hole through the wall into the changing rooms of St Botolph’s nunnery.
He told me that he had reported the incident to the Mayor and the Constable of the Watch
"So what happened?" I asked him
"Nothing as yet" he replied. "They are still looking into it."

0

Tuesday 1st July 2025 – I HAVE EMULATED …

… my namesake the mathematician today, and done three-fifths of five-eighths of … errr … nothing.

And I can’t say that I’m sorry either. Not only am I not feeling very well, and haven’t been ever since the first drip of chemotherapy went in, I’ve done rather a lot over the last couple of weeks and I need a rest.

My rest actually started last night. I’d finished everything that I needed to do by about 22:30, and very shortly afterwards, I was in bed.

From what I remember … "which isn’t an awful lot" – ed … I must have been asleep quite quickly. I didn’t even start my nighttime mantra that helps me go to sleep when all else fails.

It was something of a turbulent night though. I remember being awake at 01:40 and again at about 04:20 but it was at about 06:15 when I finally decided that that was enough sleep. Not that I was out of bed quickly though – it took me a good ten minutes to summon up the energy.

The first thing to do was to watch a football match. Penybont had been playing a friendly against Airdrie in order to warm themselves up for their European Championship match. Whilst Airdrie had most of the play, Penybont’s desperate defending only allowed them to score one, whereas Mael Davies and Gabriel Kircough scored two of the sweetest goals that you are likely to see at this stage of the season.

The next thing was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from last night. I was in a hotel with someone. It was one of these plush places where everyone dressed for dinner. I couldn’t be bothered to dress for dinner so my friend and I came downstairs and found a table where we could just sit anywhere, expecting at any moment to be shunted off into a side gallery or somewhere like that out of everyone else’s way. I began to look through the menu to see what we could have when a young couple came down. They were very much like 1920s socialists with the cloth cap and all of this kind of thing. They chose to sit down at our table, not that we minded, of course. We began to chat, and I asked the girl what she would like for her meal. She said that she would like some really typical English sausages. I replied that there were some very, very English traditional sausages in the freezer but they were vegan ones. If she didn’t mind, she could have some of those. She asked if I could fetch two for her so I went off into the kitchens to find these sausages and to find one or two things that I needed too. I couldn’t find a plate so I opened the door to the cupboard and began to rummage through it. The noise that it made was absolutely awful so everyone looked around. I said “if you wanted to see what I was doing to make this noise, you are a little too late”. A few people made some kind of comment. I then had to go to fetch a ramp, and I really had no idea where a ramp would be. There were still one or two people making a few comments so I lay on my back and pushed myself along with my feet arched and my elbows dug in so that I could move quite quickly. Everyone was impressed by that. Then I came to a trailer that had exactly what I wanted as part of the floor bed on this trailer, so I lifted out the appropriate piece. It was really heavy. I then set out on my back propelling myself with my feel and my elbows to go back to my table.

When I was skiing in Bulgaria with my cute little Irish friend, we met another young couple (I wasn’t all that young actually) in our hotel and had a little chat with them. The guy was one of these clever types who knew everything … "like someone else we all know" – ed … and so it was hard to have a chat with them, but the girl, although she wasn’t my type and in any case, I was with my friend, was quite sweet. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have shared any of my vegan sausages with her. Coming from the kind of family that I had, “sharing” was a phenomenon that was quite unknown.

And then I was at school, and it was school lunch break. I met up with a friend of mine and we had a really long chat. It wasn’t until later in this chat that I realised that the time was now 15:35 and we were an hour and a half late to go back for our lessons. He thought that he’d better rush so I decided that I’d rush too. But I couldn’t go back to lessons at this time of the afternoon because it was nearly home-time. Besides, it would look silly just going in for the final thirty minutes, so I decided to loiter around. So when my friend disappeared around a corner, I hung back to wait until he’d gone but instead, he came back to look for me. I reluctantly followed him until we came into the school hall, where I took my leave of him and looked as if I was going to climb up the stairs to go upstairs. Instead, I went to hide in the bottom of the stone stairs that were in an artificial turret to wait there until the final bell went. However, a class came downstairs into the hallway, looking around. I recognised the teacher, who was one from whose class I had dropped out a while back. She was discussing certain things, but must have seen me somehow because she stuck her head in the door and asked “could you take these books back up to my room please?”. They were apparently books that she had been showing to this class but they decided that they weren’t of any use in this course. I began to collect the books but as I started to go, she called me back to take her handbag. I had to go upstairs and hope that the classroom was empty and that there was no-one in there; otherwise it would be extremely embarrassing, just walking in in the middle of a lesson with things to leave behind, and then to go again. They would all be wondering what I was actually doing.

Being in school was at one time a regular subject during my nocturnal rambles. Not that I enjoyed school – not at all – but when you spend seven years in a place during your formative years, it figures quite intensely in your make-up. Strangely though, I very very rarely see any pupils whom I knew. Quite a few “mystery girls” though, including the famous “girl from Worleston” whose appearance overwhelmed me for several months, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. I never did find out who she was.

There was something somewhere about another friend of mine who had moved back to live with his parents. They had a large house on the edge of a wood. With another friend, we were wandering around and I pointed out this house. I said “this is where so-and-so’s family used to live”. He replied “so that was the house that he was hoping to have as his inheritance. What a shame he isn’t going to have it now”. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to say that he was still living there, and I don’t know why I couldn’t say it.

This is a wood through which we’ve walked on several occasions in the past during our nocturnal rambles. But once again, here I am stuck in some kind of dilemma. Why take the easy route when there’s a way of complicating matters?

Finally, there were three of us on somewhere like a motorway services or airport concourse. We’d booked a room in a hotel on site. We found the hotel, which was enormous, by far the largest I had ever seen, but we couldn’t find the entrance. After walking all the way round, we found the entrance and found that we had room n°80. We set out to find the room, walking through crowds of people, several bars and so on, down several series of steps one after the other, until we came to a series of what looked like bathrooms. Even then, right at the end we still hadn’t found the bathroom for n°80,but there was another door with several more bathrooms beyond, and maybe n°80 was through there. But even so, we were still nowhere near finding our hotel room in this labyrinth.

This is a place that we have visited on several occasions during the night too. And dreams about hotels seem to be commonplace these days. I wonder why. Am I missing the fact that I’m not going away at all these days? And yet another dilemma?

Isabelle the nurse came round later to deal with my legs and to give me my injection. She tells me that it’s another one of the “injections of last resort” as I used to have all those years ago. It seems that we really have gone round full-circle.

She also seems to think that it’s a good idea to go to Rennes for chemotherapy rather than Paris. So does everyone, a sit happens, which is a change to find so many people agreeing with me.

After she left, I could make breakfast and then, now that I’m alone, go back to reading THE SURVEY OF LONDON.

There’s a beautiful example of the confusion caused by the calculation of the “old year” of the Julian calendar. Our author, John Stow, has been talking about the Rebellion of Thomas Wyatt.

He tells us that Wyatt and his men marched on London on 3rd February 1553. However, under the old calendar with the New Year beginning on 26th March in those days. In modern times the march on London has been dated as 3rd February 1554 because of the change of the date of the New Year to 1st January.

Back in here afterwards, I vegetated around for quite a while, chatting to my cleaner on the internet as she was doing a couple of laps around LeClerc.

When she returned, she came with a pile of shopping that she had found for me, including a shed-load of vegan cheese. Also two litres of olive oil on special offer at €13:20, a price that you won’t find bettered anywhere else.

This afternoon, I did something that I should have done a couple of months ago and filled in my tax return. This involves printing off a pile of supporting documents and luckily, my printer seems to be working properly for the moment. However, the ink is running low and we shall have to see if it continues to like these ersatz ink cartridges.

There were a few other letters to write. I’d been letting the correspondence run astray for a few weeks and it needed bringing up to date. No time like the present, before it goes completely out of hand.

For a change, there is some good news too. The plumber tells me that he’s coming to start work on Thursday, and won’t that be nice if he does? And not only that, the kitchen-fitter is starting on Wednesday next week and the way his programme is panning out, he thinks that he’ll be finished by the end of the month.

And so this move might be on much earlier than I thought. At least, I shall move my bedroom and office downstairs as soon as it’s possible. The rest can follow when there are people available to bring it.

As seems to be the case these days, I didn’t feel much like eating anything. However, I can’t go on not eating anything so I made a small about of stuffing and prepared a taco roll with some rice and veg. Even though there wasn’t much, it was still a struggle to push it all down.

And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, if I’m off my food, then there’s really something wrong with me. I’ve been off my food ever since chemotherapy, and I wonder if my appetite will return before the next session. If not, I can see a huge load of complications arising.

So now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed. I’m restarting work tomorrow, and it’s also shower day, at long last. A good scrub will do me a lot of good.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my namesake the mathematician … "well, one of us has" – ed … he is actually famous for other things. And another poem has been written about him.
"A mathematician named Hall
Went to a fancy-dress ball
He thought he would risk it
And went as a biscuit
But a dog ate him up, crumbs and all."

0

Monday 30th June 2025 – WE ARE NOW …

… alone, STRAWBERRY MOOSE and me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That makes much more sense to me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Sunday 29th June 2025 – EVEN THOUGH IT’S …

… still quite early, I’m going to write up my notes and go to bed. I’ve had a really tiring day today.

Not that you would think so after last night. I sprinted through my notes, my statistics and my back-up and was in bed by 22:45 which made a lovely change. And there I lay, fast asleep, until about 06:20 – one of the longest and deepest sleeps that I have had for a while.

By about 06:30 I was at my desk working, feeling much better than I have done since the chemotherapy and that was at least some kind of good news.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We had to go to inspect some kind of shopping mall in a town centre. We went to have a look at it, but the inspection had to take place on the roof. We climbed up onto the roof and were walking around inspecting it. It was the first time that we had been on the roof of this place. You could see for miles and miles, with all of the plants and greenery in the distance and the hills and their outlines on the horizon. It was a wonderful view that I’d never seen before. There were some trees or little shrubs that were growing on the top. Someone broke off one of the berries, the little berries that were really hard, and tried to eat it. They said that they were some kind of stupefiants. This whole place was covered in stupefiants. We couldn’t believe it at first but this person was totally convinced of it. As we walked along, we found that what we were supposed to be doing was checking the roof of this because the shopping mall had come back into use after a while of being closed. Some big store had taken it over. The reason why they wanted a shopping mall outside was because they could have a really big opening party. So we walked along the roof and we worked out that where the biggest tree was growing was where this shop’s unit was. So someone walked along with a kind-of ball on a chain rather like a medieval military one-handed flail, and was banging on the side of this shopping mall until someone down below told him that we had reached the correct place. That was when we stopped

Even now, I can still see the view from on top of this roof. It reminded me vaguely in some ways of the view from the top of Mount Royal at the back of Montréal looking towards the Appalachian Mountains and the US border to the south. But as for anything in the actual dream itself, there is no significance at all.

There was also some kind of dream that involved some kind of panic. All of a sudden, instructions were given out to these people that they had to go home. They had to take a main-line train, not a branch line train nor a tram nor anything like that, and they should run now. So all these people began to run. As they ran past where we were standing, we could see that they were all small elves of the kind who would be working in Santa’s grotto. We were wondering what this was all about because we had heard nothing about this other than what had been said just now in the street.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago a couple of us from the radio visited Santa’s grotto to interview the elves. And had they been warned in advance, I’m sure that they would all have run away in a panic.

People began to move around in the living room at about 07:45 so I went for a good wash and scrub up ready to join them and have a coffee.

The nurse turned up to do his stuff and after he left, the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies and I went to watch the football.

First match was the highlights of a friendly between Ayr United and TNS. And I have a feeling that it’s going to be a long, cold autumn in Europe for TNS, the way that their full-backs were torn to shreds by the Ayr United wingers. Anyone from a JD Cymru League who saw that game will dash out immediately to try to sign two speedy wingers before the transfer window closes.

The second game was Stranraer in a friendly against Irvine Meadow FC. Packed with trialisis, the Stranraer team ran out 4–2 winners quite comfortably although with the gulf in league positions, it was only to be expected.

What was worrying about this was, despite a new central defence, the ease in which the Irvine attackers were winning the ball in the air. "Here we go again!" I thought.

When the Hound of the Baskervilles and his master came back, my faithful cleaner descended with a cake. It’s my friend’s birthday so we thought that we’d give him a little celebration.

Although I was feeling a little better, I didn’t feel like much breakfast but I forced some down and after a rest, we went out for a drive.

Our route took us past the nuclear waste disposal place at Cap de la Hague and then down to the port to see the famous revolving lifeboat house that we had visited FIVE YEARS AGO. We found a place that sold fish and chips so my friend had fish and chips and I had some chips.

On the way back, we passed by Dielette and its ferry terminal and then the failed nuclear reactor at Flamanville, passing by some beautiful coves and bays. The sun came up as the day drew on and we had a lovely time.

Unfortunately, my little renaissance couldn’t keep going and I began to fade away quite rapidly. It took an age to haul myself up the stairs into here, and then I couldn’t bring myself to eat anything. And if I’m off my food, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I really am ill.

So I’ll finish my notes, back up, do the statistics and then go to bed, to see if I feel any better in the morning.

But seeing as we have been driving past the Cap de le Hague nuclear waste plant and the failed Flamanville reactor … "well, one of us has" – ed … at the little beachside café they asked my friend what he would like to eat.
"I’ll have fish and chips" he replied
"We don’t do that here" the cook replied
"Do you have anything similar?" asked my friend
"What we do have around here that is similar" said the cook "is what is called ‘fission chips’. Will that do?"

0

Saturday 28th June 2025 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about this weight gain thing on Thursday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0

Friday 27th June 2025 – I AM ACHING …

… and breaking and I don’t kno … errr … in just about everywhere that it is possible to ache, and i’m feeling dreadful.

In LORD OF THE RINGS Frodo Baggins said that he felt "all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread."

And the way that I feel today, I know exactly what he meant and how he must have been feeling.

He went on to say "That can’t be right. I need a change, or something". And he was right – it can’t be right. I need a change, but how on earth do you manage to do that when you can’t walk or drive and every two or three days you need to go for a painful three-and-a-half hour session of dialysis.

There have been three things that have triggered off this current depression .

  1. The fact that I am aching all over, absolutely everywhere and it’s becoming a nightmare to move
  2. That the creatinine amount on my bloodstream has only reduced to 406 after nine months of dialysis (the critical limit is about 80).
  3. Speaking to the nice receptionist at the taxi company this afternoon, the doctor dealing with my chemotherapy has asked for authorisation for no fewer than FIFTEEN trips to Paris and back

One of these trips and one of these sessions is more than enough. I am simply not going to survive another fourteen of them. And if next time I have the same kind of interaction with certain members of staff that I had this time, it will be the last time for sure. As has been attributed without positive proof to many theatrical personalities, "I’m too old, I’m too tired and I’m too talented to care" any more.

There is at least a positive side to all of this in that with another fourteen trips to Paris in the pipeline, the taxi company will be doing its best to keep on my good side.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, I was in bed long before 20:00 last night, curled up under the covers and dead to the World.

At one point I do have some vague memory of the Hound of the Baskervilles yowling and barking some little yelps during the night, obviously having some sweet dreams himself, but that’s about it. I eventually awoke at 4:42, drenched in sweat yet again which was rather unfortunate as I still had on my day clothes, as I discovered.

By 4:52 I was already at the desk writing out the notes from yesterday and it took me quite a while to do so, firstly because there was so much to write and secondly because it was so hard to motivate myself, as usual.

Once the notes were finished, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Later on … "later on from when?" – ed … I was being ill and so I decided that I was going to go home. My cleaner decided to come with me. There were quite a few of us in the car. We arrived at Davenport Avenvue and we all piled out. I went straight upstairs and my cleaner followed. Where these other people were staying was in one of the bedrooms and I pointed it out to them. I noticed that someone had painted the bathroom door and it looked really nice. I went into my bedroom, which was right down at the end of some kind of kinked corridor as at the hospital in Paris just now where I prepared myself ready to go to bed. As I climbed into bed, my cleaner came in. She was in her night attire too. She handed my ‘phone to me, saying that she didn’t know how these people had found my number – or her number … fell asleep here … So anyway, as I was about to climb into bed she handed me the telephone and said “I don’t know how these people have my ‘phone number”. I took it and answered, and it was the dialysis centre saying that they needed to have a talk with me about this afternoon. I waited and waited and waited but they didn’t answer at all so in the end I hung up. My cleaner told me that it wasn’t a very intelligent thing to do, to hang up on the dialysis centre but I said that I didn’t want to hang around in my nightclothes for very long at all. I wanted to be in bed.

And that is exactly how I’m feeling right now. I couldn’t care less about the dialysis centre, I couldn’t care less about the chemotherapy, I couldn’t care less about anything any more. I just want to go to bed and sleep.

Did I dictate the dream about my brother coming up to stay with me … "no you didn’t" – ed … We were talking about doing something or going somewhere so I asked him if I needed a car. He said that he needed one for the Sunday and to drop off a few other things on the Saturday. I thought that I’d arrange to hire a sports car for the weekend and we’d have some fun with it. We began to make our plans about where we were going and what we were doing but we had to wait around for a while for some reason or other. The next thing that I knew was that I found myself in bed. My brother was asleep in a bed in the same room, and when he awoke, he told me that he’d been vomiting through the night so I had to go to fetch some kitchen towels or something to clean things up. I asked him how he was and he replied that he was feeling much better but nevertheless, our plans were going to be changing. Because of this, I had a feeling that if I didn’t begin to exercise myself and have things done today we’d end up without a car at the weekend and that would be complicated

This isn’t like our family at all. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we are well-known for not being willing to share so much as a bus shelter in the middle of a monsoon with each other.

There was another dream too about being in Montréal. I was there with Nerina and we were talking to someone who was telling us certain things but I can’t remember now, but I remember saying that this is the fault with non-urban people, that they have a different outlook and a different approach to life. They can’t see things in the same way as everyone else, to which they agreed. I told Nerina about the woman whom I’d met in Labrador back in 2010 and with whom I’d kept in contact for a while until she moved to Toronto and I can’t remember any more about this particular dream.

One place to which I never took Nerina was to Montreal. I talked to her once about going to North America but she wasn’t impressed so I never mentioned it again. Canada was actually my preferred destination as a bolt-hole when my past began to catch up with me but Diplomatic Immunity in Belgium was a pretty good choice when that job came up. I still preen myself with pride … "show-off!" – ed … when I think that there were seventy-eight of us who sat that first exam in London for just one vacancy.

A friend of mine had a job as a house painter, to paint someone’s house. The house was in Ightfield, near Whitchurch. He asked me if I’d run him for his second day of work. I’d had a really bad night of sleep but nevertheless, when he came round at something like 08:00 on a Sunday, I took him out there. We found the house, so we pulled up outside it. It was a very narrow road. he took about five minutes to try to exit the van, saying that it was all muddy where we had stopped so in the end I had to move into the middle of the road and let him out there to fetch all of his things. Of course, with the road being narrow and me being in the middle of the road, a big lorry appeared so I had to move off quite quickly and swing into a side street to look for a parking place. There was a pub, so I drove into the pub. There were loads of people in there. I backed up against the pub wall on the inside, and climbed out of the van on my crutches and went to fetch the key to lock the doors. I suddenly realised that i’d left the keys in the back door. I’d backed the van right up against the wall so I couldn’t reach the key and I couldn’t start the van to move it because of course the key was in the back door. I was scratching my head thinking “how am I going to find my way out of this one? I seem to have made a huge mess of parking this van up. What was I going to do now?”.

Astute readers will be asking themselves the same question that I did when I transcribed the notes for this particular dream. Namely “if you drove the van into the pub and backed it up against the wall, you must have used an ignition key that is not stuck in the back door of the van, so why don’t you use that?”.

By about 7:30 everyone else had arisen from the Dead so we all gathered in the kitchen and had coffee and a chat. And my friend showed me a lovely ‘photo of an invalid scooter with a Kawasaki 900cc 4-cylinder transverse engine. I was sorely tempted until I noticed in the comments that someone was trying to work on fitting a V8 engine in one. I’ll wait and see how that pans out.

The nurse came round as usual, and if ever proof were needed that he doesn’t listen to a word that anyone says, we had
"How are you today? Was it OK at dialysis?"
"Not at all. My fever reached 38°C, coagulated the blood in the needles and they had to stop the session."
"And did you sleep well?"

After he left, we had breakfast and then set to work. We emptied the big glass-fronted wardrobe by the door that blocks the draughts. We turned it round to face the room and took several photos.

There is no place for it in the new apartment so it’s being sold. My friend, who has known me and my habits for sixty years told me to “put it online right now or else it will never be sold” so I advertised that and the kitchen units that I never used after buying them a few years ago. You can see the adverts HERE.

After all of that, we sat and chatted for quite a while and then my faithful cleaner came along and chased us out of the apartment while she did her stuff. We went downstairs and changed over the doors on the new fridge-freezer.

And that was an engineering job too, not at all simple. The two of us figured it out in the end because in some places the destructions were not at all clear. It took an age to do it and, as usual, we ended up with a screw left over.

After that, we went for a walk outside but by now the Black Dog was beginning to make its appearance. I was tired, I was aching and I was beginning to feel dreadful again.

Climbing back up these stairs was a Herculean effort and once I’d sat down, I had a really hard time standing up again. Tea was baked potatoes with a mixture of leftovers from out of the fridge with a sachet of vegan mince thrown in. And you can tell that I’m not feeling well at all because I’m still off my food. I didn’t feel like very much at all.

Now it’s bedtime and I just want to go to sleep. I don’t care about anything else any more, but I do know that I won’t be able to manage another fourteen of these chemotherapy sessions at this rate. I was looking back at my blog entries from when the Mapthera began, and it didn’t look very positive. I was hospitalised on several occasions after a dosage. And I was younger and fitter then, too.

But seeing as we have been talking about painters … "well, one of us has" – ed … my painter friend was asked to go and put two coats of light green all-weather matt paint on the porch at some rich person’s house.
When the guy cane back, he asked my friend "have you finished that paint job?"
"Yes I have" He replied. "But it’s not a porch, it’s a Ferrari".

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Thursday 26th June 2025 – REGULAR READERS OF …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I didn’t work for long.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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