… for me when I arrived, all lined up at the door. And before I’d even sat down on the bed they had pounced. It was like being a staggering wildebeest, beset with vultures.

And the worst part of all about it was when they mentioned the ponction lumbaire. That was when I knew that I was in for a difficult time.

There was something of a difficult time last night when, due to my dilatory habits, I didn’t finish my notes until midnight or so, and it was certainly later than that when I finally made it into bed.

Once in bed, I had a very peaceful night until about 05:20 when I awoke with another one of these dramatic awakenings, and by 05:45 I was hard at it at me desk.

As usual the first thing that I had to do was to transcribe my dictaphone notes; And I must have travelled miles last night. I was somewhere in rural France last night and came across a market. It turned out to be an autojumble of all kinds of bits and pieces. I went to stand in the queue to be served but no-one was serving really. There were all these dummies dressed up as people, and balloons painted with people’s faces painted on them, but there were no real servers. It was really ghostly and eerie. I walked around a little and found myself in one of the back rooms where I met a girl coming out towards the door. I asked her if she had an engine for a Panther. She said that she didn’t. I said that that was a shame because I was desperately looking for an engine for my Panther. She said that they were good bikes and that I needed a good engine for it. “They are good bikes because of their caiques” which I imagined she meant “sidecars”. She said that it’s a shame that I wasn’t here years ago because there was a place down by the road out that sold all kinds of bits and pieces like that. I replied “yes, that’s where the machine mart is now, isn’t it?” but she didn’t even remember where there was a machine mart. I remembered that place even though I’d never been in this town before. She wasn’t able to help me very much about an engine for this Panther. I hadn’t actually bought the bike at that time but had seen it for sale in one of these cheap garages, the frame and running gear but without the engine.

I would have loved a Panther, a nice, big 650cc single-cylinder “sloper” but trying to find one back in the early 70s was just about impossible. I met someone much later whose husband had had two but when he died, she simply gave them away. How disappointed was I?

As for the garage though, we have been here before on a few of our nocturnal travels, and we’ve also discovered old motorbikes here and there while we’ve been out and about.

There was something about vans now, these Ford Escort vans that we use for delivery. One of these places had a fleet of them. We’d been walking through the rushes and had finally made it onto dry land. Then someone went on up the hill to have a word with these garage people to see whether one of them would come down. There was some kind of story about them only doing certain kinds of jobs and only doing them within a certain radius and not very much in Ostland so it didn’t seem to be very hopeful. people were saying that this kind of service is not very good but it’s better than the nothing that was here before. There was one of my family with us too but he or she had difficulty manoeuvring … "PERSONoeuvring" – ed … or opening and closing … fell asleep here …

This is another one of those dreams of while I have no recall or recollection whatsoever and it doesn’t seem to relate to anything except, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we had a Ford Escort van for a while, an ex-Post Office one.

I was out with a friend last night. He was taking me to somewhere with a really big secret. It was extremely complicated and he wasn’t going to tell me anything about it. We got into the car and drove. This secret rolled and rolled and rolled as we drove. We ended up near Northwich somewhere, through this industrial estate full of these tiny little business units, many of which were empty and decayed. We eventually came to one, parked up and went in. There was a guy there who was brushing it out and trying to make it tidy. It turned out that he was the owner, and he had a tenant in at the far end, the end nearer the street. he was moaning about the tenant – how the tenant wasn’t tidy, his place had turned into a mess and had some bonsai plants. The owner had given him some but he wasn’t looking after them. As we walked through the shop I could see speaker columns and PA equipment, things like that. Nearer the door was more electronic stuff. I noticed that on the window was a letter addressed to me and my friend. I said something and he replied “yes, this is to where all of the correspondence for the two of us comes” of which I knew nothing about at all. In the end, he handed me a letter that he’d picked up that was addressed to me. I opened it, and it was from the Customs and Excise people telling me that they were refusing to export my pyramids, the ones that I’d sold to someone, because there was some issue about the card, some issue about the payment and the airline company being afraid that they would break en route. It was a big disappointment that they weren’t being exported because I’d received £600 for them. It was also a disappointment because with all this secrecy, I was expecting something much more important than this. I mentioned it to my friend and he replied “oh, no. We have to keep things extremely secret. The more secret it is, the better”. We went out and climbed back into the car. I said a couple of other things and he said “well, I’m going to have to do some more of this because I have to have that £400 back that I gave you as some kind of War information service”. I was wondering what was going to happen next.

This was one of those impressive dreams that seemed to go on for ever. I wish that I could remember who my friend was in this dream. There can’t have been a choice of too many. But the industrial estate reminded me of several places in North-West USA that I’ve visited and to which I wish that I could return. However, the idea that I would be wanting to export pyramids, never mind owning a few, would be bizarre to say the least.

There was time for a quick dabble into the radio programme that I am trying to prepare, but the I had to go to organise myself ready for departure.

After a wash and brush up, I went to prepare my things ready for departure and make some sandwiches because I know all about the food in the Paris hospitals. I packed a pack of crackers and some of my home-made energy fruit bars too.

While the Hound of the Baskervilles was taking his master for walkies, the nurse came and sorted me out, and then I had a message from the taxi “there in twenty minutes”.

At the appropriate moment we went downstairs where we met our driver at the front door. She carried my bags to the car and I followed along behind and climbed in. I’d had no drink and no food – on the basis of “what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out”.

The taxi had originally been booked for 10:00 but they had rung up yesterday to change it to 09:00. And I was right about the reason too. There was someone else to pick up – a woman who lived in an apartment in the centre of Avranches who had to take her seriously-ill baby to Paris.

Once we were under way again it was a rapid drive, and one thing that I learned was that both my driver and this other passenger knew how to talk. We had a non-stop chat almost all the way.

At a Motorway Service area on the edge of the suburbs of Paris we stopped to feed and change the baby, and I hoped that she would come back with a quieter one. I stood outside in the shade and cool breeze enjoying the weather and talking to a Moroccan guy who recognised my accent and asked if I came from Belgium. It’s not by any means the first time that I’ve been taken as being from Belgium. Old accents die hard.

Back in the car we drove off and went a different way into Paris, going through some of the nicest, prettiest, flowery suburbs like Plessis, an area that I have never visited before.

At a hospital down there, we dropped off mother and baby and then drove though some more leafy suburbs to he centre of the town and the Prif to the Hopital Pitié-Salpetrière, where we arrived exactly half an hour late.

There wasn’t even time for me to sit down, never mind have a drink, before everyone pounced upon me and began to push, probe and prod me. And prepare me for the ponction lumbaire.

They have changed he internet password here so I asked the young student nurse if she could enquire after the new one.
"C’est au-delà mes compétences" – “out of my range of duties” she replied, giving her shoulders a Gallic shrug.

She won’t last five minutes on a ward with an attitude like that, if she ever qualifies.

Eventually, everyone cleared off and the cute little nursing assistant, who can soothe my fevered brow any time she likes, finally brought me a coffee.

Surprisingly, the lumbar puncture was quite painless (mind you, anything is painless after a biopsie musculaire) and it would have been even better had the doctor not given a running commentary. She got the message though when I reached for my headphones and clamped them over my ears.

"You adopted a perfect position" she said.
"Well, it’s not my first time by any means" I said. "But if you’re going to do this again, can you tattoo a target on the small of my back?"

After they all left and I was lying down recovering, the secretary came to see me. And if I’d have behaved towards a female patient as she behaved towards me, I’d have been sent down for two years. I don’t know what she was after but I don’t have it any more.

They all came back a little later to wire me up to an intravenous drip. They explained what each one was and mentioned that one of them to combat nausea.
"Oh – is tea coming soon then?" I asked.

Rosemary rang for a chat but I had to cut her short (a mere forty minutes) because tea arrived. soup, salad, a pizza slice and some fruit salad. It’s a good job that I had some fruit bars.

Later on, we had an argument. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … they prescribe Doliprane for everything here. The country is awash with it, but they are really not just scraping the bottom of the barrel but through the base and into the muck underneath when they brought me not one but two Doliprane for “something that might happen”. You can’t go any lower than that.

When I revolted … "you’re always revolting" – ed … they threatened to call the doctor but I stood my ground and they took the Doliprane away. What is the matter with everyone that they dope themselves up with paracetamol at the first sign of any discomfort?

Then they wanted to bring me a urinal. Why? Because I might need to go to the WC.
"Why can’t I go to the bathroom?" I asked.
"How will you go?"
"On my two feet of course" I replied. "How else?"
"Is it possible?"
"How do you think that I do it at home?"

So they began to position the medication tree on the far side of the bed to where my catheter is.
"You’d better put it back here, or I’ll be tangled up in it if I turn over"
"But the pipe won’t be long enough to reach"
"So why wouldn’t I unplug the machine and take it with me and let it run off the internal battery?"
"You have two crutches"
"So why don’t I use the Portable Patient as one of them?"

Life is tough. It’s a battle to survive and if you want to survive you have to fight. Opting out and giving up the fight is the quickest way to the grave. I’m convinced that in the case of a serious illness, those who are prepared to fight and struggle are the ones who have the greatest chance of survival. No-one has ever accused me of taking the easy route when there’s a more difficult route to follow … "I’ll say!" – ed …

So now, coupled up to a machine or two and a raging blood pressure of 186/106, I’m going to give up the struggle, for the night only, and go to bed if only the high blood pressure alarm would stop sounding and nurses would stop dashing in to switch it off and summoning the doctor.

And I’ll tell you something else for nothing, and that is that this male nurse and I are going to finish by having blows. He lost his temper when I stopped him from performing a task because he was tangling up the wires and pulling on my catheter.

When he came back with the doctor, I bawled him out and told him not to ever talk to me like that again. That led to a “frank exchange of views” between the doctor and me, ending with me refusing once more the Doliprane, and telling them both that my life is much more important than their medication.

If I die in six months in full activity, that suits me much more than living like a vegetable for six years stuck in a bed.
"You have a very serious illness" he said.
"And I’ve had it since 2015, and since then I’ve been to within 900 kms of the North Pole, and I’d go there and die tomorrow rather than die in bed. I’m seventy-one years old and I’m not going to live for ever, no matter what you do, so what difference does it make? I’m not going to cling on to m life by my fingertips in total agony.. "

But seeing as we have been dreaming about pyramids … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was talking to the ghost of Sir Norman Lockyer who wrote THE DAWN OF ASTRONOMY about religious sites in Egypt.
He asked me "do you know why there are pyramids in Egypt?"
"I don’t know" I replied. "Why are there pyramids in Egypt?" I asked, bitterly regretting, ten seconds later, having done so.
"It’s because they were too big to fit into the British Museum."

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