Category Archives: France

Friday 13th March 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was, last night.

And it started off quite well too. Without very much to say about the day, I’d finished the notes by about 21:50, and by 22:10, I was in bed. Well before my curfew time of 22:30, and it’s been a long time since that happened, hasn’t it?

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall what usually happens when I go to bed early, without me having to remind them. And it was at 04:10 too.

This time, though, it was something different that awoke me. First of all, it was a coughing fit of the like that I had not had before, and at the same time, there was the stabbing pain in my foot. Except that this time, it was like an electrical discharge going all the way down from the rear of the instep to the tip of the little toe.

One of those every minute or so, and I was having the worst amount of pain that I’d had since that muscular biopsy. But at least the muscular biopsy pain only endured for a minute or two. This electrical discharge was a sudden, sharp pain that lasted about three or four seconds but was continuous every few minutes.

There was no possibility of going to sleep and no possibility of leaving the bed, so I lay there and festered until 06:29 when the alarm went off. After a minute or two, I managed to haul myself to a sitting position in the bed, and then we had the usual struggle to leave the bed.

When the alarm went off, though, we were in Pionsat. It was 16:00, school chucking-out time. There was quite a lot of traffic coming round a corner and I remember saying to whoever I was with that this really isn’t the time to be in Pionsat right now. But again, that’s all that I remember of that.

This dream reminds me of yesterday, in Carolles, where we went to pick up that other passenger, and then an incident in St Jean le Thomas when we were trying to negotiate the narrow streets of the town.

In the bathroom, I had a good scrub and then went into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication. And guess who forgot that he’s now moved the medication into a drawer in the kitchen?

Back in here, I transcribed the rest of the dictaphone notes from the night.

Last night, it was one of the big battles between the Crusaders and the heathens, but this time it was near Constantinople towards the end of the Byzantine government’s rule. The Franks were badly defeated and their only hope was to send out for young kids to carry on the fight in the hope that they could do something to stop the Muslim hordes advancing and overwhelming the country, but that looked to be a really most unlikely situation.

This, of course, relates to ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT, the book that I’m reading at the moment, of course.

I was at grammar school, and towards the end of the previous year, I’d been talking to a girl who was in the first year – we’d been talking over the internet or over the ‘phone etc. We were back at school for the next year, and I rang her up again to ask her how things were. She told me that she’d finally managed to change her history teacher or geography teacher. She hoped that whoever she had was much nicer, and she told some rather lurid tales about the previous one. So I laughed and said “yes, you’ve certainly changed him. We have him this year, to which she laughed. We carried on chatting on the ‘phone for a while, and then I had to go. Then, there was something happening and everyone found themselves confined to their rooms. I went and had a wash and clean-up, and then rang up this girl and told her what had happened and why didn’t she come along to my room instead of hers and have a chat? I’m sure that the people who share with me wouldn’t object. I came out of the bathroom carrying a dirty dish and was immediately given a lecture about “no dirty dishes allowed in the rooms”, which I thought was rather strange, so I put the dish down and went into the room. There was a girl there whom I didn’t recognise. She was an enormous girl, and it wasn’t until she began to speak that I realised that this was the girl to whom I’d been speaking on the ‘phone so often.

As if we had the internet when I was at school. And mobile ‘phones.

This story about an “oversized” person is interesting too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall from things that I have said in the past that I keep a pretty close eye on my weight, and so should other people, I reckon. I’m not into this “big is beautiful” idea when it comes to people.

And at our school, we didn’t have many lurid tales to tell about the teachers at our grammar school, except for one who ended up with a two-year prison sentence, although there could quite easily have been a few similar. Mind you, we used to make up quite a few, and they quickly gained currency amongst the more gullible pupils.

The nurse turned up as usual, so I told him about my bad night and the agony that I was suffering with my foot. I warned him to be very careful, so didn’t he go and put his hand right on it?

After I’d come back down from the ceiling, he finished sorting out my legs and feet, and then he cleared off on his rounds. I could go about making my breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’re still in the Ionian Islands today, and it seems that, in Corfu at least, the locals did experience some kind of sanity and better judgement and managed to keep themselves out of the hands of the Ottomans. However, for a period, they did fall into the hands of the French, then the British, and later on, the Italians.

Back in here, I was about to start work when I had a visitor. The electrician sent by the estate agency came to inspect my telephone wiring. I sent a message to my faithful cleaner to invite her down to see him in action to find out what’s going on.

He spent ages here searching for the telephone cabling and eventually found it, after much searching, behind the wall in the wardrobe cupboard. He didn’t have with him all of the equipment that he needed, so he promised to return later.

After he left, I finished off the notes for the radio programme that I’d begun the other day, and they are now ready for dictation.

There was a pause next for a disgusting drink, and then my cleaner came down again, this time to do her stuff. We were interrupted by the return of the electrician, who managed to thread a tracing cable through part of the conduit, and now he reckons that there should be no problem for the fibre-optic people to install the cable.

In the middle of all that, there was another interruption. The postie came by with a big parcel for me. I’ve ordered some new waste bins, the sort that slide out like a drawer, because I’m struggling with the ordinary type of waste bin with the swinging top. I really need two hands for that type of bin, but I need one to hold myself upright.

As well as that, there’s a new computer hard drive. That’s for my late birthday present, which arrives next week, with a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby.

After a brief … errr … relax, which is hardly surprising given the bad night that I had, I sorted out the plans for the next two radio programmes that I’ll be preparing next week. And for one of them, I’ve already chosen the music and written the notes, and I’m right now in the throes of editing the music that I need.

For the other programme, I’ve made a list of the songs from which I’ll be choosing those that will be included in the programme.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with chips and salad, followed by the last of the birthday cake and some more home-made ice cream. I didn’t enjoy the salad and chips as much as I would have liked, though. Having only recently recovered my taste buds, I don’t want to start losing them again so soon. It makes me wonder what on earth is going on with my body.

But I’ll worry about all that tomorrow. Right now, I’m off to bed, to sleep if the agonising pain in my foot and these severe coughing fits let me. I honestly can’t take much more of these.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the teachers at my old grammar school … "well, one of us has" – ed … on one occasion, following a series of arguments in our history class, it all came round to the teacher shouting, in an exasperated voice, "if anyone believes or thinks that he or she is stupid, stand up!"
So, of course, I stood up.
"Do you really believe or think that you’re stupid?" she shouted
"Not really, miss" I replied "but I felt really sorry for you, standing there all on your own like that."

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Thursday 12th March 2026 – TONIGHT’S TEA …

… wasn’t as nice as some have been just recently. And I’ve no idea why that might be, because it’s a tea to which I’ve been looking forward for over a week.

Something else to which I’ve been looking forward since Monday morning was a good night’s sleep, but one again, I was thwarted in my ambitions.

Last night’s tea, nice as it was, took so long to prepare, eat and clean up that I ended up running hours late. In fact, I didn’t go to bed until about 23:45 and I need much more beauty sleep than that, especially as I’d been awake so early in the morning.

To go from bad to worse, it was another turbulent night and I felt as if I hadn’t gone to sleep at all. When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was dead to the World and it took me an age to summon up the energy and the courage to head for the bathroom.

Even though Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more, I still had a shave. I might as well go through the motions, even if I don’t feel like it and they are of no earthly purpose.

In the kitchen, I made my hot lemon, ginger and honey drink to go with my medication and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night. And that was a disappointment too.

It was round about 03:30 when I definitely heard someone shout “aren’t you getting up yet?”. I wondered what time it was, and looked at the clock. It was 03:30 so I don’t know who it was who had awoken me.

When I looked at the timestamp of the soundfile, it showed 03:31, so this dream obviously had some basis in fact somewhere. But that’s a few times now when I’ve either heard a phantom alarm or heard someone shout out during a dream.

There was also something about the bandage and plasters after dialysis but I can’t remember too much about that. In fact, I can’t remember anything really other than the bandage and the plasters.

And this kind of dream makes me wish that there was much more to it than that which I recorded. Or else, it’s my subconscious stopping me from going too far into “what happened next”.

The nurse came along to sort out my legs and feet, and today he remembered to put the things back into the drawer and to close it. I’m glad about that because I shall rapidly lose patience if he doesn’t tidy up after himself. It’s bad enough that I don’t.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re reviewing the position in the Ionian Islands. At the moment, the Venetians are clinging on to a precarious foothold as the Ottomans slowly surround them and hem them in. We’ve already had a few important raids, and I suspect that there are many more to come.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I turned my attention to the radio programme that I started yesterday. All of the music is now paired and segued, and quite a lot of the notes have been written. I can finish this off tomorrow morning, provided that my visitor doesn’t come too early.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to wait for my taxi to arrive.

And I was in luck. It was my favourite taxi driver and we had a lovely chat all the way down the coast to Carolles to pick up someone else and then another drive down the coast to Avranches.

Once again, I was early. It was 13:40 when I arrived, but it made no difference because I wasn’t connected up until 14:50. And then, they set the dry weight to what it had been two weeks ago and so there was almost nothing to take out. And they forgot the booster for the blood pressure. I don’t know what’s the matter with them these days.

But once I was connected, they left me pretty much alone. Even Emilie the Cute Consultant, who was the duty doctor today, kept to the far end of the room, well away from my clutches.

At least they didn’t hang around too long to unplug me, but it was still 18:50 when I climbed into the taxi to come home.

When I arrived here, I had to be dropped off at the rear of the building as there was a howling gale blowing up outside. My faithful cleaner helped me in, and believe me, I was glad to be home.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and ratatouille, which I didn’t enjoy as much as I thought it might. The birthday cake and home-made ice cream were nice, though, but tomorrow will see the last slice of that disappear.

And right now, I’m going to disappear too because I’m off to bed. And to sleep, if the stabbing pain all down my foot will let me. Right now, it’s the worst that I’ve ever known.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my strange dream … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of an old Tommy Cooper story.
"I once knew a man who dreamed that he was awake" he said.
"And what happened?" asked someone in the audience
"Well, when he woke up, he was!"

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Wednesday 11th March 2026 – THAT WAS ANOTHER …

… really nice tea, even though it took me over two hours to prepare it and then to tidy up afterwards. And consequently, I’m running even later than I was last night, and that was late enough.

So much so that, by the time that I’d finished everything that needed finishing and had crawled into bed, it was about 23:20 – so much for any possible idea of having an early night.

And just as the previous night, it was another bad one, and by 05:20, I’d given up all possible hope of going back to sleep. But not to worry – round about 06:00 I raised myself from the Dead and attacked the two lots of radio notes that I’d written last week. They are now dictated and ready for editing, and there’s nothing outstanding in that respect.

However, there are no fewer than six lots of radio notes that need editing, so I am going to have a busy weekend by the looks of things.

When the alarm went off, I staggered into the bathroom for a scrub-up and then into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication. And the medication is much better in the drawer opposite the microwave rather than scattered all over the place.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was something about being back in historical times. There was a young boy who was in bed in this house and having to measure how far away from the nearest plug he was in his bed so that we could put the correct amount of cable on a table lamp. For some reason, instead of calculating it from a plug in his bedroom, we calculated it from a plug in the living room and that seemed to go for metres – maybe there were five, six or seven metres. And if we’d taken it from the plug by the bed, it would have been next-to-nothing in the way of cable. But while we were measuring it, we had a metal ruler that was a metre long and a scribe that we were using to mark everything. Part of this route took us outside, and we were measuring in the snow and ice. We were looking at the ice and thinking of how things were frozen up, thinking that we’d better hurry and take ourselves inside again before we freeze in this weather.

It’s not very likely that they would have had table lamps back in historical times, but it’s certainly possible that there might not have been electrical sockets in every room. I can remember times like that in the dim and distant past. And don’t forget that the farm down in Virlet doesn’t have mains electricity or running water.

It would be interesting to know, though, why our route from one bedroom to another took us outside into the snow and ice.

Did I dictate the dream about being in Germany with my German friend? … "No, you didn’t" – ed … We ended up going around one of the supermarkets in his town looking for things that he needed. I saw some Heinz baked beans on special offer, so I went to look, but they were beans with pork sausages, so that ruled it out for me. So we had a good wander around and we noticed a couple of tins of beans on the shelf which were for sale. He asked me if they would be any good, so I replied that there was only one way to find out, so we put them in the trolley. I went to the check-out and waited for my friend who was still looking. I was chatting to the cashier, and he was saying goodbye and talking politely to everyone who was leaving the shop, but no-one seemed to reply to him. He was very annoyed by this. Eventually, we climbed into our car and drove out of the car park into the main street, but we were in Wandsworth by this time. Seeing as we were here, I asked him to turn to the left, which he did. I pointed out a row of shops, which in the past included an Indian takeaway, which was really nice. Up at the junction ahead, the round swung round to the left and headed down towards Wimbledon. Where the Italian restaurant had been, where I used to work, it had all been demolished and it was modern shopping units, things like these tool supply places and DIY hardware fittings places etc. I couldn’t believe how things had changed since the early 1990s when I was working down there. I was really, really disappointed by this.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my desperate search for decent baked beans, and it would be just my luck to find a huge supply, only to be thwarted by something like several pork sausages.

A while ago, I was looking at one of these online 3-D mapping sites, checking the area where I used to live in Wandsworth for that couple of months, and I didn’t recognise any of it. How it’s all changed since those days. It was really difficult to believe just how different the area is now, compared to how it used to be.

The nurse came extremely early today. He had several blood tests to carry out, including one on me! Unfortunately, he doesn’t have “the touch”, and as my veins are very small and fragile, I suffer enormously.

Not only that, I should have been à jeun – that is, without any food. However, I’d forgotten, so heaven alone knows what they are going to think at the laboratory when they find my blood full of home-made lemon, ginger and honey drink.

After he’d sorted out my feet, which was also agony because the pain in my right foot has returned, he left, and I could make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, having finished the accounts of the downfall of the individual duchies, he’s discussing the situations on the islands. It’s, regrettably, exactly the same as on the mainland, with different groups in conflict with others, internal revolution, external warfare, appeals to various European bodies and even craven submission to the Ottomans in order to seek protection from a different Christian force.

It really is difficult to understand why these people couldn’t see that they were signing their own death warrants.

Back in here, I finished off a few things and then, regrettably, I had a little “doze” in my chair for an hour or so. I can’t say that I was surprised.

Once I’d brought myself back round fully into the Land of the Living, I carried on writing the notes for the radio programme on which I’d been working yesterday. And by lunchtime, I’d finished everything. So this idea of being “up to date” didn’t last any longer than six hours.

After a disgusting drink break, I had a few things to do.

This fibre-optic cable issue is still rumbling on … "and on, and on" – ed … due to the inability of the estate agent’s manager to understand the problem. And now another inhabitant of the building, not exactly known for his patience, has thrown his hat into the ring following the failure of the installation chez lui. It seems that I am shortly to have a visit from a technician nominated by the estate agent, who intends to check the situation.

And not before time, either.

There was also an order to pass to my online retailer, and as a result, my late birthday present to myself should be arriving in about a week or ten days or so. In fact, a part of it should be here within the next couple of days, as it was “en route” about an hour after I’d ordered it.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links on the sidebar for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

A third thing was to reply to a letter that I’d received from the Auvergne. A few weeks ago, I wrote about a letter that I’d received from someone sending me his sympathies for my illness. I’d written back with an update as to my condition, and he’d replied. He’s going to carry out a little task or two for me, something that should come as quite a pleasant surprise to whoever inherits my possessions.

And finally, I’ve had my tax demand for my property in Canada. Looking at the increases over the last few years, property values close to the border with the Great Satan (and you can’t be much closer to the border with the Great Satan than my property) are rising dramatically since the orange utan took power down there.

Rosemary rang for a little chat. And it was a “little chat” too – it only lasted one hour. She’s been noticing the lack of worms in her garden these last couple of years, and the compost that she spreads on her vegetable plots doesn’t seem to break down as quickly as it should. Consequently, she’s planning on ordering a couple of hundred worms from a place in France so that she can dig them in with the compost.

With the time that was left, I chose the music for the next radio programme. And some of that took a lot of finding too. But it’s all now present, reformatted, remixed and re-edited. I can pair it and segue it tomorrow and maybe even write a couple of the notes for it.

Tea tonight was a fresh vegetable curry … "well, frozen vegetable curry actually" – ed … with onion, mushrooms, tomato, lentils, broccoli, cauliflower and sprouts in a thick vegan yoghurt sauce with rice, followed by birthday cake and home-made ice cream. And it really was delicious.

However, I might have to smile sweetly at Alison and ask her to take a little trip into Leuven on my behalf because my stock of spices is running rather low right now.

But that’s a job for the weekend because right now, I’m off to bed, hours later than I would like.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my blood test … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told one of my friends from Crewe that I had had a blood test this morning.
And so she asked "did you have to study hard last night, then?"

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Tuesday 10th March 2026 – WHAT A NICE …

…tea that was tonight. And seeing as I didn’t have anything in mind but instead made it up at the last minute, it was even nicer. I ought to do this more often.

In fact, today has been a reasonably good day, for the most part. Not like last night, where I was once more running hours late … "as you are tonight too" – ed …

By the time that I’d finished everything and was ready for bed, it was once more coming up to 23:30, and I really don’t know where the time goes. But anyway, I finally slid into bed, curled up underneath the bedclothes and went almost straight to sleep.

However, it was a rather restless night and I awoke a few times, usually for no good reason. However, there was one dream that related to all of this.

This was another morning when I was convinced that the alarm had gone off and awoken me. I was lying there, waiting for the second alarm, but nothing actually happened so I didn’t leave the bed.

It was hardly surprising because when I checked the clock later, it was 02:21. So that probably explains it from that point of view – why the alarm hadn’t gone off – but it was so real and so convincing, as a few other similar dreams have been.

When the alarm finally did go off, I was totally flat-out in bed, fast asleep. And it was such a struggle this morning to leave the bed that I didn’t have my feet on the floor when the second alarm went off. So we’ll have to call that a failure.

Nevertheless, I was eventually able to stagger into the bathroom, and then afterwards, I went into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication.

Back here, I had a listen to te dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was an article in the staff magazine about someone moving house from the UK over into Belgium. I thought to myself that it would be a really good idea to write some kind of weekly column about the challenges and differences that people face that they don’t realise at first. I thought that I’d go for a walk around the area where this new person was living. While I was walking around there, almost right outside his house was an old pale blue J4 van. I wondered of maybe this might be his. I wanted to take the back door off and look inside it, because there were plenty of things inside, but that was going to be complicated because there was a piece of the bodywork in the way. I could manipulate the piece of bodywork and pull it out, but the whole van would fall to pieces if I were to do that, so I tried gently to do it, but it was obviously not going to work, so I went to fit it back. However, I’d disturbed the door lock while I was doing that, soinstead of the key being completely vertical, it was now at something like forty-five degrees, so I thought to myself that he’s going to have something of a surprise when he comes to unlock the door.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying that back in the mid-70s, I had an Austin J4 van before I had the big Transit. Mine was about thirteen different colours, many of which were shades of green, and it was so rotten that you didn’t need to do anything to take the back door off. It would fall off on its own.

The whole front had rotted away from the chassis, so when you slammed the door (they were sliding doors), the front end would move forward a couple of inches. How it passed its MoT I really don’t know, but I didn’t bother taking it to its next one. It ended up in Barlow Brothers scrapyard in Crewe and I recovered the £25:00 that I’d paid for it.

But we did have a staff magazine when I worked at the EU and I actually appeared in it, but not as an official contributor but as a letter-writer, and my photograph was taken, with me on the Honda scooter that I had at the time. That was the scooter that I taught Roxanne to ride when she was … errr … eight years old.

We were supposed to be moving house that afternoon, so I’d had something of a lie-in that morning because emptying my room wouldn’t really take me all that long. So when I awoke, I began to sort everything out, and my mother came in to see how I was doing. I was making quite a lot of progress but there weren’t enough boxes for everything, so I had a feeling that much of my stuff was just going to be thrown into the van. When I’d finished my room, I went to see how everyone else was doing, but no-one seemed to be doing anything. They were just sitting there, lounging around. I was doing my best to chivvy everyone up, but to absolutely no success whatsoever. It seemed that everyone else in the house was just not interested in packing away their things. I made a start, working on the lounge and the living room, but the people who were sitting around were just in my way and I had numerous kinds of discussions and arguments with them about lending a hand. But at one stage, I stopped and listened, and I couldn’t hear anything coming from upstairs where my mother and some of the other children were. I thought to myself that it’s when kids and people are being silent, that’s when they are getting into the most mischief but I didn’t really have time to go to have a look at it if we had to be out of this house in a very short space of time. I just tried my best to sort things out and make the best of the one or two people, particularly the very young kids, who were interested in giving me some help.

This seems to be another one of those dreams that’s par for the course. Here I am; I’ve done what I have to do, and I’m becoming stressed out about something that has nothing whatever to do with me. Emptying the house was the problem of my parents, so why am I so concerned about it?

It’s simply that, I suppose, I’m totally unable to delegate anything to anyone else. I become far too interested in it myself to trust anyone else to do things.

The Nurse turned up, happy as Larry, after his week’s break. I told him about the planned removal of the medication to one of the empty drawers, so I hope that he cottons on to it tomorrow instead of having a mad ten minutes panicking.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Things are coming to a head in Greece as the Frankish control has passed to the Navarese, then to the Florentines, then to Naples and a few other people in between. No-one can seem to keep control of Greece for very long in the fourteenth century.

But what’s worse is that some of the disaffected powers are asking for help from … The Turks, of all people, and the Turks aren’t going to miss an opportunity to install themselves in Greece. The disputes between the various Latin factions are laying the foundations of their own destruction.

Back in here, I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. The lesson passed really well again, thanks to all of the preparation that I’ve been doing. I should have done it years ago. . But what’s important is not necessarily how much I prepare, but how much I can remember for the next lesson.

And our classmate from Dubai is still there. She still can’t understand the panic in the western press.

After the lesson, I had some tidying up to do, and then, when my cleaner came to do her stuff, she shooed me under the shower. When I came out, she had started organising the medication drawer, and I can’t believe how full it is, with everything that was lying around.

But it’s going to be much better like this, and I reckon that even then, there will be further scope for improvement.

After she left, I made a start on the next radio programme. And now, all of the music has been selected, reformatted, remixed, re-edited, segued and paired, and I’ve even written some of the notes for it. I can finish it off tomorrow, and then I have plenty of other things to do before I start the next one on Thursday morning.

And to tell a little secret, I could have done much more than I did, except that I had a little “relax” in my chair for half an hour in the early evening.

As I said earlier, I had no idea what to have for tea. But in the end, I ended up with a slice of vegan pie with veg, including cauliflower, mashed potatoes and gravy. It was followed by birthday cake and home-made ice cream. Delicious!

But right now, I’m off to bed ready for a good sleep before a hectic day of work tomorrow. I need my beauty sleep – and lots of it, of course.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my letter to the EU’s staff magazine … "well, one of us has" – ed … the discussion was about the comparatively low death rate on Belgium’s roads compared to other countries.
My response was "seeing the amount of smoking that people do in Belgium, most people here die of cancer. It’s only the survivors who die on the roads."

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Monday 9th March 2026 – WHATEVER COULD HAVE …

… gone wrong at dialysis today did in fact go wrong. And in spades too! I tell you, I’m totally fed up with all of this, and for two pins, I’d pack it all in and do something else with my time than keep on putting up with it.

In fact, things started to go wrong last night when I fell asleep … errr … riding the porcelain horse before going to bed. As if I don’t have enough trouble trying to be in bed at some reasonable time, last night ended up being completely unreasonable.

As seems to be the case these days, I was asleep quite quickly. However, at some point in the morning before the alarm went off, I awoke. I’ve no idea what time it must have been, because regardless, I had absolutely no intention of leaving the bed at that moment. Not even the combined efforts of Kate Bush and Jenny Agutter could have tempted me out of bed this morning.

In fact, I must have gone back to sleep at some point because the alarm at 06:29 awoke me from my slumbers. And once again, we had a real struggle to rise from our comfy bed and face the World.

After a good wash and shave (not that there’s much point in the latter these days seeing as Emilie the Cute Consultant is keeping her distance), I headed off into the kitchen for my morning hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night.

I was driving somewhere down the Devon and Cornwall peninsula on the coast. As I came round a corner, I could see, way out to sea, three enormous freighters or passenger liners heading out towards the Atlantic. I decided to chase them for a minute and look for a car park somewhere where I could take some photos of them. The first car park that I found, the view wasn’t particularly good. I had to climb up onto a rather large rock where the view was slightly better, but I still couldn’t take a really good photo of these ships – or not as good as I might have had from the vehicle a few miles back. Suddenly, I heard a voice behind me saying “it’s Mr Hall, isn’t it?”. I turned round, and there were two people whom I knew from university. They came over for a chat, and I fell off this rock, but I managed in the end to pick myself up. It turns out that they were staying in the hotel that was behind me. They were telling me about a whole series of new rules at university that basically cut down a lot of the jokes and a lot of the fun that we used to have there. I told them about the ships, and they said that there was a really good viewpoint inside the hotel, so I followed them in. We were talking about luggage labels – how it seems that if you go to an airport and you already have a luggage label on your suitcase, every other airport to which you go for the rest of your life with that suitcase, the suitcase will have a label from the landing crew, but it wouldn’t necessarily have a label if there wasn’t one in the first place. We were talking about good ways to dispose of a body, which was to put it into a suitcase and send it off on a flight somewhere. We went in, but I couldn’t find a way in to this viewpoint. It was one of these traditional hotels with lots of people walking around and very small rooms, but they showed me the way in, which I hadn’t realised was an access, which was through a staff door, and then you could open another set of doors once inside there, and there was a hidden corridor that went all the way down alongside the rooms. I was thinking that if I go down there, at long last I may have a photo of these ships, and that was what I was hoping for in the beginning.

The last time that I was driving down there was back in the 1980s when I took a coach tour that way, but I can’t remember seeing any ships.

The hotel reminds me of where we used to stay when we went to the university for meetings, and the idea that they would change all of the rules to stop people having fun is about par from the course. Even STRAWBERRY MOOSE ended up being expelled after he taunted a British government minister.

The thing about luggage labels seems to have come out of nowhere, though.

There was also something about a Dutch rock musician who had died. He had this Gibson SG guitar, but there was some kind of issue with it, but that’s really all that I remember of that particular dream.

As this dream didn’t really end, I can’t really say anything about this.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, with a big cheesy grin on her face as it’s her last day before her week’s rest. She even had time for a little chat before leaving to finish off her round.

Once she’d gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re discussing the Frankish Duke of Athens and his successors. The first Duke seems to have been able to build up a prosperous territory out of the ruins of the conquest, but as usual, it seems that his heirs went about and managed to undo everything that he had created.

Back in here, I had a radio programme to review and then to send off ready for broadcast this weekend, and after a few more tasks that needed attention, I spent the rest of the morning revising my Welsh ready for tomorrow and checking over the homework that I then sent off for marking.

At 12:00, I knocked off and went to sort myself out for dialysis. my faithful cleaner turned up as usual to sort out the anaesthetic and we discussed my idea of moving all of the medication – to such an extent that I forgot my disgusting drink before leaving.

The taxi turned up early for me, and we had to go off to Sartilly to pick up another passenger. We arrived at dialysis early, 13:40 to be precise, and I staggered off to my bed and waited to be seen.

And waited … and waited … and waited …

Sometimes I find it difficult to understand what goes through the head of the planning department at the dialysis centre. Who in their right minds would put two trainee nurses in a room of eight patients without the guiding hand of someone more experienced?

It was 14:50 when I was finally plugged in, in total agony with one of the pins. And I wasn’t the only one who suffered this afternoon either. And at least I was left pretty much alone after that.

The doctor came to see me and asked if he could do anything for me. "How about making me better?" I asked. He didn’t stay long after that.

As I mentioned the other day, they have decreased my dry weight and are taking out the excess water bit by bit. At least, that was the plan. But today, they took out a whopping 2,000 grammes. I’m not sure if that’s all of it, but I’m now down to below my ideal non-active weight. Since I’ve been having dialysis, I’ve lost 8,000 grammes in total, but much of that is down to not eating so much.

When my session of three and a half hours was over, I waited to be unplugged. And waited … and waited … and waited, while the two nurses cleaned up the empty machines from the other people who had left.

Eventually, one of them wandered over. "Has it finished already?" she asked.

"Yes, and for quite a while too" I replied.

"But surely … ohhh! It’s only three and a half hours, not four!" and she carried on cleaning the other machines.

Eventually, I was unplugged, and as I was preparing to leave, she suddenly remembered that she should have taken a blood sample. So here we go again.

It was 19:00 when I was finally ready to leave and 19:10 when the taxi arrived. “That’s what time it was booked for” said the driver, and I could believe him.

Consequently, it was 19:50 when I returned home, having left at 12:50 for a session of three and a half hours. And I bet that the senior doctor, who follows these pages and tries to pull me up if I say anything bad about the service, will have “missed” this entry and nothing will happen about it. But it’s really getting on my nerves.

Tea tonight was the rest of last night’s pizza with birthday cake and home-made ice cream for pudding. And now I’m off to bed, hoping for a better day tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about ships … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends told me that in the High Arctic, they once encountered a ghost ship.
"How did you know that it was a ghost ship?" I asked
"There was only a skeleton crew on board"

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Sunday 8th March 2026 – THAT WAS …

… much more like a game of football today. And I hope that those of you who watched it via the link that I posted yesterday (the link is still active if you want to watch it later) enjoyed it just as much as I did.

So last night, I went to bed, looking forward to today’s game of football. And as usual, I was later going to bed than intended. It was actually 23:40 when I finally crawled into bed after finishing everything that needed finishing.

As usual, I seemed to go to sleep quite quickly, and when I awoke (without the benefit of an alarm) it was just becoming light outside. I made no effort whatever to find out what time it was, because whatever time it was, I had no intention of leaving the bed. Sunday is a Day of Rest and these days, it begins with a lie-in.

When Isabelle the Nurse put in her appearance, I was fast asleep in bed, and quite rightly so. She massaged my legs and feet with the oil etc while I was lying there immobile, and then she wandered off on her rounds. I went straight back to sleep.

When I finally awoke, it was 10:10 – what a wonderful way to start the day, and I wish that I could do it more often. I went into the kitchen, made my breakfast, forgot my medication and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

He’s now winding up the affairs of the Frankish nobles, recounting how, even in danger of annihilation by the Ottomans, they refuse to form a united front to defend their territory. They seem to be content with plotting, counter-plotting, invoking the aid of different factions such as the Genoese, the Neapolitans, the Venetians and even the Ottomans themselves to aid them in their selfish ambitions, not realising that the only winners in this scenario will be those who are giving the aid and, ultimately, the Ottomans.

But breakfast was nice, though. Porridge, hot black coffee and the last of the home-made croissants. I’ll have to make some more on Saturday. And while I’m at it, there’s only enough birthday cake to last until Friday evening. I’ll have to make some more dessert on Saturday too. Anyone have any ideas? Some kind of trifle sounds nice, but I don’t have any vegan jelly. Would agar-agar do the job, do you think? And I could top it with the vegan cream mix that I used for my birthday cake.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been up to during the night.

There were some photographs of some certain people going around that were dated back to the Roman period. Then, they came across a few more. One of them was interesting because it showed some Roman or other with an apple or something on his head as if it were a precursor to a story about William Tell. This became quite a well-known photo. Then they came across a few more which showed a couple of small girls, maybe eight years old or something, and they had that particular guy, who was asleep, and they were busy balancing these apples on top of his head. So they began to realise that the photo with the apple was not exactly a fake but was an involuntary one while this guy was actually asleep.

That would be quite something – photographs dating back to Roman times. Although the technique of using light to create images has been known since at least the fourth century BC, no one succeeded in capturing an image until 1777, and then they didn’t take the idea any further.

The allusion to William Tell is bizarre, though.

There had been some kind of archaeology carried out on a site. They had come across a woman, or a skeleton of a woman, who had been subjected to all kinds of atrocities and so on. A couple of years later, working in a similar place, they came across the same skeleton but much more modern, one that had also been subjected to a lot of atrocities. So we were busy trying to investigate it, so we had a small team. But there wasn’t much to do for entertainment there in the evening so one of the guys and I were talking about boxing. We agreed to have a three-round boxing match between us. This took place in the roadway up near the roundabout near the sports centre in Granville. We put the gloves on etc. and went to compete. It was obvious that this guy was in quite a different class to me and I was floundering around somewhat but he never actually laid a glove on me because my defence was quite good, but I couldn’t attack. At the end of a few rounds, he was rather dismissive about the affair and made one or two rather offensive comments, but I told him that I wasn’t in the least offended because we had to do something to pass the time, but I don’t think that he was all that entusiastic. He didn’t really appreciate anything, but I suppose that he could quite easily have had me on the floor in the first ten seconds if he had really tried. I forgot to mention in this boxing dream that the discussion about it came because we were discussing what to do to pass the time and the question of boxing came up. I said that I had brought it up before, but they hadn’t seemed to be very interested, much as I would have liked to have been involved in it.

If we go back to Mortimer Wheeler and MAIDEN CASTLE, there’s a report in there about a skeleton that they found which seemed to have been hacked about and cruelly treated round about the time of death.

As for boxing, I would have enjoyed maybe having a go once or twice, but I wouldn’t have been any good at it.

I’d had to go somewhere for some reason and I’d borrowed someone’s old pedal moped. I’d travelled all the way to wherever it was that I’d had to go and went to do what I had to do. Coming out of it, I bumped into the owner of the moped, a huge, big guy, so we went to go back home. He said that he hoped that the moped had been OK. I hoped that it was and went to look for it. But I’d left the keys in it and the ignition turned on, but it started up. He climbed on the front to ride and I sat on the pillion and we set off. Later on, I was driving, and he was talking about changing into his shorts, so I said that it’s probably not a good idea and tried to discourage him. We carried on riding and came to a town centre where there were roadworks. There was a diversion posted, but we reached a point where there was no diversion so I went straight on, but realised that this wasn’t the road. It was an old residential area full of terraced houses, some of which had been demolished. He was talking about a row of terraced houses somewhere that hadn’t been demolished because the Beatles had bought it after they had gone the wrong way down what had been supposed to have been a diversion and seen these houses standing on their own. Eventually, I tried to return to where the main road would be. This involved driving across a piece of wasteland. But there was a big fence at the end of it and a workers’ canteen. When the workers in the canteen saw me coming, they dismantled the canteen so that I could drive this car through and back onto the road. They asked if I would be OK from here. I said that I would have been OK had I seen the diversion sign. They replied that they had taken the diversion sign away thirty seconds ago because the diversion had finished. The guy on the back of this moped was now talking again about changing into his shorts even though he said that I had stopped him. But I hadn’t stopped him – I’d just tried to discourage him

This is a strange dream, right enough, hopping about from moped to car and to moped again. And, incidentally, there wasn’t a pillion seat on such things as an old NSU Quickly, a Phillips Panda or a Raleigh Runabout.

However, the demolition site seems to be a flashback to that dream about a disappeared sports stadium a couple of months ago, and while the Beatles never owned a stock of houses (as far as I know), I do know of one group that did, a most surprising group as well, given their ethos. However, professional secrecy impels me to keep that news to myself.

Having brought everything up-to-date, I watched the highlights of Stranraer’s game against Edinburgh City, bottom of the table. And I wished that I hadn’t because Stranraer were awful and suffered their worst defeat of the season, which is pretty hard to bear after some of their recent positive results.

Next on the list was the Welsh homework, which I almost finished before the football came on.

And while the result was predictable, given the gulf in class between a team in the Premier League and another one in the second tier, Y Rhyl gave Caernarfon a good run for their money and pushed them all the way. The game finished 2-1 to Caernarfon, and it could have been ohh! so different if the referee had awarded the penalty that I would have awarded to Y Rhyl in about the fortieth minute when the Cofis’ ‘keeper, Connor Roberts, hauled Y Rhyl’s Somali international Mohamud Ali to the ground.

But what has annoyed me about all of this is that I didn’t notice a single representative of the FAW at any of the games this weekend. It’s a well-known fact that the FAW is a very Cardiff-centric organisation and rarely wanders outside its home territory, but not being present at a Welsh Cup semi-final is appalling.

In a fit of pique, I wrote to the FAW to ask "Where was Noel Mooney" the CEO of the FAW "this weekend? I didn’t notice him at either of the semi-finals this weekend. Did he slip by unnoticed and unannounced, or did he simply not turn up? What was the matter with him? Was he ill? Or could he simply not find enough native bearers to carry the FAW drinks cabinet north of the Heads of the Valleys and fight off the sheep and druids who are all that occupy that forbidden and unknown (to the FAW) territory?"

As well as that, I added a few bells and whistles, but I don’t expect that I shall receive a reply.

Once the game was over, I went to make my bread and pizza. And I have never had a loaf of bread rise up as much as this one did today. It looks wonderful. The pizza was good too, and there is, as usual, half left over for tomorrow.

But right now, I’m off to bed ready for dialysis … "I don’t think" – ed … tomorrow

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about photography … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends is a professional photographer.
One day, he was walking along a beach when two girls from Crewe came walking by the other way.
As he reached for his camera to take a picture of them, one girl said to the other "keep still! He’s going to focus!"
And the other girl replied "What? Both of us?"

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Saturday 7th March 2026 – THIS REALLY BUSY …

… spell that I had yesterday and the day before seems to have continued today too. Mind you, I let a really golden opportunity slip through my fingers, but more of that anon.

Last night, it was another late night … "as it will be tonight" – ed … and it was again about 23:15 when I finally struggled into bed after I’d finished listening to Colosseum.

Once again, I managed to go to sleep quite quickly, and there I stayed until all of … errr … 04:01 precisely when I awoke. It was too early to raise myself from the Dead so I lay there vegetating, being totally unable to go back to sleep.

At what I thought would be about 05:30, I thought that I may as well leave the bed and dictate the radio notes that I’ve been writing, but on checking the time, I found that it was actually 06:05 and the alarm would be going off very shortly.

That was certainly a missed opportunity – I could have dictated all of the radio notes and been totally up-to-date again in that respect, but at 06:05, it’s far too late to make a start.

Nevertheless, I managed to raise myself into a sitting position, and by 06:20 I was up and about and heading to the bathroom. An early start, sure enough, but not the early start that I wanted or needed.

After a really good wash, I went into the kitchen and now that I have some fresh lemons thanks to Leclerc, I could make my drink correctly and take my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been up to during the night.

I was on my way to see some friends. I arrived in a city and I was on a bus, and because my mobility is restricted, I ended up in a hotel in the city centre in the early afternoon. The first thing that I did was to ask a few questions to a kind of robot writer. I wrote down some questions and it wrote out the answers, then it asked me if there was anything else that I needed. I said that I had to speak to some friends so the first thing that I did was to write “hello” to one of my friends, but I didn’t receive a reply, so I sent another brief message to one of my friends. She wrote back to say that she was pleased to see me and that the papers that I wanted were outside her lock-up garage in some kind of 17th- or 18th-century box, and this is the time when most neighbours won’t really complain about people hanging around there, so maybe I would like to go along and move them. I explained that I was not able to travel and couldn’t make it up there on my own, so she came back with a message “would you like me to prepare a meal for you?”. I was hoping to see my other friend who wasn’t in, but nevertheless I replied “yes, that would be really nice”. Then she told me about how she could make some kind of container. I sent back “what? Do you mean out of a lump of bread?” but she replied “no, out of a lump of butter”. I thought that that was not going to be a very good idea at all, to try to make a container out of a lump of butter.

It’d been a long time since I’ve thought about a robot writer – the 1960s and 1970s precursor to Artificial Intelligence and the display screen.

But of course, there’s the phenomenon of “automatic writing”, where some people can go into a trance while holding a pen, and it’s as if another being takes over and begins to write with your arm, hand and pen, with you having no control over it.

That’s something that has happened to me, and I’d love to know in what language you’d find the words ” XDFVV CHXWD BBBQC”.

Making a container out of a lump of butter would be interesting too. I hope that it wouldn’t be for holding hot food.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my legs and feet, being really delicate around the sole of my right foot as the pain was back this morning. She was running late for a blood test so she couldn’t hang around.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re dealing with the winding down of the Frankish empire in modern Greece, the attacks by the Catalans, the Navarese and the Genoese, and the capture and sack of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottomans.

The Ottomans are now preparing to move into Greece, and this is probably the saddest part of the whole procedure

During the morning (and some of the afternoon) I’ve been rearranging the things in the kitchen drawers, making it all more user-friendly. I’ve now ended up with a large drawer completely empty, and my cunning plan is to move all of the medication into it instead of having it lying scattered around all over various shelves and drawers. It will be much nicer, much more user-friendly and a lot less dispiriting when I don’t have to look at it every time I’m in the living room.

There was football at lunchtime, Y Fflint v Dinas Bangor, in the semi-final of the Welsh Cup. Bangor, from the third tier, were hoping to be the first club from their level to reach the final but Y Fflint, struggling in the Premier League, are hoping to win the cup for the first time since 1954.

Unfortunately, despite having done so well to reach the semi-finals, it was one step too far for Bangor. What stood out for me was the difference in quality between the Fflint and the Bangor players, which is only to be expected. Y Fflint were much quicker to the ball and seemed to be able to find a colleague with a pass, even when under a lot of pressure.

But congrats to Y Fflint and commiserations to Bangor.

And also congratulations to former JD Cymru League striker Will Evans, who played for Cardiff Metropolitan and Y Bala. Now playing in the English First Division with Mansfield Town, today he scored a goal against Arsenal to go with the one that he scored against Manchester United a couple of years ago.

Tomorrow, we had a first-v-second division encounter between Caernarfon and Y Rhyl, which you CAN WATCH HERE at 13:15 UK time, 14:15 CET or 08:15 Toronto time.

The rest of the day, I’ve been editing some of the radio notes that I’d dictated in that mad session the other morning. I managed to deal with no fewer than five programmes – admittedly only the notes for joining tracks – and now that’s five more radio programmes totally completed, all the way up to 2nd October. As I said, I want my radio shows to live on after I’ve gone.

There was even time to begin the research on yet another radio programme, in addition to the one that I began yesterday. This one today will take me all the way up to 27th November.

Tea tonight was the last of these breadcrumbed nuggets that have been hanging around in the freezer since Adam was a lad, with vegan salad and a baked potato – with vegan cheese in the slits instead of vegan butter. It was followed by some of my birthday cake and home-made ice cream.

But as for the nuggets, there are a few that I’ve bought recently, and the aim is to take them out of their shop packaging and tip them into an old ice cream container so that they are better-protected in the freezer than in a plastic bag.

But anyway, that’s for tomorrow, maybe. Right now, I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Sack of Constantinople "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked one of my friends "did you know that the Ottomans sacked Constantinople in 1453?"
"Really?" he asked. "Who did they appoint instead?"

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Friday 6th March 2026 – GUESS WHO …

… has been a busy boy today?

It’s difficult to understand where all of this energy has come from, but it was certainly there today and I hope that it will still be there for the weekend too and I can keep it up.

Last night, though, it didn’t look as if it would be a good day today. Once more ♬ I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied, lost my way and don’t know where to roam ♬ and ended up being quite a bit later than intended going to bed. If I’d rushed, I could have been in bed by 22:30, I suppose, but it was in fact 23:30 when I crawled under the covers.

At least, I went to sleep straight away, which was one thing, but it was rather sad to awaken at 05:00. I could have done with much more than that. A good few minutes were spent deciding whether I should leave the bed at that point but instead, I curled up in the warmth of my quilt and went, surprisingly, back to sleep.

But not for long. I don’t know what time I awoke after that, but the alarm went off a short time afterwards and I tried my best to raise myself from the Dead.

Eventually, I was able to stagger into the bathroom for a good scrub-up and then I went into the kitchen for my medication and hot drink. And DISASTER – no fresh lemons. I had to make do with processed lemon juice, and it’s not the same.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was a huge meeting of some kind of Gamblers Anonymous thing where people were invited to comment on how they stopped gambling. There was one guy who gave a lengthy speech about how he’d managed to stop gambling etc. and everyone applauded him. He was taken as being one of the shining examples of this meeting. Later on, while he was with his friends, they all went off somewhere and left him on his own. It was then that someone else came round to bring him a prize that he’d won when he’d been gambling. It was a huge prize too, and there was no possibility of hiding it. The people who had brought him this cheque decided that they’d take him out for a meal, and they ended up presenting formally this cheque to him in a restaurant where his friends were actually dining at the time. That proved, of course, to be something that was most embarrassing to everyone. Of course, his friends were really angry at having supported him at this Gamblers Anonymous thing. They went over to the table later where he was sitting, or he went over to theirs and they had a most acrimonious argument or discussion about this whole affair.

This was a strange dream. It’s another one that seems to have come out of nowhere, with nothing that has happened in recent times provoking anything like this.

I’d met a girl walking around Granville and I began to chat to her. She was part of a large family whose father had died and they had been evicted from their house where they were living and were basically on the road looking for somewhere to stay. They were heading in the Rennes direction. It turned out that the previous night they’d spent in a hotel just down the road from where I was living, one of these cheap village hotel-type of things. I felt really disappointed that I hadn’t seen her then. After we’d had a really good chat and she had wandered off, I went down to look at the street. I thought that what was this big hotel had been all boarded up and padlocked. There was no possible way in to it, so I didn’t say or do very much. I realised then that she was actually at the house next door because I could see the tables being laid out for breakfast the following morning, so I loitered around there but she didn’t turn up, and neither did any of her family, so I wondered if they had moved on. At some point a little later on, I met her again. She said that they were leaving and were going towards Rennes. I was spending some time chatting to her. She had this very large family and one of the children was underneath my bed, stuffing stuffed toys up underneath the mattress, so I had to chase her away. I was chatting to this girl when this old, strange minibus turned up. She basically said “goodbye” to me, and I felt terribly disappointed that she was leaving. They all crowded into this ancient minibus, one of those that had the luggage underneath the floor, and they set off. I decided that what I would do would be to try to hitchhike down towards Rennes to see if I could catch up with her at some point. So I set off and arrived at Rennes. I was on an airfield when this strange aeroplane came in to land. It nearly knocked down an officer, who made some kind of gesticulation at it, but I thought that he shouldn’t have been walking across the landing strip anyway. I wondered if this was the family arriving, so I ran towards the aeroplane, but it had crash-landed, sticking up with the tail in the air, landing on its nose. There was some kind of riot going on around this ‘plane and the police were called to quell it, which upset the commander of the base because he didn’t think that it was appropriate for the police to intervene in some kind of military affair. But there was a description of the airfield somewhere, and somewhere, people were talking about the different places where the aeroplanes were parked etc, but I didn’t take much notice because I was hoping that this was the ‘plane in which the family had arrived and everyone in it, especially her, were all OK.

And I was going to say that this was another one too, but meeting a girl in the street and staying in one of these shabby village-type of hotels of the kind that you would have found in every French village fifty years ago but are now long-gone reminds me of my hitchhiking trip around Finisterre in the mid-seventies when, in Morlaix, I was staying in such a place, I did meet a girl while I was walking around the town, and we did have quite a chat.

Furthermore, the streets in which this dream took place resembled very much some of the streets in the Quartier St Paul of Granville around which we drove yesterday looking for one of our passengers.

The rest of the dream would seem to be pretty meaningless, especially the part about the airfield and the part about the little girl shoving stuffed toys up underneath my mattress.

Isabelle the Nurse wandered in as usual and organised my feet and legs. She had a little more time today so we had a little chat. She seems to think that I ought to buy some garden furniture so that I can sit outside. And I would, believe me, if only I could lift myself out of it afterwards.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

The period of the Frankish occupation of Greece is coming to an end, due to the marauding Turks, and we’ve been discussing the Battle of Nicopolis when a reinforcing army coming from the West to relieve the besieged Franks in Greece was annihilated by a Turkish army, ending all hopes of salvation for the besieged. The End Is Nigh, right enough.

Back in here, I had things to do as usual, one of which was to send off an order to Leclerc because I’m now about to run out of soya milk. One thing that I really did fancy was a butternut squash because I wanted to make some butternut squash soup for next week, but it had gone out of stock since yesterday, which was a disappointment.

When I’d finished what I needed to do, I attacked the next radio programme and now, all of the notes are written, ready for dictation.

There were several interruptions too. I went to set the washing machine off with a load of clothes. I’m no longer able to hang the clothes up on the airer so I’ve arranged with my cleaner that I’ll do the washing on Friday lunchtime and she’ll hang it up when she comes in on Friday afternoon.

After she’d hung up the washing and done some cleaning, we emptied the top shelf in the wardrobe in here. There were plenty of bags, backpacks and so on, but we also found a large plastic box full of tools, screws and all kinds of similar stuff. I’d been looking for some of this stuff since the day that I first moved in here when I needed to erect the shipping radar aerial but couldn’t find it anywhere. So that’s another box to sort out this weekend.

Rosemary called me for a chat today too. Only a brief one – a mere fifty or so minutes – and, as usual, we didn’t discuss anything of any importance.

With what time was left, I began to prepare the following radio programme. This one will fall on the anniversary of the Day of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, and you’ve no idea how many songs I have in my library that include the word “child” or “children” in the title. I could make a really good radio programme with all of those.

Tea tonight was baked beans with cheese, chips and vegan sausage, followed by the last of the apricot halves and some more of my delicious home-made ice cream. Tomorrow, I can start back on my birthday cake and finish it off during the coming week.

But right now, ordinarily I would be going to bed but onto the playlist has come a COLOSSEUM CONCERT FROM 1971. This is a really strange concert, because every time it comes round on the playlist, something dramatic happens. It appeared on the playlist on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR in 2018 when I met The Vanilla Queen, and also in 2019 when Castor suddenly appeared on the scene, and we know how dramatic those encounters were. I was never the same again.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links on the sidebar for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

But before I go and listen to the rest of Colosseum, seeing as we have been talking about Gamblers Anonymous … "well, one of us has" – ed … there’s a similar society for people who suffer from alcoholic issues.
"Is that called ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’?" asked one of my friends.
"Knowing the people whom I’ve met and known" I told her "it’s more like ‘Alcoholics Unanimous’."

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Thursday 5th March 2026 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I first told them at dialysis that I’d cut down dramatically on the food that I ate?

It all started after a couple of sessions of chemotherapy when all of the food began to taste of nothing but salt, so let’s say “August 2025”.

Anyway, as usual, no-one took any notice of anything that I had to say, and so little by little, the quantity of liquid to be extracted from my body has diminished and diminished. Today, for example, it was just 200 grammes – a far cry from twelve months ago when they were extracting well over 2,000 grammes at each session.

But today, we have finally had a reaction. When the figure of just 200 grammes came up, they fetched the electricity resistance meter to measure the water in my body, and they came up with a staggering 3,800 grammes. In other words, since they last used the meter on me, and I really can’t remember when it was, I’ve lost 3,600 grammes in weight.

What they have been doing is calculating the liquids to be removed based on the previous “dry weight”.

If you had asked maybe a year ago, losing 3,800 grammes of water in a dialysis session would have been OK, but not having had that much to remove for quite a while, my body wouldn’t withstand the shock all at once. And so they are going to remove an extra 1,000 grammes per session until I catch up with where I ought to be.

But what a performance! No wonder I’ve been feeling so tired just recently.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

Last night, I managed to be in bed before 23:30. But only just, as it was 23:15 when I finally crawled under the covers. Not as early as I would have liked, because I’m trying to be in bed before 22:30 to give me eight hours’ sleep, but most of the time, that proves to be an unrealistic target.

So once in bed, it didn’t take long to go off to sleep, and while I remember waking up a couple of times, I was soon back to sleep again. And there I stayed until the alarm went off at 06:29.

Eventually, I managed to stagger off to the bathroom where I had a good scrub-up and a shave – I’m not sure why because Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more – and then I went off for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

We were living in some kind of house with people of every nationality in it. My room was just across from where the Russians were. Every time that I went out, I had to take my crutches from against the wall and they used to bang on the latch of the Russian door. I’m sure that they were annoyed by it, but this was happening every time. We’d been using our rooms as kinds of sales places for selling our national products. Books were one of the most important things and I’d been having book fairs in my room, but on this particular occasion, I picked up my crutches and they banged on the latch of this door, and someone came to the door to see what was happening. It wasn’t anyone from the Russians but it was a friend of mine from the UK. I went in and apologised, but I could see that the Russians were in one part of the room and someone else, much younger, was trying to sell a book to an ordinary person. It seemed that there had been an evolution in how trading was taking place for books and I hadn’t noticed. Then, they began to talk about this other book, and the person, or the victim, I suppose, couldn’t seem to find it so I pointed it out to him. It was above his head on a shelf, but it took him a good few minutes to realise that. There was also something else about other people there who were needing some kind of help when it came to buying and selling books. They were sitting more like passengers in a motorcycle combination, which was at the side of everything rather than behind it.

This is another dream that seems to have come out of nowhere at all. There’s nothing in this dream that seems to relate to anything that I’ve been doing or thinking just recently.

Having said that, though, I did spend about ten minutes last night trying to remember some of the Russian that I used to know and practising a few of the words that I used to know.

Isabelle the nurse was very late arriving today, so I had made a start on the next radio programme while I was waiting. And when she finally did turn up, she was in such a rush that she couldn’t hang around and was soon gone.

That enabled me to make my breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

The Frankish Crusaders have now arrived in Greece and are busily dividing up the country between the leaders of the Crusade, creating small duchies that alienated the local population and led the locals to make some rather strange alliances in order to try to drive the Franks out – something that created a period of disorder for a couple of centuries.

Back in here, I carried on choosing the music for the next radio programme. Some of it took some finding too, but it’s now all collected, remixed, reformatted, re-edited, paired and segued, and the notes started. Where has all this energy come from?

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and then the taxi turned up, early again. Mind you, there were two other people to pick up on the way, so we weren’t any earlier arriving.

And I was really impressed by the number of flowers that have appeared by the roadside these last few days. It’s all looking impressively beautiful out there now.

At the dialysis session, we had the pantomime, as I mentioned earlier, and then I was left pretty much alone to complete my shopping list.

There was, as usual, a delay in unplugging me from the machine, and by the time that the nurse had finished compressing my arm, the taxi driver was here. He wasn’t particularly chatty, so we had something of a silent voyage home.

And isn’t it nice to be back home in the daylight?

My cleaner was waiting for me and she helped me into the apartment.

Tea tonight was going to be a vegetable korma out of the freezer, but while I was rummaging around in the freezer, I came across an aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit dated, would you believe, November 2023. I decided to eat that before it walked out of the freezer on its own

So right now, I’m off to bed, ready for a good radioing morning tomorrow. I have my shopping list to send off and a pile of washing to do. I hope that I remember to do them all.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the stuff in my freezer … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends once said that she had problems taking something out of her freezer.
"Why was that?" I asked
"Because every time I opened the freezer door, something in there reached out and closed it again"

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Wednesday 4th March 2026 – AFTER YESTERDAY EVENING’S …

… excitement, it’s been a much more calm day today and I haven’t really done all that much.

Up to now, though, I have managed not to fall asleep … "although the night is young" – ed … and that’s already an achievement.

Especially when it was about 23:30 when I finally crawled into bed. But once in bed, apart from waking up briefly on a couple of occasions, I managed to sleep through until the alarm went off at 06:29.

When the alarm went off, my wife (who wasn’t Nerina), my brother and I were going to the FA Cup Final. For some reason, the FA Cup Final was being held in a provincial stadium, not in London. We had tickets for rows M4, 5 and 6. As we arrived at the stadium, my brother suddenly realised that he didn’t have his ticket with him and it was too late now to go back home so he joined the queue anyway. There were Morecambe and Wise there, and it seemed that Eric Morecambe had left his ticket behind too but he was going to try to blag his way through the gates, so my brother decided that he’d try too. We joined the queue for one of the gates and fought our way down to the front eventually and were let through but there was no sign of my brother. So when we came to find the seats, I found M94, so I imagined that we wanted the other side of the stadium, but it seemed that M94 was an addition to the row and was placed before M1, so our seats were just there where we were standing, so we settled down and waited to see whether my brother would come along and join in. Then, we had to leave the stadium afterwards. We found our car, and my wife was driving so I let her drive. We had some people to see on the outside of Birmingham so we went down a road. My wife was frustrated because the traffic was moving really slowly. She thought that it was a cyclist holding everything up and she was urging the other motorists to pass the cyclist, but then it turned out that a little further ahead, there was a train driving down the road, an old steam train pulling so many goods wagons. Eventually, we caught up with it, but she decided that she was going to stop and have a break so we pulled into the side of the road. We had a baby with us, and the baby belonged to a member of her family although it wasn’t hers, and she looked after the baby for a while. Eventually, we found ourselves in a house, along with our possessions and this baby. She was still looking after this baby, but upstairs, there was a very small child. The very small child was quite talkative even though it was only a few months old. It was asking about this baby, then it began to accuse whoever was looking after it that my wife was doing things to harm this baby, which the other one thought belonged to it. Of course it didn’t, and this all became confusing. We began to think of how we could possibly defuse this situation but we didn’t think that it was going to be easy because there is no reasoning with small children at all.

Now THAT was what I call a strange dream.

The stadium reminds me of a time when a friend and I went to Caen to see Granville’s cup tie with Olympic Marseille just before I fell ill, although there was no third person with us.

And what with babies on the scene, talking babies, goods trains running down the streets and all of that, I’ve no idea what must have been going on that had provoked all of that. And who was my wife if it wasn’t Nerina?

As well as all of that, as for my brother getting lost, well, he can do that as much as he likes, and in more ways than just one too.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and scrub-up and then went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I began to write up the missing notes from the previous evening but I didn’t manage to go all that far as Isabelle the Nurse turned up.

She was in a good mood, and we had quite a chat as she sorted my feet, and then she cleared off. I went to make my breakfast and to read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’ve been reading about the series of invasions of Greece, from the Bulgars in the north, the Venetians and Lombards from the west and the pirates of North Africa from the south, who all ravaged the country for a couple of hundred years round about the turn of the first millennium.

But now, the dark clouds are gathering, and so is the Fourth Crusade, ready to set off from Italy on its way to the Holy Land. Unfortunately for Greece and the Byzantine Empire, most of the Crusaders took rather too much of a fancy to the wealth of the various Greek and Byzantine cities and the Crusade escalated out of control, as we shall see over the next day or two.

Back in here, I finished off my notes, backed up the computer and took the statistics that I should have done last night. And then, I was free to listen to the dictaphone to see what else was on there.

I was living down in the centre of France again and was going through my correspondence about the late arrivals of my taxis and the problems with medical care. I seem to have sent one hundred letters to different people but no one has ever replied to me. On one occasion, I’d even been picked up, and we had to go many miles more to a railway station where the one train per week that came to the station, which was the TGV that came from Dublin, had a passenger to drop off on us. I remember having a cup of tea there and they poured it, and the first half of the cup was pure water. It wasn’t until well after that that the tea began to come through in the water. At some point, I was actually in one of the hospitals and I came across Nerina’s doctor, the doctor who had sorted out her appendix. I explained to him that she was on home leave at the moment and was feeling so much better for being at home, so I wondered if it might be possible for her to be discharged into my care and to stay at home for her recovery rather than the hospital.

She wouldn’t have had much of a respite with me. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m useless with all affairs of a medical nature. I had to go to see her in hospital once, and I lasted less than ten minutes.

And while it’s true that the taxi times are all up the spout some times, I don’t keep records and I don’t complain. After all, as I’m terminally ill, it’s all free to me and I don’t intend to bite the hand that feeds it. But TGVs from Dublin to the South of France are an interesting concept too.

After that, there were a few more things to do and then I began to mess around with some more artificial intelligence stuff. I began to work on a few programs with which I’d experimented last time, and I noticed that a few of the more undesirable features have been tightened up, which is good news.

However, I managed to find a few rat runs into a couple of the programs and what was interesting was that they seemed to employ an artificial intelligence probe detector that did really well to close up one rat run while I was still exploring it. Maybe a few more sites of this nature ought to adopt this probing detector and close a few more that are known to exist while they are at it.

But at least, things seem to be tightening up a little in this respect, which is good news.

After a disgusting drink break, I carried on writing the notes for the radio programme on which I had been working, and now they are all complete and ready for dictating.

Tea tonight was a slice of vegan pie with vegetables, mashed potatoes and gravy, followed by an apricot half and home-made ice cream. The ice cream had set far too hard so I had it out for half an hour and then mashed it vigorously with a fork before putting it back into the freezer. I hope that that works.

Anyway, I’ll find that out tomorrow because right now, I’m off to bed, hoping for a good night before dialysis tomorrow, although I doubt whether it will be as good as I would like.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Lombards … "well, one of us has" – ed … a friend of mine and I were discussing those acronyms that people used forty years ago to describe social groups of people.
"What was a Yuppie?" she asked.
"A Young, Upwardly-Mobile Professional Person."
"And a Dinky?"
"Dual Income, No Kids Yet."
"And a Lombard?" she asked
"I’ve no idea about that" I replied. "Was there anything?"
"Ohh yes" she replied. "A Lombard was ‘Loads Of Money But A Right D**khead’!"

0

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… how I’m going to start today’s entry, because, after racking my brains for long enough, I can’t think of anything important or significant that happened.

TNS won … "yet again" – ed … the JD Cymru League championship, but that’s anything but important or significant. In fact, it’s quite usual. It’s long been suggested that it’s a waste of time playing a season’s worth of football. The Football Association of Wales should give all of the trophies to TNS and relegate the newly-promoted sides before a ball has been kicked. That’s usually how it all ends up.

Not necessarily this year though. While newly-promoted Llanelli have already been relegated, the other promoted side, Colwyn Bay, buoyed by some of the biggest crowds that the league has seen, have recruited a good squad of players and are currently in sixth place.

Y Barri lifted the League Cup against TNS the other day, and in the Welsh Cup, TNS were surprisingly eliminated a while back, and this weekend, we have the not-to-be-missed semi-finals with the unlikely pairings of second-tier Y Rhyl against Caernarfon and third-tier Dinas Bangor against Y Fflint. I don’t think that in all the long history of the competition, there have ever been four clubs from the North Wales coast all together in the semis.

While it’s probably too much to hope for, a final between Y Rhyl and Dinas Bangor would certainly be a match to remember, with old rivalries and battles going back almost 150 years, as regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous guises will recall when we were on the terraces at the old Farrar Road Stadium for a match between the two clubs.

But anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

Last night, I raced through everything that I needed to do and, quite surprisingly, finished fairly early. I was actually in bed at 22:20, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been in bed before my curfew time of 22:30.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall what happens next at times like these when I’ve had an early night. That’s right – and at 02:10 too. I tried my best to go back to sleep – tried for hours – and I thought that I would never manage it too. However, at some point, I must have done because the alarm awoke me at 06:29.

And I’m glad that I did too, because I had a special visitor during the night, but more of that anon.

For a change, I was up and about without too much effort and headed into the bathroom for a scrub-up, following which I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

I’d been round at Zero’s house last night, talking to her parents, going over old times again. Their house and their lifestyle were still the same as they always were. We were sitting there, discussing things, and they announced out of the blue that they were going to go out for a meal that evening. I gathered that I wasn’t included in that, but it didn’t bother me at all. However, they asked me if I’d stay behind and keep an eye on Zero. I thought that I may as well do that, so I then had to find some food to eat. They gave me the number of the local chip shop so I tried to telephone it, but for some reason, it wasn’t connecting, so Zero’s father came over and, as usual, over-complicated the affair. Eventually, I managed to get through, and I asked them what vegan or vegetarian options they had. After a lengthy discussion, they didn’t really have anything, so I asked them if they could just send a large bag of chips down and I would make do with that during the evening. Zero asked me if I would be staying there while her parents went out, so I told her that I would, and then her parents made ready to leave.

So welcome back, Zero. I thought that you had deserted me for ever, as TOTGA and Castor seem to have done and the Vanilla Queen did quite a few years ago.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m not in control of whatever happens in my dreams, so just in case anyone is reading this, in real life I would never ever have been left without food when visiting Zero’s parents, that’s for sure.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in after her week’s break. She was in an incredible rush, with a pile of blood tests to perform, which is quite usual after her break. She didn’t hang around long and was soon off on her travels. I could push on and make my breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, for some reason, we are discussing the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople, and this has led me off on a tangent … "as usual" – ed … to examine the entire walled defences of the city and the giant cannon that the Turks used to try to breach them during the siege of 1453. I’m not quite sure how I arrived at this stage, but it’s not surprising.

After breakfast, I came back in here and revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. And, as seems to be usual these days, it all passed very well.

Our classmate from Dubai was there today. We asked her how things were, and she simply couldn’t understand why we were concerned. There had been maybe six, maybe eight rockets that had landed, and no-one was taking any notice of them. The horse racing at the weekend went on as usual and the Emir, the Crown Prince and a group of about twenty sheikhs went for a walk around the city.

She said that there has been no sign whatever of any of the “panic” reported in the Western Press. As far as she’s concerned, it’s the usual “horror story” in the Press, designed to drum up hatred with no foundation whatever in fact.

And that’s all that I’m going to say about it.

When the lesson had finished, my faithful cleaner put in an appearance and shooed me into the shower as usual. And while I was showering, she changed the bedclothes so I now have my nice, clean bed for tonight. And that means a clothes-washing session on Friday.

After she had left, I had a little relax for a while and then attacked the radio programme that I’d begun yesterday. By the time that I’d finished, all of the music had been paired and segued, and some of the notes had been written.

Then, it was a mad dash into the kitchen for tea. I’d planned some pasta, a vegan burger and some ratatouille, but then I remembered that I had some crusty spinach things from ages ago, and I thought that a handful of those would be nice with ratatouille, so I bunged a few in the air fryer.

That was when I discovered that I had no ratatouille. You really can’t make it up, can you?

Back in here, I was in time for the football – Connah’s Quay Nomads v TNS – and if TNS win, they win the Championship.

Unfortunately, Connah’s Quay never looked like scoring, and as the match dragged on, it became more and more obvious that TNS would pull something extra out of the bag. Sure enough, with just a few minutes to go, they won a penalty, one that I considered was rather harsh. However, TNS tucked it away to go into the lead.

Surprisingly, the Nomads went straight from the restart and scored an equaliser, but that wasn’t the end of the story. I’ve lost count of the number of times the Nomads have conceded a goal right at the death and today was no exception. Just ninety seconds to the end too.

The after-match celebrations and speeches went on for so long that it was almost 23:15 when it was all over, far too late to begin to write my notes, so I went to bed instead. The notes can wait until morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Zero … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends asked me if, in the dream, her parents wanted me to babysit her
"You don’t mention the word ‘babysit’ to Zero" I explained.
"Why not?" I was asked
"The first time that I did" I replied "it took two weeks for the swellings to go down and another week before the bruises faded.".
In her youth, she was a fiery, feisty creature.

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Monday 2nd March 2026 – ANOTHER EXCITING DAY …

… at dialysis, I don’t think. If I’m not careful, I shall die of boredom in there. As if I don’t have enough to do with my time as it is, and when you only have one hand that you can use because the other one is pinned to the side of the bed, it all becomes extremely complicated.

Having been going there for as long as I have, I can see why most of the patients in there just curl up and go to sleep.

Actually, that’s how I felt today, and I almost did fall asleep too, but then again, I had a very good reason to do so.

Last night, it wasn’t quite so late as it has been in the past. By the time that I finished everything that needed doing and crawled into my stinking pit, it was 23:20. Still much later than I would have liked, of course, but still earlier than some have been just recently.

What was the killer, though, was that I awoke at 05:20. And it was a case of leaving the bed at that moment too, without even five minutes to let the bedroom stop spinning around.

While I was up and about, I went for a wash and shave and to dress, and then I came back in here because it was far too early to go for my medication.

Instead, I took advantage of the early start and dictated the radio notes that I’d prepared since the last time that I’d had an early start. There were seven lots of programmes all told, and that was a Herculean effort to dictate them all and then upload them to the computer, but I’m glad that they are all done now and I’m up-to-date from that point of view.

Once I’d finished, I went off into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been up to during the night.

I was driving my taxi again last night, and there was something going on in the town centre, so I was there. I must have taken away about twenty fares. One of the very early ones was to go from the town centre with a girl whom I knew who worked in a restaurant there and drop her off at home down the West End. But every other single trip involved a trip down Gresty Road, and I couldn’t understand why everyone seemed to be heading that way. On the way back, on the corner where the Crewe Alex ground is, there was a huge church with lots of tourists milling around there. There were two or three taxis that were waiting there for fares in amongst the crowds, and there was some kind of official, like a tourist guide or something, amongst them. As I kept on going back there to the town centre, I kept on going into a kind of room. At one point, back in this room were some of the people whom I’d taken quite early on in the day, so we had a joke about the trip down the West End because that girl was back there too. I said “I’d have to take a photograph of you,” but she misunderstood it because she was a foreigner, and wondered what on earth kind of photograph I was thinking of. At one stage, I had to go into a different room. I was carrying something. The reason why was that I needed some kind of authority from someone senior, and I knew that the small rooms where the senior people hang out were down this corridor. And out of another room towards the room where I was standing came someone with whom I used to work years ago. We went into his room, and he said “I suppose that you’re going to come out with some kind of comment about photos too, aren’t you?”. Then I suddenly realised that this guy had commented on some photos on a social network, and his comments would not have been the kind that would have been approved today, although thirty or forty years ago, there would have been no remark made. I replied “oh no, but they were rather indiscreet, weren’t they?” to which he just gave a shrug.

This is one problem with living and working in a foreign language. Quite often, you might understand the words but not the actual meaning of the phrase, and this can lead to all kinds of double-entendres and misunderstandings.

But here I am again, driving taxis around Crewe and bumping into old work colleagues. And it’s true about how the UK, and probably many other countries in the Western World, have become more sanitised, and the kind of risqué or oblique comments that we used to use in the past suddenly became banned overnight – round about 1991 and 1992 when we began to have these “political correctness” lessons in the workplace. I remember that a lot of my more humorous cassette tapes that I used on the coaches were completely outlawed

There was also a dream about being down in the Isle of Thanet on holiday. I was walking along the beach, looking up at the promenade thinking “wouldn’t it be great if they dredged this out and they had ships coming along here to moor and anchor right up against the promenade? Then, my mother was talking to my father about the houses in the area. They were alternately grey and white, but we didn’t really know why. We went to visit someone whom we knew, who lived in one of these grey and white wooden wattle-and-daub type of cottage. We went into the kitchen, and I vaguely remember the kitchen from years ago and it looked different to me. She said “yes, there have been one or two changes here. Can you think of what’s missing?”. For some unknown reason, and I don’t know why, I mentioned a bookcase. She looked surprised, and she said “there used to be a bookcase just here”, pointing to an empty space on the wall, “but that’s long gone, and you’ve never seen it. It’s been long gone before you first ever came to this cottage”.

Firstly, there are several places in the World where different colours of houses represent different ethnic groups. Hungary and southwestern Newfoundland spring straight away to my mind, and I seem to recall that Romania does too, or used to.

As for the Isle of Thanet, though, my mother had distant relatives there and every summer, we’d go down there to stay with a great aunt or something, Dolly, Gertie or Mabel. On the Friday night after school broke up, our father would come home from work, we’d all pile into his van and drive through the night and next day down to either Birchington or Hamstreet.

He’d have a few hours’ sleep and then drive back Saturday night and Sunday, ready to start work again on Monday, and that was no picnic in the days before motorways and in a 1937 Fordson van with a three-speed gearbox.

And then he’d come back down for the final two weeks of our school holidays.

Incidentally, many years ago, I went down there myself for a good look around and to visit the places where we used to go. With the M6, M1, M25 and M2, the journey from Crewe to Birchington took just under four hours.

The nurse turned up as usual and was in a chatty mood, hardly surprising because he’s on his week’s break as of this evening. He didn’t stay long, and I could push on, make my breakfast and read my new book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Our author is coming to the close of the period of the Roman occupation, so naturally we’re discussing the religious disputes and also the gathering clouds on the horizon as Alaric and his Huns, various Visigoths and a few Ostrogoths are heading towards Athens and the other Greek cities.

The next few years look to be fairly bleak from a Greek point of view.

Back in here, I reviewed a radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend and, satisfied with how it runs, I sent it off for inclusion in the broadcasting stream. There were a few other things to do, and then I made a start on the next radio programme. All of the music has been chosen and prepared, and I’ve made a start on pairing and segueing it.

My cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and then I had to wait for the taxi. He was more-or-less on time but there were two other passengers to pick up, and as one of them was late for her appointment, we had to drop her off first and I ended up being the last to be dropped off.

At the dialysis clinic, it was one of the new nurses who attended to me. She’d had a very bad experience on Thursday connecting me, what with the machine breaking down and all that, so naturally she was extremely nervous today. I tried to encourage her but even so, it wasn’t far short of 15:00 when I was finally connected.

Nothing exciting happened there today apart from that, but the doctor came to see me to see if everything had been OK over the weekend. What could I say? Nothing ever changes around here.

Eventually, hours late, I was unplugged, but at least the taxi was already here. It was the young chatty driver who came for me, although I would quite happily have swapped for my favourite lady driver who had come for someone else. But anyway, we had a good chat on the way home.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me when I arrived, and she helped me into the apartment.

After she left, I warmed up my half-pizza from yesterday and for a change, I had a small baked potato with it. It was followed by an apricot half and home-made ice cream.

So right now, I’m off to bed, ready to catch up on the sleep that I missed last night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about double entendres … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me if I’d heard the story about the girl from Crewe who went into a pub and asked for a double-entendre.
"No, I hadn’t" I replied. "What happened?"
"The barman gave her one."

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Sunday 1st March 2026 – DYDD GWYL DEWI …

… hapus iawn, pawb!

Did you all enjoy your leek soup? And did you arrange your daffodils neatly in your living room? And did you give your pet dragon a little treat? As long as you did all of that, you aren’t likely to receive a visit from an angry druid today.

As for me, I’m afraid that I didn’t. Sunday here is pizza day, and as well as that, I can’t go out hunting for daffodils, although Rosemary did send me some virtual daffodils via an internet chat program.

Instead, I’ve had something of a lazy day, and you’ll be surprised at just how productive I have been, because I know that I am.

Last night wasn’t as I had planned it either. It ended up being horribly late, just after midnight, when I stopped letting it all hang out and went to bed instead. And instead of the decent sleep and long lie-in that I wanted, it was one of those mobile nights where I was tossing and turning, half awake and half asleep, without actually going into a really deep sleep.

When the nurse put in an appearance, I was actually awake, and so I pretended to be asleep so that I didn’t have to leave my comfortable bed. He sorted out my legs and feet and then disappeared. I curled up under the bedclothes and tried my best to go to sleep, but with no luck at all.

Eventually, round about 09:15, I gave it up as a bad job and arose from the Dead. I gathered up my clothes from the chair and, throwing my slippers in the general direction of the bathroom, I scored a beautiful hole in one, right into the toilet bowl. What a way to start the day!

In the kitchen, I forgot my medication, but I had a lovely breakfast of porridge, hot coffee and two of my homemade croissants. That’s a really nice way to start the day, especially when you take your time and don’t go into your office to start work until 10:45. I wish that every day could be like this.

What took me so long was that I was engrossed in my new book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A. Miller.

Today, we’re discussing the complicated relationship between Thebes, Athens and Sparta, a relationship that sporadically erupted into warfare, with any two pitted against the third. It’s helping me brush up on my classics from when I studied Latin at grammar school, and it’s amazing just how much of the old classical stories have been proved by modern archaeology to be true.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

I was living in some kind of communal living thing. There were lots of different people there doing lots of different things. There should have been a meeting late one night before going to bed, but it turned out that the guy on whose behalf the meeting was being held had simply gone ahead and applied the texture mix to his skin, which meant that he’d be busy recovering or whatever, changing or something, and so the meeting was cancelled. That was extremely disappointing, so I gathered up a couple of things from the radio, some old English-language programmes that I’d done years ago and went to see the girl in the next room who worked for the local radio. She thanked me for coming but said that they were doing things in a different way these days and didn’t need the programmes that I had. However, there would be plenty of opportunity to do stuff in the future. She was thinking of having some kind of doll or something and she would want me to write the speech for it. I took my things to go back to my room, but on the way back, I heard that there had been some kind of announcement that Jim Dale, one of the CARRY ON stars, had been seen hiding in a tree near the old airfield up near Wardle – it was described as “Stoke Bank” in this news report. He’d been repeating one of his “Carry On” speeches from out of this tree and it had made the local news in all the papers.

Whatever the significance of the first part of this dream might be, I have no idea. As for the second part, I have a whole stock of English language radio programmes that Liz and I prepared when we were running “Radio Anglais”, programmes that were broadcast on French local radio. A short while ago, a radio station in Nantwich was calling for radio presenters and programmes, so I sent them one or two as tasters, to see whether they might be interested in a programme from me every now and again. It goes without saying that they never replied.

There is a “Stoke Bank” along the A51 a couple of miles from the old Wardle Airfield, which was my home … "the airfield, not Stoke Bank#34; – ed … for a short while when I was a baby. But there aren’t any trees there in which Jim Dale could loiter, whether or not he might be repeating a “Carry On” speech.

And I did once live in some kind of commune. But not for long, though. Firstly, I’m not a sociable animal, and secondly, most people in that place preferred to live off the backs of other, hard-working people. In the end, I preferred to live in my van.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links on the sidebar for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase.

There had been a couple of girls who had come over for an environmental conference. I’d been chatting to one and I was getting on extremely well with her. For some reason, my brother ended up with their contact details, but I didn’t. On the Sunday, we had various things to do, like we had to pack our place up as we were moving house that weekend. We were busy organising everything, and there was this beautiful cupboard that I’d had my eye on for ages with several drawers in it. It just looked like a huge bass speaker. The price on it was something like £275.00, which I thought was too much. Someone whom we knew came along and asked about it. The woman said “if you take it now, you can have it for £180.00. He paid her cash on the spot, and I felt really annoyed because I would have had it for £180.00 any day of the week. I told her to wait a minute because it had some of my paperwork in it. I had to go through and find somewhere to put this paperwork. I asked someone if they had a sack, and my mother made some kind of comment about that, but I wasn’t in the mood to joke. In the end, someone found a large paper sack and I began to put my things into it. One thing that I’d noticed was that a plot of land on which I’d had my eye too, which was formerly a garage in Audlem, had come back onto the market. The announcement from the paper was that there was a confusion about the closing date of the auction. Of course, I was far too busy to concentrate on this and we were still putting away our things. I came across a press cutting that showed that this conference to which we’d been was going on today, and there was a chance to meet all the contributors. That really annoyed me because I could have gone along and seen that girl again. Then my brother came up with some kind of story about how his car, with a trailer on it, had an electrical fault and he’d had to manually flash the rear lights to make some kind of brake lights every time he stopped. I was still in no mood for any kind of joke

This is quite a regular theme, isn’t it? Here I am, just about to Get The Girl, and a member of my family comes along and throws a spanner into the works.

The chest of drawers sounds interesting, and had I been healthy, I would have gone all-out to make one. And moving house, cars with electrical faults and looking for plots of land were habitual themes in real life back in the day.

There was also something about a Grand Prix around by Monte Carlo, the Monaco Grand Prix, twisting and turning through the streets with all of these cars taking part. We were watching it from a distance, and suddenly, after about half of the cars had gone past, there was complete silence and nothing. Then, all of the Grand Prix drivers who hadn’t gone through in their cars, they came through, and they were running. Apparently, there had been a major accident somewhere and they couldn’t proceed any further with their cars – this major accident behind the leading group so they couldn’t proceed with their cars, so they were going to run the rest of the course.

Before I went to bed last night, I was reading a news article about Cadillac’s entry into the Formula One circuit, but that their engine is not considered to be as reliable as it needs to be. Running the course on foot would be a novel way to proceed, though.

There was some kind of dream going on about a football competition. One of the teams had been relegated. There was something about a particular match and it involved my vegan ice cream somewhere, but I really can’t remember any more about it because I awoke as it was under way and it all evaporated … "the dream, not the ice cream" – ed …

Llanelli has just been relegated from the JD Cymru League, and lest night, we were watching the Welsh League Cup Final, complete with its very emotional ending, followed by vegan ice cream for dessert.

Seeing as we have been talking about the Welsh League Cup Final … "well, one of us has" – ed … this is the LINK TO THE HIGHLIGHTS. This is the LINK TO THE FULL MATCH. If you have the time, it’s well-worth it from a footballing point of view. The highlights don’t really show anything like a fair representative proportion of the game.

When I’d finished the dictaphone notes, there was yet more football. Morton were comfortably beaten by Airdrie after going down to nine men, and then Stranraer’s long unbeaten run came to an end as they were beaten at home by Elgin City.

After a disgusting drink break, with some of the medication that I’d forgotten, I had a pile of *.html coding to edit.

First thing though was to upload my graphics program onto this laptop. That’s easier said than done because there is no DVD drive on it. I had to rummage around deep in the bowels of the box where all of the redundant hard drives are hiding, and there it was, right at the bottom. And to my surprise, the USB cable and power pack were with it. Usually, knowing me, I would have expected them to have been scattered to the four winds a long time ago.

The next step was to open the drive. With not having been opened for years, the springs had seized. Luckily, there’s an escape hole, and a straightened paper clip fitted in quite nicely to lever down the internal catch.

Having uploaded the program, I could then go ahead and prepare some graphic images. And then I had to hunt down a few web links to tie to the images, and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been.

The next task was to edit the *.html coding to include the images and their links, and I was dismayed at how much *.html coding I’ve forgotten. Turn the clock back thirty years, and I was writing web pages by hand in “Notetab” and even teaching basic web design to a couple of interested people, but I couldn’t do it now.

There was an hour to spare, so I made a start on the Welsh homework. I’ve done about two-thirds of it, and as it doesn’t have to be done for two weeks, I’m glad that I’m well in advance because I can have a relax at some point.

At 16:30 I knocked off to go a-baking. A loaf of bread and a vegan pizza were today’s output. The bread rose like a lift and looks excellent, and the pizza was absolutely delicious, with half left over for tomorrow.

But right now, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed … and to reflect on what a busy day I’ve had, considering that Sunday is supposed to be a Day of Rest.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about The Monaco Grand Prix … "well, one of us has" – ed … Percy Penguin once told me that she’d like to go there to watch the Formula One race.
However, I told her "we don’t have the money to go to watch the Formula One race in Monaco. And in any case, it’s pronounced Gron’ Pree."

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Saturday 28th February 2026 – I HAVE JUST …

… watched one of the best football matches that I have ever seen.

Of course, watching a good match is always quite enjoyable, but when it involves TNS not only being beaten but also royally stuffed by a real Welsh football team, and in a Cup Final too, that really is the icing on the cake.

It’s a match to which I’ve been looking forward all weekend, and so last night, I decided to have an early night so that I would really be in the best of form to watch it.

Of course, what I decide to do and what actually happens are not the same thing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And so none of my faithful readers will be in the least surprised to hear that it was 23:50 when I finally made it into bed.

Yes, it was that late. I really don’t know where the time goes these days. No matter what I try to do, it’s very rare that I can beat my curfew time of 22:30.

Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly, and that’s the last thing that I remember until the alarm went off at 06:29. It was another night when I don’t believe that I moved a muscle at all.

As seems to be the case these days, I struggled to make it into the bathroom, but I finally managed it and had a good wash, a change of clothes and a handwashing session. I need to keep on top of my socks and undies, otherwise I’ll run out of stock.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and took my medication, including the Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D supplements that the people at dialysis are insisting that I take. It’s only once a month, and I usually always forget to take them.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what was going on during the night.

One of my neighbours had a car parked on their property for a couple of months and I had my eye on it. Then, they announced that they were selling it but the price that they wanted for it was way out of my pocket and way out of what I thought it was worth, so I was rather disappointed with them about this. But we ended up walking into Crewe, walking down Delamere Street towards the post office one early Saturday morning. I had a letter to write and I needed a stamped envelope, so I thought that I’d go into the post office to buy one, but I suspected that if the post office were open at this time, there would be quite a queue inside. So we went and opened the door, and there was really a queue, quite a long one in there in fact, and they were all at one counter because there was just one counter open. Someone was arguing with someone about small change, saying that they’d had to go all the way to Chester this morning to fetch some small change, so they are rather careful about how they give it out. Eventually, the queue divided into two as another window opened. There was a young girl who went up to the window and handed over a ring. She asked if she could change this engagement ring for a single person’s ring. A couple of people felt sorry for her, but I seemed to remember that this girl had been engaged three or four times before, but it had all broken off, so I wondered what was happening now with this latest one. Then she explained that she’d like to have the money back, and have it back quickly, because everyone will remember what happened when she used a cheque last time she had to buy something. I for one didn’t know what she meant, but I imagined that one or two other people in this queue must have known or something like that.

In the past, I would always have been interested in cars parked up for ages in neighbours’ gardens, but these days, there’s not a car being made anywhere in the World that is of any interest to me.

The story about the Post Office is perfectly true, though. Go in there at any normally busy time, and there would only be one window open of the five or six available. And I know who the girl was too. She was a colleague of Nerina’s when Nerina worked at Crewe before she moved to Stockport, who was also in the same school year as my brother.

Interestingly, going to Chester for small change was an interesting point. When I had my taxis, we had the contract for the local McDonald’s. They could only ever use approved products supplied by the franchise and never buy anything in a local shop. There are several occasions when we had to run to the Wrexham outlet for a bag of lettuce or to the Chester one for some cartons of milk, that kind of thing. I remember once, the Saturday before Christmas, having to go to Wrexham for lettuce, taking Nerina with me, dropping her off at a supermarket there to do our Christmas shopping while I went to pick up the lettuce.

That was the kind of pressure under which we were living. We never had five minutes to ourselves to relax. No wonder our marriage didn’t last.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort out my feet and legs, and we had a chat about Welsh football. I’m not quite sure why because it’s a very specialised subject.

After he left, I made breakfast and began my new book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A. Miller, having finished the previous one about plants at Calleva Atrebates.

This book goes back to 1921 and refers to the history of Greece under the Roman and then the Byzantine Empire, something about which I really ought to know much more.

Everyone knows about the “Franks” — the crusaders who passed through there on their way to the Holy Land and who seemed to spend more time fighting the Byzantines as they crossed that empire than they ever did fighting the Saracens to free the Holy Land — but that’s about the extent of my knowledge. I really ought to be doing better than that.

Back in here, I had something of a footfest with the highlights of last night’s matches in Wales. They were quite entertaining, but there was nothing remarkable about any of them.

In fact, it was quite a leisurely late morning, with the monotony being broken by a series of ‘phone calls about a missing letter. I posted it (or, rather, my faithful cleaner did) on the 12th February, but it’s still not been received and the action to which it refers took place today. I had to find a copy of the letter and e-mail it.

This afternoon, after my disgusting drink break, I attacked yet another pile of radio notes, as I said yesterday that I would. And now they are edited and the two halves of the programme have been prepared. The joining track has been chosen and remixed etc, and the notes are written ready for typing. This means that I can have a complete day off tomorrow. Won’t that be nice?

Round about 17:30, I went and prepared tea because there won’t be much time later. We had the football match to watch instead.

It was the League Cup Final with TNS, odds-on favourites to win (as usual), against rank outsiders Y Barri.

Usually, games involving TNS, the only full-time club in the league with a squad that cost a fortune, involve a backs-to-the-wall approach with the opposition penned back in their own penalty area with piles of desperate defending. However, I’ve noticed a weakness in TNS’s defence, and that is that they are very susceptible to the ball “over the top” with a quick forward rushing onto the ball. And Y Barri have the two quickest forwards in the league in Ieuan Owen and Ollie Hulbert

Y Barri took the game to TNS right from the start and actually had TNS pinned in their own penalty area for long periods of the game. And when the TNS goalkeeper couldn’t hang on to the ball from a cross into the penalty area, Ieuan Owen was the first to reach the loose ball, and that was Y Barri 1-0 up.

As the second half wore on, you could see that Y Barri were tiring rapidly, and it was a question of whether they could hang on. But as we entered injury time, we had Ieuan Owen reacting first to a loose ball about twenty-five yards out of the TNS goal, and what followed was the best goal that you are ever likely to see at this level of football. HOW ABOUT THIS?

That wasn’t all the excitement either. The match finished in a good old-fashioned brawl involving just about every one of the twenty-two players, all of the staff and all of the substitutes on the bench.

After that, I went and had the tea that I’d prepared – baked potato, vegan salad and one of those breadcrumbed quorn fillets that I like, followed by ginger cake and home-made ice cream

Now though, I’m off to bed, hoping for a good lie-in tomorrow. I certainly deserve it, but we shall have to see about that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my new book … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends asked me what book I was reading at the moment.
"It’s called ‘Essays on the Latin Orient’" I replied.
"Oh yes" she said. "Weren’t they promoted to League One a couple of seasons ago?"

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Friday 27th February 2026 – WHAT A DAY …

… I’ve had today. And if I did crash out for fifteen minutes towards the end of the afternoon, I can only put it down to the after-effects of some very hard work.

Last night was quite hard work too. Once again, despite my best efforts, I didn’t seem to make much progress, and by the time that I’d finished everything and was ready for bed, it was 23:30 and how I wished that it was an hour earlier.

Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly, and there I stayed until the alarm went off at 06:29. Surprisingly, when I awoke, I found myself in exactly the same position as I had been when I went to sleep, so it’s not a surprise at all that I remember nothing at all. I can’t have moved a muscle all the way through the night.

When the second alarm went off at 06:33, I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor – which is what counts for “beating the second alarm” – but that’s a long way short of saying that I was actually up and about.

The first thing that I have to do is to wait for the room to stop spinning around before I can even think about standing up. That can sometimes take a good few minutes.

Eventually, though, I found my way into the bathroom, and after a good scrub up, I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, but to my dismay, there was nothing at all on there. It really must have been a deep, sound sleep. I had to find a few other things to do to fill in the time before the nurse arrived.

But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … not having any dreams to which to listen is extremely disappointing. It’s just about the only excitement that I have these days.

The nurse didn’t stay long today. He was being harassed by one of his boys about some clothes to wear at a paintball rally in the firing range and so needed to return to sort them out. That meant that I could start my new book, THE DEBATABLE TERRITORY WHERE GEOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY MEET by A Lodwick.

This is a book that re-examines the excavation reports of Calleva Atrebates of 1909 and the collection of new evidence for the flora of the site in the prehistoric age.

Although I’m not much of a botanist (regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the only reason I passed my Biology ‘O’ levels was thanks to the helpful drawings on the walls of the Gentleman’s Rest Rooms at Crewe Bus Station) this is a fascinating book, as it talks about the expansion of the British crop pool during the Iron Age and early Roman period and suggests that many seeds common in the modern era were actually introduced into England by the Romans.

After breakfast, I started a new project. I went to make vegan ice cream.

In the fridge, I’d found some banana-flavoured milk and some coconut cream. So with some maple syrup, a pinch of salt, vanilla essence and a pile of chopped chocolate from the slab of cooking chocolate that I found, I went to work, whisking all of the ingredients together.

While that was doing, and in between going into the kitchen every hour to give the ice cream a stir to stop it freezing in one solid mass, I was editing the next lot of dictaphone notes.

There was an interruption when my cleaner came round to do her stuff. And a discussion. Apparently, Mme la Presidente of the Residents’ Association had had the engineers round to install her fibre optic system, but the engineers had declined, for the same reason that they had declined at my place.

Perhaps they’ll all believe me now.

Anyway, it led to a flurry of e-mails, and I couldn’t resist throwing my weight in.

However, I’m appalled by all of this. The conduit for the telephone, through which they’ll be passing the fibre cables to the apartments, has been blocked for over twenty years, and everyone knew this.

Nevertheless, the estate agency that manages the site gave everyone the go-ahead to apply for the installation. I was the first to apply. I had the engineers round who couldn’t install the cable because the telephone conduit is blocked, so on the 21st January I wrote to the Estate Agency to tell them.

Since then, nothing has happened. The estate agency hasn’t sent out a letter to people telling them of the problems, and as a result, there have been countless hours of technicians’ time lost, countless frustrating hours of residents’ time lost and the fabric of the building, a listed building of the “Patrimoine de France”, has been irreparably damaged by the two impatient residents who had technicians drill through the listed walls of the building.

Later on, a couple more technicians turned up to see me, to make a written report as I had asked. However, there was no need. I grabbed hold of another resident and Mme la Presidente and sent them off to speak to the technicians.

And surprise! Surprise! The technicians said exactly the same thing as those this morning and those who came to see me twice before.

Perhaps they’ll all believe me now.

After everyone left, Mme la Presidente came in for a chat and a piece of ginger cake, and once she’d left, I finished off editing the notes, assembling the radio programme, choosing the joining track and writing the notes for it.

This week, I’ve only actually written one programme instead of the two that I’ve been trying to do, but I’ve prepared two others, and tomorrow, I’ll try to prepare a third from the notes that I’ve dictated in the past. Then next week, I’ll go back to writing two more.

The stress and effort today were such that I crashed out in my chair as soon as I’d finished, and so tea was late. Beans with vegan cheese, chips and sausage followed by ginger cake and homemade ice cream. It’s not much of a success, texture-wise, but the taste is terrific, and I’ll make some more like that if my faithful cleaner can find some more of that banana-flavoured soya milk. The ground chocolate really added something special to it.

And that made me start thinking … "which is dangerous" – ed … I have some of these fruit cordials here of the type that you use to make fizzy drinks. How about a coconut milk-based one with chocolate and a stream of mint cordial running through it? There must be plenty of mileage with stuff like that, if the cordial won’t curdle the milk.

But that’s tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed, to sleep, perchance, to dream. Or, as Lee Jackson put it, YOU WOULD GIVE A SMALL FORTUNE TO GET BACK IN YOUR DREAMS

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about ice cream … "well, one of us has" – ed … at the ice cream van at the park where I used to take Roxanne on Sundays, an old man hobbled over, obviously in great difficulty walking.
"An ice cream cone please," he asked
"Certainly, sir" replied the vendor. "Crushed nuts?"
"No" replied the old man. "I always walk like this."

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