Category Archives: France

Sunday 24th March 2024 – WE’RE RUNNING LATE …

… yet again this evening. Once more, the late Mr Hall seems to be doing the business (or not, as the case may be).

The problem with a football match kick-off at an inconvenient time combining with a series of complicated manoeuvres … "PERSONOEUVRES" – ed … in the kitchen and things has conspired against me yet again.

For example, it’s currently 21:20 and I’ve still not eaten tonight’s pizza. It’s still cooking away in the oven.

Most of the cleaning-up in there has been done though so I’m not as tardy as all that but nevertheless things are still not going as they might or as I would like them yet again.

There is one bright spot – a very bright spot – on the horizon and I’ll tell you all about that in due course if you read on down the page.

And as for last night, I was late going to bed then too. Despite setting the alarm for 08:00 it was still well after midnight when I finally let it all hang out and went to bed. Not even 8 hours sleep, and on a Sunday morning too!

At least it was a really deep sleep and I remember very little about anything that went on. However, once more I awoke just before the alarm went off. So twice in succession now I’ve awoken just before 08:00 without any artificial aids. There’s obviously something going on somewhere.

But when the alarm went off I fell out of bed and sat down to recover and to compose myself. Not like Beethoven, who spent 57 years composing and then the next 197 years decomposing.

Once I was ready I checked the blood pressure to see how it was doing. 15.7/10.4, compared to 160/10.1 from the previous evening. It’ll be interesting to see what the reading will be on a real, accurate machine though because this one seems to produce results that bear no resemblance whatever to what figures they obtain at the hospital.

Anyway, so now that I’ve eaten my delicious pizza we can continue.

Once the nurse had been and gone, without complaining too much today, I made myself a coffee and had some cornflakes. There have to be some benefits if I’m going to be up and about so early.

And I gave Rosemary a terrible shock too. She’s apparently tried to contact me which I was baking and watching football yesterday so I sent her a message “any time this morning”. She was shocked because usually it’s “anyone who tries to disturb me before midday on a Sunday will be exterminated”.

While I was waiting for her to call back I took the stuff out of the freezer that I had put in yesterday, took it off the metal trays that I use so that everything freezes individually, and then stacked it all in the freezer, the burgers between layers of baking paper so that they don’t stick together.

Rosemary and I had another one of our marathon chats that go on for ever, putting the World to rights as usual, not that we can do very much about it. We’re both glad, though, that we don’t have to go through the chaos that is the UK and that we live over here.

And it looks as if this bunch of Auvergnats that has been threatening to come up to Normandy at some point really is happening. Not only have they booked a house up the road at Breville for their stay, every one of them has paid her share of the rental.

There’s some talk that they might even come and take me out for a day while they are here, which will be nice. It’ll be good to stretch my legs outside for once.

After we’d finished speaking I transcribed the dictaphone notes from last night. This was part of my flying patrol thing where one aeroplane has to stay out for a very long time so it has to take all of its equipment with it but it was seen by one lot of people flying over on its way out to pick up its stuff and they were looking out for it flying back again but without any success. The aeroplane in question has collected a lot of the smaller stuff that it needed and was going to stay out for a long time

Or so I said into the dictaphone. But my plan would have worked, with a few first-generation four-engined bombers like Stirlings and Halifaxes stripped of absolutely everything except the bare essentials and with a galley and bed in them, and based in Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland they could have had enough range to patrol the North Atlantic to provide defence against submarines operating in areas where more conventional aerial forces couldn’t reach.

It would have made an exciting novel anyway.

Later on I was out in the countryside following the trail of a film. Someone had written in asking what was the significance of the name of a pub “The Flying Anvil” and a few other things about a particular road during which a vehicle was filmed advancing in a film so I went down on my motorbike to have a look. I could filld The Flying Anvil easily enough but I was looking around for everything else that they’d asked about when I came to a “stop” sign in the road. There were all these people on motorbikes congregated around it blocking the road. I asked if I could advance. They said “yes” but sat with this meeting and I had to pass right through the crowd effectively but they didn’t move at all. I just had to sit there. One girl pulled up on a motorbike later and someone asked her if she’d dropped it. She replied “yes” – it had slipped from underneath her. They were just having this big discussion amongst them selves all across the road not caring whatever about anyone else who might have wanted to go through there and continue on their way.

Finally I was on my way around the town and went past a petrol station. The girls were filling up the petrol tanks of the two mopeds that we had but they had the windscreen washer bucket things underneath the frames of the mopeds. I asked them what was going on. I said that it looked awful, that. The girls said that the petrol station is sick and tired of us making a big mess when we come here. I asked what was the problem. They replied that the fuel tanks are leaking so much. Every time we fill up half of the stuff leaks all over the petrol station. I was furious because no-one ever told me anything about this. I asked why it was leaking. They replied “basically it’s George. He went to a camping exhibition with the two mopeds the other day and drove all the way with the choke fully open. That’s how he drives them. Every time he takes one of them somewhere he has the choke fully open so the petrol all leaks out everywhere. Now it does it all the time”. I was furious that no-one had ever mentioned it to me because obviously I can’t repair something or fix something if no-one ever tells me anything and no-one ever lets me know whether there’ a problem with anything.

And that’s the story of what I was doing 30-odd years ago. It seemed that common sense was in very short supply back in those days and by the looks of things, nothing much has changed. Everyone talks about “Artificial Intelligence” as being the thing of the moment. But in my opinion what we need is less Artificial Intelligence and more Natural Intelligence.

And if we had enough of the latter, we wouldn’t need any of the former.

So abandoning another good rant for the moment, I went and began to prepare the Hot Cross buns. Easter just isn’t Easter without Hot Cross Buns toasted and with piles of butter sinking in.

Having checked the other day, I found that I did have almost everything that I needed and what I didn’t have I couldn’t get anyway, so it was a simple matter of collecting everything together.

Liz had given me some advice about making the liquid wetter than the recipe suggests so instead of 150 ml of milk I used 160, and 30 mg of butter instead of 25.

Learning from my past mistakes, I took my time and prepared everything carefully. And then slowly and gently, but for a considerable time, kneaded the dough together just as if I was massaging Zero’s clavicles.

While it was proofing I went off to watch the first half of the football, Airdrie United v TNS in the final of this Scottish FA Challenge competition.

Connah’s Quay Nomads had lost to Ross County in the 2019 Final by 2-1 after going a goal up, so when TNS scored early in the game to go in front, I was reminded of Terry Venables and his quote "if history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again".

And I wasn’t disappointed because Airdrie scored after 25 minutes to sent the players in at half-time equal at 1-1

What I did was to go into the kitchen to give the dough a second kneading, add in the dried fruit and some fleur d’orange flavouring.

The second half of the game was a foregone conclusion. TNS failed to penetrate the Airdrie defence for the remainder of the game and after about an hour, conceded a very soft penalty. And that was that.

But once again, I really don’t understand TNS’s tactics. 2-1 down and with the game slipping away, and they are passing the ball around on the edge of the opponents’ penalty area retaining possession but making no attempt to put the ball into the penalty area.

You don’t win games if you don’t score goals, and you don’t score goals if you don’t make any attempts. The more shots you have, the more likely you are to score.

This “it’s all about retaining possession” which seems to be the modern way of thinking is all pretty pointless really. It doesn’t produce any results. If you look closely, this “playing the ball out of defence” from a goal kick or a keeper’s clearance has led to more mistakes and more goals conceded by the team’s defence than it’s led to goals being scored by the team’s attackers.

Once the game was over I went into the kitchen, split the dough into 6 equal parts, kneaded each part again and put it on the baking tray. And then, using the little icing bag that I’d bought ages ago, made the crosses on my buns, not very artistically it has to be said.

While they were proofing I kneaded the pizza dough that I’d taken out of the freezer earlier and which had been defrosting. Then I rolled it out and put it on the tray, leaving it all to fester.

Back in the kitchen later when the pizza base had risen, I switched on the oven and shoved in the buns, and then assembled my pizza.

And when my buns had cooked, I couldn’t believe it. They had risen like a lift and looked exactly like shop-bought buns ought to look. This was the first time that I have ever had such stupendous, satisfactory results when I’ve been bread-making and I’m almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

If I can make buns like this some other time I’ll be more than happy

The pizza was delicious too although it could have done with another 5 minutes in the oven.

So my Welsh Easter course starts tomorrow. That should keep me out of mischief for four days or so. I’ll have to prepare for it of course, so that will be the task after the nurse has gone. It’s not like the time that they told me at the hospital that I was going to have a blood test the following morning so I sat up all night studying.

At least, with the course being run by the college in Caerfyrddin there’s not likely to be anyone on the course who knows me, like last time. The World is far too small for my liking. A teacher at my old school on my current course and a student from Nantwich on a previous holiday course.

It’s becoming rather like 2000 again when Marianne and I went to Rome for Holy Week and she was invited to see the Pope. I was determined not to miss out so when he appeared on the balcony to bless the crowds I shinned up the ivy to meet him and say hello.
All of the newspapers all over the World had it in their headlines next day "MYSTERY MAN ON HOLY BALCONY IN VATICAN"
And in small print underneath "Who was the man up there with Eric Hall?"

0

Saturday 23rd March 2023 – A FEW MONTHS AGO …

… I bought a cheap hamburger press, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It was rather like an old flat iron made of plastic, with all kinds of sizes that fit inside each other like a Russian doll

It was rather cheap, both in price and quality, so I didn’t think that it would be all that much good. However I have to say that despite all that, I really am impressed with it. Almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin, and that will stir a few memories from times long-gone.

Actually my friend in Munich sent me ages ago a packet of dried stuff that he’d found in a vegan shop down there and posted it to me. So today I added water and mixed it, left it alone to do its thing and then out came the hamburger press

It actually made a nice, professional job of the rehydrated stuff and I now have four big, really solid burgers and as I said just now, I’m almost as impressed with them as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

“Whatever happened to that?” I asked myself. The last time that I saw it, it was being used as a brazier to burn a pile of weeds down the garden when I used to have my raised beds and vegetable plots. It’s probably now thoroughly and completely overwhelmed with weeds and been pulled into the soil.

It’s 10 years ago since I last planted any veg down on the farm. I had quite a lot of stuff there that year too. The following year I cracked on with the bedroom all the way through the spring and summer ad finished it – and actually moved in.

But we all know what happened in the autumn that year, don’t we?

It was almost 10 years that I lived full-time down on the farm and despite the primitive conditions I really enjoyed it. I keep on thinking – and hoping – that I’ll go back to live down there once more but I doubt that I’ll ever see it again.

For a start, I can no longer drive, and that’s always going to be a serious consideration. And then regular readers of this rubbish will recall the photos of when I was last there and it was overwhelmed by brambles. I no longer have the energy to fight my way to the front door.

Last time it took three of us – Rosemary, Ingrid and Yours Truly – a whole afternoon to reach the front door, and the time before that it was with Terry and he had brought his industrial-scale equipment to clear the path.

Still, as Dan Quayle once famously said, "It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back"

So I shall go past into the back and say that for a change I was in something of a hurry to go to bed last night. I didn’t hang about at all.

It was another good sleep as well and I was fighting fit (well, sort-of) when the alarm aronsed me from my slumbers.

First thing was, as usual, to check the blood pressure. 15.1/9.0 this morning, up from 14.5/9.3 last night. So something must have annoyed me last night. And if you want to know what it was, you’ll have to read on.

After the medication I came back in here, but not for long. The nurse, having been late yesterday, was early today. Today’s moan was that the plastic bag I’d put out for him wasn’t big enough and that I need to wash my puttees. I wonder what tomorrow’s will be

The bread for my cheese on toast was delicious. I had a really nice breakfast later this morning. And then I had a pleasant relax and watched a film.

Another film that has come out of copyright is HELLZAPOPPIN’ so I spent a very pleasant 85 minutes watching it, and it was nice to relax for a change.

It’s not a film to everyone’s taste because it’s partly a musical and "YOU’RE NOT GOING INTO THE SONG WHILE I’M HERE" but where its interest lies is that if ever you want to know where all of the humourists of the 1960s and early 70s like Monty Python and Marty Feldman obtained their ideas, it’s all here, everything and much more besides, and it was done in 1941.

As far as comedy and humour goes, it was light years ahead of its time and will still run the course today.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. We’d all gone out as a family together. We all had lifts with various different people so we were all spread out amongst the cars etc. A guy in a mobile home, the type that’s a shell that fits onto the back of your vehicle, took a fancy to one of my sisters. He persuaded her to travel with him. They disappeared but the rest of us kept going in a kind of convoy. We ended up stopping for the night somewhere at the side of a river. Just then this guy appeared with his camper. He wound down his window and said that he was terribly sorry but something had happened to our sister – some other people had come along, taken her, kidnapped her and carried her off. My mother said “I bet that she’s in the back of your camper”, just strode over there and wrenched open the door. My sister was in there on the bed lying down. She began to tell her tale of woe about everything that had happened to her, with my mother and brother becoming more and more angry as the story unfolded about this kidnap.

So there you are – that’s the reason that my blood pressure was up. I had the family round last night. I don’t ask them to come to visit me during the night but they always seem to, far too often for my liking. Why can’t I have Zero, TOTGA and Castor round as often as them?

But kidnapping my family members one by one sounds like a good idea. But you can all think of an idea for the ransom note – "pay us £5,000 or we’ll send them back".

That reminds me of the time when I fuelled up in Stoke on Trent only to find that I’d left my wallet behind at home. I had to leave my friend at the petrol station as hostage while I went to his house to fetch some money

When I told his wife what was the problem she told me not to bother going back, and to leave him there for good

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed we had a taxi job to do, to drive someone up to Newcastle upon Tyne for a meeting and then take them on to Edinburgh later. There was only one daytime driver and me about. The receptionist left a note for the daytime driver “be in the office 04:40 ready for a long trip”. I thought that long trips and office workers all on account etc don’t pay very much in tips if anything so I’d go to do that and let the driver carry on doing normal jobs. The only car we had was an old two-door Japanese thing from the late 1960s or early 1970s. It made something of a racket but I’d been out a few times in it and it seemed to do the job. A good long run like that would probably do it good. Of course Edinburgh – I had my niece in Edinburgh so I could go to see her. I tried to contact her but there was no luck. I thought “should I just turn up at the University there and speak to her?”. I thought that that’s probably not a good idea. But I was impressed that we had this job, going all that way but I was really disappointed that we didn’t have a better car available other than this old Japanese thing.

And that was an age-old problem too. We’d occasionally have some really high-quality work to do but never seemed to have a decent car available to do it, and when we did have a really decent car we’d never have the work. At times I despaired.

This afternoon I went a food-making.

Firstly, as I said, my friend in Munich had sent me some burger mix so I added the water, stirred it all in and then left it to fester for 20 minutes as according to the instructions

There was a box of do-it-yourself falafel powder on the shelves as I discovered when I did some tidying up a few weeks ago. So I added some water to that and left that to fester as per the instructions.

While that was doing its stuff the first lot was ready so with the hamburger press I made four really good and solid burger-types of things. They are busy freezing even as we speak.

As for the falafel, I divided that up into little balls and they are busy freezing too, along with a couple of balls that I made from the left-over stuff from the first mix.

But I’m pleased with this hamburger press as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … It’s really simple and cheap but it made some really solid burgers and it gives me much more confidence about making more burgers from ad-hoc ingredients.

Finally there was the home-made mayonnaise. And once again, that seemed to work in spades. I made it rather more liquidy than before so we’ll see how that works out. It ended up making quite a lot more than I can use in its shelf-life, so I’ve sealed to top on the jars quite tightly.

Yes, having learned my lesson, I’ve put the mayonnaise in a better container or two.

Then we had the football – Y Bala V Connah’s Quay Nomads in one if the Welsh Cup semi-finals, played at Llandudno’s picturesque ground. And it was actually being broadcast on foreign carriers too after the disappointments of the last few games.

The first 75 minutes of the match were nothing to write home about, but it’s really hard to play creative football in a tornado.

However both sides made a couple of substitutions with 15 minutes to go and that kickstarted the game dramatically. Those last 15 minutes wee much more like the football we’d expect to see and Aron Williams scored a late winner to push the Nomads into the finals.

But spare a thought for Josh Ukek of Y Bala, who will probably go down in the record books as being on the field for the shortest period of time ever.

He came on as a substitute for Bala late in the game but almost immediately Kieran Smith, a central defender, was sent off for two bookings. Now a central defender down, Colin Caton, the Bala manager, now wanted to send on a central defender off the bench to shore up the defence.

And Ukek, who had only just come onto the field, was the man who was withdrawn to make way.

Tea was as usual a salad, baked potato and breaded quorn fillet. I know that it all seems to be the same, but I happen to like it so I don’t care.

And now rather late this evening, I’m off to bed. There’s an alarm in the morning for the nurse is coming (so I’ve washed my puttees already) so I’ll feel like death for the rest of the day. Today, I actually fell asleep for five minutes during the football.

But before I go, that story about tightly closing the lid on the mayonnaise jar did remind me of the guy who rang up his doctor
"You know those pills that you gave me to give me strength?"
"Yes" said the doctor. "How are they going?"
"I don’t know" replied the man. "I can’t get the top off the bottle".

0

Friday 22nd March 2024 – I’M NOT HAVING …

… much luck with my footfest this weekend. Cymru’s Under-21 match against Lithuania isn’t being streamed on a foreign carrier either tonight.

It’s just my luck, after last night’s stunning victory of the senior team against Finland following on from Cymru’s “C” team against England on Wednesday night. I was really looking forward to some football tonight. Watching Stranraer slump to a controversial 2-1 defeat to Elgin City on the swamp that is Stair Park was hardly any compensation

It’s been a really long time since I was at Stair Park – almost 50 years in fact. I was coming off the ferry from one of my trips to Northern Ireland when I saw crowds (well, perhaps not “crowds”) of people heading all in one direction, all wearing blue and white scarves. So I had to follow them to see what was going on, as if I didn’t know.

It’s so long ago now that I can’t remember who they were playing. Probably someone like Arbroath or Montrose or something. And as I don’t have my photos here from that period, I can’t even tell you the colours. But one thing that I can tell you is that the ground hasn’t changed one iota in that time. It still looks the same as it did back then.

Mind you, that’s a relief. The Taylor Report swept away many traditional football grounds and with football attendances in Scotland being what they are, we were left with far too many of these modern, soulless one-sided wonders with “room to build the other three sides when attendances improve”.

Yes, quite.

The problem in Scottish football can be summed up in two words, “Celtic” and “Rangers”.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous versions will recall that I stood outside Albion Rovers’ ground in Coatbridge where the average attendance was about 300 watching busload after busload of people wearing green and white or blue and white scarves all heading into Glasgow.

And then I was at Broadwood in Cumbernauld once watching a game between Glasgow Rangers reserves v Celtic reserves, both teams full of players that would have been a boon and an asset to any other club in Scotland. Rangers and Celtic had signed them not because they needed them but because they didn’t want any other club to have them and become a competitive threat.

And absolutely nothing whatever has changed, except that Albion Rovers have been relegated from the Scottish pyramid into the Lowland League. But as former Spurs manager Terry Venables once famously said, "if history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again"

However, I digress … "again" – ed …

Last night was another one of those nights where I couldn’t tear myself out of my chair and into bed. It was something like 01:30 when I finally moved a muscle and set about doing my nightly chores. I’ve absolutely no idea what’s happening to me right now about this.

Anyway it was another really deep sleep like last night where I can’t remember a single thing until the alarm went off

When it awoke me I really was dead to the world and I had quite a battle to raise myself from the dead. They talk about “the quick and the dead” in Biblical terms but there was nothing whatever quick about it.

First thing was to check the blood pressure. 15.9/100, pretty similar to last night’s 16.0/10.1, taken when I was feeling rather stressed out trying to exert myself to go to bed. So what was winding me up during the night?

Anyway I wandered off into the kitchen to sort out the medication. I’m beginning to run low on certain things again – just supplies of a few of the tablets for a couple of weeks. I need to keep an eye on everything to make sure that I don’t run out.

Next task was to make the bread. And I put a lot of thought and effort into this lot and tried my best to knead it correctly, which is not easy.

After that I went for a good wash, scrub up and shave and all of that kind of thing, as well as washing to shorts that I’ve started to wear in bed. But I didn’t get as far as I would have liked because for once in his life the nurse was here early.

When he came in, he saw the bread buns slowly rising, said “oh look, bread!” and poked one, which promptly sank

He eventually managed to find a vein and extract some blood. And I’ve had the results already. The red blood count is slowly rising, which is no surprise given the amount of stuff they are injecting into me every Wednesday, but so is the carcinogenic protein. It should be between 59 and 104 and it’s increased from 267 to 275.

So if the red blood cells are increasing, what is the protein attacking? The answer is that it’s now attacking the platelets. They should be between 140 and 380 and they have decreased from 108 to 92. That would seem to indicate that the cancer is now moving into my bone marrow.

So what’s the next move going to be? Someone will tell me something in due course, I imagine.

Having switched off the heating in the apartment, I checked the bread again and it had risen really well and for once I was impressed, especially as I’m making hot cross buns on Sunday and I need some confidence and encouragement.

The bread baked perfectly too, lovely and soft. It made some really nice cheese on toast and there is bread for the next couple of days too

Later on today I went to pay the Property Taxes on my place in Canada. I tried for an age unsuccessfully to log into my bank account, only to discover that I was trying to access Scotia Bank Trinidad and Tobago rather than Scotia Bank Canada.

Once I’d found the correct bank, everything went really smoothly. I do like how easy it is to make payments and so on in the Canadian banking system

It’s not so easy making payments on-line in France to the French Government.

The French Government has at long last started a system of on-line payments where you can pay your bills via internet rather than sending a cheque. I went to set it up for me this afternoon, but it’s not easy.

The logical way to organise payments is to index everything by reference to a person’s identity card number, so you can log in, see your account, see what’s owing and pay it off all at once with just one payment.

Instead, everything is indexed by invoice number, so if you have more than one bill to pay, as I did, you have to log in more than once, entering all of your details, including card details, more than once, and it takes an age.

What makes life even more complicated is that it asks you to enter certain details from the invoices into certain boxes on the computer screen, and the names don’t correspond. You have to use some intuitive guesswork to figure it all out.

But what am I going to do about my place in Canada?

it was an inspired decision to buy it because all you need when dealing with Canadian administration is a Property Tax Assessment. I could open bank accounts, buy pick-ups, obtain insurance, have mobile phones, all of that, simply on production of a Property Tax Assessment and it eased my passage (if you’ll pardon the expression) around Canada.

But I’m never going to use it now and it’s just going to sit there with the apples falling off the trees year after year until the cows come home unless my niece goes up there to pick them up.

But while we’re talking about Canada … "well, one of us is" – ed … I wonder how Strider is getting on with his new owners. We travelled miles together, him, me and STRAWBERRY MOOSE. I hope that they are looking afer him.

And that reminds me – I told my niece to dispose of most of the stuff that was in there – tools, camping gear, expedition equipment and so on – but there was a Fender bass and amp in there that I used that I wanted her to keep for me. I need to think of a way of bringing them over here.

The cleaner came round this afternoon for her Friday cleaning spot, bringing my mushrooms and tomatoes with her. I retreated into my bedroom while she was here but I actually had a fall while I was in the bathroom. Luckily the chair was in my way and I fell onto that, otherwise it could have been nasty

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too, surprisingly. I had several Ford Corsairs in my drive last night. One of them was driven away and I can’t remember where it went. Someone else borrowed a set of my number-plates but hadn’t brought them back and I was becoming rather concerned about that. Anyway there was some more car-swapping that needed to be done. I had to bring another Ford Cortina into my drive. That was parked in Gainsborough Road so I had to go down there to it, start it and bring it back. That was a Safari Beige colour but I was thinking that if I were to paint it blue I could put on the number-plates that this guy had borrowed because they belonged to a blue estate. I could make a set of plates but what would be the position if someone saw both vehicles, mine and the one on which presumably the guy had put the plates, and noticed that there were two vehicles with the same set of plates? What would my neighbours say if I were to turn up with yet another car after I’d just had one taken away somewhere? I got into the Cortina Estate. The clutch was right down on the floor and it was difficult to start. I thought that I better hadn’t leave vehicles lying around for so long without actually starting them up otherwise I’m just going to make myself a lot of problems

This is something of a recurring dream, isn’t it, having Cortinas scattered all around the town. It’s just like in real life when I actually did, including a beige Cortina estate and a blue one too.

But swapping over number plates from one car to another? And VIN plates too? I look back on those years with amazement and wonder how on earth I managed to keep clear of some serious trouble. Six months at Her Majesty’s Pleasure would have been nothing. I had to stop and leave the country because those years were catching up on me rather rapidly

My excuse was though that when you are up to your neck in alligators, it’s hard to realise that you are really trying to drain the swamp. Taking drastic and rapid steps to solve short-term issues can lead to some really long-term problems further down the line.

It’s a surprise though having Ford Corsairs around the place for a change. I didn’t think that it would be too long though before a Cortina or two appeared.

So this afternoon I’ve chosen some more music for another radio programme and began to pair it off before tea but I ran out of time, mainly due to going away with the fairies for an hour or so. And miles away too, it has to be said.

But tea was lovely – the last Kale and Quinoa burger from Noz, and I’ll have to find a way of making those because they were nice, especially in breadcrumbs.

Last of the home-made mayonnaise too, although it might not have been had I used a more convenient container. Still, you live and learn.

However, the mayonnaise was an unqualified success. It was too thick and I’d used too much garlic, but those are minor problems. The principle was perfect and tomorrow, I’ll make some more, having learned from my first batch.

So what with that and making hot cross buns on Sunday it looks as if I’m going to be in for a busy weekend. And it’ll do me good right now because I seem to be doing too much of nothing right now.

So what else can I make while I’m at it? I shall have to pick Liz’s brains, and I’ll welcome any suggestions from anyone else too

But before I go, the story of my mayonnaise in the wrong bottle reminds me of that aerosol that came onto the market in the 70s. The publicity for it went something like "enough paint to cover 70 square metres of panelling"
And someone wrote underneath the advert "and enough propellant to get just about a quarter of it out of the can"

0

Thursday 21st March 2024 – THE BAD NEWS …

… is that tonight’s part of the footfest i.e. Cymru v Finland isn’t being “streamed to your country” on any service that I can find. And so it looks as if I shall be missing out on that.

Somewhere on my computer is “Tor” – a strange kind of browser and so in theory I could configure an anonymous VPN that would make it look as if my computer is situated in the UK but by the time that I do that the game will be over anyway.

It’s something that I suppose I ought to have considered but never mind. Here’s hoping that tomorrow night’s match is free to air in foreign places like here.

It’s been ages since I last set foot on a Welsh football ground. The last “live” match that I saw in Wales was Bangor v Rhyl in the Welsh Premier League and it was so long ago that Lee Kendall was keeping goal for Rhyl and I was there with Liz (not “this” Liz but “that” Liz) and she shuffled off this mortal coil in 2009.

It’s a far cry since the time I used to have a girlfriend at Bangor University. I’d be up there every weekend and while she was washing her smalls in the University laundry on a Saturday afternoon I’d be on the terraces at Farrar Road.

Those days are long-gone of course, and so in fact has Farrar Road. It’s now a supermarket.

And so, incidentally, have Rhyl and Bangor football clubs. At Rhyl the owner simply threw in the towel at the end of one season and at Bangor, there were the well-documented problems with a couple of characters “known to the forces of Law and Order” who became involved in the club.

However, we do have new clubs in the towns and they had to start afresh from the bottom of the pyramid. Bangor’s new team has fought its way up to the second tier and Rhyl’s new team is just one step behind. However it’ll be a long time before I ever see them again.

Not so long maybe until I see the old girlfriend again though. She’s appeared in these pages a few times – the one who we met in a pub near Oswestry who still looked as if she was 16 or 17 even then – and we still keep in touch occasionally. There’s been some kind of vague and indefinite discussion about her and her partner maybe flexing their muscles on the mainland.

They did once come to see me in Brussels and we all went skiing together once in Eastern Europe, the two of them, me and Percy Penguin.

So anyway, as things go, it took another age to do everything that I needed to do before going to bed last night and as usual it ended up being later than I would have liked, which is the story of my life right now. it brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “the late Mr Hall”.

And if there is a deeper sleep than the one that I had last night I would love to see it. When the alarm went off I was so deep that I needed a ladder to climb out.

It took a while to orientate myself – even more so than usual – and then I wandered off to take my medication, resisting today the temptation to stick my head under the cold tap.

Having done that I prepared everything for the arrival of the nurse who would fit my puttees and take the blood test that he had postponed yesterday and planned to do today.

But I was right about those being “famous last words”. He “didn’t have time” today and will “do it tomorrow”. And we’ll see about that as well. Never put off until tomorrow what you can postpone indefinitely.

Most of the day has been spent having a slow and steady saunter through the radio stuff. I’ve finished writing all the notes for the radio programme that I started yesterday and I’ve been working on two more programmes today.

One of them is rather complicated because a lot has happened on one of those particular days in past years and I need to track down a pile of stuff. And then I have to choose some music from albums that I don’t know too well.

On top of that, there are also a couple of birthdays of some rather obscure artists, like for example Steve Miller’s drummer. Having to trawl through Miller’s albums to find stuff that his drummer wrote and sang took an age.

Another thing in connection with the radio is that I’ve finally made a start (only a very slow one, of course) cataloguing the live concerts that I have, trying to find the dates that they were recorded.

Some are so famous that their dates are well-known, like the Lindisfarne ones or the “Marshall Tucker Christmas Eve” concert. Shrewsbury Folk Festival’s itinerary is on line.

Some are much more obscure but there’s A SITE ON THE INTERNET where people post the setlists of concerts that they have seen and by comparing what’s on the tapes that I have with published playlists, I’m hoping to match the concerts to the dates.

It would of course have been much easier if the dates had been written on the tapes when they were recorded, but we were young, naïve and innocent. And in any case, several of the labels have fallen off with the passage of time anyway

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too. Not much, but with a sleep as deep as the one that I had, it’s no surprise. And by the looks of things I missed some stuff out at the beginning. What I dictated was “I was pushed back by the fog and had to have a native guide or something to help me make my way through the country back to where we were. When that boy asked me what was going on I had to explain it to him how come I was having all these difficulties and why I was so late arriving” – and that’s your lot.

It’s rather like the committee of the Football Association of Wales. They need a few native bearers and guides if they have to go north of the “heads of the valleys”.
"What? To show them the way?"
"No. To carry the drinks cabinet"

But to be fair, the FAW isn’t the only Welsh organisation (and I use that term in its official, not literal, of course, sense) that thinks that there’s nothing much further north of the “heads of the valleys” except sheep and Druids.

Tea tonight was some of those Chinese stuffed pastry things with fried rice. It was lovely of course, but it could have been even nicer. It wasn’t a full bottle of soy sauce that I had on the worktop but an empty dark brown bottle of the aforementioned. Who puts stuff like that in a dark brown bottle where you can’t see how much is left?

So with no football I’m going to bed when I’ve done my tasks. Tomorrow morning I’m bread-making if I remember. I hope that it will rise up like it did last week. That was a much better batch and I can’t think of what I did right.

But thinking about that skiing holiday that I mentioned earlier, that was the time a couple of us ended up being stuck in the mountains in a thick fog when they stopped the ski lifts and everyone went home. We had to pick our way down the mountain, which would have been difficult when you could see where you are going, never mind in a thick fog.
"The first thing that I’m going to do when I get back to the hotel" I said to one of the people with me "is to give Percy Penguin a good seeing-to "
"What’s the second thing that you’ll do?" he asked.
"I dunno" I replied. "Take my skis off, probably."

0

Wednesday 20th March 2024 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… night where I ended up not going to bed until after 02:30 or so. And this is becoming ridiculous.

As usual, it’s just that I can’t seem to find the effort to carry out the simplest of tasks, like going to bed. Everything really is churned up at the moment.

Some of the side-effects of some of these pills and tablets that I take are frightening. Eyesight issues is of course one of them, and a state of confusion and disorientation is another. And I can say without a shadow of a doubt that they are correct.

The burning question of the day is not O’Rafferty’s Motor Car but that if they are right about those effects, what about the others? And if so, why haven’t I noticed them? And if I haven’t noticed them, has anyone else?

It reminds me of the story that Dr Keith Simpson, the Home Office Pathologist used to tell after he’d retired
"I’m not going to sit around and become old, decrepit, doddery and senile" he said. "If ever I get like that I’ve told the wife to have an “accident” cleaning the shotgun"
"Blimey!" piped up a voice from the crowd. "She’s leaving it rather late, isn’t she?"

Another one of the side effects of one of the tablets is “impotence”. And by that I don’t mean that you have your own article in Who’s Who, or even like some famous animals who have their own article in Who’s Zoo.

But that side-effect probably explains why TOTGA, Castor and Zero haven’t been around for a while. It tells me everything that I need to know.

Every cloud though has a silver lining. And while I was trying to find the motivation to go to bed I came across a couple of albums from a Hungarian rock group called Karpàtia, about which I’d completely forgotten. There isn’t half a pile of all kinds of obscure stuff around here.

Anyway I eventually found my way into bed, fully-clothed because there was no point undressing for such a short period of time in bed.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and you’ve no idea how much effort that was – or maybe you can imagine it. It was all of about 10 minutes before I could manage to open my eyes and find the blood pressure machine. 14.6/8.6 so the night can’t have been all that bad.

And to my surprise, I noticed that I had taken it before hitting the hay earlier. 15.1/8.5, and that’s not all that unreasonable either, compared to how things have been in the past.

Sticking my head under the cold tap didn’t help much but I went off and took my tablets, hoping that one of them had a side-effect of insomnia.

While I was waiting for the nurse I had another go at re-arranging the medical stuff, which he promptly re-re-arranged into a state of disorder just a few seconds after arrival.

He didn’t realise that he had to do these puttees every day, and then there wasn’t enough room in my apartment, and I didn’t have any disposable gloves, and my veins aren’t good enough for home-sampling, etc. etc. etc und so weiter.

In the end he abandoned the attempt at the blood test and he’ll do it tomorrow when he has more time. That’s what I call “famous last words”, isn’t it?

After all of that I was in no state whatever to start any work this morning and it wasn’t until this afternoon that things set off under way. I reviewed and dispatched the radio programme for this weekend and then started on another one. I’ve chosen the music, remixed it for broadcast, paired it off and joined up the pairs, and even written some of the notes. That was quite an effort, the way that I’m feeling.

The cleaner came round as well, so I have a nice, clean apartment. And we had a good moan at each other too, putting the world to rights. Not that it’ll do much good, but there you are.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too from the night, which was a surprise. There was some kind of convention with a lot of guys from work etc. attending. I had my list of keep fit exercises that I do in bed and I’d brought it with me. For some reason or other I ended up in a real tangle doing one set of exercises and had to call in the stewards or something to help me untangle myself. I can’t remember all that much about it.

That’s actually a real issue. With not having sufficient force to raise my legs when I’m lying down in bed, they do have a tendency to become tangled up in each other on occasions and I have to use my hands to pull on a leg to free it off from the other. What I’m going to do when I no longer have the force in my arms, I haven’t decided yet.

Tea was lovely. A beautiful leftover curry with rice, vegetables and a naan bread. A leftover curry may not sound exciting but the way that I cook it, it really is.

And that reminds me – while we’re on the subject of curries … "well, one of us is" – ed … I shall have to make certain arrangements about acquiring some more spices from the Asian supermarket in Leuven now that I can no longer go. I’m not running out yet, but I don’t want to take any chances and I need to make sure that I have a good stock on hand.

So that’s my notes written up, and I’ve only crashed out twice, I’m off to do what I need to do before going to bed. As Gandalf said in LORD OF THE RINGS, "Go where you must go, and hope".

And as Shakespeare wrote in “Henry VI” – "Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.". But I can’t remember now whether he said that in Henry VI part I, part II or part III.

One thing that I always wondered about when Shakespeare wrote those three parts of the play, did he run adverts in between the parts or was it just the News?

0

Tuesday 19th March 2024 – I’M RATHER LATE …

… writing my notes tonight as I’m in the middle of an exciting, busy week this week.

We’re having a footfest right now – on Thursday there’s a World Cup qualifying match between Cymru and Finland, then on Friday there’s Cymru under-21s in a Youth Cup qualifying match against Lithuania.

On Saturday there’s league football where Y Bala entertain a stuttering Connah’s Quay Nomads, who last weekend lost their third game in a row for the first time in 9 years, and then Sunday in the Scottish FA’s Challenge Cup, it’s the final between Airdrie and TNS, where the latter attempt to bring the Cup out of Scotland for the first time ever apart from when Berwick Rangers won it.

Tonight though it was the turn of the Welsh Premier League’s representative 11 to take on England’s National League team at Stebonheath, the home ground of Llanelli FC.

The match was a very tight affair with few chances for either side but a beautiful free kick right on the stroke of half-time from Caernarfon’s Sion Bradley was enough to win it.

How ever it could all have been so different but for a brilliant save from Y Bala’s goalkeeper Kelland Absalom deep into stoppage time.

It’s not quite the heady 4-0 win at Caernarfon 2 years ago but it makes up for the 1-0 loss at Altrincham last season

It’s an exciting annual competition this, but wouldn’t it be nice if they could broaden the challenge a little and include semi-pro teams from Scotland and the two Irelands, and make it a real league.

That’s not all the football by the way, but the match in this strange European amateur challenge competition between second-division Llantwit Fadre and Enfield Town isn’t being broadcast anywhere as far as I can see.

That was an interesting match in the previous round when Llantwit Fadre, the minniows in the competition, knocked out the Danish club that had founded the competition.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

Last night, despite finishing my notes with time to spare, there’s that much to do at the end of the evening that it was still later than I would have liked before I ended up in bed and it’s the kind of thing that is getting on my nerves.

But once in bed I actually had a good sleep and to my surprise, I was wide-awake quite early. So much so that I was actually up before the alarm went off. And it’s been a long time since that happened.

After taking the blood pressure – 14.2/8.5, so it must have been a calm, refreshing night because before going to bed it was 16.2/9.4 – I went off to take the medication and then did some tidying up of the medical stuff in the living room and rearranged it all.

Mind you, I needn’t have bothered. The nurse apparently forgot me, or some such thing, because he never turned up to wind on my puttees. That was really annoying because I had to wait around when I had plenty of other things to do.

Mind you I’m seeing him in the morning when he comes to inject me and take my blood sample, so we’ll discuss the matter then.

There were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. Not many of them again, which is disappointing. I’d travelled to Limoges on a job. Then I was relaunching my delivery service. There was a big building there that was occupied by a company called Locanest which gave me the impression that it was actually one of these cubicle rental-types of places. I thought that that might be a good place to go in order to hand out some leaflets. I tracked down the building, parked up outside and went in. A followed the signs and walked through a door into a room where there were about 20 or 30 people buzzing around. This looked like Locanest’s head office but no-one took the slightest bit of notice of me, even the people who were coming past. After I’d been standing there a few minutes I said “it’s OK, don’t rush, don’t bother. I can stand here all day if I have to”. Some girl piped up something about “well, we all have our work to do, we all have our jobs to do. We have to do them here” to which I replied “yes. So as I said, I’m quite happy to stand around all day. We can all stand around all day and that will be fine”. Eventually someone came to see me and to talk to me.

Yes, I can be sarcastic in a crisis. The keys to this kind of problem are

  1. 1 – Unlimited time
  2. 2 – Unlimited money – well, in a realistic sense

It brings back many happy memories of AN EX-NEIGHBOUR OF MINE who in a similar situation once said "I’ll stay here as long as they will" and then if you have the time, you can grind them down with your persistence and patience.

A schoolfriend of mine once told me that his parents went to see someone in his office but he had persistently refused to see them in the past. So having been stonewalled by the receptionist yet again, they sat down at a table, took from a bag that they had taken a thermos flask of tea, a pile of sandwiches and a couple of good books, and prepared for a siege.

It didn’t take them long to be seen after that.

Of course, if you have the money too so that there’s no pressing need to be elsewhere, then it’s an even more comfortable situation to be in.

Unfortunately, these days, the competitive spirit in these kinds of situations is evaporating rapidly and the response now is to “call Security” and have you bodily ejected from the premises. As I said the other day, the world is changing, and it’s not changing for the better. The lunatics have taken over the asylum.

So with no nurse, I prepared for my Welsh lesson. And despite putting a lot of effort into it, I still wasn’t happy with my performance today. I need to improve, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … so here’s hoping that this Easter course will inject some life into me.

It was our last day today before Easter and lessons don’t restart until 9th April. So it’s a long time to go from after my Easter course finishes until we restart. I shall have to think of a cunning plan. Mind you, with all this football that I’ll be watching, there might be some more stuff that will stick if I’m lucky.

Towards the end of the lesson I caught myself just as I was about to have one of these moments where my lights go out. That could have been embarrassing had I slipped over the edge into the void so I was lucky. But it’s actually disturbing how easily it happens. What with that and my double vision, it’s a good job that I no longer drive.

While we’re on the subject of double vision … "well, one of us is" – ed … I rang the hospital 4 times ti cancel my appointment but with no luck at all to be put through to the Opthalmology department. Then I was in my lesson, and after the lesson it was too late.

That’s a shame, isn’t it?

This afternoon I’ve not done much. Just a pile of personal stuff. That took me up to teatime and my taco roll with rice and veg. Plenty of stuffing left for a base for a vegan curry tomorrow with my naan bread.

But were OK for cheese and so on at the moment because my faithful cleaner was at LeClerc and she stocked up. Apparently it’s selling out quite quickly so next time she goes, she’ll have to buy all that she sees

So with everything finished, I’m off to bed. I suppose that tomorrow I’d better start work again after a few lazy days once the nurse has been to inject me, if he remembers.

But I’m sorry that I missed that eyesight test. I suppose that I could always reply by saying "I couldn’t see the entrance to the building" – that would confuse them.

The last time that I went to have my eyes tested, the optician told me "I’m terribly sorry, but the results of your tests aren’t very good"
"That’s bad news" I said. "Can I see them?"
"Probably not" said the optician

0

Monday 18th March 2024 – I’M SUPPOSED TO …

… be going to Paris tomorrow for a visit to the opthalmologists’s at the hospital.

When I was at the hospital just now I mentioned that this blurred vision that I’m having right now is interrupting just about everything that I do.

It’s not just blurred vision either but for objects close too, I’m actually seeing double. Double just about everything, except my bank account, that is. You try watching a football match on the internet when you see it like that.

At least that explains why there are so many tpying errors and faults in the speling. I’m not able to poof-read what I type because I can’t see it.

However, there is absolutely no chance whatever of me being anywhere near Paris tomorrow. For a start, I need a bon de transport for the trip, which they never sent, and then the trip needs to be approved by the Social Services.

And then I need to book a car to take me, always assuming that there’s one available at short notice and always assuming that the trip is approved.

Approval won’t be for a couple of weeks, so that immediately rules out any possibility whatever of going tomorrow.

How I found out was by reading my text messages this afternoon. No-one called me or spoke to me. The message just appeared and I didn’t notice it until it was far too late to ring up to cancel it

It goes without saying that I’m impressed, as I always am, with the speed of reaction of the French Health Service, but I can see that I’m going to have to train the hospital much better than this. At Castle Anthrax, for example, we finally managed, after much trying, to synchronise the appointments so that they all took place while I was there at Haematology. I need to do the same here.

In theory, seeing as I’m going on a day visit and carrying no luggage, I could attempt the train and have help to see me to and from a taxi in Paris but firstly, I need at least 24 hours notice to apply for the service. Secondly, with these puttees on my feet I can’t wear my shoes and thirdly, I have a Welsh class tomorrow.

In other words, it’s a total non-starter.

There will probably be a rude message for me later on tomorrow, rather like the time that I was late for work.
"You should have been here at 09:00" shouted the boss
"Why?" I asked. "What happened?"
After a few weeks he called me into his office.
"You are coming into the office later and later" he said
"I do actually make up for it" I said
"How’s that?" he asked
"Well look how early I leave for home!"

But problems with my vision will probably explain why I’m having trouble finding my bed.

Last night was another 02:30 switching off of the computer. I was actually really tired but far too tired to stir my stumps and rise up from my chair. It’s been a few times that that’s happened and I really don’t know what to do about it.

What I probably need to do is to force myself and make an effort, but that’s easier said than done. I have said before that I have so many things to do but keep on forgetting to do them. Actually, the problem is that I have so many things to do but can’t find the effort or the motivation.

It’s not just my dreams that are going through my death-throes, it’s me, I reckon, and I’m taking my dreams with me as I go.

When the alarm went off you can’t imagine (well, actually I suppose that you can) the struggle that I had to leave the bed. I managed to beat the second alarm but it was just like the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo and "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life".

First things first, and I did manage to remember the blood pressure – 14.8/8.2 this morning, down from 15.8/10.0 when I’d checked it before going to bed.

After the medication I went into the bathroom and had a really good wash and scrub up in the hope that it might awaken me but it didn’t seem to work. I was in no fit state to do anything.

When the nurse came to see me, I got my own back. Taking off my puttees last night I lost one of the clips, so when she came in this morning I said "You’re going to have a go at me again today"
"I didn’t have a go at you yesterday" she said
"Yes you did" I insisted. "But anyway, taking of my puttees last night I lost one of the clips"
And she was quite nice about it.

But I certainly saw a side of her yesterday that I had never suspected.

But she’s off now for a rest and it will be her sidekick for a week starting tomorrow. He’s the one who can’t ever find a vein in my arm for his blood sample so on Wednesday we’ll probably have a “discussion” about that too.

After she left I came back in here but really I was in no fit state to do any work. In fact I missed my morning coffee and lunchtime fruit because I couldn’t find the enthusiasm to leave my chair.

It was late afternoon when I finally moved and went for some hot chocolate – the first food or hot drink that I’d had all day.

My cleaner came in the stuff that had finally arrived at the pharmacy, and we had a chat. I gave her a shopping list of things that I need from LeClerc tomorrow that they won’t deliver, and she photographed a couple of bottles and jars as an aide-memoire

An energy drink later on did something for me, and I transcribed the dictaphone notes, such as there were from such a sad night. The tenant of one of my apartments wanted my friend to meet two new sub-locataires but she didn’t have the slightest bit of interest whatever in seeing them and felt that the management of the property in their respect should fall on the guy who’s leasing it rather than whoever was the principal leaseholder . She didn’t have the slightest wish whatever to become involved in his sub-letting.

Although I dictated that it was my apartment, it actually belongs to the friend who was included in the dream. She owns a couple of apartments and is actually, even as we speak, having issues with one of her tenants and the management company involved that are on the verge of escalating.

But the whole letting industry in the UK is all descending into total chaos anyway. A property that was completely rewired five years previously failed its electrical certificate at next renewal.
"Why was that? What was wrong with it after five years?"
"Well, nothing actually, but standards have now changed and what was good enough five years ago is no longer adequate"
"So you’d better have someone fix it for me"
"We would have already done it, but we can’t find any tradesmen to do it."
Conversations like that actually do take place.

There was time to finish off the radio programme that I started yesterday (apart from dictating and editing the notes that I wrote for the final track) before going for my stuffed pepper. Quite delicious again. The couscous instead of the quinoa or bulghour works really well.

Plenty of stuffing left for my taco roll tomorrow and there will probably be some for the basis of a leftover curry too on Wednesday.

But that’s Wednesday. Right now I’m going to make a huge effort and go to bed. Walter Reisch said "tired minds don’t plan well. Sleep first, plan later" and he’s not wrong. The way that I feel, I couldn’t even plan a whatsit in a wherever right now.

It’s more a case of Maccbeth and "to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day" and as everyone knows, after my experiences in the High Arctic, I’LL GIVE ALL MY TOMORROWS FOR A SINGLE YESTERDAY

0

Sunday 17th March 2024 – WHOSE SILLY IDEA …

… was this for me to make a start at 08:00 this morning?

It wouldn’t have been so bad if the alarm had actually gone off but somehow for some unknown reason it didn’t fire up and that was that.

Strangely enough, five minutes later, at 08:05 exactly, I sat bolt upright, wide-awake and that was something really quite extraordinary, especially as first of all it’s a Sunday and secondly, I didn’t go to bed until 00:20 this morning. I’ve really no idea why I should awaken like that just five minutes after the alarm should have gone off, but didn’t.

It’s actually quite surprising how long it takes to do everything that needs to be done before I go to bed. There’s the list of what I needed to do that I posted the other day, and even then I forgot about taking the blood pressure. Seriously, I’d forget my head if it wasn’t so firmly screwed on

And that’s why a baby never falls out of a pregnant woman – because it’s screwed in. But I digress … "again" – ed …

Last night after I’d finished the notes I wandered around doing everything that I need to do before retiring, apart from washing these puttee-things. They aren’t soiling so there’s no need to wash them until we have the second pair.

And then, thinking that I’d set the alarm, I fell into bed.

As I mentioned earlier I fell out of bed at 08:05 and then checked the blood pressure. 16.0/9.9, compared to last night’s figure of 16.1/11.1. We shouldn’t go round taking these figures as gospel because there’s quite a discrepancy between what they show at the hospital and what is being shown at home. I have grave suspicions about my little machine.

Having taken my medicine I arranged a few things in order ready for the immediate arrival of the nurse.

When she turned up she tore into me because the stuff wasn’t here from the pharmacy. As I said, “what can I do about it? I’m firmly and completely in the hands of other people”. However, that’s no excuse apparently, and she carried on with her endless verbal assault.

She also had a good moan about me not taking painkillers. The whole of France is awash with Doliprane and I have no wish to join them. We’ve seen far too many cases in the past where people, pumped up to the gills with painkillers, fail to notice the damage that they are doing by continuing to use whatever member of the body is being numbed and the damage becomes permanent.

You suffer pain for a very good reason.

After she left I didn’t do too much. I had some food and then simply drifted around in cyberspace, that is – when I wasn’t asleep. I’ve fallen asleep a couple of times, once at the table in the dining room after two large mugs of black coffee. Something’s clearly not right there either.

But I did manage to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had another dream … "when was the first?" – ed … where all the passengers were soaked inside a coach. This time I’d been to a local bar and seen on the counter top a couple of trips advertised to different places, one of which was a trip around the nuclear power station up the coast. so when the landlord had a moment free, for he was the type who was friends with everyone I asked him about it. He had a moan about him hoping that I wasn’t someone who had just come in to waste his time but he let me see the itinerary, the brochure etc and I thought “yes, I’ll sign up for this” and put my name down. He was at the point of asking me for a payment and a deposit but we ended up playing football. I was substituted quite early on pretty much the same as that dream at the start of the evening … "which dream?" – ed … where all the passengers were given a soaking by the coach driver who pulled the choke mechanism and that released a water tower into the air vents

That was another dream about which I recall absolutely nothing at all and I’ve no idea at all to what it refers.

But later on I was back singing in a rock group again … "presumably in English tonight" – ed … One of the things that I had to do was to speak to someone there about singing some of the songs in a mixed-up kind of fashion like singing a song by the Moody Blues, giving a false title and having people guess who it was and who wrote it. I had to communicate with someone about it, another group’s arranger. He was speaking to someone else so I had to interrupt him. A policeman there tried to take hold of me and usher me away. I had to be really insistent to the point of actually almost being arrested before the policeman would let me speak.

That’s something similar to a quiz that we had a few months ago on the radio. There, we were snipping out sound-bytes from popular songs and having people identify them. Being ushered away by a policeman is however quite a new experience. Usually, from what I’ve seen, it would be “out with the handcuffs” or, these days, more like “out with the truncheon”.

When you look back to the 1960s and early 70s and the Monty Python sketches of violent policemen going berserk with their truncheons and how we all laughed at the satire because it was such an unreal situation, and yet here we are today where policemen going berserk with truncheons is par for the course.

We’ve come a long way since those days, and all of it completely in the wrong direction. It’s like Théoden said in LORD OF THE RINGS – "The world changes, and all that once was strong now proves unsure"

And as Erma Brombeck wrote, "When humour goes, there goes civilization", and humour has long-since departed from this wretched world.

I’s easy to understand the sentiments of Bhuwan Thapaliya who said "The older I get, the more I cherish the company of children and the flowers. The children have no prejudices. They are what they are. And so are the flowers". That’s a position with which I sympathise.

What work I’ve done today has been to make a start on editing some radio programme notes. Not much of them because, being so tired as I am, I’ve not really felt in the mood for work.

In fact, I almost forgot about making my pizza tonight. Luckily I remembered just in time, and it was another delicious one.

So here’s hoping for a better day tomorrow. A good sleep might put me right, and then I have plenty to do. It’s never-ending. Who said anything about retiring making life easy?

It’s the one thing about old age, and that is that you have so much to do but you keep on forgetting to do it. That’s where I am now. It’s like the character in The Navy Lark who said "All of which reminds me of a funny story I once heard and which now completely escapes me"

As for me though, I’m like the character in “Gunsmoke” of which it was said "A lot of things can happen to people who get too lonely" – but as long as it only happens to me when I’m asleep, that’s OK.

Rather like the police who raided that woman’s apartment and found a knife under her pillow
"What’s this for?" they asked
"That’s in case someone breaks into my room while I’m asleep" she said "and brings me a cake".

0

Saturday 16th March 2024 – AFTER I’D FINISHED …

… doing what I have to do in the evening I didn’t hang about and was in bed quite shortly thereafter. I don’t seem to be able to last the pace like I used to, especially if I didn’t have any sleep the previous evening.

But of course I have to admit that my bed is extremely comfortable. Seeing as I spend about a third of my life in it it went through some pretty rigorous tests, as in me lying down on every combination of bed and mattress that was on display in the IKEA in Caen.

The sofa too is extremely comfortable. That underwent the same series of tests and has been put to good use on several occasions when I have company, but that’s another story.

So last night I climbed into bed and that was that until the alarm went off at 07:00.

At that point I fell out of bed and went off in search of medication – the usual morning round of things designed to keep me going until we have the night-time’s helpings. 10 different types, and each one presumably treating the side-effects of the one that was prescribed immediately before.

In fact, as I take all of this medicine I’m singing to myself THERE’S A HOLE IN MY BUCKET because that’s exactly how I feel.

Having dealt with the medication I made the bread rolls for today and tomorrow and left them there to fester while I went and took down the puttees and rolled them up ready for the nurse. They are still wet but that can’t be helped.

When she came round she burst the blisters on my feet, put all the cream on everywhere and wrapped the puttees around my feet and legs. She’s told me that there’s no need to wash them tonight as they don’t seem to be soiling any, which is good news.

After she had left I checked the bread rolls. And for once in my life they had actually risen as I hoped that they might. I’m not sure what I did correctly today – I can’t recall doing anything any more different than I usually do and which up to now has proved to be singularly ineffective.

But anyway I had a lovely cheese on toast for breakfast which was really nice.

Back in here I checked the dictaphone and to my surprise there was actually some stuff on there. “Surprise” because for the first two dreams I remember nothing at all, which quite possibly explains why they seem to be a pile of gibberish. Anyway, There was something about being in a rock group in North Wales called Achmarchnad – “Supermarket”. We all spoke to each other in Welsh and I introduced the songs in Welsh too. We climbed up onto the stage and there was applause but when I began to announce what we were about to play plenty of people dashed off as though they were heading for the bathroom. I made some kind of comment about everyone going to the bathroom. They also turned off all of the microphones so I had to wait for someone to restart everything again before I could actually carry on. But I was dreaming in Welsh as I had to wait for these people to go as we all sit around here, phrases like that to the other members of the group.

Yes, there I was, dreaming in Welsh and presenting the music of a rock band. I’d give all that I own, and more besides, to be able to do that in real life. But as I have mentioned before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … dreaming in a foreign language is nothing new. Besides Welsh (which isn’t a foreign language of course) we’ve had dreams in French, Flemish and Spanish in the past.

It’s actually quite ironic really. Here I am, learning a language that I probably won’t ever speak, in practical terms, and yet during the night I’m speaking it quite fluently and can’t even remember a word of what I’ve said and could certainly never repeat what I said when I’m awake.

There was a story once about this – about some guy who had had a knock on the head and came back to consciousness speaking a language fluently that he had never learned or even heard before. I wonder if it’s some kind of similar phenomenon.

It’s a shame though that I’m no longer going to Leuven though. I enjoyed revitalising the Flemish that I learned when I lived in Brussels and was glad that I was able to put it to some use after all these years. I just speak it now sometimes with Ingrid.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed – when we had fully loaded our ambulance we were ready to leave and go back to current times but the ambulance hit a stone causing injury to Orly and someone in the back and we haul up and treat our injuries etc before we could head back and try to cross the border. Rooms were booked for us in a hotel a a place on the Welsh side of the river just before you cross the river into the English part …fell asleep here …

The above two dreams I have absolutely no recollection whatever of them. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … although I’m asleep when I’m dictating my notes, when I’m transcribing them I usually have some kind of very vague recollection of them.

But not those two. They mean absolutely nothing to me

Finally, I was doing something about the radio last night, recording all my programmes. I needed a tenth track. After much messing about I actually chose the track but when it came to using it to join up the rest of the music I couldn’t find it. I was searching everywhere but it just wasn’t there. The last time that I remember, it was still attached to a set of stereo headphones with the wires dangling everywhere but I couldn’t find it at all. When I awoke I was actually searching the bed for it.

But can you imagine it – searching for a digitalised audio file in the bed last night. Sometimes I really do shake my head.

This afternoon I’ve been a busy boy. Firstly, Rosemary rang me and we had a chat. Just a short one today – only one hour and three minutes. We’re losing our touch, that’s for sure. Whatever happened to the ones that used to go on for several weeks?

Then I’ve been working on my photos from Canada 2022, writing the notes for another big pile of stuff. I hadn’t yet fallen ill so I was still getting about and doing things, like ordering the sunroof for the only Ford Flex ever imported into Europe, and having fun with STRAWBERRY MOOSE.

The dramatic collapse in health is yet to come, and it will be interesting to see how the events of that period unfolded and led to a two-months stay in hospital and totally wrecked my health.

The stuff for a couple more days was completed and I could have done so much more except for a major crashing-out – another one of these total black-outs that last for several hours where it’s as if I just switch off without any warning.

Finally there was the football – Pontypridd United v Barry Town. Both teams are languishing near the foot of the table – Pontypridd due more to administrative errors than standard of play – but they will basically safe from relegation as heaps more woe and misery pile on Colwyn Bay and Aberystwyth below them in the table.

The league position of the teams was reflected in the play – scrappy and at times rather agricultural – but playing football in a tropical monsoon as they had this afternoon down in Pontypridd can’t have been easy.

The game seemed to go in spells. Firstly, Pontypridd would have a good five minutes and then Barry, and then Pontypridd again and so on. The result, a 1-1 draw, was probably about right.

If you want to see the rather one-sided highlights of the match, they ARE HERE

You don’t need me to tell you what I had for tea tonight.

That’s right – breaded quorn fillet with baked potato and salad. Those fillets really are nice and I’m glad that, at the moment at least, they are available in LeClerc’s on-line shop

“At the moment” because even over the short time that I’ve been using the service, I’ve noticed a few things that I would buy that have been withdrawn from the range and that is more than just a pity. It’s a tragedy

So now I’m off to bed, ready for my … gulp … 08:00 start so that i’m ready for when the nurse comes. Can you imagine that too – me having an alarm call at 08:00 on a Sunday? But I need to show willing

It reminds me of the time when a girl who I knew once said to me "will you awaken me at 08:00?"
To which I replied "What should I do? Knock on your door or give you a nudge?"
There were times when I wasn’t very popular.

But as yet an alarm call might be unnecessary. Where the nurse burst my blisters, every now and again (more “again” than “now”, as it happens) there’s a stabbing pain that goes right through me and if it doesn’t subside I can’t see me sleeping tonight.

However, I’m away to finish off what I need to do before going to bed. The last task for today will be to cover myself in boot polish and eat several packets of yeast. That way I’ll rise and shine in the morning

0

Friday 15th March 2024 – THERE’S NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone from last night either.

But that’s not a surprise because I didn’t actually go to sleep. And don’t I know it now!

After I’d finished my notes last night and despite talking about films and falling asleep, I couldn’t even summon up the energy to leave my chair. I just sat there in a kind-of hypnotic trance – not the cataleptic attack that I have sometimes but just a total and utter lethargy as if my battery had run flat.

In fact it was about 02:30 when I finally crawled into bed, more in hope than expectation because by now I had a real killer-pain in my right knee.

As to where that had come from, I didn’t know at first but it gradually seemed to increase as the evening wore on until, as I was lying in bed, it was insupportable.

And while I was lying there I suddenly realised that I’d gone to bed with my elasticated puttees on. I’d better take those off I suppose, but no chance of washing then now. That will upset Isabelle the nurse.

Adjusting the genouillaire – the elasticated knee pad on the right knee, I almost ended up going through the roof. That was where it was hurting.

And then I realised what had happened. The elasticated puttees were doing their job, pushing the fluid in the lower legs upwards, right into the knee where the genouillaire was stopping it going any higher, and the knee area had swollen more than the capacity of the elasticated stretch in the genouillaire.

So in the end I took that off too and the pain slowly began to subside. Not completely because there’s still some kind of pain there as I found out when I went to put the cream on my legs this evening.

And what with one thing and another, and once you make a start you’ll be surprised how many other things there are, I just lay there in agony and watched the clock going round and round until the alarm went off.

That was the signal for me to fall out of bed and take my blood pressure. 15.7/10.1 this morning, which is not bad at all for a nuit blanche – a night with no sleep. I did remember to take it before going to bed last night, and it was 17.2/12.2, which is also not bad for a body wracked with pain.

To give you some idea of that I meant the other day about “not knowing what day of the week it is” I forgot to make my Friday bread. I remembered my medication (which I forgot last night) but was then busy tidying up everything ready for the nurse, like rolling up correctly these puttee things ready to apply.

Incidentally, if you want to know about my night’s routine after I finish my notes and before I go to bed, it’s

  1. check for any last-minute mails and messages
  2. take the statistics
  3. close down all of the files
  4. back up the computer
  5. go for the medication
  6. unwind the puttees
  7. wash, rinse and hang up the aforementioned
  8. apply the cream to my legs
  9. switch off the computer
  10. go to bed

The days when I could finish work and just fall into bed are long-gone.

So fighting off wave after wave of sleep, sometimes unsuccessfully, I made a start on work.

With nothing on the dictaphone to distract me I spent a while reviewing my order for LeClerc and being reasonably satisfied that there was as much on there that I could order of what I needed I sent it off.

It’s a shame that they don’t carry a full stock in the home delivery part of the supermarket. There’s tons of stuff that I would like that isn’t available and I have either to make do, send my faithful cleaner or else do without.

But be that as it may, beggars can’t be choosers. if I’d had this illness a couple of years ago or otherwise stayed in the Auvergne I wouldn’t have had anything.

The Auvergne was beautiful and I loved every minute of the time that I lived there. But it was simply not a practical proposition when I was ill.

For a start, with winters as cold as -20°C and snow for as long as 7 months of the year, if you wanted to heat your house you had to go into the forest with your chainsaw and find a convenient tree

Imagine trying to do that now. It was great fun when I was healthy and fit but had I stayed down there I’d have been pushing up the daisies for a long time.

We had the usual interruptions. Isabelle the nurse came round to put the cream on my feet and wind up my puttees. She wasn’t very happy with me, but neither was I to be honest. The night had been awful and I really must have been on some other planet somewhere

And then my cleaner appeared with what she had managed to prise out of the chemist’s. And that wasn’t everything that I needed either. Some of the stuff has had to be ordered but when it will arrive is anyone’s guess. I told my cleaner not to be in a rush. Things will be done when they’ll be done.

After lunch the order from LeClerc arrived. No carrots to dice up or freeze today but there was a pepper to clean out before I could freeze it. And they had some of my favourite breaded quorn fillets that I like so much. There’s a good supply of those now, which is good news.

There was the question of putting away the stuff but I now have so much that there isn’t anywhere to put it. Yes, the freezer, fridge and shelves are bursting with food and that’s exactly how I want them to be. It’s important that I keep things stocked up because I never know when I might need them and not be able to obtain them.

The rest of the day, when I wasn’t asleep, was spent editing some more of the backlog of notes and preparing a programme. That’s all done now and I’ve even chosen the final track and written the notes. When I find a quiet moment, and I’ve not fallen asleep, I’ll dictate everything that’s outstanding and ten I’ll have another pile to edit and build up.

It’s non-stop, isn’t it?

Tea tonight was vegan nuggets with chips and a vegan salad. All extremely delicious of course. No-one can fault the meals that are served up in this place.

And they better hadn’t, as word on the streets is that there might be a few people round to eat some of it very shortly, and I’m not talking about our usual travel group either, but more visitors. I seem to be quite popular these days.

But not popular enough to be able to delegate these tasks to someone else. I have to do them so I’d better press on.

And then go to bed and hope for some pleasant dreams at the moment, I feel like Barbara Follett, who walked out of her life after writing "My dreams are going through their death flurries. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money"

It’s not the world of Time and Money though. They are just dying of old age, like me.

Still, as my hero the Irish politician Boyle Roche once said, "The best way to avoid danger is to meet it plump." so I shall ride forth to meet my destiny. "Follow one’s own star, wherever it leads" as Jacqueline de Bellefort said.

So if all of these pains subside, I might even manage some sleep. And then we shall see what we shall see.

0

Thursday 14th March 2024 – IT’S BEEN ALL …

… go in here today.

It doesn’t seem like it but it’s been an extremely busy day today. I didn’t even find the time to crash out until 18:00, and that’s quite late.

What was surprising was that for the first time for an absolute age, not only did I sleep right through the night, there was nothing on the dictaphone either.

Last night after I finished my notes I took my blood pressure and then wandered off to take my medicine for the night. There’s enough of that as well to keep me going for a while.

Strangely, I didn’t feel tired and so I watched the start of a Sherlock Holmes film, an old black-and-white one from the 1940s

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that that always does the trick. On the portable computer is a pile of old black-and-white films and when I used to travel I’d switch one on at night to watch – and I’d always fall asleep straight away.

There have been countless times when I have awoken to find the computer still whirring on or, on one or two occasions, with a flat battery, as in times on the road in the wilds of Northern Québec and Labrador when I used to camp out in the Dodges that I used.

So I staggered off to bed and that was the last thing that I remember until the alarm went off this morning.

That was the cue to fall out of bed and the first thing was, as usual, to check the blood pressure. 16.1/10.1. Compared to last night’s 15.0/7.8, you wouldn’t have thought that last night would have been so relaxing.

As I have said before… "and on many occasions too" – ed … I really don’t understand how this blood pressure works. The figures are not at all as I would have expected them to be, from an amateur’s point of view.

Second thing was to give my feet and lower legs a really good wash. I didn’t cover them in vaseline cream though because the nurse is coming round today to do that for me.

Third thing was to have a chat on the internet to Liz. We haven’t chatted for a while, which is a shame. She sent me a recipe that she’ll be using for her hot cross buns, in the hope that it might work for me rather better than the one that I have.

However, it’s not the recipe, as we now. My issue is making the dough rise, and I’d give all that I own, and much more besides, to be able to make it rise properly like it ought.

The nurse came round at 08:45.
"Will you be coming round at this time every day?" I asked
"Yes, if that’s OK for you" she replied
"What choice do I have?"
"Well, none really"

So 08:45 it is every day including Sunday. Bang goes my usual lie-in. Still, I suppose that I ought to be keeping some kind of normal hours somehow – come and live in the civilised World.

When I lived with Laurence I didn’t have much of a Sunday lie in. After a while I’d hear from the kitchen "go and wake up Eric" and then a few seconds later several stone of child would leap on top of me, and that would be that. I loved it really.

So the nurse has rubbed ointment on my feet, put plasters on the worst places, and then wound these elasticated puttee things around my lover legs.

My legs now look like Bibendum, the Michelin Man and I can’t put on my shoes over the top. That means no going out for a while, as long as this prescription lasts.

So instead of sending off my LeClerc order on Monday, I’ll send it off tomorrow and order my mushrooms on line. That was something else that I needed to do – to bring my order up-to-date and make sure that I’ve missed nothing. I probably have, but it’s too late once I’ve sent it off.

After my coffee and flapjack (which was an absolute and total success) I sat down with a radio programme.

There are several where I’ve dictated the text but not edited it so I did one of those today. It’s all finished now and mostly assembled. The last track has been chosen and remixed and the text written I just need a quite hour or so to dictate it and everything else that needs dictating.

However, quiet hours are practically unknown around here anywhere near where I am.

The cleaner came round during the afternoon. The nurse had written out a prescription for stuff that she needs so my cleaner will sally forth tomorrow and arrange everything.

While she was here we went through the medicines, pills and tablets that I have, made a note of where I’m likely to run out in the very near future, and she’ll organise that tomorrow too while she’s down there in town

After my hot chocolate I even found time to carry on with a project that was side-lined a few weeks ago – namely, to review my blog entries for the period when I was in Canada in October 2022.

The details of my mega train trip ARE NOW ON-LINE. It’s not actually the definitive version as it needs poof-reading, spel-checking, the tpying reviewed and the all-round plan
ning verifying.

Had I not had an unexpected … errr … relax, it might have been finished, but as it is, it’ll give you an idea of what I had to suffer.

There’s no doubt at all that Canada’s rail network, such as is still left, is nothing but a shambolic mess. And “shambolic” meaning that half of it is a sham and the rest of it is … errr … everything else.

Tea was a nice lot of steamed veg with these vegan meatballs in a cheese sauce. And it was delicious as usual. This cheese sauce that I make, a simple bechamel with a handful of grated vegan cheese, tarragon, chives and freshly ground black pepper in it, is really nice.

So am I going to watch a film now and crash out, or shall I just go to bed? I’m at the stage where my body is telling me one thing but my mind is telling me something else.

The end result will inevitably be the same – that I’ll fall asleep while I’m doing it.

So here’s hoping that my dreams come back. These days, they are the only excitement that I have. Like the time that I dreamed that I was eating a giant marshmallow, and then next morning had to buy a new pillow.

But thinking about all of these quotes from LORD OF THE RINGS that appear in these notes, I’ll probably end up Tolkein in my sleep.

0

Wednesday 13th March 2024 – THE DEED IS …

… done and I’m now registered for an Easter Welsh course with … errr … Caefyrddyn

Enrolling on a Welsh course rather like Macbeth and the murder of Duncan actually and "If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly". Caerfyrddyn was the only centre that had any spaces left on its Easter revision course when I went to sign up.

It’s a symbol of how popular learning Welsh became at Covid. When the courses were face-to-face (or wyneb-wyneb for regular readers of this rubbish who recall a dream a week or so ago) they had about 100 applicants each year. When Covid hit and the courses went over to video-conferencing, they had 1031 applicants.

That’s not the kind of thing for which infrastructure exists and they had to be quite inventive to fit everyone in

With my class, I’m quite lucky because already being involved and registered, my place is assured. However, for this revision course, I’m dropping down two levels and so I have had to re-register

So with studying a course down in the south, I’ll be saying things like gyda-gylid instead of efo-gylid and caeth e instead of cafodd o. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago why it was that the Welsh language evolved differently in the south and in in the north.

If I had had any sense, not that that is likely of course, I should have enrolled last night while I was talking about it and maybe I would have found something more convenient. But instead I had a little relax to unwind before going to bed.

Once in bed though I felt nothing at all. Nothing whatever and it was as if I’d slept all the way through the night undisturbed.

When the alarm went off though I was already awake and it didn’t take much to have me out of bed.

First stop as usual was the blood pressure. 16.0/10.0 this morning, compared to 17.4/10.6 last night. It really MUST have been a calm, comfortable night.

Second stop was to go to take my medication for the moment, half a tonne of it as usual. And then some tidying up ready for the nurse to come round. I’d like her to think that people actually lived here.

We had a good chat about the things that the hospital wants the local nursing staff to do. Some of the things don’t come within their remit, so it’s tough luck on me but the rest is going to start tomorrow at 08:45 and how I’m not looking forward to that, especially on a Sunday

She took the blood sample and gave me my weekly injection of the Last Resort and then wandered off while I organised some breakfast.

The coffee is really nice around here, and my flapjack is definitely a success. I’ll make some more of that another time if I can remember the ingredients that I used. They biscuits that I made on Sunday are overcooked, but not so much as they are in-edible. I’ll make more of those too at some point.

Next step was to listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. And I must have been stark out last night as I remember nothing at all of these. Did I dictate the dream about the person that I’d killed in that motel room? … "no, you didn’t" – ed … He was beaten quite badly and I was about to finish him off when someone began to come into his room. I quickly had to clean him up, tidy him up and remove as many visible marks a possible to make it look as if he was treating himself for his wounds before they came in, which was difficult. Somehow I managed it and he passed by quite normally without having any suspicions. Then I had to restart these videos, all three of them, to find out exactly where the secret place was where you had to puncture the skin in order to kill someone – someone had worked out that you could leave very minimal marks by just putting something long and pointed in through these three places. He’d prepared a video of it, that I’d been watching but of course with this other guy coming into the motel room to see what was happening I actually lost the place in the video and couldn’t find it again on all three tapes for all three points on the body

That’s the stuff that dreams are made of, isn’t it? If videos like that really did exist and I really did have access to them, there would be far fewer people on this planet than there are today. I can think of quite a few who would shuffle off this mortal coil with my assistance, if I had any say in the matter.

But I di have some gruesome dreams; don’t I? And many have been far more gruesome than this. It reminds me of Dr Cameron in Tannochbrae in the good old days of Dr Finlay’s Casebook – or Dr Kenley’s Feesbook
"And what’s the matter, Janet?" asked Dr Cameron
"Och Dr Cameron, it’s gruesome" she replied
"Well, look again Janet" he said. "It’s gruesome more"

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed I was going on a flight somewhere so I had to walk through the airport and look for my train to London. I eventually arrived at the station part and the next train to London was 22:02. It was only 21:00 so I thought that it was going to be cutting it a little too fine. I’d better go to find something to eat. I found what looked like a bakery or hot food stand and asked if they had a pâté végétale. She replied “no, no” and pointed to half a dozen things that she had on the shelves, the usual mainstream type of normal kind of food. She did have some large fruit bread. I thought that I could buy one of those but that would be quite a waste because I wouldn’t be able to eat all of that.

Not that anything like that would normally bother me, especially if I’m going on a flight somewhere. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I always take food with me on a plane. I’ve learnt from bitter experience that you can’t rely on airlines to always respect special diets on their planes, and it’s a long way and a long time across the Atlantic with nothing to eat.

Yes, my spicy or fruit bread has saved me from a fate worse than death on many occasions, as have my Subway sandwiches from the airport at Montreal. Consequently a large fruit bread would have been a gift from Heaven on a flight from an airport

Back in here and surfing around on the internet looking for something, I made a fantastic discovery. Carol Reed’s famous and spectacular film THE THIRD MAN starring Orson Cart and Joseph Cotton is now out of copyright and is available to download

What a film that is, too. It’s not so much the acting and the dialogue but the way that it’s directed that makes it a classic – with all these cuts of ordinary, old people filtered into the scenes that really give it the kind of panic-stricken atmosphere that must have existed in the immediate post-war Vienna.

My acquaintance with Vienna is somewhat more recent than that. And the last time I was there, actually in the city, was 1998 when I took a 15-tonne lorry there from Brussels.

It’s a film that in my opinion is on a par with THE MALTESE FALCON as one of the greatest films of all time.

The cleaner came round with my missing pieces today, and it’s a shame but she’ll have to be going back because the nurse needs some stuff to treat me, so she’ll write out a prescription tomorrow morning. We’ll go through the medication tomorrow too and see where I’m short, as one or two things are running out.

But poor cleaner. She’s not had much of a rest on her week off, has she?

The rest of the day has been spent finishing off the notes for the radio programme that I began the other day. They are done and ready for dictation sometime, but I’m not sure when. It won’t be at 01:00 on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, I’ll tell you that, not it I’m having to be up and about by 08:45.

After a session on the guitar I went for tea – another one of my delicious leftover curries with naan bread.

But while I was in the freezer I noticed that I seem to be running low on frozen vegetables again. It looks as if my last pre-Easter order from the supermarket will be going off on Monday.

That means that I’d better check my hot cross bun recipe and make sure that I have everything that I need. And then work out how to make the dough rise properly.

Hot cross buns are made with milk, not water, and that makes the issue far more complicated. I tell you – it’s not easy baking and being a master-chef when your oven only works when it wants to and you don’t have a clue what you’re doing anyway.

But you can’t have an Easter without hot-cross buns so I’d better learn quite quickly. It’ll give me something to eat while I’m taking part in my Welsh lesson, I suppose

At least I don’t have to worry about the Easter bunny coming to visit me. It’s not like the time years ago, when I had that part-time job just before Easter looking after these small bunny-like creatures just after they were born and making sure that they grew into responsible adults.

That was what I would call a hare-raising experience.

0

Tuesday 12th March 2024 – I’VE ALMOST FALLEN …

… asleep not once, but twice, just sitting here on my chair and only a dramatic grasp at the edge of the chair on both occasions has stopped me from dropping off, in both senses of the word.

In one of them I’d actually gone as far as having a dream, fitting the clutch cable to a transverse engine car but some of the strands of cable snapping. It was amazing, because on both occasions I’d had no warning of going off to sleep.

It’s not as if they have put me back on that horrible potassium stuff either, so it must be one of the other pile of medicaments. But it really tells you about what a state I’m in when we have this issue about side-effects and there are so many of the medicaments that I can’t work out which one it is.

For two pins I’d dump the lot and let nature take its course
"Have you thought of an ending?”
“Yes, several, and all are dark and unpleasant."
as Frodo and Sam discussed in LORD OF THE RINGS. I know that mine will be anyway – I have been told so – but at least “while there’s life there’s hope”, as Cicero once told us. Dum spiro, spero.

That’s a far different position than a couple of weeks ago when I was all ready to throw in the towel but honestly, I don’t know where I am these days.

Last night though, I know that I was in bed. After relaxing for a short while I went and did everything that needed doing and crawled off to bed, much later than I wanted but that’s how things are going these days.

When the alarm went off I was watching a fork-lift truck load some stuff on a pallet onto something. There had been something going on about sugar, sugar in its nitro-cellulose form is extremely harmful. A company had sold some and another one had bought them, and there was an argument about who was responsible for ensuring that it complied with the regulations. That was what was going on at the time.

With that kind of dream, I’m surprised that the alarm going off didn’t frighten me to death. “Start the day with a ‘bang'” I say.

First thing that I did this morning was to check the blood pressure. 17.1/9.8 this morning, compared with 18.4/10.5 last night.

It’s always a good sign if it decreases at night, from some points of view. On the other hand, it’s quite often a good sign if it increases, but the kind of events that would cause that are few and far between. Usually, if it increases during the night, it’s always for the wrong reasons.

Next thing was to sort out the medication for the morning, followed by a trip to the bathroom to deal with my feet. There’s no doubt that this vaseline cream is making a real difference to my dry legs and feet. I hope that the improvement continues

And while we’re on that subject … "well, one of us is" – ed … the nurse rang up to see if I was at home. She’d heard that I’d gone to hospital last week.

To put her at her ease I told her that I was back, and we also had a chat about the new prescription. We’ll talk more about that tomorrow because all the stuff that she needs isn’t here yet.

Back in here I transcribed the rest of the dictaphone notes from the night. There was an important series of exams that my girlfriend was taking. She needed to have a year in tutelage under the relevant tutor in a relevant subject. Actually she’s not been as faithful as she ought to have been with this course that she’d been following but when I went to see the person who was supervising it I was told with shock that she wasn’t going to be eligible because the person who had been guiding her had left the University after six months. Someone else had taken over but my girlfriend hadn’t taken the necessary steps to introduce herself so she was basically voided. This was really awful news but the examiner suggested a way around He said “knowing you, I’m surprised that you haven’t contacted the departed tutor directly to explain the situation and have her give your girlfriend the certificate directly even though she’s no longer at the University. She’s married and gone to live in Scotland but you should be able to find her and contact her. If she’s satisfied that your girlfriend has followed the course and done the necessary work etc, there’s no reason at all why she can’t issue the certificate of presence or whatever its called to prove that she’s followed that course for a twelve-month period but you’ll have to be quick because all the paperwork needs to be in very shortly. It looks as if we had work to do, my girlfriend and me.

And a girlfriend? I wish that I knew who she was. She won’t have been anyone we’ve met so far on our travels, that’s for sure. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I wish that I could put names to these girls who have been appearing every now and again, and for several reasons too.

As for the “knowing you, I’ surprised that you haven’t …” – it seems that even in my dreams people are beginning to know me quite well and that’s rather disturbing. I prefer to passer inaperçu – pass by un-noticed and it worries me when people begin to recognise me.

Especially when they recognise something like “… I’m surprised that you haven’t …” – and it’s in a dream too. That’s what I call “worrying”.

Then there was something about an orange Cortina that had to be taxed. It would mean queueing at the local Tax Office for hours. We’d done all of the paperwork etc already. We’d bought some new parts for the vehicle. We’d been to Minibits for them. We noticed on the way round that on the corner of Flag Lane where it turns round were shops that had wire grilles put all over the windows. We noticed that they’d been working there for a day or two and we wondered what they were doing. They were actually moving the wire grilles down one position – it looked as if they’d installed the wire grilles on the wrong windows and were just moving them further along the street, these grilles. The first window was being missed out. It was rather puzzling. I went into work where someone asked me if I’d seen the Ryanair van. I said “I’ve just seen it in Flag Lane”. He asked “are you sure? It should have been here a while ago”. I replied “yes” so he said “I’ll contact Head Office to say that the van’s not been here but it’s been seen in Crewe at 15:15”. It worried me why he was being so precise about this. We went into Minibits to pick up some bits. I made a comment that he could open his windows now that the wicked European Union has moved its grilles away from his windows. The girl who was serving me growled a little and opened them but it didn’t make much difference in there. It was still dark. Then we had to go along to queue up to tax this orange Cortina. Just as we were standing in the queue with the papers ready to pounce on an open window the dream ended.

Now, Minibits in Crewe was a place to remember in the 1980s. It was run by an old guy called Ken and was a dirty old shop on a street corner in Crewe, full of all kinds of stock for minis, stuff that he had bought probably 30 years earlier and was all covered in dust.

As Fords became more popular in the early 1970s he began to accumulate Ford bits and pieces. They too sat and gathered dust for years.

We had a trade card for a car spares warehouse in Manchester but rarely used it because he was still selling stuff at 1970s prices. That didn’t matter as long as you blew off the dust.

And as mechanically a Ford Cortina MkIII, MkIV and MkV were all the same car, stuff from 1971 would still fit cars from the 1980s.

Body panels too. He had a contact in a metal fabricator’s in Oswestry and they produced pattern-part body panels for all kinds of cars. Just cut out the rot and weld one of the correct panels in place. I still have tons of those that either I never managed to use, bought for stock or bought for projects like the 2000E saloon in the warehouse in Montaigut.

What would they be worth now?

So many plans and projects that I had on the go or on the back burner, and look where we are now.

Never mind though. As Gandalf said, "no need to brood on what tomorrow may bring. For one thing, tomorrow will be certain to bring worse than today, for many days to come. And there is nothing more that I can do to help it. The board is set, and the pieces are moving"

Then I was back in that dream again … "which dream?" – ed … still trying to load that Land Rover but it wasn’t as easy as I had thought it was before because there was a big sack on the floor and with all the stuff in my hands I couldn’t bend down to pick it up and my arms wouldn’t reach low enough to the ground to pull it. I was stuck in this really awkward position with a huge pile of boxes in my hands and the thing that I needed on the floor. I couldn’t make any progress with regards to putting the stuff in the back of the Land Rover. I was stuck in that position just like that.

So have I missed yet another dream? Judging by the timestamps, with only 20 minutes between this one and the last one, it can’t have been much of one, if there was one that has been missed.

Having finished the notes, then armed with a mug of instant coffee, which is not like me at all, I prepared for my Welsh lesson.

To my surprise the Welsh lesson passed quite well and I was rather pleased with what I’d done, which makes a change.

It just goes to show you what you can do with a couple of hours of preparation. I shall have to do it more often, that’s for sure

And that reminds me. While we’re on the subject of Welsh lessons … "well, one of us is" – ed … tomorrow morning I need to look for a course to cover the Easter period. I have to keep the pressure on. I’m using the philosophy of “if you throw enough whatsit at a wherever, some of it might stick”.

First job this afternoon was to sort out the webhosting renewal – “bank card declined”.

That’s no surprise seeing as it’s a new card. I had to do a huge pile of virtual paperwork and then still it wouldn’t work. So that involved an exchange of mails. It’s a good job that renewal is 30 days away otherwise I would have run out of time at this rate.

But that reminds me. While we’re on the subject of webhosting … "well, one of us is" – ed … the webhosting for these sites of mine isn’t cheap at all.

You’ll see some “Amazon” links aside and occasionally, some links crop up in the text. I’m an Amazon affiliate so if you make your next Amazon purchase by using one of these links, it costs you no extra but I earn a small commission. That helps towards the cost of web-hosting.

After that I had an exciting job – helping someone with a video that he’s making of several Welsh football grounds. I have some strange tasks sometimes.

The rest of the afternoon was spent writing out radio programme notes.

Tea was a taco roll with stuffing (and inserted peanuts) veg and rice, just as delicious as always. And there’s enough left over for a good start at a leftover curry tomorrow, which is always nice, especially if soya yoghurt and naan bread are involved.

Anyway, that’s enough for today. I’m tired and I want to go to bed. I really have a struggle to keep going these days

But while we’re on the subject of football grounds … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’m reminded of the woman who went to her solicitor’s to ask him to obtain a divorce from her husband
"On what grounds?" asked the solicitor
"Manchester United’s, mainly" she replied "but he has taken her to several away matches"

0

Monday 11th March 2024 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… one of those rare days when nothing at all has happened.

In fact I felt like erecting one of those signs that I saw in Fredericton a few years ago – “On 12th April 1894 On This Site, Nothing At All Happened”.

After I’d finished my notes last night I had half an hour or so to unwind and then went off to bed and that was it as far as I was concerned.

The excitement continued this morning. When the alarm went off I staggered out of bed and checked my blood pressure – 16.1/10.1, compared to last night’s 17.8/10.3 when I was supposed to be relaxed.

After the medication this morning I went off to the bathroom. First thing was setting the washing machine off with a full load. Such is the exciting life I lead this days that doing the washing is considered worthy of note

Second thing was to thoroughly clean my lower legs as well as I can and then apply some more of this vaseline cream that I borrowed from the hospital. And although I’ve only applied a couple of coats and there was an earlier one applied by a nurse at the hospital, I can see an improvement.

That’s not difficult because they were in a shocking state. I don’t think that the doctor had ever seen skin as dry as mine.

Back in here I tidied up a little and arranged a few things. I’ve actually lost the phone charger that was plugged in by the bed. It’s been missing for a few weeks now and the more I look, the less likely I am to find it.

It seems to have come unplugged in the confusion round about the time that I had my very bad fall but I’ve no idea where it went from there.

Having done all of that I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’ve been during the night. It was coming up to weekend on the taxis. We were organising the work. On turning the page to the Saturday night there was a note stuck there – “phone Mick, Crewe 1110”. I phoned the number and it was Mick Gorton who answered. He said “you have my book, haven’t you?”. I asked “which book” and he replied “The Private Lives”. I had to think for ages and I suddenly realised that he meant “The Private Lives of Sherlock Holmes”. I remembered that I’d been reading it. He asked if I could drop it off some time. I told him that I had piles of other books of his too so he hummed and hawed about what he was going to do about all of those because he didn’t think that he had the room, he hadn’t planned on them right at the moment until he was organised so that was something else that was left up in the air fir the moment

He was actually a strange guy. I don’t want to say too much about him though, merely that he wasn’t the kind of person ever to have wanted to read a book.

And as for the handle of my trolley jack that he borrowed once, that was produced in evidence a short while later at Chester Crown Court during a hearing of a charge of “grievous bodily harm” and I was never ever given it back by Cheshire Constabulary’s finest. Until I bought a new jack I had to use a length of piping and a screwdriver.

Yes, when I had my taxis I knew some very strange people. It made life so much more interesting.

It all actually reminds me of the time that I was giving evidence at Mold Crown Court
"I’ve listened to your evidence for three quarters of an hour, Mr Hall" said the judge "and I’m still none-the-wiser"
"Maybe not, m’lud" I replied. "But you’re certainly better-informed"

We were then working out the publicity for a friend’s radio station. I was thinking that maybe there would be people who had said things about the radio, chop them out and use them as publicity snippets, such as if someone had said that the radio station was rotten, you’d have “So and So, the Rotten Radio Station” and have the people themselves talking during the adverts, and trying to find people who have something to say that correlates with something about the radio, for example with the radio station of our radio we had someone who played football for the club on certain dates and part of his appearance date and about his shirt number and the date all seemed to tie up with part of the phone number, and use these snippets as publicity to drop in every now and again through all different programmes that would be running so that people will pick them up and use them with their own everyday lives without realising that it relates to the particular radio, thinking of other things that we used to say like calling people “Brain of a Duck” or that sort of thing. There were plenty of ideas and plenty of possibility of doing something interesting and novel for the adverts.

The fact that I can run an advertising campaign for a radio station in my sleep is something of which I ought to be proud. Quite often you hear people say “I can do that in my sleep” but here, I really can.

By the looks of things, I’m clearly in the wrong job.

The thing about phrases becoming everyday sayings is not a new idea. How many people use a “Hoover” regardless of which company made the vacuum cleaner? And here in France we’ll use a piece of Sopalin regardless of who made the kitchen tissue paper.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s there was a whole series of cult films with memorable phrases that worked their way into the English language from those films. And it was the thing (and still is, in some places) to quote this cult film dialogue at appropriate moments.

For example, whenever anyone said "it’s over there!" another person within earshot would always reply "What? Behind the rabbit?"

And if anyone ever came out with an intelligent fact, they would always follow it up with "Well, you have to know these things when you’re king, y’know"

The very first thing that attracted me to Nerina was that she spoke in film clichés too. I felt that I had a kindred spirit who was on my wavelength. I hope that, regardless of everything, she’s still managed to retain it

Finally, I had a visit from a nun. Apparently there’s something about me going into a rest home run by nuns. They wanted to assess me. It was all about how I could walk, how I could pick up glasses, how I could carry things, how I arranged all of my food on the edge of the worktop so that I could pick it up so much easier than if it was set back a little and whether there was any risk of knocking it off as I went past. This carried on for quite a while. Then the question of the meat pies on Sunday came up. I said that in all honesty I didn’t really enjoy the meat pie on a Sunday but because it gave the person who made it so much pleasure to make it I pretended to enjoy it and to appreciate it. He replied “actually I hated making the thing. The only reason that I made it was because you seemed to love it so much”. I said “well, we know where we stand in the future then, don’t we, the two of us about this meat pie”.

The food in places like that isn’t much to talk about. There are only two men allowed to work in a nunnery and they are also of a religious order too. In the kitchens you’ll find them – the chip monk and the fish friar.

The hardest work in a nunnery though is in the laundry. That’s where the nuns try to deal with their filthy habits. And in many of these places there’s work to be done on a commercial basis where the nuns actually bottle their own water.

Apart from that, most of the rest of the day (when I haven’t been asleep) has been dealing with radio stuff.

The notes for the final track have been written, the music for the next programme chosen, paired off and joined, and I’ve even started on choosing the music for the programme after that.

That final programme is for 27th December which, apart from a few holes, shows you how far ahead I am. This is where I want to be because if I fall ill, detained in hospital or even worse, I want to make sure that my radio shows roll on

After all, if I can run a radio advertising campaign in my sleep, no reason why I can’t run a series of radio shows from beyond the grave. Barclay James Harvest HAVE GREAT OPTIMISM FOR US
"Like brave Explorers bold and free
We sail forever on the sea!!
Above the seven seas is one
The sea of life we drift upon
Our spirits living in the waves
Survive beyond the grave!"

The cleaner stuck her head in the door and passed me some of the stuff that she’s been able to buy, following my hospital visit and changed prescription. The rest will come on Wednesday.

But she tells me that she’s having a week off work for a rest. And that’s hardly a surprise – I’ve worn her out with all these endless trips, I reckon.

One thing that I forgot to mention was that the dreams, that I had forgotten to add into LAST FRIDAY’S EPISODE, are now on-line and ready to read.

Tea tonight was a really nice stuffed pepper. And it would have been even nicer had I remembered to add the peanuts to the stuffing.

Honestly, if it’s not one thing it’s another, isn’t it? And once you start, you’d be surprised at how many other things there are.

However right now the only thing in which I’m interested is my bed. It’s time that I wasn’t here. I have a Welsh lesson tomorrow and I need to be on form

While we’re on the subject of nuns and lessons and schools … "well, one of us is" – ed … there’s quite often a school attached to a nunnery. At some point the girls who are about to leave are interviewed by the Mother Superior.

At the school run by the nuns in Crewe (there was one and I knew a couple of girls who went there) one day the Mother Superior asked a girl "what do you want to be when you leave school?"
"a prostitute, Holy Mother"
"Ohh you wicked girl!" exclaimed the Mother Superior. "Wash your mouth out with Holy Water"
The class teacher took the Mother Superior aside. "It’s all right, Holy Mother" she said. "The girl said ‘prostitute’, not ‘Protestant’"

0

Sunday 10th March 2024 – TODAY IS THE …

… first day of the new regime, in which I have an alarm call on a Sunday morning.

It was set for 11:00, which makes for a nice lie-in after working until 02:00 dictating radio notes that I’d written, but it will be a different time next Sunday and for every Sunday onwards for the next few months as the nurse comes to visit me.

Yes, a much different time on Sunday mornings in the future, so make the most of it today.

Sure enough, when the alarm went off I was deep in the arms of Morpheus but I still managed to stagger to my feet.

Last night had been quite calm after I’d finished my notes. I went back to reading THE DAWN OF ASTRONOMY and the baffling phenomenon of Sothic time periods and the calculation of epacts until the street outside had quietened down and then went to dictate the notes for three radio programmes

In fact though, there were only two. I hadn’t finished the third, what with being in hospital and all of that. It had completely slipped my mind, thanks to my teflon brain, to which nothing whatever seems to stick. Still, it will give me something to do on Monday.

So just two to dictate, and that was enough. The usual nonsense and garbage because first of all I’m all up to my eyes in a state of confusion and secondly, with the cancer now beginning to affect my eyes I can’t see what I’ve written anyway.

In fact, it reminds me very much of the student at art school when his teacher checks his art folder
"What on earth is this?" asks his teacher, waving a piece of the student’s work around
"I assure you sir" said the student "I paint what I see"
"Well the shock will come" said the tutor "when you see what you paint"

Having done that I cleared off to bed where I had a rather bizarre night, as you will find out in due course.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and the first thing that I did was to check the blood pressure. 16.9/10.7. Last night was 18.0/10.6, but that was after dictating the radio notes so it’s no surprise.

After the medication I went into the bathroom and gave me feet a really in-depth wash. At the hospital they had put some kind of vaseline cream on my legs to hydrate them and it seemed to work. Somehow the tube was left behind in my room and it found its way into my rucksack.

Now that it’s here in my apartment I may as well make use of it before they work out that it’s missing.

Having done that I came in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night. We’d been to a restaurant, a group of us. We’d been having a meal. We’d ordered dessert but dessert was served in a strange way. There was a big bowl and everyone’s dessert was in the bowl. We would pass the bowl and had to help ourselves to our dessert from it. People were dipping in and taking their bits and pieces. I’d ordered some kind of pastry which was served as round balls covered in cream … "profiteroles" – ed … I was having a look for them but couldn’t work out which was mine or not. I lifted one up and said to the assembled multitudes “is this one of my balls?” which of course stopped the conversation and brought forth a whole gulf of eruption of laughter from the table, so much so that it actually awoke me.

That was what I mean by a bizarre night. The sound of the laughter did actually awaken me and I did actually sit upright with my eyes wide open

And then we’d been fighting a war against the Germans in World War I. We were in our front line somewhere and I vaguely remember walking in the air over the front line looking at all of the people still in the trenches as I passed by over their heads. It was a weird sensation. Then there was an attack, apparently the French attacking the Germans because the Germans had massacred all of their French prisoners in a certain town as some kind of reprisal for this particular raid.

It really was a strange feeling, that. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall several years ago I had a strange dream where I was running down some marble steps when I took off near the bottom and actually flew for some distance. It was a similar sensation to that, floating over the trenches looking at the heads of the soldiers in there.

It’s the kind of thing that makes me wonder if that’s what happened to the soldiers when then died. Was it just as case of the light going out, like a switch being switched off, or did something live on afterwards?

There are lots of stories about people in a high emotion doing all kinds of things that they could never normally do, and there can’t be a much more heightened state of emotion than being psyched up to charge an enemy trench.

Later still I was with a friend and another guy. We were up in the hills looking down over a beach waiting for the D-Day landings to begin. The guy had one of the latest cameras that was capable of taking photos in the dark. He was playing with it and taking some really good images with the camera stopped quite low down. So I had a play with the little NIKON 1 J5 and that was producing some pretty good pictures too so I decided to go as low as it was possible to go and take a photo to see how it would come out. I pressed the shutter and knew that I would have to wait for several seconds but then my friend went and stood right in front of the camera to block the light. Every time I moved the camera he moved again with it to block the light so I was really quite annoyed about that because I was sure that regardless of the money that the guy had spent on his new camera my Nikon would take photos even better than the ones that he’d managed to squeeze out of his new camera.

Having my friends step in to confound my progress is not a new experience either. There was one of my friends who seemed to enjoy doing that as a matter of course but it wasn’t this particular one. Having said that though, I can think of a couple of occasions when I put my mind to it …

Finally the eldest daughter of my niece came to see me last night. She asked if I’d heard of a certain beach, (and she mentioned the name of it, but I’ve forgotten). I said “no”. She said that her friend suggested that they take me there. It’s very quiet and there are hardly any cars there. It would be nice. They handed me a card and after a little while I noticed that it said “credit cards accepted” so I wondered what on earth type of place it was.

Most beaches in North America are private. It’s not like Europe.

In the UK, for example, when lands began to be allocated shortly after the Norman Conquest, there was already an established road system and lands were allocated “back from the road”.

In North America however, there was no road network at the time of the allocation of lands and access was by the river, so lands were allocated “back from the river” and that included the beaches of course.

Québec is really interesting in this respect because much of the traditional medieval French system of allocation of lands is still reflected in the current system. For example, if you go around the St Lawrence valley you’ll see première rang or “first row” back from the river, and then deuxième rang or “second row” back from the river and so on that still exist today when you look at a map of current land allocations.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

After lunch, or breakfast, or whatever, I made a start on the next radio programme but I didn’t go far. I had pizza dough to make as I had now run out. And having used the same flour and the same yeast as yesterday I’m totally bewildered as to why it went up like a lift as I watched it.

There’s really something not quite right here with this dough and I don’t know what it is.

“Watching it” because I was making biscuits while it was proofing.

On the internet last night I found a recipe for oat and syrup biscuits, and I had all of the ingredients if I were to use honey instead of the syrup. That was what I did for the flapjack and it seemed to work perfectly, so why not?

It was quite an interesting way of making biscuits, more in the American line than the European but once I figured out what was going on (which took a while and wasn’t easy) they were absolutely fine.

The pizza was delicious too. The base had risen just as it ought to have done and it was well cooked too. I really seem to have found the knack of making these now, but I wish that I could pass on the skill to the bread-making activities.

The radio programme is almost finished now – just the notes for the final song to write and dictate. So I’ll do that tomorrow too along with everything else.

It looks as if I’ll be extremely busy this coming week with all that I have to do. Still, it keeps me out of mischief and I’d only be bored.

But right now I’m tired so I’m going to bed. But before I go let me just mention that it’s not just Rosemary who has joined the Air Fryer revolution. Grahame tells me that so has he, and he doesn’t know what he’d do without it now.

In the future I can see huge “hint-swapping” and “recipe-swapping” sessions on the agenda

The best recipe-swapping session took place in the mid-west USA in the 1940s when two farmers were having a discussion
"I hear that your old cow had the colic" asked one. "How did you treat it?"
"I made up a mixture of three parts turpentine, two parts paraffin and one part molasses" said the other.
"Very good" said the first.
Two weeks later they were talking again
"You know that recipe that you gave me for the cow with colic?" asked the first
"What about it?" asked the second
"I made it up and gave it to my cow and it died"
"That’s strange" said the second. "So did mine"

0