Category Archives: France

Monday 25th December 2023 – A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS …

… to all my readers. I hope that you had a lovely day and that Santa was kind to you.

This year I shall be changing the habits of a lifetime and I shan’t regale you about the public conveniences on Crewe Bus Station as I do every Christmas, for the simple reason that they are no longer there.

Like everything else in Crewe these days, they have gone the Way of the West and right now Crewe Town Centre is looking like Dresden in 1945 after an Allied air raid.

And that’s a shame about the public conveniences. I have many fond memories of them and in particular about how a careful study of the helpful diagrams on the walls helped me pass my ‘O’ Level Biology so convincingly.

But anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here. Despite going to bed late last night I was up and wandering about at 07:45 this morning – after just about 6 hours sleep.

It beats me what is going on right now – the days when I could have 10 and even 12 hours sleep weren’t all that long ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Mind you, I did notice that for one of these medicaments that I’ve been having since my stay in October, one of the side effects is “disturbed sleep patterns” but I don’t think that it’s the sleeping patterns that are necessarily disturbed.

Once I’d organised myself, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Nerina and I were staying somewhere at a hotel, a fairly comfortable hotel. She suddenly announced that she was going to go swimming or to the cinema with some friends from work or something like that at about 23:30. That didn’t bother me but the place needed to be cleaned and tidied as we were leaving. She said that she’d do it when she returned but I told her not to bother. There’s no reason why I couldn’t do it while she wasn’t there. She seemed to want to insist but quite seriously I couldn’t see the point. Once she set out on her way to go I managed to find a polishing cloth etc and began to wipe down the surfaces and the tops of the chests of drawers etc. I had one of these old tape recorder radio things, a Grundig thing. There was a tape of Steve Marriott singing but I can’t remember which group he was in. I put that on to listen to it but the quality was absolutely awful and I couldn’t understand why. It was usually so much better than this. Even Steve Marriott instead of singing was having a really good complain about the quality. I could hear him in between the crackles and whizzes having a really good moan about the state of everything. I just didn’t know why this cassette wasn’t playing properly at all.

It’s been a couple of weeks since Nerina came to join me on a nocturnal ramble, so welcome back Nerina. I know (because it’s been said before) that some people think it’s strange that I’d welcome back Nerina into a nocturnal ramble, but it’s far from being strange in my opinion. Apart from the fact that I actually invited her to share my life all those years ago so she has more right that most to be there, we were in a very bad place at a very bad time with all kinds of very dark storm clouds hovering on the horizon back then.

And given a choice between Nerina and almost anyone else of my family coming along to keep me company, I know exactly who I’d choose

I fell asleep dictating this and I can’t remember where I’d reached. There I was cleaning the room and Steve Marriott on the tape deck of this big Grundig tape recorder-radio thing. The quality was dreadful and I couldn’t understand why it was so bad. Neither could he because while the speaker was crackling and popping I could hear him complain. Anyway I made a start but some people suddenly appeared. There was a recording that needed to be done and could Nerina and I do it? I explained that she wasn’t here at the moment and wouldn’t be back for a while. That didn’t seem to please them at all. They decided to stay. I decided that while he was staying and Nerina would be on her way home from this cinema or whatever I’d go to have a shower. It was one of those where you have to juggle the controls so that it would be correct and then climb over and in to it as if it was the base of a bath.

By the way, for the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few these days, when I say “fell asleep” and “woke up” when I’m dreaming, that’s not actually what’s happening.

At the time that I’m dictating, I am in fact fast asleep but I’ve been doing this for 25 years and it’s become an automatism these days. When I “fall asleep” what happens is that the dictating starts to slur, it all goes quiet and then after about a minute or so we have the deep breathing and, occasionally, snoring (and I’m sorry for doubting you, Percy Penguin).

But when I’m “awake” I’m actually asleep but I’m somewhat conscious and aware of my surroundings and when I transcribe the dictaphone notes later I do have a recollection of some of the events.

On the other hand, sometimes, I transcribe some notes that mean absolutely nothing. I have no recall whatsoever of some of the dreams that I have, like the following, which means absolutely nothing to me. I had 2 overtime Gods or whatever fighting over me trying to drag me this way or that way to go along and work under them for some overtime etc. It was quite an extraordinary dream and it all evaporated when I awoke and took hold of the dictaphone but they were pulling me one way and another one another way offering me all kinds of inducements to follow them and do the homework that they had planned. Instead, I kind-of awoke.

Finally I was back in the Vietnamese jungle or some such. We were running a guerilla unit. I was in the stores somehow. We were sending out patrols. I was trying my best to keep our camp quite tidy but no-one else could be really bothered. Stuff was being dumped in the jungle and I was in despair because of this. Someone would have to come along in years time and clean it all away, old metal skips and everything just abandoned. We were expecting to be pulled out at some time. As we were discussing this the phone rang in the office. Someone went to answer it. I remember saying to people that it looks as if we finally have our orders to go. There was no cheering or anything like that from within the hut so I didn’t think anything of it. Then someone came dashing in saying “for God’s sake try to stop such-and-such a patrol”. It seems that someone has sent them off with the wrong gelignite and it’s 10 times more powerful, they stuff they’ve taken, than what they should have. If they are planting booby-trap bombs with that they are likely to become casualties themselves. Of course there’s no way of stopping a patrol once it’s gone out. As it happened, we were lucky. The captain of the patrol had decided that he would sample some of the gelignite to make sure that it worked correctly. When he did, he was astonished by its performance. A simple lump demolished a considerable part of the suburb of one of the towns that he was supposed to be attacking so he too came to the realisation that he had the wrong gelignite so he and his troop beat a hasty retreat before anyone of the opposition realised what exactly was happening and what had gone on.

So today I have emulated my namesake the mathematician and done three fifths of five eighths of … errr … nothing. I spoke briefly to Liz, Alison and my ill neighbour on the internet, and a neighbour came here for five minutes, and that was that.

So, what about my Christmas food? I know that you are all dying to know how it went

  • The Hash Browns – not the absolute disaster that they have been in the past but they were still a long, long way from where I would like them to be
  • The Christmas Cake – too dry and crumbly, but that’s always the case with eggless cakes. I think that Liz must have a special ingredient that she keeps secret. But despite that, it looked like a Christmas Cake and tasted like a Christmas cake, even if I did have to eat it with a spoon
  • Icing and Marzipanning – not my strongpoint. I can’t do icing to save my life. But the cake was covered with it so what I did worked to a point. All in all, the cake passed muster.
  • The Vegan Wellington – this was superb and a big thanks to Liz for sending me the recipe. There’s plenty left and I’ll be eating it for ever, I think
  • The Stuffing – the chestnuts having been discarded as unfit for human consumption and having to improvise, it could have been a problem. It was dry and crumbly but it looked like stuffing, smelled like stuffing and tasted like stuffing. What more do you want?
  • The vegetables – I was using the electric streamer which is rather hit and miss. Following everything that I usually do, they ended up overcooked. That’s a rare event
  • The Christmas Pudding – Leave the best until last. This was a masterpiece, it really was. Exactly how a Christmas pudding should be. I’m really pleased with this.

There’s no peace for the wicked. The Centre de Re-education is open tomorrow and I have three sessions, spread right out through the afternoon. There’s plenty of paperwork that needs sorting out but I’m in no mood to do it.

An early night sounds as if it might be a good idea but I don’t have the energy to go to bed right now

But that’s Christmas over for another year. I’m wondering if I’ll see the next one. If my health continues to deteriorate like this, it’s unlikely. No-one with this illness has lived longer than 11 years and I was diagnosed in 2015. Time is running out.

But not me. I can’t even stagger out at the moment.

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Sunday 24th December 2023 – AFTER ALL OF …

… the effort that I went to so that I would be up and about at 08:20 – and on a Sunday too – the nurse didn’t turn up until 09:20.

And it wasn’t Yoan either. It was his weekend off so he sent his sidekick Isabelle to deal with today’s issues, including sorting me out.

That was actually quite nice because I like Isabelle. One of her children was on a University exchange programme in Dublin last year so they met up in Belfast and went for a wander around for a week. I suggested a few places for them to visit.

My memories in Belfast aren’t quite so pleasant as that. I used to do deliveries there in the mid-70s in a van with British number-plates and on one occasion I was “detained” by a military patrol while my bona fides were checked.

Mind you, it was coming back from one such delivery that I had my encounter with that student from Lancaster University that I recounted a couple of months or so ago – the girl who didn’t like Tuppence, my old black cat.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, it wasn’t really all that much of an effort to raise myself from the Dead in time for Isabelle. In fact, I was actually up and wandering about at 07:45 this morning.

And that’s not something that happens every Sunday, is it?

Once Isabelle had gone (and come back to see if I actually had some injections in stock, and then departed again) I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. The first was another dream of which I’ve forgotten most. They were talking about putting me under and they were asking which side of my body I wanted to come round on. I misunderstood the question and replied something to do with strawberries because I had a fancy at that moment to eat something like that. The discussion went on about the hospital. They asked me how I liked being there. I replied that it was far better than I imagined. The treatment that I’m having here couldn’t be better anywhere else. Again there was a lot more to it than this but unfortunately it all evaporated while I was trying to dictate it.

Those are sentiments that I would certainly echo about the Hôpital Pitié-Salpetrière – if only the food were better and they’d turn up the heating.

And then I’d been with my friends from the Wirral on a motorbike voyage somewhere for a while. We ended up back at their house. I was having to travel on back to my house but for some reason I needed to unwind because the final leg had been extremely difficult – even though we had been on motor bikes we’d had to lower our baggage down some kind of cliff somewhere in order to reach the bottom which was extremely complicated. While we’d been in Wrexham there had been some kind of riot or disturbance and they’d actually blown away a whole cliff so that there was a view from the town right the way down the Dee valley into the mountains there. We made our way down these mountains and this cliff. The husband caught something in a pool – he’d wandered off to a pool and was there with his hands in it. We ended up back at their house. They went and sat in their living room and I just slumped into the kitchen for a while. Then I noticed that what he had done was that he’d caught some kind of small fish and put it in a bowl. I knocked on the door of their sitting room and they opened it. I told them that one of my cats has a pet goldfish. I recounted the story of how it caught it and brought it home, then it had actually fished another one out of a pond and brought it home too. Then I began to prepare to leave. Foolishly I took off my boots and then I couldn’t put them back on again as my feat swelled up. I noticed that I was wearing odd socks – one was a dark brown and the other was a slightly lighter shade of brown.

Back into another dream that I’ve had in the past. We’re discussing railway locomotives. It turned out that not only did one railway company put a locomotive at an experimenter so that he could make his experiments, it put a whole fleet out to one guy and allowed him to experiment all up and down their main line with a fleet of locomotives. These were interesting because although they were coal-fired they actually started up on oil. To make them start you lit an oily rag and stuck it under the chassis at the air intake. This was at the height of World War I. There was a huge casualty sorting station – I said that it was at Valenciennes but it can’t have been because that was behind enemy lines – where they would take all the wounded prisoners and soldiers from the front line back to a field hospital. Anyone who was injured there and taken away was really lucky because the locomotives and the field ambulance trains really worked extremely well and all kinds of experiments went on. I should have been working there and helping these people shift coal around but I was far more interested reading books about this and talking to some of the workers. We even made whole charts of how much more efficient it would be taking all factors into account, including the factors of children killing donkeys – if a donkey was old and overworked it was put into a field to recover but all of the children would climb all over it and there were several instances of donkeys killed by over-enthusiastic children. There was one particular incident where I was reading a book when I should have been moving coal. Some woman dropped a few things as she was carrying the coal and told me to stand guard over it until she could come back to pick it up so that no-one else would take it.

Yes, lighting oily rags and holding them up to the air intake while someone else turns the motor. I remember very well doing that for my father in the winter of 1963. Gardner 5LW and 5LX engines were notoriously difficult to start in the cold and there was always an endless collection of old Fodens parked up outside our house at night in those days.

The winter that year was so cold that at times we had a paraffin heater underneath the fuel tank to stop the diesel from freezing, and I’ve seen fires lit under fuel tanks too.

But as for experimental trains running wild on main lines, the Great Western Railway company lent an experimental train to a Doctor Dionysus Lardner and the train would turn up unannounced at all kinds of strange places.

When Brunel was asked what he would do if he encountered Lardner and his train coming towards him on the same line, Brunel replied "I would increase my speed and rely on my superior velocity to drive him off the rails".

When Sir Daniel Gooch wrote his memoirs just before he died, he commented on the incident and said "whatever would be said of such a mode of proceeding today?"

So having dealt with all of that, I’ve had a very quiet day today. I’ve made my hash browns, for better or for worse, and despite following the instructions carefully, they don’t seem to be any better than any others that I’ve previously made.

The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, of course. They’ll be on the breakfast menu tomorrow along with beans on toast, vegan sausage and mushroom paté on toast and we’ll see how it goes. But I really don’t know why I can never make hash browns properly

So, tune in tomorrow and I’ll tell you all about them, if I haven’t died of food poisoning in the meantime.

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Saturday 23rd December 2023 – A GREAT BIG …

… “hello” to a certain young lady from my past who has featured in these pages, mainly during my nocturnal voyages, on about a dozen occasions over the previous ever so many years.

It’s pretty certain that she won’t want her name blasted all over these pages – after all, who would really want to be associated with me to that extent? – but she’s found her way here, recognised herself from a few of the remarks that I’ve made in passing, and sent me her best wishes.

So best wishes back to you too!

Also a big “hello” to Grahame who did indeed listen to the wrong track the other morning and wrote and told me about it. I hope that you enjoy the correct version while you’re stuffing your Christmas bird.

And not to forget a big “hello” to Robert from the Orkney Islands who sent me a few photos from 45 or so years ago. And when I’ve recovered from the shock, I’ll post them on here and give you all a laugh.

The reason why I’m mentioning the correspondence here is because all three people wrote to me using a Gmail account, to which I can’t reply. Google has blocked access to its e-mail system from all small independent webservers who won’t put Google’s own code into their sites.

So if anyone receives an e-mail in the future from STRAWBERRY MOOSE, you’ll know that he’s writing on my behalf. As far as I’m aware, his account can still access Gmail.

Anyone else who has written to me recently from a different account will have received a reply.

However, I’m not sure how I managed to do that because even though I was up and about at 09:45 this morning, I didn’t go to bed last night … "this morning" – ed … until after 04:00. I wasn’t at all tired and just couldn’t go off to sleep.

But when I finally awoke, first task was to take my blood pressure.

The dratted box was flaming well sealed shut and took some rather aggressive action to open it. And then I had to wrestle the blasted batteries out of the sodding plastic wrapping and that was a real work of art to do that.

Then I couldn’t open the perishing battery flap in the wretched machine for ages.

And how the hell do you wrap the flaming strap around your perishing arm with only one bleeding hand?

At that point I noticed the instructions – "blood pressure should be taken in a calm, relaxed and stress-free situation" and I thought “maybe I ought to start this tomorrow rather than today”.

Instead, I went to deal with the broccoli.

Firstly, I trimmed off the florets and put them in cold water which I slowly brought to the boil.

While it was heating up, I diced the stalk into tiny pieces, diced a small potato ditto, chopped some garlic and a small onion.

When the broccoli reached boiling point I fished out the florets and put them to drain. Then I put the water on one side for reuse.

Into the saucepan went a knob of butter and when it reached cooking temperature, in went the onion with some coriander, chives and marjoram and fried until it started to go brown.

Then I added the diced broccoli stalk, the diced potato and the garlic and spent five minutes or so stirring it all round before adding enough of the broccoli water to cover the veg – not forgetting the stock cube this week as I had the last time.

When I judged that it was ready, I added a pot of soya yoghurt and whizzed it up ready to eat.

While it was cooking I was topping, tailing, scrubbing and slicing 2 kg of carrots into the giant saucepan.

When the soup was ready the carrots went on to blanch while I ate my soup with the nice crusty bread that I’d bought.

Once I’d had my food I came back in here to transcribe the dictaphone entries from the night. Once again I was dictating into my hand and when I awoke most of this dream evaporated. What I do remember is that I was walking down a street and I came across a group of children whom I knew from somewhere else. They were all having a play around with a couple of other kids. It seemed to me as if there was some tension in the air and I couldn’t understand why. One of them, probably the one whom I knew best had on a swimming costume but had a tailored winter coat over the top of it. That looked quite strange. There was some discussion about milk and so on. Because they were busy having their issues they didn’t actually hear it. Later on when the woman was dictating the report, she said “and there was milkshake too, strawberry, but no-one seemed to want any”.

I think that I dictated that dream about me and all of those kids … "yes you did" – ed … At the place where we were, there were a couple of adults too. One of the adults there was a particularly obnoxious character who seemed to detest everyone and didn’t have a good word to say about anything. He had an accident one day and slipped. He had to be somewhere so one of the girls went to fetch some kind of toy-type of thing like a small horse on four wheels with a handle on which a parent would put a child and pull it round the room for fun. She went to fetch this and somehow the old guy managed to mount it, broken arm and all. She set off quite happily pulling him to his meeting like that. It was one of the sweetest things I’d ever seen.

Later on I was on my way to a folk music concert in Abingdon and had the computer open on my lap for how to arrive there. I was flagged down by a policeman who saw me with the computer open. He wondered if I was watching a film. I satisfied him that it was a map. When he turned it round he could see that in the camera was actually me being shown on the screen. He accepted that that was OK and waved me on again. I drove as far as Basingstoke. As I came into the town there were these 3 great big buildings at the side of the road, one after the other, all completely derelict and abandoned. I thought “what a sight to greet visitors this is”. I parked up and went for a walk around. I ended up in the shopping precinct, a miserable place. But then I couldn’t find the exit. I was wandering around that shopping centre for ages. Then I bumped into Zero’s parents (but unfortunately not Zero). We went for a coffee. They were discussing things that they needed to do. I told them that I’d be quite happy to help so they asked me if I’d make a phone call to Penzance on their behalf. I didn’t know where the phone boxes were. She said “there’s one just outside the centre”. I replied “I’ve been wandering around here for ages trying to leave. Where’s the exit?”. She pointed out some kind of tiny spiral staircase thing. Before I left, we began to talk about other plans. A while ago I’d referred them to a guy who built computers. I asked if they’d had much luck with him. They suddenly realised that he’d never contacted them al all. They were all for contacting him on the spot. In the end we worked out some kind of plan about I’d ring them every morning before they left for work at 07:30 to receive my orders for the day. Then I was wondering whether it might be better if they were to ring me before they left for work. That was where I was busy debating with myself

My cleaner turned up round about now and awoke me from a little siesta that I was having. She had brought with her some more medication that had had to be ordered. Now I really am overflowing with medication and I’ve no idea where to begin. I can see that I’ll have to rejig my entire schedule and it’s going to become really complicated.

vegan wellington Granville Manche Normandy France Eric Hall photo 23rd December 2023And this, dear reader, is my vegan wellington.

It doesn’t look particularly attractive but then again, it’s not the culinary disaster that I was half-expecting. It actually tastes quite nice too, if the bits that bubbled out of the side are anything to go by.

That was this afternoon’s task – to make the vegan wellington. It took quite a long time too all told and I was hard at it for several hours all told.

Despite only making half a quantity, there’s still a considerable amount here and there will be plenty left over. It’ll probably freeze for another time, if only I were to have some room in the freezer. No matter how much I use out of there, the quantity never seems to go down.

All that remains now, as far as food for Christmas goes, are the hash browns.

And it’s quite appropriate to talk about them seeing as I mentioned culinary disasters just now. No matter how I try to make them, they never go right. My family in Canada can belt these out by the thousand, perfect every time, but somehow the technique always escapes me

Tomorrow I’ll have another go and see where that takes me. I have plenty of potatoes here.

And I had a smile to myself today. Rosemary has taken the first photograph of her cat.

When I was down there in the summer three years ago there were several feral cats roaming around.

When I was down there in the summer last year it was “don’t let that white cat into the house! It keeps on trying to come in”.

A few weeks ago I was talking on the phone to Rosemary and I asked her to read something that she’d received. “Just hang on a minute. I’ll have to stand up to fetch it. Let me take Myrtille off my lap”.

And today we had the first photo.

No-one I ever knew ever won a fight with a cat.

Tomorrow, for one of the very rare occasions on a Sunday, there will be an alarm call – and at 08:20 too.

The injections start up again on Wednesday and the nurse wants to see the prescriptions beforehand so he knows what tubes to bring for the blood samples – blood tubes are colour-coded depending on what they are testing.

He’s in the building administering to my ill neighbour so he says that he’ll pass by – between 08:30 and 08:45

Then there’s just the hash browns to make and I’ll be as ready as I ever will be for Christmas. I’m really not feeling festive one little bit which is a shame but that’s no surprise. It’s been another year when I’ve been through the mill

But I’ll go through the motions all the same. I don’t know what else to do.

"Me, my thoughts are flower strewn
With ocean storm, bayberry moon
I have got to leave to find my way
Watch the road and memorise
This life that passed before my eyes
Nothing is going my way"

I HAVE GOT TO FIND THE RIVER

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22nd December 2023 – BYE BYE STRIDER!

strider centreville new brunswick Canada Eric Hall photo October 2022Amongst the fall-out from the developments over the last 15 months is the parting of ways from one of my faithful companions.

Strider will be off to a new home as soon as his log book arrives here and I sign it and send it back to New Brunswick’s Motor Vehicle Bureau.

He’s not going far at all, as it happens, but even half an inch is too far to be separated from someone who has served me well for 9 years and God alone only knows how many thousands of miles.

strider ford ranger centreville canadaHe first appeared on the scene in November 2014.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the disputes and arguments that I’d had with car hire companies in North America who found it impossible to believe that “unlimited mileage” meant that mileage was unlimited and you could go as far as you like.

After 2010 when I’d taken CASEY, THE CHRYSLER PT CRUISER over the TRANS LABRADOR HIGHWAY one of the first vehicles to travel across 1800 miles of the worst roads in the World when the final 300 miles over the Eagle Plateau and through the Mealy Mountains were finally opened, I was on some kind of blacklist.

labrador city 813 kilometres canada september septembre 2017So when someone turns up with a lightweight 4×4 pick-up with off-road pack, how can you say “no”?

STRAWBERRY MOOSE And I found our soul-mate and we set off on our adventures that took us thousands and thousands of miles all down the Eastern side of the North American continent.

And apart from a gearchange linkage falling apart in Québec in 2019, he never gave a moment’s trouble. And even then we still limped home after a fashion.

We’ve been as far north as it’s possible to go by road or trail in Labrador and Northern Québec … "and on several occasions too" – ed … as far south as Georgia in the USA and as far west as several miles beyond Ottawa

But we aren’t going any further. I can’t travel over to Canada any more and it makes no sense having him sit around when someone else can use him.

The total irony of all of this is that his seat is exactly the right height for me with my disability, his brake pedal can easily be operated by the left foot and the cruise control will move him along without using the accelerator.

There’s no reason at all why, if he were over here or I were over there, I couldn’t continue to drive him.

He drinks petrol like it’s going out of fashion though … "well, it is" – ed … being an old-technology V6 4.0 litre, but down at the bottom of my field I have another scrap Transit with a 2.5 diesel engine that would drop straight in.

However, if I were fit enough to change an engine over these days, I wouldn’t need the vehicle in the first place.

"What do you want us to do with the stuff that’s still in it?"
"The only things of interest to me are the Fender bass and the Fender combo amp. Share the rest out amongst yourselves and bin the rest"
Tons of tools, camping equipment, vehicle maintenance stuff, expedition equipment, all gone just like that that. But what can you do?

Here’s hoping that Strider has a good home.

Luckily, I have a good home, and I’m glad to be back in it.

Last night I finally went to bed at 02:30 and with no alarm, I was still awake at 07:15 and up and about by 07:45. There’s not much point in having a lie-in these days.

As usual, it took an age to wind myself up ready for work and I began by unpacking my backpack and sorting out the washing.

And if anyone tried to listen to “The Mountain Queen” and Hein Mars and Paul Weststrate last night or early this morning, I posted the wrong link. I’ve corrected it now and it’s THIS LINK that you want.

Sorry about that.

Armed with a coffee I had a look at all of the papers that I’d brought back. I couldn’t make head or tail of some of them so my cleaner said that she’d come round later to help me look.

And so I went off to listen to the tons of stuff on the dictaphone. Firstly there was a continuation of a dream that I’d had a couple of nights ago. It concerned some kind of exhibition of ancient vehicles or something or other. I was going through my photographs trying to identify the people, the location, the vehicle that they had with them etc. I came across a photo where I recognised the person. He was a radio presenter. It just so happened that at that very moment he came out of the building towards the car park so I ran after him and caught up with him as he was standing by his car. I showed him the photo. he replied “that’s not me”. I replied “the car’s a Rover 90” – it was a red Rover 90. He suddenly said “ohh yes, 1954, that”. I asked “what? The car, the photograph or you?”. He replied “no, the car. The photograph was probably taken in 1974. It’s the car that’s 1954”.

Later on we were spread out on a desk in a laboratory obviously run by this doctor. A girl was going through, counting off so many. When she arrived at the number that she wanted, the person she was standing next to, she pointed out and that person was taken away. She said that she was preparing a table and discussion for, I think, her brother who was obviously the psychiatric doctor. As it happened, the people with me and I were saved. We attracted his attention when we went into the boudoir to be interrogated

And I’m doing it again – dictating into my hand. We were going to have a practice with our rock group so I went round to pick up our singer. She was a young girl, and wore one of these party/ballroom dresses type of the 18th Century when she came out. I had to practically lift her up to climb into the van because it was so high up. I climbed in afterwards. She asked “what’s new?”. I replied “we have a gig on Tuesday”. She asked where so I told her “Nantwich”. We set out from her house and drove, and ended up at the back of Alvaston Hall going over a bridge that had been built to keep the vehicles off what was a prehistoric settlement on the ground. We were heading for the recording studio where our group practised.

And this is really strange (or maybe it isn’t). Talking about Simon House yesterday, and the times that I’ve played the bass to some of those tracks, something came into my head yesterday about a girl at our school. She was 4 years or so younger than us, quite small, long dark brown hair, brown-rimmed glasses and a round face, but she sang and played the violin and piano, and to a really good standard too. I was actually imagining her weaving her web around me playing her violin as I played the bass lines to Damnation Alley or Steppenwolf.

Bizarrely, this isn’t the first time that she has come up in a discussion. In Munich 18 months ago my German friend, who was in my class at school, and I were discussing her and her violin for some reason, and neither of us could remember her name. And I still can’t.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed I was in the gold 2000E estate that’s in the barn in Virlet. I was driving to Stoke on Trent. I had to be there for 18:00 but was early. There’s a place that I know where you can park where there’s a good view of the city (if ever there’s a good view of Stoke on Trent from anywhere). I parked on there with about 3 or 4 other cars. It was just underneath a pub. By now the gold estate had transformed itself into a service bus. I was sitting in the seat behind the driver. The door opened and a couple of people came in. One was a young girl. She was obviously waiting for someone but she had her phone and was describing the passengers on board this bus to whoever was on the phone presumably for security reasons. She looked at me and said “there’s an old guy with a small face” so I stuck my head up and said “yes, and extremely handsome” which made her laugh. She moved on to another guy there. She said “he’s the guitarist from the pub”. Another couple of people came on and everyone began to chat. It became quite friendly. Someone asked me why I was there. I replied “I have to be here because I have to be at someone’s front door at 18:00 on the dot and not be early”. They thought that that was an extremely strange command which I suppose it was but if that’s what the person wants, that’s what the person is going to have “so I’m just sitting here killing time”. After a couple of minutes I had to make my excuses and leave. It was time for me to be heading off.

Having done that, I set about photocopying all of the paperwork that I’d received from the Hospital. There was a whole rain-forest of it too, and it all has to be distributed amongst the appropriate recipients.

Anyway, the cleaner came round and we sorted out everything that needed to be sorted out. And then she set off for the Chemist’s.

When she came back and gave me the stuff, I arranged it on my shelf. And now I’m well over into a second shelf of medication.

And do you want to know how much a month’s medication is costing? If you do, then I’ll tell you that it’s €7104:00 and I know because I’ve seen the bill. And my contribution to that is nothing whatever (I almost said “Zero” but that could have been misconstrued).

On top of that I’ve been issued with a tensiometer and a heart monitor.

My blood pressure needs to be measured 3 times a day, morning, noon and night, when I’m sitting calm and comfortable without stress. And when is that ever likely to happen?

The aim is for the blood pressure to be below 14.0/9.0. And when has that ever happened?

There’s to be an injection of this Aranesp substitute every Wednesday by the infirmier ambulant and it has to stop if my blood count rises to 12.0.

And how do we know if my blood count rises to 12.0? That’s because the nurse has to take a blood sample every week. He’ll enjoy that because he can never find my veins.

With the heart monitor, I have to send off the readings and the blood pressure figures every day to the hospital for further instructions – keep on doing what I’m doing jusqu’à nouvel ordre in fact.

There’s another couple of IRMs that needs to be arranged – one for the heart and another for something else that I forget now.

And then there’s the medication. When I walk around in future, you’ll hear me coming because I’ll be rattling. Honestly, I have never seen so much anywhere except in a chemist’s, and then not all the time.

At this rate, sorting out all of this paperwork and medication and keeping all these records, I’ll be far too busy to die.

In between all of this I prepared an order for food and sent it off to LeClerc. It was shockingly expensive today but I’ve bought presents for everyone who has helped me this year, to express my gratitude.

Nothing really exciting because LeClerc’s home shopping isn’t blessed with a great deal of choice. Just boxes of chocolates and also a bottle of champagne for my cleaner. Anyone who comes round tidying up after me thoroughly deserves it.

Tea was a salad with burger and chips, some of which were sweet potato chips – LeClerc’s home delivery won’t deliver less than 1kg of sweet potatoes and I only needed a few hundred grammes for the wellington. And it was all delicious too.

So tomorrow I’m going to start on the vegan wellington. I don’t have everything but I’ll do what I can with what I have. It should be delicious anyway, whatever goes in it. I have all kinds of vegetables to go with it – 7 varieties of different veg in fact.

Yes, there was more broccoli on offer so I bought another one. Once more it’s mostly stalk so I’ll be having broccoli stalk soup again tomorrow.

So there is broccoli and 2kg of carrots to blanch in the morning, and the vegan wellington in the afternoon – if I’m still here after taking my first tablet.

This is all beginning to look rather uncomfortable to me.

0

Thursday 21st December 2023 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting on my comfy chair in my office/recording studio/bedroom (it’s not just STRAWBERRY MOOSE and me who do multi-tasking around here.

And I’ll refrain from quoting Golden Earring, Sean, just for you. I’ll just let everyone imagine it.

First of all, let me announce that the completed entries for the last three days are now on line so you can go back to Monday and read forward at your leisure.

But let me give you a little warning – if you are offended or upset by anything that I’ve written over those three days, I’m really sorry, but that’s how it is, I’m afraid.

For the whole of my life (yes, the whole of my life) I’ve been falling into the deep dark pit where the black dog lives and then climbing out again later on. And sometimes I fall into it deeper than other times and it takes me much longer than other times to climb out.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been in the pit but the other day I slid down probably deeper than I’ve been for 30 years and couldn’t climb out again.

At times like that I have a tendency to give vent to my feelings maybe more than I otherwise would, something like a safety valve blowing off excess steam.

People have asked me before why I don’t go back later and edit what I write. But the answer to that is for someone who is suffering from a long-term terminal illness, a control of the mental health is as important as a control of the physical health and I need to see how my mental health is evolving as the illness progresses through my body.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been advised by many people … "and on many occasions too" – ed … to seek counselling as my health deteriorates more and more, to prepare me for “the end”, but counselling won’t solve my problems, and it won’t help anyone else who follows my trail.

And so you are stuck with these notes, for better or for worse. And if you read something that makes you raise your eyebrows, don’t worry about it.

As for my dreams, I have no control over them at all. And how I wish that I did.

A few people are actually quite adept at reading the signs in my postings. Almost immediately after I posted last night’s entry, Alison came on line and spoke to me for quite a while, for which I was extremely grateful.

So for the last few nights, I’ve had Alison, Rosemary and Jackie helping me along as I deal with all of these issues, and I’m very grateful.

So grateful was I after my chat with Alison that I awoke this morning feeling much better than I did when I went to bed last night. Mind you, it was 07:20 so I suppose that was partly the reason.

The nurses came and did their usual nursey things and told me that I’d be leaving today, critical blood count or not. But last night before going to bed, I had an injection of a product similar to Aranesp, the “last resort” for stimulating the red blood cells to fight against the carcinogenic protein.

They took the card that I gave them so that someone could ring up the taxi company to tell them to fetch me. I told them not to hang about because he has a 4-hour drive to come here for me.

And after breakfast I finally, at long last, had a good shower. And how much better I felt for it too.

The doctor waited until about midday to come to see me with an enormous sheaf of papers, including my permission to leave.

She also brought me the very bad news. If you want to see what the lumbar puncture and the thoracic puncture disclosed, you need to READ THIS

Of course, I’m not going to have any old common or garden complication to my illness, am I? It has to be something that is “an extremely rare neurologic complication”.

And as if I don’t have enough issues already with which to deal, without having all of this dropping on me over the last few days.

But no-one can say that they weren’t thorough.

While I was waiting for the doctor to come I transcribed the dictaphone notes. We were on board ship, a whole pile of us, kids from school. We’d gradually settled down into groups of friends. I was with a couple of people, other boys from other places. Someone suggested a game of cards. We found a pack of cards and went to the deck above to the games room where all of the card tables and all the other tables were. But there wasn’t a card table free. There was one table where there were some boys from the year above us, They were playing and said “we’re playing here”. I replied “I can see that you’re in the middle of a game. In the end they invited 2 of our party to join in with them to make up the numbers. That left a couple of us. We were trying to work out what we were going to do. As far as I was concerned I’d be quite happy to sit on the floor and play. The 2 other boys seemed to be much more interested in finding a table or something like that. I thought that that was rather unnecessary given the circumstances.

Later on there was a big battle in the American Civil War between the North and the South. The Southern forces were completely overwhelmed and the North was victorious. What happened then was that the North suspected that several women had been extremely active in helping the Southern forces. They rounded up these women and arrested them. The women had to go to General Headquarters so they were put on some kind of primitive bike each. A group of them set off. They came to a steep hill so they had to dismount and walk up the hill. When they reached the top they could remount and ride back down again. At the top of the hill they leapt onto their bikes and pushed off to start pedalling. Just at that moment the wife of a Northern military dignitary decided to cross over the street. As a result she collided with one of these women and was killed. The woman was then rearrested on a charge of murder and was taken away. Many people had seen the incident and agreed that she couldn’t possibly be guilty of murder – it was quite simply nothing more than an accident. They somehow found their way into the tribunal. When a vote was passed for whether or not she should be prosecuted it ended up being 325 in favour and 325 against. It was necessary then for another committal hearing to be held. She was still nevertheless taken off to a ladies prison. While I was watching her in the hallway of this big building waiting for the carriage to come, I awoke.

Did I dictate the dream about everyone coming upstairs to visit an apartment next to mine? … "no you didn’t" – ed … The interior was black and white. As they came up they kept on commenting on some signs that were there, like “Mrs So-and-So – 1st prize for baking” etc. One of the people said to everyone else that whoever lives there says that we’ll have plenty of nice home food, implying that she’d baked it but in fact it’s obviously her mother who’ll have baked all the food for them. So there was some general rumbling. I stepped out onto the landing to see what was happening. There were all these people. They asked me if I was a member of a certain church too. I replied “no, this isn’t a church. It’s a block of flats”. They all looked at me quite strangely.

Somewhere along the line I was planning on doing something or other but I didn’t know what. I wanted to make changes so I’d gone out for a walk to think. I’d seen a Volvo B58 coach parked in the yard of a coach operator. It had been completely stripped out of seats etc and the back panel was missing. I thought to myself “I could make myself a nice little car transporter and caravanette-type of thing out of this, the way it is at the moment. It was an old 53-seater, probably N or P reg Duple body. I had a quick look around. It looked clean enough so i went to ask for the proprietor. While I was looking for him I found a Morris Traveller that was also for sale. I had a really good look around the Morris and found that they wanted £650 for it, which I thought was cheap. Meantime I found the proprietor and he pointed out a woman to whom I had to talk. It meant jumping across a kind-of ditch. Of course I landed in the ditch all the way up to my knees but eventually found the woman. I asked about the coach. She said that it had been one of their tour coaches that they’d had from new. It’s a really good vehicle. They’d advertised it for sale as a coach for £2,500 but there were no takers so they began to break it for spares. They found that it was too good to break for spares so the idea was that one of the car racer people might like it. I asked how much and she replied £650. It needs an MoT that they can arrange and a few other bits and pieces. I thought “£650 is nothing for a coach like that”. I se off back for home thinking to myself “how am I going to break the news to Nerina that I’ve just bought her a Morris Traveller and there’ll be a big Volvo coach turning up at the house in a week or so. She won’t be too pleased about this and it might cause a few problems at home”.

A short while ago someone offered me a reasonably modern 53-seater coach for £1500 and had I had my health I could have been sorely tempted. I even drew up some plans to make it a 12-seater coach with kitchen and 12 berths for sleeping, and use it on my trips around Europe with my friends but it wasn’t at all a realistic proposition the way that my health is going.

I was then back in that dream again … "which one?" – ed … and we were all in Virlet, although it wasn’t the Virlet that I know. We were tidying up around my house, finding all the loose rocks that were lying around and either putting them in a pile or putting them back where they belonged in the fabric of the house. This huge group of people had come together as a result of issues in the previous dream, all marked “present”. The situation was explained to them. We began to tidy it up and were doing really well. We’d done two sides of the house but the 3rd and 4th side of my house are on a different level. I thought that we’d have stayed on this particular level where the other two sides of my house are and tidy up all around there before going down into the marshy morass and dealing with that. For some reason one of the women who was co-ordinating the party went down below and began to move the stones around. We tried to call her back but she took absolutely no notice and carried on moving the stones around down below. Some of them were really heavy and required 2 people to lift them comfortably but she was lifting them on her own. I was convinced that she was being deliberately stubborn and she’ll end up with a bad back at the very least at the end of all of this if she doesn’t stop, come back to us and co-operate with the pattern that we are trying to do. There were some other people involved in this dream who lived in a nearby house that was actually a chateau but I can’t remember what their actual involvement was.

The secretary came to see me after the doctor had gone. “Your car will be here between 16:00 and 16:30” she said, meaning that she had only just phoned for it. So I settled down to do some work and … errr … a little relax.

By 17:00 they all wanted to go home so they began to harass me a little and eventually they moved me into a waiting room outside. And 20 minutes later the ‘phone rang
"Where are you?" asked a voice
"Batiment Heuyer" I replied.
"Ohh, not where you were last time?"

It seems that no-one had told him where I was, even though I’d given the taxi company a copy of my convocation and the secretary had said nothing when she rang, so he’d been trying all of the doors in the building where I was last time.

Eventually we set off for home, right through the Paris rush hour and hit the open road. It was a good drive – I’ve had this driver on a Paris trip before and I’ll travel with him again – and we even had a 10-minute break.

At one point on the journey I dozed off, and then had one of those really dramatic awakenings that I have sometimes when I suddenly sit bolt upright. It scared my driver to bits.

What made me laugh though was the taximeter. Somewhere on the autoroute between St-Lô and Villedieu les Poeles it rang up over the €1000 mark and by the time we pulled up at my door at 21:45 it was showing €1178. It’s a good job that the Social Security has prise en charge the journeys.

First thing that I did was to make myself a big bowl of porridge and then collapse in my comfortable chair.

This weekend I’m not going on the bus to the shops. First task will be to go through all of the papers from the hospital and work out what to do. Then to check Liz’s vegan wellington, order the stuff (or ask my cleaner to buy it) and send off the next big order to LeClerc.

Right now I’m totally exhausted but as usual, after a journey, I can’t wind down enough to sleep. In the old days when I was chauffeuring, I’d go for a run and that would help me unwind but these days I can’t even go for a walk.

How the mighty have fallen, hey?

0

Wednesday 20th December 2023 – TODAY I HAVE HAD …

… a lumbar puncture (the fourth that I’ve had if my counting is correct) and a thoracic puncture – one after the other without a pause.

And if you think that a lumbar puncture is bad, you want to try a thoracic puncture. I promise you – a lumbar puncture is a walk in the park in comparison.

Furthermore, even as we speak, I’m having a blood transfusion. You might not believe this, although I’m sure that regular readers of this rubbish will recall this kind of thing happening on several occasions in the past, but despite having had two pochettes of blood during the other night, my blood count has GONE DOWN and I’m still below the critical level.

And so I’m having another one right now.

That’s not the best of it either. They’ve had my blood whizzing around in something that looks as if it’s come from CERN and they have discovered that I have a genetic disorder.

That might explain a lot about a lot of things, but it might also create even more problems because I’ve signed an agreement for them to take my DNA so that they can start work on trying to find the problem.

They’ve told me to contact my family in order that they might undergo a test to identify anything that might arise, but who the hell is my family?
"What about your parents?" asked the doctor.
"My mother’s been dead for years"
"WHat about your father?"
"I never knew who my father was"
"Didn’t your mother ever tell you?"
"To be honest, I don’t think that she ever knew who he was either"

Our family was screwed up right from the very beginning. We were never a family, just a group of people living under the same roof scrambling and fighting for position

And I’m wondering what happens to my DNA sample afterwards. I can see a few issues arising here and there and none of them medical either, at least, from my point of view. However, quite frankly I’m too old, too ill and too tired to care.

Tired is certainly the word because not only was it a really bad day, it was a really bad night too.

Not that there was much of a night to be bad about because I was wide awake at 03:10 and up working, transcribing the dictaphone note, such as they were, at 04:00. There was a battleship that was ostensibly American but was actually owned by a private person and leased to the US Navy. One day he announced that the ship had disappeared. No-one knew where it had gone. A couple of weeks later it turned up in an American port being painted white. When the authorities caught up with it he announced that all the crew had deserted and was having to recruit another crew. The matter then went to Court and it turned out that the crew on board the ship, mainly Japanese, had all been dismissed and the owner was trying to recruit cheaper personnel. The Courts however ruled that the ship’s crew had unalienable right to be on board the ship. If the owner didn’t want them on board the ship, which was quite clear, then the ownership of the ship would pass to the crew, which was exactly what happened. In order to fill in the gaps in their ranks they began to recruit in West Germany. Consequently the ship was to become part of the West German Navy. This was going to lead to all kinds of complications.

And then I was with a girl from school last night, someone who has previously featured at some point or other in my dreams in the past on one or maybe two occasions. Her older brother had a Velocette Venom that he traded in for a Honda K1 750. We (the girl, not the brother) were actually a couple. I was living at home and so was she. She was quite young, small for her age as I remembered her. We’d go on a Saturday night to a little pub that we knew where they weren’t all that particular about the ages of people who went in… "The Rifleman in Volunteer Fields in Nantwich" – ed …. We’d sit in a very quiet corner towards the end of the evening, our arms around each other, and we’d just sleep. We’d wake up and I’d take her home in time so that her parents didn’t suspect anything. After we’d been there for several weeks doing that – we’d go out and do things like go for a walk, go to the cinema or something and end up back at the pub where we’d sleep together for an hour on a bench with our arms around each other. But after we’d been there for several weeks I’d noticed that the pub was becoming more and more crowded. I was thinking that we can’t really go on like this. One night while we were there, she noticed too and made the comment that this place seems to be becoming more and more crowded. I said “well, we don’t really have very much alternative, do we? You still live at home and I still live at home. I might be able one day to have an apartment but at the moment it’s not possible. There isn’t really anywhere else where we can go”. We really ended up just like that again on that particular Saturday night, arms round each other, asleep on a bench, heads against the wall in this particular pub.

It was just like Mark Knopfler and DOWN TO THE WATERLINE – a song all about an adolescent romance with a girlfriend, a Saturday night and simply nowhere to go.

But it was this dream that awoke me. It was one of those that I have every so often, a nice, warm, comfortable dream of the type that I wish would go on for ever where I feel totally at ease and relaxed with a girl really comfortable in my arms.

Being at ease and relaxed are of course things that seems to be happening less and less often these days.

It’s the kind of thing that rarely happens in real life. In fact, it’s only ever happened with two girls.

At one point in my life I was just so stressed out that I could no longer function correctly and everything – absolutely everything – was falling apart. So I’d make a huge effort, go on a trip and p-p-pick up a Penguin – a Percy Penguin in fact.

We’d find a place with running water, because water is very important in my life and the sound of it is relaxing, and we’d just lie there. She had loads of issues (and so did I too, and still have) and she’d wrap herself around me really tightly so that I’d protect her from whatever demons were threatening her. Sometimes she’d even cry on my shoulder as she poured out her problems.

And I’d hold her tight to protect her, her long brown hair all over me, and I’d lie there listening to her breathing as she calmed down and began to sleep. She breathed like a cat, exactly the same frequency and that, and the running water, would calm me down as well. Then I’d be ready for the second round of whatever battle I was fighting at the time

Sometimes I wonder whatever became of her. She would (and did, sometimes) follow me into Hell itself without a pause, a question or a second thought. But she didn’t understand the dangers or the risks and it was really unfair of me to encourage her under those circumstances.

She was someone to whom life had dealt an absolutely wretched hand of cards but I admired her for the way that she fought on regardless.

As for the other girl who drifted into my life, calmed me down and gave me the same kind of comfortable feeling, I’ll let you guess who it was. If you like, you can tell me and I’ll tell you if you’re right or wrong.

Having had Alquin on the playlist just as I was going to bed last night, today I’ve had their three albums going round in a continuous loop all day and that, together with all of my medical issues, has depressed me to a point that I could do with p-p-picking up a Penguin right now.

In fact, I actually crashed out for 5 minutes and it was she who came to check on me. That was rather ironic.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

The first time that I encountered Alquin was, despite the fact that they are from the Netherlands, Delft in fact, in a dingy damp cellar under a decaying hotel in Crewe in the Spring of 1975 where there was a rock club frequented for a while by the misspent youth of the town.

They are (because they are still going) a bass-driven multi-instrumental band, although they have lost a lot of their power after bassist Hein Mars left them.

In fact I had a bit of a desultory correspondence with them at one time. The bass lines are some of the best that I’ve heard on a consistent basis and all of the songs are pitched in a key and a narrow vocal range that I can actually sing well enough.

After all, you never know. When a young boy called Alan Davey was learning to play bass he played along to Hawkwind records and one day sent off a tape of his efforts to Dave Brock. 10 years later, when Brock was looking for a new bassist after Harvey Bainbridge moved to keyboards, he remembered Davey, and Davey played bass with Hawkwind for 20-odd years in a couple of spells

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … cellar, any group that can produce a song LIKE THIS on THEIR DEBUT ALBUM, MARKS has to be worth checking out so I’d been keeping an eye on them.

Their second album, THE MOUNTAIN QUEEN is even better. If you haven’t heard the bass solo near the end of the TITLE TRACK Grahame, give it a listen.

What interests me most about that track, and the bass solo in particular, is the rapport between Hein Mars on bass and Paul Weststrate on drums.

As far as I’m aware, I’ve only ever heard an interaction like that between two musicians on one other occasion. Listen to Simon House on violin and Adrian Shaw on bass during the violin solo in the middle of DAMNATION ALLEY and you’ll see what I mean. Put your headphones on and turn the bass full up.

Now THERE was an underrated rock musician, Simon House and his violin. If I had engineered and produced ASTOUNDING SOUNDS, AMAZING MUSIC, while Robert Calvert reads his poem in the middle of STEPPENWOLF I’d have had long, long pauses after every line while Simon House winds up the magic and builds up the suspense and tension.

But anyway, more Alquin is going round. So, in the words of the Mountain Queen
"take your time and join me
I’ll tell you an endless story
Rest your head beside me
In that fading light."

And right now I’d settle for almost anyone’s head beside me, not just Percy Penguin’s or the other person whose name I didn’t mention. I don’t want to drag her into all of this rubbish any more than she’s been dragged into it already.

0

Tuesday 19th December 2023 – THE GOOD NEWS…

… is that if there is a change in condition of my heart, it’s an improvement. The cardiologist put me through my paces this morning and her opinion is that whilst the evacuation of the heart isn’t 60-65% as it’s supposed to be, it’s not the 48% that the previous cardiologist recorded.

For the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few, let me explain.

A normal blood count should be between 13 and 15. My carcinogenic protein is attacking my red blood cells so my blood count is less than it ought to be.

If, for example, I have a blood count of, say, 9, it means that my heart has to beat 50% faster to move enough oxygen around my body.

If the evacuation is, say, 48% instead of 60%, it means that it has to beat 25% faster still to take the oxygen loss into account, and that means that it’s beating at 185%-190% – almost twice as fast.

The heart can do this for so long of course, but not for ever. And this is why they are keeping a close eye on mine.

But the bad news is that they gave me the tests where they pulse electricity through my nervous system to see how the nerves and muscles respond. It’s the fourth time that I’ve had this test and each time they have noted a deterioration.

And that’s how it was today. I’m losing more strength in my legs.

But returning to last night I mentioned yesterday that my blood level had dropped below the critical limit, which is 8. Then there’s not enough oxygen to make the body function. And, I suspect, that’s why I’ve been feeling so miserable these last few days and why my co-ordination is going.

And so at 23:44 they cam around with two pochettes of blood to give me a transfusion.

It took four hours for the transfusion to be completed, with someone coming around every half an hour to check my pulse and blood pressure. And being the light sleeper that I am, it awoke me every time.

And what was the worst about this was that at one point Zero came to check on me too but just as I started to talk to her one of the nurses awoke me to take my blood pressure, and I couldn’t go back into the dream afterwards to carry on our conversation.
"Candles burn
dull red lights
illuminate the breasts of four young girls
dancing, prancing, provoking …
Dreams are always ending far too soon
Life’s to short to be sad
wishing things you’ll never have
You’re better off
not dreaming of
the things to come
Dreams are always ending far too soon"
It seems that CARAVAN HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE ME and know the feeling only too well.

But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that after having lived a life full of excitement, the only excitement that I seem to have these days is what goes on during the night.

I’ve been told on many occasions that I ought to take sleeping pills to have a good night’s sleep and I’d cope with things much better during the day

And miss out on what goes on during the night and the possibility of a visit from TOTGA, Zero and Castor, and anyone else who comes along to keep me company? You must be joking!

And strangely enough, the walls of my room are actually grey and pink.

By about 07:15 I’d given up the idea of a good sleep and once I’d gathered my wits, such as they are, I set out for the bathroom and a good wash.

However no sooner had I started than a nurse came round to take a blood sample. It was quite a while before I made it into the bathroom and the chance of a shower was gone.

Having said that, the van to pick me up to take me to Cardiology was rather late but the driver stuck me in a wheelchair and pushed me outside to his vehicle.

Once more, for the benefit of new readers, this hospital isn’t built “up” like most modern hospitals, it’s built “out” on 33 hectares with a whole series of buildings built since the earliest hospital building on the site, in 1648. Consequently there’s a fleet of electric vans with drop floors and ramps in the back for wheelchair-bound passengers and a bus service for those who can walk, to take people from one building to the next.

First stop was Cardiology, second was Neurology and finally, after much waiting about, I came back here in time for lunch.

For each of the trips I had the same driver and vehicle. He’s a rock music fan and one-time musician so we had a good chat. He imagines people like us in an Old People’s Home in out 70s and 80s still rocking the crowds of old women, and 70-year old groupies throwing their panties onto the stage.

Back in 1973 a group of us was hired as roadies for “The Sweet” when they played at the Liverpool Empire and the things that we saw, well, perhaps they are best left unrecorded.

This afternoon I had an endless stream of visits from different medical personnel doing all kinds of different things. But my neighbour, the President of the Residents’ Committee, is in Paris again and she came round for a chat which was very nice.

She stayed for about an hour and we chatted about nothing in particular and then she had to nip off.

However her visit coincided with afternoon coffee so they didn’t bring me a cup. But I managed to blag a cup of coffee later on from one of the nurses.

They don’t like my blood pressure. They think that it’s far too high and there’s no real reason for it as far as I can tell.

However it wasn’t as high as the time at Castle Anthrax when the young student nurse with the low-cut overall and no t-shirt underneath climbed all over me to couple me up to the machine.
"I don’t know why your blood pressure is so high this morning."
"I do" I thought to myself. "And if you climb over me like that again it’ll go even higher."

There was plenty of work that I have to do but I didn’t accomplish all that much. Last night’s lack of sleep took its toll on me and I was falling asleep for 10 minutes here and there all day.

However I did manage to transcribe the dreams from last night. I’d been to a Saturday lunchtime class for my University course. Coming out I went a couple of doors away to where Zero was living. The house was empty but I had a key so I went in. There was a book there. It was part II of “500 photos of the Bangor area of North Wales Published Consecutively” or something like that. I sat down and began to read it. After I’d been reading it for a couple of minutes the front door opened and I could hear Zero’s voice along with my elder sister and her husband. That was quite a surprise. It was Zero’s birthday today and there was a party later on to which I’d been invited. Zero opened the door into the room where I was sitting. I said “hello gorgeous” to her and at that moment I awoke.

It seems that the medical staff of the hospital has joined forces with my subconscious in preventing Zero from succumbing to a virtual fate worse than virtual death.

And of course, I couldn’t step back into that dream, could I?

There was also a golfing competition taking place. The club decided that it would have an annual tournament so many of its members took part. I went along a a sort-of adjudicator, not that I knew any rules about golf. There were all kinds of things happening. On one occasion one player lost a stroke, or, rather, he had a ball moved so he had to play an impossible shot and then play on because of some infringement. People wondered if that was legal. Then someone hit a ball which was then lost from view so he took a penalty and another shot, and he found that ball but it was right by the one that was lost so he wanted to play the first ball again and withdraw the penalty but I didn’t know what to do. It was another one of these long meaderings that seemed to go on for ever and ever. As I said, I know nothing about golf and I don’t know why I was there. I don’t know any of the rules and couldn’t give any decisions on anything.

We were next building an armoured lorry for a trip into the Middle East. We came down to the question of the doors. We found a door that would fit, an armoured door, but it had seized up. We tried to dismantle it but one of the things was that the cover on one of the inspection hatches where the lock was, a bolt had seized solid and there was nothing that we had that would free this bolt. The girl who was going to drive the lorry also pointed out that it didn’t seem safe because the window winder had broken . I took it apart and found that there was a bearing and retaining clip missing so while the window winder would go round, if it went over a bump or something it might drop off and the window would fall down again to the bottom. That wasn’t in accordance with the idea that we’d had about this armoured lorry. She was insisting that we found another door where the window worked. My father was more interested in trying to remove this inspection panel off so that he could check the lock. The girl and I were joking about 1 or 2 things, talking about unnecessary heat that would ignite any kind of conversation. One of the guys had some WD40, sprayed the bolt with it and fetched a cutting torch with the idea that he’d use the cutting torch to set the oil alight that would heat up the bolt to free it from the hosing where it was stuck so that he could unscrew it. It was funny him doing that just as the girl and I were talking about heat so of course we had to smile. All the time my father was trying to remove the lock. He had someone else there who was freeing off another inspection panel to show the girl how the lock worked, trying to convince her that this was the most secure door that could be found but the young girl was extremely frustrated because she was still insisting on doing something about the window. If that dropped down in the middle of the mountains or something people would be able to enter or fire a gun into the cab. She was much more concerned about that but no-one seemed to be taking any notice of that. They were all trying to prove to her that this door was secure when it was quite obvious to the girl and me that it wasn’t, because of the window.

Having told them this morning (again) that I’m vegan, tonight’s tea was veal and carrot soup followed by salmon lasagne with spinach in cream

Luckily the nurse who came later saw what was going on and made me a bowl of cheap vegetable soup with bread, and my neighbour had brought me some bananas and clementines.

But it’s not that I’m unprepared. Following what went on at Riom over the food when I was there for my “second opinion” in 2016, I have brought a few supplies with me “just in case”.

In a few minutes I’ll be off to bed, and hope that Zero comes back to check up on me, or maybe TOTGA or Castor might come along.

But Castor seems to have disappeared now. It’s been ages since she’s come to visit me. Our three nights on the upper deck of THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR looking at the midnight sun and the northern lights and singing to each other are long gone now.

Life’s too short to be sad, wishing things you’ll never have, but when you are sad wishing for things that you actually might have had and which slipped through your fingers on a deserted, windswept airstrip in the High Arctic as a ‘plane prepared to take-off for Ottawa, life is never too short for that

Before I went to bed, a Dutch group called Alquin came round in the playlist and we had their song THE DANCE from their second album THE MOUNTAIN QUEEN.

As we were talking … "well, one of us was" – ed … about ships that pass in the night and that kind of thing, somehow some of the lyrics of “The Dance” seemed relevant to our parting.
"Where will you be tonight?
Where will you be tomorrow?
Fly in your silver kite
And leave me here in sorrow
Hey dude can you see what you’ve done to me
Oh I’m feeling so bad
Yes I’m feeling so blue"

0

Monday 18th December – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting in a seat against a window in a room on the second floor of the Batiment Heuyer of the Hôpital Pitié-Salpetrière.

That’s the Haematology department, so you can imagine why I’m here.

And we’ve just had another delightful verbal exchange, of the kind that you can only have in a hospital.
Ward orderly (about to take Our Hero’s temperature) "are you wearing a hearing aid?"
Our Hero "Pardon?"

Last night I ended up going to bed rather later than I intended. Alison was on line, I noticed, and I wanted to have a chat so it was nearer midnight when I ended up in bed.

Once I was in bed, I found it difficult to go off to sleep, as seems to be the usual case when I’m having to leave my bed early for something special.

When the alarm went off at 05:55 I staggered to my feet and set the wheels in motion. I’d made some sandwiches and packed last night but I had to sort out my medication, have a good wash change my clothes and so on.

There I was, all nice and ready quite early, but the taxi was late. Apparently my co-voyager is an inmate at the Centre de Re-education and having planned to be awoken at, coincidentally, the time of the change of shift, everyone there thought that everyone else had done awoken her. In the end it was the taxi driver who had to shake her awake.

And hadn’t he hit the jackpot? Not only did he manage to cram two different trips into one car on the outward journey, there was also a passenger to bring back. That’s the kind of day of which every taxi driver dreams, and good luck to him.

The other passenger had had a brain tumour and was blind, but its true what they say about other senses making up for those that you’ve lost, because she spoke enough to make up for it.

The driver was quite garrulous too, an older guy for a change, and it turned out that all three of us were cat-lovers so we had a really good chat all the way to Paris.

But I had more in common with the driver than the obvious. He too had lived with a woman and her child for several years and when they separated, he missed the little girl far more than he missed her mother. It seems that I’m not the only one who ought to have been a father. He certainly laughed at the story of Roxanne going off down the street several times on my Honda moped at 8 and 9 years old.

Despite being late, we stopped off for a coffee at a service area too. I had plenty of time to kill and the other passenger didn’t seem to be too bothered.

At Paris we dropped off our passenger at a hospital in the west side of the city and then headed across to the Porte d’Italie and my hospital.

My check-in time was 13:15 but I was here at 12:30. Nevertheless, my room was ready so I was installed here quite quickly.

The room is nice and comfortable, but it’s cold, as I expected and there is no internet.

All kinds of people came to see me so I didn’t really have a chance to settle down for quite a while.

It only took two goes for the nurse to put a catheter in my arm, so well done her.

We’ve had all kinds of orderlies and the like too, including a couple of doctors.

So thanks to the doctors, I now know what is the plan, and it is as I expected.

Apart from the usual tests that have been programmed, they are going to make a start on giving me this medication about which they talked the last time that I was here.

It has some serious side-effects and is not really recommended for anyone who has cardiac issues (which is probably why they never prescribed it at Leuven) but they think that it’s worth a try.

It’s only natural that they want to administer it under medical supervision. And so if you hear nothing more from me, you’ll know that the side effects were as serious as predicted and the cardiac team wasn’t quick enough.

They tell me that I’ll be here until Thursday but I’ve heard promises like that before.

Eventually I managed to find a quiet moment to transcribe the dictaphone notes. During the night I reached out for a green box that was on the bed with all of my shoe care stuff in it. Of course the box wasn’t there but I ended up with an absolutely enormous attack of cramp, thinking “what a way to start this flaming thing about Paris”.

And then there was Aberystwyth Town v Drenewydd in the Welsh Premier League. The Aberystwyth keeper Dave Jones had the ball and was bringing it upfield ready to clear it forward when one of the Drenewydd players tackled him and kicked him on the ankle. You could hear him cry out from where I was and the noise actually awoke me.

Later on, I climbed over the wall of a palace into the courtyard where all of this re-education was taking place. I found my particular body that was in there so I quickly took from it the elastic that was around the ankles and began to rock that particular version of me backwards and forwards to try to free off the movement in the legs but just then I awoke again

The hospital food is pretty appalling, as you might expect, but that’s not my major worry right now.

Having been off the Aranesp for a couple of months, my blood count has crashed down to 7.8. That’s below the critical level and will probably explain why I’ve been feeling so miserable just recently.

And so they have sent off to the laboratory for some blood and it’s likely that I’ll be awoken at some silly hour of the night for a blood transfusion.

It looks as if I can’t have a decent night’s sleep even when I’m in somewhere like this. I’ve spent most of the afternoon listening to Hawkwind so I’ll probably just carry on until I fall asleep or the world falls in on my head.

I definitely TOOK THE WRONG STEP YEARS AGO

0

Sunday 17th December 2023 – I AM ABSOLUTELY …

… exhausted.

And not just the usual fatigue from which I seem to suffer but I’ve been on my feet for 5 hours without a break and without even a moment to sit down, starting from 15:15

Things aren’t finished yet either. I have my packing to do and my sandwiches etc to make before I can go to bed. And then I have an alarm call arranged at 06:00.

This was the last thing to which I was looking forward, this early morning trip to Paris, but it has to be done and I have to make the best of it.

What didn’t help matters was that, surprisingly, I didn’t have a very long sleep tonight. Although it wasn’t until 09:45 that I raised myself from the Dead, it was something like 02:00 when I went to bed this morning so it was hardly anything like the usual Sunday lie-in.

There were the radio notes to dictate, a play around on the guitar to do and a few other bits and pieces before I went to bed.

And it was a mobile night too. There was quite a lot of stuff on the dictaphone so I must have gone quite far. I was playing with a rock group last night, me, a guitarist and a drummer, accompanying a female singer. We were preparing for a concert. I had my notes. For some reason the other guy had some note for my sister which he’d given me in a notebook which I’d put underneath the bus. My guitar was underneath the bus too. I was busy having a think about trying to organise myself ready when the singer suddenly appeared and began to performance. The first song was “Rock and Roll Hootchie Coo”. The other 2 musicians began to accompany her but I couldn’t find my bass. Eventually I remembered that it was underneath the bus so I pulled it out from underneath. Then I couldn’t remember how to play it. I was just standing there miming something or other thinking to myself “how on earth am I going to play this?” I couldn’t remember.

Next, wee were making a radio show, but it was a radio show with a difference. The artists had to sing their actual song down the telephone so that they could be recorded in the studio and the programme assembled. I made out a running order of people etc whom I wanted to take part, contacted them all. Of the 10 people or groups who were assembled one guy refused to take part. he didn’t actually say that he wouldn’t but he just never turned up until we were well under way, and then he kept discreetly to a corner hoping maybe that we wouldn’t see him. But it was awful. I had to do about 10 takes for whatever I was doing and so did 1 or 2 other people, the order became completely and utterly confused, things were being recorded in all kinds of different ways. In the meantime the young guy was still keeping out of everyone else’s way in this room while the rest of us were at the telephone singing our songs. Then we looked around and noticed that he’d gone. One of the teachers came over and asked us why we had only 9 instead of 10. We explained the situation about this guy but he replied “why don’t you go to fetch him back?”. We replied “he lives in Tarporley. That’s a long way away to go to come back again”. As I was wandering away I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my keys. I began to look for them but couldn’t find them and had another panic attack about the keys.

Then I had another girlfriend. There was something to do with Chester. Whether she was at the college in Chester and I was in Crewe I don’t know but I ended up going to see her, walking home and then going back to see her. It was all becoming extremely complicated. The question of a car came up. I explained that I would have to buy a car, it would have to be something rather more modern and I don’t know where the money would come from. She offered me a mug that had about £500 in it. Of course I couldn’t accept it. We had a little dispute about that. I ended up talking to her friend about it and the story about Chester came up. There was also something about a load of entries being written in the margin of a piece of paper. I was rubbing them out one by one as I checked them off but I can’t think what this was supposed to be about and where it was involved. There was also a feeling running through my mind that maybe this girl didn’t like me as much as she perhaps ought to but I dunno. She was also at one stage checking some grammar for a letter than she was writing. She was asking me questions . For some reason I was replying with Welsh grammar and words. She asked “what’s the word for this?” and I’d reply to her in Welsh. It was all just so confusing

And I did have a girlfriend for a while at Chester College too. One of the rock bands in which I played bass and sang topped the bill there in 1975 at a Students Union event and in the audience was a girl whom I knew from school and with whom I’d had a brief adolescent fling. She was a student there.

After our performance she came over for a chat and one thing led to another. And, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … once you actually make a start, you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are.

On one occasion the steering box seized in the van and it was off the road for a while while I tried to find one (I dug one out of a vehicle abandoned in a hedge on a farm in the end) and so to go to see her I’d catch the bus from Nantwich to Chester.

There were several occasions when I walked back home all through the night to my squat near Audlem, all 20-odd miles of it, arriving just as dawn was breaking. In those days, walking that kind of distance was never ever a problem.

It all came to a halt when she came home from College for Easter. Her parents actually knew me from “elsewhere” and they made their displeasure quite evident.

But anyway, that dream was surprisingly accurate in parts.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed, I was back out with the rock group again but I can’t remember very much about this at all except that the floor to this building was of cracked marble times. It looked really nice and ancient. Somehow words were passing from one end of this great hall to the other end underneath the tiles and coming out where the tiles were missing or had been worn away. It was an interesting phenomenon that impressed quite a lot of us.

I’d also been on my holidays. For some reason I’d gone to Ilkeston where I’d watched a football match between Ilkeston Town and someone else. I developed quite a rapport with Ilkeston’s goalkeeper and couple of fans so I stayed on for a week to watch a few games. Then I hit the road and ended up in Scotland. There was a Scottish 2nd Division match taking place between Alloa Athletic and someone else which might have been Morton so I went to see it. It was pretty agricultural. As I was walking back I bumped into a girl whom I knew with whom I’d been on a night school course once. She had an arm in plaster. We began to chat, chat about the game at first. “Did I call this game ‘entertainment’?”. I replied “for Scottish 2nd Division it’s not bad. I’ve seen worse than this”. A couple of her friends from work came to join her. They all began to talk about work things. The Department of Work and Pensions was mentioned and 1 or 2 other things. I began to feel left out of the conversation, which was only to be expected. This was another one of those dreams that went on for hours and hours, and when I awoke most of it evaporated immediately.

There was another dream at some point where a herd of migrating wildebeest ran into a couple of prides of lions at a river crossing. You don’t really want to know any more about this, especially if you are eating your meal right now. But interestingly there was even a pile of chimpanzees joining in with the carnage at one particular point.

After I’d awoken I had something of a slow start to the day (which is no surprise) and then attacked the radio programme for which I dictated the notes last night. It took longer than usual to edit the notes because, as seems to be the case these days, I made something of a dog’s breakfast of it and there was a lot of editing to do.

By the time that I’d added in the eleventh track and the notes that do with it, I had over-run by 8 seconds but I always include phrases in my dictation that I can edit out without changing the sense of anything or interrupting the rhythm.

Having finished that, I went into the kitchen and began to work.

First thing was to make the dough for a small loaf with which to make my sandwiches

Second thing was to make the dough for the biscuits. And following the recipe, the dough was far too wet for what I wanted so I heaved in a handful or two of oats and put the mixture in the fridge to cool down.

Thirdly, I made my chestnut stuffing. Unfortunately it ended up without chestnuts in it because the packet of chestnut that I had had evidently been hanging around here for far too long so they ended up going the Way of the West.

Instead, I had to make it with some ground almonds, extra breadcrumbs and some various kinds of oil

After my lunch I’d taken out a lump of frozen pizza dough and it had been defrosting. So next I kneaded it, rolled it out onto my pizza tray and put it on one side to prove.

The biscuit dough, I rolled it out, dusted it with flour and cut it with my 50mm biscuit cutter so that I ended up with about 40 biscuits.

While they were baking, I assembled my pizza and when the biscuits were done, the pizza and the stuffing went it.

While they were cooking, I washed everything up and cleaned the kitchen.

Once the pizza and stuffing were cooked (and the stuffing does actually smell like stuffing) the bread went into the oven while I ate my pizza.

Now I’m off to make my butties and pack ready for tomorrow The car comes for me at 07:00 and then I’ll be gone. Until when, I don’t know.

The internet in the Neurology department was dreadful. I don’t expect that it will be any better in the Haematology department so as usual, it will be just brief notes typed on the ‘phone using a mobile hotspot, and I’ll update everything when I’m back home.

Whenever that might be.

0

Saturday 16th December 2023 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning at 07:00 I was already sitting half-dressed on the edge of the bed.

Being a light sleeper, the slightest thing awakens me but I usually go back to sleep quite quickly. However there’s definitely something going on that’s awakening me in the morning before the alarm went off.

But anyway I wandered off into the kitchen for my medication and then came back in here to have a look to see where I’d been during the night.

However, I didn’t go far before Liz contacted me. She has a good recipe for a vegan wellington that she serves up to her daughter and her family on Christmas Day and so she sent it over for me to look at, and we had quite a chat about it.

The big issue about this is that it requires a lot of stuff that I don’t have in stock and LeClerc won’t deliver. If I’m back from hospital in time to go on the bus to the Carrefour at St Nicolas before Christmas I can conceivably find the things that I need.

However, if I don’t come back in time, I shall have to think of a Plan B. But I’ve really no idea when I’ll be back. The letter that I received just said un hospitalisation – “a stay in hospital” and apportez vos affaires – “bring your things”. No idea of any dates or anything.

Once Liz wandered off to do family things, I carried on with the dictaphone notes. There was something going on about a railway line, something to do with a murder mystery. Someone whom I suppose was Hercule Poirot was investigating it. He eventually came to the railway line and saw that a train was about to leave from the railway station so he ran after it. The other person with him tried to prevent him. But it all came out when he eventually managed to arrive there and found things like pie moulds etc hidden behind the door. It was something to do with the guy with him who was causing all of these difficulties and not however it was who was the chief suspect

I actually had a girlfriend with me from school. I don’t know who she was but I wish that I did. We’d been out for a walk around a seaside town and had come to a kind of industrial plant like a foundry or similar. Everywhere was all very tight. They had a Morris Minor pickup that they’d cut down so that it could pass under these beams and round tight corners and down a type of hairpin bend ramp carrying a load of stuff that was needed at the bottom. We stood watching it for a while. In the end we realised that we needed to be back in the street which was quite some way up some steps. There was a kind-of escalator for pedestrians that people could use to go to the top. It was a heavy-duty thing, more of an industrial type than the type that you’d find in a shop. I asked for permission of we could use it and a guy there said that we could so we jumped on board. It didn’t ‘arf go quickly. I had the feeling that when it reached the top I’d have a lot of problems trying to dismount. I was right. It practically threw me off at the top, it was that quick. I had a real struggle to regain my balance after that. The girl with me pointed out someone and said that it reminded her of another girl from school whom I knew but it wasn’t her. Anyway we set out to walk home. When we were close to my house I asked her if she’d like to come in for a coffee. She certainly agreed. Just as I was about to open the front door and let her in I awoke! Can you imagine!

Yes, I actually dictated “can you imagine” in my sleep. But that’s no surprise. The other night I had Zero on my plate and just as I was about to stick my fork into it, I awoke and she disappeared. And here I am tonight in exactly the same position. Just about to lure a willing young lady into my lair and the same thing happened again.

"Gone! And never called me ‘mother’" yet again.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed I had been out somewhere with Zero’s father. We’d had quite a few little adventures and were going back to Virlet. It involved walking over a railway bridge. When we’d been over there a few times in the past there had been some plots of land being used as scrapyards etc. We noticed that they had seemed to be starting to clear them away. When we went over tonight all the scrap had gone. There was just the rear axle of a lorry sitting there in the middle of it. We imagined that it’s some land that will now sit vacant for 25 years before anyone does anything. We carried on, came back to Virlet and walked up my drive which was a load of uneven rocks. He fell over and hurt his ankle, and walked on a tin can that he’d overlooked. With my huge collection of keys and huge collection of padlocks I actually found the correct one straight away, to my surprise, so I could unlock the padlock to the garage and we could go in. There was an arm of the hinge that went over the corner of the door that meant that despite the door being high, a high vehicle couldn’t go in. I was thinking about changing that. He’d gone off to look at next door’s garage where there had been a similar problem. He came back and said “how long do you think it would take to shift that arm?”. I replied “probably about an hour”. He answered “yes but after all that time it’s still there. They’ve done a few things but the arm is still there” and we went inside the house.

Yes, Zero’s father. But not Zero herself, which was rather depressing.

Later on I was actually inside Virlet. The place was a tip as usual. I thought that while I was there this time I would really make an effort to tidy it up. But one thing led to another led to another as usual. It was coming close to going back home and I’d hardly done anything. I began to look for 1 or 2 things but couldn’t find anything. In the middle of the doorway between the front room and the rear room a little girl was sitting there. Every time I walked past she seemed to be putting tea leaves into a jar or teapot. I asked her what she was doing. She replied that she was making tea. I asked “when is going to be ready? You’ve made it long enough”. She replied “I’m putting the tea leaves in now and then I can put in the water when it’s ready”. I wondered when that would be but she didn’t really seem to have any idea herself. She was just sitting as if she was playing “house” sitting in the middle of the doorway getting in the way of everyone else who was trying to go past.

And then I was in my Luton Transit. I’d been to High Street in Crewe to pick up some things and were on our way to an Indian restaurant. There was a bunch of kids wandering down the street. As I let out the clutch to pull off I stalled the van. Of course all the kids cheered so I started again, let out the clutch and as it swung round out into the street the wing mirror hit one of them on the back and almost knocked him over. I thought “I’d better go and disappear into the ether for a while”. I had someone with me. It wasn’t Zero and it wasn’t Roxanne but a very small person, someone who was only used to ever being in the house because we had a talk about how she felt being outside in the street for the first time. I had a feeling that it was one of my cats. The cat was talking about the winter and how the winters were uncomfortable but they made the most of them. We were just driving around Crewe town centre becoming more and more confused about the correct side of the road, one-way streets, going up them the wrong way. The cat was talking about being outside for the very first time and enjoying it very much.

This final one was another dream where I found myself dictating into my hand again. I was back in the previous one with this little girl or cat. On Chester Bridge in Market Street I decided to stop to take some money from the bank seeing as the road was quite wide there. My passenger seemed to be in something of a hurry and was rather impatient to get under way again. That was something else that confused me because just sitting there doing nothing, it wasn’t as if she was in any kind of hurry etc but it seemed that she really just wanted to leave that spot at that moment.

So back in the same dream at another time on a couple of occasions. I can manage to do that on a fairly regular basis, but never when I want to, such as when I have Zero around or when I’m just about to invite a girlfriend from school into my lair.

It’s almost as if my subconscious is deliberately putting the brakes on my nocturnal activities. Obviously it’s a much stronger influence than my conscious mind that never seems to slow me down sufficiently when I’m about to run amok in real life.

But then, it’s strange little facts like this that the project that we are doing is all about.

It’s actually been running now for 25 years or thereabouts and I often wonder what conclusions were reached. I can’t even remember now who it was who organised the project, never mind whether his thesis was ever published.

The Luton Transit is still down on the farm after all these years, slowly dissolving into the landscape. But it’s the aluminium body on the back that’s interesting. There is a pair of MkIII Cortina rear quarters in there for the 2000E saloon that’s in the warehouse in Montaigut for a start, and you can’t buy those at any price these days.

There are a couple of engines and gearboxes, petrol and diesel, for Volkswagen Passats, a 2.3 diesel and type 9 5-speed gearbox from a Ford Sierra that were going to go in the red Cortina estate that’s also in the warehouse in Montaigut, to mention just a few things.

If my memory serves me right, there’s also in the back of the Luton Transit a big diesel generator that we used to run on recycled plant oil.

There’s a funny story about that diesel generator. I had it, with a huge pile of other stuff, in the back of the LDV when I was stopped by a flying customs patrol.

They wanted to look in the back so I told them that I’d open it because I knew exactly what was going to happen.

One of the guys brushed me aside and wrenched open the rear doors.

Have you any idea of how loud a person can scream when a huge single-cylinder cast-iron Lister diesel generator drops onto his foot from a great height?

Most of the rest of the day has been spent, when I’ve not been away with the fairies, on the photos from Canada 2022.

Right now I’ve alighted from my train at Moncton and am now heading west on the “Coach Atlantic” towards the border with the USA.

And that train journey was the most depressing train journey that I have ever undertaken.

There’s only one passenger train in the whole of Canada east of Québec City (the miners’ train to Schefferville excluded), I was on it and Canadian National, and in particular its “Viarail” subsidiary would like to wipe this one out too.

There’s been no investment on the line for years, the 2 locomotives that pulled it were built in 1985 and if you want to see what the carriages are like, THIS WAS HOW THEY WERE IN 2010 and they are now even worse.

The promised investment that was mentioned in 2010 never ever took place. But I don’t suppose that anyone ever really believed that it would.

And being used to hurtling around the European continent at speeds of over 300 kilometres per hour on a modern 21st Century rail network, we covered the 1095 kilometres from Montréal to Moncton in, would you believe, 19.5 hours.

That’s an average speed of 56 kilometres per hour or 35 mph.

If anyone wonders why passengers are deserting the railways in North America in record numbers, then this journey told me everything that I needed to know.

In the good old days, I’d walk out of my digs in the Rue St Hubert in Montréal, go round the corner to the coach station in the Rue Berri 200 yards away and catch the “Orleans Express” coach that goes to Gaspé.

I’d alight at Rivière du Loup and 90 minutes later the “Coach Atlantic” from Moncton would come in. When the driver had had his break he’d turn round and go back, with me on board. Seven hours from door to door.

However, with inter-Provincial travel being prohibited with the pandemic, “Coach Atlantic” turned round at Edmundston, 120 kilometres away from Rivière du Loup on the New Brunswick side of the border with Québec.

And since inter-Provincial travel restarted, only “Coach Atlantic” knows the reason why it hasn’t reinstated the service northwards over the Appalachians to the St Lawrence and instead of 7 hours, I’m stuck with a journey of no less than 27 hours.

So abandoning another really good rant for the moment, I went and had my tea. Baked potato and salad with one of those breaded quorn fillets that I like. And I’ve actually now mastered the art of baking potatoes in my air fryer and they are delicious.

There are some radio notes to dictate and that’s really it for today.

Tomorrow I have biscuits to bake and when I was tidying out the shelves the other week I came across some coconut oil. If I use that instead of vegan butter I could make some stunning chocolate biscuits

There’s some bread to bake too because if I’m going to be at the hospital for 11:00 and won’t be admitted to the ward until 13:00 I’ll need some butties because lunch will have gone by. I asked my cleaner to pick up a lettuce while she was in town as I’d run out and she duly obliged so I’ll have some really nice salad sandwiches for lunch on Monday.

There will be a few other things to do too, I reckon, but I’ll worry about that at the appropriate time.

As if I don’t already have enough to worry about.

0

Friday 15th December 2023 – YOU HAVE PROBABLY …

… already guessed what has happened today.

At roughly about 11:40 when I was comfortably settled deep down in the Arms of Morpheus, the telephone rang.

"This is the hospital here in Paris. We’re doing our planning for next week. Can you come on Monday instead of Tuesday? You’ll still be staying for several days."
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we started off with Tuesday, and then it was already changed from Tuesday to Monday a few days ago, and then changed back again to Tuesday at a later date.
"I shall have to see what the taxi company has to say about it. I’ve messed them around enough with all of these cancellations and it is rather short notice"

And so I phoned the taxi company to chat to them about the situation. We had an “interesting and illuminating” discussion which eventually led to them agreeing to take me on Monday instead. The appointment isn’t until 13:15 which means leaving at 09:00 instead of 04:30 and hitting the rush-hour head on, so that might have helped to persuade them. And the lie-in will be useful for me too.

Having had the agreement from the taxi company I phoned back to the hospital and confirmed the situation. So that is that.

When the cleaner came round, we had a discussion about the situation, as we do.

With my usual air of optimism I added "well, it’s 16:00. Still plenty of time for a further change of plan"
"Not at this time of the afternoon. Everyone will be ready to go home" she replied.

And I must admit that I really did admire her confidence. Five minutes later the telephone rang.

This time it was the taxi company. "Would you possibly consider doubling up and sharing a taxi with someone else going to Paris on Monday, leaving at 07:00?"

So much for my lie-in then. But considering how they’ve been messed about by all of these changes to the programme, I have to show some bonne volonté I suppose. My cleaner hopes that it will be a belle blonde travelling with me, but my money is on a retired Bulgarian female weightlifter

They probably won’t say anything to the Social Security about the car-sharing and charge for two trips, but in that position I’d probably do the same too.

But anyway, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, I had a good play around on the guitar before going to bed, something that led me down another road to somewhere deep in the past.
"She moved her hips
And swayed in my direction
I thought we could make it yet
And beat the isolation
But in that gentle dark
We tore ourselves apart
Through fire and rain
Through wilderness and pain
Through the losses, through the gains
On love’s roller coaster train
I call your name"

So hauling myself out of the pit wherein lives the Black Dog, I hauled myself off to bed where I had another turbulent night. And although there was quite a lot going on, I didn’t have any special visitors.

When the alarm went off this morning I already had the bedroom light on and was just about to swing my feet out of bed, so effectively I fell short of an early start by a matter of a handful of seconds. Still, a miss is as good as a mile.

After the meds I came back in here to print off a justificatif de domicile – a certificate issued by the Electricity Board as proof of your occupation of your premises, and then transcribed the mountain of dictaphone notes. It seemed to have been “quantity” last night, not “quality”.

I started off busily organising my bread, dividing it into portion-sized helpings for the future when I awoke this morning. The ambulance had already come for me and there was something going on there too about organising a wholesale supply of food and daily helpings for different people but I wasn’t actually involved in what was going on down there. They’d just come to pick me up and at that moment I awoke.

And then I was doing my English homework at home. I had a list of words and had to find their equivalent in the second column of this list and then insert them in the correct place in the test that I was reading. It was about an American guy from the Mid-West who was finishing work and coming home. Some of the language in this text was extremely dubious so I wouldn’t read it out loud because we had a young girl staying with us. Then my father came home from work. He asked what I was doing so I explained. The girl explained a little too. My father then began to say things like “do they have an equivalent in there for ‘stripper’?” – words like that. As a matter of fact they did but I didn’t want to read them out because of the young girl. My father didn’t seem to care at all. We began to make tea. On the table, there were all kinds of stuff on this table that you wouldn’t believe. There I was with these hot dishes and there was nowhere to put them. I went to move some things out to the side but someone grabbed hold of it and began to use it. Someone else asked me if I wanted a slice of apple pie. That had been put on the floor because it was the only place to put it. This was in my opinion a completely unacceptable way that everything was just scattered about everywhere

Continuing on that dream later on, there was some of my mother’s cooking there and that was something of a mess. No matter how much I actually like hummus I decided that when my mother presented a bowl for the evening meal, I’d rather give it a miss.

My mother’s cooking was legendary, but for all the wrong reasons. When I used to go round to a friend’s house in Nantwich after school his German mother always served me up with piles of food. When I was in Munich with him last year, we talked about it and I asked him why.
"Don’t you remember?" he asked. "I stayed for tea once at your house. Only once."

To be honest, it wasn’t until I met Nerina that I began to eat well

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed it was a Monday morning and I was slowly preparing to go to work. Suddenly I looked at the time. It was 08:20. I had to rush around and find everything really as quickly as possible. I hadn’t even had a wash and probably smelt to high heaven but had to do the best that I possibly could. All the time there were the usual interruptions, people in my way, not being able to find anything. There was a discussion going on about why Manchester United hadn’t done as well as everyone had expected over the last couple of seasons so I had my three ha’pence-worth as I was going around. But I was really fighting a hopeless task and was nothing at all like ready when I realised that the bus had gone and that I’d be late for work. In a fit of exasperation etc I stormed into the kitchen, dropped my things onto the floor and said “this is it! I’ve missed the bus again! I’m not going to miss this bus again whatever happens”.

Believe it or not, I actually laughed in the middle of the dream when I dictated that. I’ve heard those promises before.

A short while later I had exactly the same dream again about preparing for work or for school. Exactly the same thought about never being late went through my head again with exactly the same response from my subconscious during the dream. I ended up storming off out of the room, bad-tempered. I spent some time doing some Welsh revision while I was waiting for the alarm to ring

While I was in Munich I’d gone to see something or other on the outskirts. When I was driving back I came to a roundabout where there was some evidence of bomb damage still – burnt-out buildings etc. I stopped and took the camera but I couldn’t find a good spec to photograph it, where I could fit everything in without the sun interrupting me. At one stage I was trying to cross the road when 3 BMC 1100s appeared one after the other and performed some kind of pirouette around me as I tried to reach the other side of the road

Finally I came across some people who had a Bristol Lodekka double-decker bus, a green one, in their barn in the centre of France. The destination blind on it read ROUTE 929 – LEEDS to OPORTO. They told me some of the story of the bus but not everything. We’d recently come to settle down there. Before leaving someone had given me a box of things with fish in it. I made a little pool for these fish but instead it turned out that they were some giant cormorant birds. They looked quite ridiculous sitting on my little pond. They, at least, one of them, could actually talk and I had some very interesting conversations with the cormorant about laying eggs and hatching, etc. But it was the bus in the neighbour’s barn that intrigued me. I’d love to know what it was doing and how it had ended up there when it should have been somewhere in Oporto

When the bus (the local one, not the 929 from Leeds to Porto) came, I clambered aboard, declining a lift from a neighbour because I have to push myself onwards on the bus whenever I can, and we set off for St Nicolas and on the way, the driver forgot to stop at the Ecole d’Hotellerie to let off the High School baking class

At St Nicolas the first stop was at the Post Office where, armed with my justificatif de domicile, I jumped through various complicated hoops in order to open a bank account.

So shortly I’ll have a bank card and actually be able to draw some cash at some point. As I have mentioned before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s not another cash point in the town accessible to me because I can’t climb back onto the bus afterwards.

It took so long that I didn’t have time for my coffee at the Carrefour but at least I have tomatoes and mushrooms and a few other things. I met the guy with whom I’d had a long chat the other day.
"A British guy who likes our bread and our coffee " he said. "That’s a rare sight"
"If I’d only wanted tea at four o’clock" I replied "I’d have stayed over there".

At the bus stop I had a long chat with a local guy also waiting for the bus, and then with a woman on the bus on her way to the doctor’s.

People are starting to notice me. I’m not sure that that’s a good sign.

Back here I had another chat with a neighbour and then climbed up the stairs to my apartment where I made my coffee and cheese on toast

Despite phone calls, the attentions of the cleaner and the occasional drift away into nothingness I finihsed off the radio notes that I’d started yesterday, and they are now ready for dictation, which I’ll do tomorrow night as usual.

Rosemary rang up too and we had another one of our lengthy chats that seem to go on for ever when we talk about almost nothing.

However, I have made an executive decision, and for the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than a few just recently, an executive decision is a decision that you make which, if it goes wrong, the person making it is executed.

And that is that I’ve decided what to have for Christmas dinner.

For a while now I’ve been thinking about making a vegan pie because I haven’t made one for ages. But this one is going to be different – I’ve ordered some puff pastry rolls.

Making pastry like that from scratch is difficult. You have to roll it out thin, coat is with oil, fold it over, roll it again, coat with oil, fold again ad infinitum. I can imagine exactly how mine would turn out.

However the LeClerc poverty-spec pastry rolls are vegan so that’s what I’ll use.

  • Put a cup of lentils in the slow cooker, cover with water and slowly bring to the boil.
  • When they begin to boil, drain them out and rinse them thoroughly, then put them back on the lowest heat with more water, plenty of herbs and spices and leave them overnight on the lowest heat
  • Next morning, cut up your tofu into small squares and fry with onion, garlic, mushrooms, whatever else you like and plenty of herbs and spices.
  • When they are nice and golden brown, tip in your lentils and stir it round, and then add a few spoons of oats to absorb the liquid and make a glutinous mass
  • Empty it into your pie case, add the top, brush with soya milk and bake until golden brown

As usual, any other suggestions and ideas are welcomed.

Tea tonight was salad, chips and some of those nugget things, something that went down really well.

So having finished my notes, I’ll carry on with the guitar for a while. I’ll have another go at trying to sing MOONAGE DAYDREAM while playing the bass.

At least I’m not the only one how finds it difficult. Grahame wrote that he doesn’t find it easy either. Maybe we ought to hold a “Ziggy Stardust” masterclass at some point.

But if anyone else wants to write and say “hello” or exchange ideas, there’s a link on the bottom right of the page. But if you use Gmail, I can’t reply to you.

In Google’s quest to take over the internet the company wants webmasters to embed its code into all minor domains and until I know why and what it does, I’m not putting it in mine. Consequently Google is blocking me from writing to anyone with a Gmail address.

Tomorrow I have no plans, but as usual, something will probably pop up to distract me. And then on Sunday, I’m baking bread and biscuits and a few other things besides, I reckon.

That means that I’d better remember to order some more vegan butter. I’m going through it at an alarming rate.

0

Thursday 14th December 2023 – IT WAS THE …

… staff Christmas lunch at the Centre de Re-education at midday today. And so as a result there really wasn’t all that much point in any of the clients going there this afternoon.

Anyone who has ever been to a French office party or Christmas lunch will understand only too well exactly what I mean.

It looked as if it was all going to go the Way of the West when Severine told me how difficult it was to make my feet respond to her massage.

She would probably have had more luck had she remembered to take of my shoes first, especially after all of the effort through which I’d gone to change my socks and put on clean ones earlier that afternoon.

Mind you, at least she went through the motions. Ophélie the Ergotherapist was definitely on another planet in some other universe somewhere and our session, which took ages to start, finished quite rapidly.

But I knew that today was going to be one of those days. During the night Zero had come to visit me. It was really nice to see her, but in the middle of a long interesting discussion that I was having with her, I suddenly awoke bolt upright and she immediately vanished into the ether.

Start as you mean to go on, I suppose.

Having finished my notes early last night I had an hour or so on the guitar and ended up going late to bed. One thing that I love about living in a building where the walls are 1m20 thick of solid granite is that I can make as much noise as I like and no-one can hear me.

Apart from all of the usual songs that I run through, I had a play around with THIS ONE.

It sounds really well on a decent acoustic guitar and the last time that I played the song to an audience was on the observation deck of THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR at about 04:00 one night when Castor and I were huddled up watching the midnight sun over Coronation Gulf on the last night of our little adventure

Playing Trevor Bolder’s bass line is really enjoyable and I used to do that a lot, but for some reason that I could never understand, I could never sing the chorus when playing the chorus’s bass line no matter how much I rehearsed and practised, and I found it deeply frustrating.

Being determined never to admit defeat and to master it one day, I still keep on trying, even if it has been 20 years.

"Keep your electric eye on me babe
Put your ray-gun to my head
Press your space-face close to mine, love
Freak out in a moonage daydream"

At least, we had the midnight sun, I suppose.

Being late going to bed, I didn’t go very far. But it’s quality that counts, not quantity of course, and just like Kris Kristofferson, "I’d give all my tomorrows for a single yesterday".

I dreamt last night that I was at the Centre Normandy again. They were teaching up all kinds of things like different series of recipes which for example was the one where we learnt about Christmas cakes and Christmas puddings. There was another one where we learnt about stuffing etc. It began quite normally but as the menus progressed it became more and more chaotic until in the end I was chasing a tin of Christmas pudding mix around my bed trying to find it (and I was too!).

And later, I was dictating the next dream without the dictaphone again, something that I do far too often. But I’m glad that my subconscious realised it and made a wild grab because this was when Zero appeared and I didn’t want to miss her. I’d been out around the North Shropshire area in my red Cortina estate and coming back through Whitchurch I wanted a pint of milk. I couldn’t find one so in the end I ended up at Northern Dairies where I bought a bottle. At some point or other I’d picked up Zero but I can’t remember how – at one minute I was on my own and next minute she was in the car. Then I had something else to do that meant that I had to double back through Whitchurch and drive around the town for a while. Instead of Zero I then had someone else with me but I can’t remember who it was. In the end I was just driving around. It was the afternoon. The previous evening I’d been to a football match, a ladies match between 2 teams. I came across a sports ground somewhere on the edge of Birmingham. There was a fair-sized crowd for what looked like an amateur game so I decided to stop to look as kick-off hadn’t happened yet. I was wandering around and ended up in one of the rooms of the building. It was full of schoolgirls and a couple of teachers. One of the teachers was wearing a bright blue flannel suit and waistcoat with his name on it and a lime green shirt and was talking in a high-pitched voice to these girls about their English exams. There was probably 20 or 30 schoolgirls packed in here. I was just sitting quietly in a corner trying to work out where I was. I noticed that the postcode of this place began with PR1. I thought “it can’t be Preston so where was I?” In the end I came to the conclusion that I was in Perry Barr on the edge of Birmingham. I ended up talking to 2 of the girls, asking what time kick-off was. They told me that we had 20 minutes to wait. Then in walked Zero. I said “hello” to her and called her by name which surprised everyone in this room – they didn’t know that I knew one of their schoolgirls. She came over to chat. I asked about her birthday, what presents she had, and asked her about her holidays. We were having a really lengthy involved chat when I awoke quite dramatically.

After that, there was no point in going back to sleep, even though I tried. I knew that this would be one dream into which I would never be able to step back. Can you imagine the disappointment? There I was with Zero on my plate, just about get my fork stuck in, and “paff”.

"Gone! And never called me ‘mother’!"

For about half an hour I carried out my exercises with the elastic strap around my ankles and then Arose from the Dead. It was 05:40.

Being up and about is one thing. Actually being in any state to do anything is something else completely and it took me an age to wind myself up ready to go.

Eventually though I managed to make a start on things and by lunchtime I’d edited the radio notes that I’d dictated before going to bed and assembled another complete programme.

Had I put my shoulder to the wheel I could have finished it off a lot earlier than that but what with a late night and a really early start, I went off again with the fairies for quite some time in the middle of it all.

Having had a good wash and scrub up I made myself ready for the Centre de Re-education and while I was waiting for my lift I hunted down some music.

Unfortunately I ended up stuck in yet another nostalgia groove (and in case you haven’t already noticed, I’m still in it, regrettably) and came across a recording of a live Hawkwind concert from a festival in Canterbury 20-odd years ago. And that was that, I’m afraid

That actually gave me yet another idea for my radio programme.

Back in the 1970s with my various vans I used to run a sound engineer around to work at various gigs and then a friend’s son was sound engineer with the Pink Fairies who supported dozens of headline groups. Consequently I seem to have inherited quite a collection of live concert recordings

Occasionally I feature a live concert recording in my radio shows when it’s convenient so I’m wondering if maybe I should go through my collection of recordings, try to identify the dates for those that aren’t labelled (there’s A HANDY WEBSITE ON THE INTERNET where people post setlists of concerts that they’ve seen and that should help identify some of them) and then broadcast “anniversary concerts” when the appropriate date coincides with one of my programmes.

After the Centre de Re-education I came back here, made my hot chocolate and sat down to sort out the music for the next radio programme. That’s all paired off now and I’ve even written some of the notes. Once more, I could have done much more but I … errr … relaxed for a while.

Tea was steamed veg with falafel and vegan cheese sauce but the veg wasn’t really steamed enough. It seems that my microwave is being rather hit-and-miss these days too.

So having finished off everything? I’m going to sort out some paperwork for the hospital, make my shopping list for the supermarket at St Nicolas tomorrow and then have a play on the guitar.

And hope that Zero comes back to see me again during the night, either on her own or with Castor and TOTGA

Yes, I’m still on this nostalgia thing again, so what better track to leave you all with than THIS ONE? Definitely the poet Robert Calvert’s finest hour.

He describes the perigee of despair in terms that no-one else could possibly imitate. Imagine being stuck in a interplanetary spacecraft on an inter-galactic voyage that will take centuries, just you and a clone of your lover, and when you make love to it "she calls another’s name"

There will never be another song quite like this.

Calvert is buried just a few hundred yards from where my mother lived as a child and one of the things that I intended to do was to go to visit his grave. But that’s just one more thing that won’t ever be done.

This “unfinished list” seems to be growing longer and longer, and there’s nothing that I can do about it.

0

Wednesday 13th December 2023 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what Severine did today that was different than usual but the climb back up the stairs this afternoon after my session at the Centre de Re-education was one of the easiest that I’ve had for a few weeks.

And that was a surprise too after what went on yesterday because last night when I went to bed I had the feeling that I’d probably need to be carried up the stairs.

A good sleep during the night probably helped. I’d had a really good session on the guitar before I went to bed, earlier than usual, and judging by the timestamp on the first of the sound files on the dictaphone, I was in a deep sleep quite quickly.

But I enjoyed the hour or so on the guitar. I was trying to work out THE BOYS OF SUMMER.

It’s a track that first came into my head years ago when I was walking up and down a deserted beach on Long Beach Island in New Jersey, where I went for the Millennium. I found an almost-deserted motel, stayed there for a week and had one of the best times of my life.

TOTGA had just been divorced and was left alone with a young son. On a whim, I asked her if they’d like to come with me.

"Where would we stay?" she asked.
"Oh, I dunno" I replied. "We’ll just drift around until we find somewhere nice".
"I’m not really sure that I could really spare the time" she answered.

A few years later we had a chat and she said "you know, if you had had some accommodation booked, I’d have come with you that time" and that was when I realised just what a lucky escape she’d had.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I don’t do pre-booking of accommodation and things like that. Drifting around is my way of life. Anyone whose Idea of a holiday is pre-booking somewhere and staying on a beach or something would have had a nervous breakdown after a week with me.

Regular readers of this rubbish will probably recall 2015 when I spent every single night (except for one) “sleeping out” in Labrador and Upper Québec with howling timber wolves keeping me awake, animals scratching at Strider’s truck cap trying to get into the sleeping bag with me, battling with snowdrifts in September and all of that.

No, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … TOTGA did well to slip through my evil clutches.

The irony is that she doesn’t remember those conversations now and even denies that they took place. But they are firmly imprinted in my mind

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … guitar, THE BOYS OF SUMMER took on a new significance many years later.
"I never will forget those nights, I wonder if it was a dream"
and
"A little voice inside my head said don’t look back, you can never look back."
"Those days are gone forever, I should just let ’em go"

Mind you, at that time, there were a great many little voices inside my head saying all kinds of things. And did I listen?

There’s no fool like an old fool, and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

When the alarm went off this morning I was already up and about. I’d been up for well over an hour, in fact, and I’d transcribed the dictaphone notes too. Mind you, there weren’t so many of those during the night. I must have had something of a decent sleep for once. There was a European Cup football match taking place between a club from the UK and a team from somewhere way out east, possibly one of the former Soviet republics. The match was played in the UK so of course there were very few away fans there at all. The away end was empty. Half-way through the second half 4 or 5 away fans went to stand in the away end with a drum and a flag etc to a huge cheer from everyone else in the crowd. It was a really warm cheer of encouragement too to see the people who had come from so far away.

And then I was going off on a taxi job last night. I was at home and everyone was hanging around as usual. There were bits of money all over the place. I thought “this is no way to run a particular business”. With the job to do at 13:45, at 13:30 I went out to the car. Someone from out of the house followed me out. He tapped me on the shoulder and caught me unawares. I swung round but I had a big plastic bag of books in my hand too at the time and swinging round caught me off-balance and I almost ended up flat on my back doing this. A voice from inside the house said something like “don’t forget – you can leave this job until some other time later on” but I thought that the quicker I do the job the quicker it’s done and the quicker it’s finished.

This morning I had a lot of work to do, including some hardware maintenance on the big desktop computer and that took much longer than it ought to.

My cleaner came round as well after her visit into town and brought me the medication that I’d been prescribed. Some of it wasn’t available and so it’ll be here tomorrow, I hope.

In the bathroom I had a really good scrub up and set off a load of washing in the washing machine so that it would be ready for when I came back from the Centre de Re-education.

The car came for me and dropped me off there. First I had a group relaxation session which didn’t do all that much. Would I like to use the weights or the exercise balls? So I replied “the weights” and she gave me a ball. Such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Severine poked and prodded me about for half an hour and then I had to go to wait for my ride home. While I was waiting, I fell asleep with my 2 crutches on my lap, and after a couple of minutes I dropped one, which awoke everyone else.

Back here, I had my hot chocolate and biscuits (and I’ll have to make more biscuits on Sunday), hung up the washing and then finished off the radio notes

Tea tonight was a leftover curry with naan bread, cooked properly this time, and if I don’t fall asleep again I’ll dictate the radio notes before going to bed. I’m back at the Centre de Re-education tomorrow afternoon but if I’m lucky I’ll find time to prepare a programme.

And that reminds me – I’ve forgotten so send off the programme for this weekend. I really must do that first thing tomorrow or I’ll really be in the doghouse. Not that I’m not in it already, of course.

0

Tuesday 12th December 2023 – THE DOCTOR CAME …

… round here at the end of the morning, with a student trailing along behind.

As he walked into the apartment he looked at me and said "it’s getting worse, isn’t it?"

Considering that when he saw me a year ago after my torrid three months away from home he told me quite frankly that he thought that I was dying and that I wouldn’t pull through, his comments today weren’t exactly encouraging. How much worse can it be?

It has left me with the feeling that the clock is winding down rapidly now and the first thought that came into my head when Frodo and Sam were staring despair in the face near the end of LORD OF THE RINGS
"Have you thought of an ending?"
"Yes, several, and all are dark and unpleasant."

He was insisting yet again that I ought to see a therapist (read “psychiatrist”) to help me come to terms with “events” but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … anyone who sees a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.

And I really would feel terribly sorry for whoever it is who draws the short straw and has to probe the depths of my subconscious mind.

Actually, I don’t honestly think that he’s too far off the mark because I haven’t had a good day today.

It was another disturbed night and an early start in the morning because I ended up not being able to sleep all that much.

After the medication I had a few things to do and it ended up being another nostalgic trip down Memory Lane. And as PG Wodehouse once famously said, "memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them"

Eventually I managed to sit down and transcribe the dictaphone notes. I was going through editing my blog last night. As well as that, I was comparing a few web pages to check on things. I came across 2 that were absolutely identical so I deleted one of them. It wasn’t until later that I realised that one of them was actually the copy on the hard drive and the other was the copy on the server. I needed to have the two copies of course but I couldn’t remember the name of the file. I then had to go all the way through, count the files and compare each of them one by one. This led to its own complications because the only way to identify the different web pages was by the images on them but I kept on losing count. A couple of people there were trying to help me but they weren’t particularly helpful. There was one occasion where I missed an image and just wanted to go back a short way but she reset the machine that she had so that it went right the way back to the start so we’d have to start all over again. I had a feeling that this is a job that is never ever going to be finished because no matter how many times I make a start on it I can’t keep my concentration going long enough to count all of the web pages and images correctly (and doesn’t this sound so familiar?) and I’d just keep on slipping up every time. I’d never find this missing file that I deleted in error.

I was then doing something different with the blog. I was trying to prepare a report of each and every football match that had taken place over the last 4 or 5 years. I had some notes and we had some old newspapers. By going through them we were able to make some kind of rough approximation of what had happened the previous season and were able to make some kind of report of each game that had taken place so that with the aid of a couple of very small children I went back and did a couple of years. That seemed to work fine. I set a little task and sent the children away to do the previous years but I was rather over-ambitious with that and the children weren’t able to do it. A couple of parents came to see me and in the end we all sat down, had a talk about it and went to work it out. One woman complained in a light-hearted way that I was speaking Geordie to them but another one replied “no, that’s Scots” and they were all being rather confused by my accent. I actually awoke before we finished it. But someone had asked me about how many years back I was going to do. I replied that that would be the last one because we couldn’t rely on having copies of the newspapers any further back than that. Without access to any records it was going to be practically impossible to complete.

Later on last night I was in Leuven, preparing to go to do my shopping. Then a flyer came round from LIDL. I thought to myself “I haven’t been to LIDL for months and this would give me a good opportunity to go”. I didn’t know where the LIDL was in Leuven. I’d have to have a look at the map to work out a route. 5 minutes later found me out in the street and I’d forgotten to look at the map. I was wandering off, daydreaming as usual down the road and almost ended up driving through a red traffic light. All kinds of traffic came to join me at the next traffic light. There was a while MkIV Cortina saloon full of people etc. Then I suddenly had a brainwave about where there might be a LIDL – miles out of my route but I may as well go while I’m out. I began to plan my itinerary about what I was doing, where I was going and what I was going to buy while I was sitting in the van at the traffic light.

Rapidly changing country, I was at the Centre Normandy, somewhere like that, standing at the reception when a giant rat scurried across the room. I picked up one of these pointed letter-openers and threw it at the rat and skewered it straight away. I felt really impressed with that, except of course that the idea of a rat running around somewhere like that is horrible.

Finally, we were in Virlet preparing to come back north. Someone had already heaved a brick through the windscreen of the Ford Escort so I wanted to make sure that everything was properly burglar-proof. One of the windows was rather badly-damaged and was easy for anyone to try to come in that way so I was trying to find some string to secure it but I found a piece of wood that was exactly the correct size to blank it off. I went looking for my drill, screws and bits. I found them lying around on the floor in all kinds of places where I’d left them the previous day when I’d been working and been too tired to put everything away. I began to collect everything together to prepare. I can’t remember who I was with now but Percy Penguin was also there.

There was some more stuff than this but you really don’t want to read it, especially if you’re eating your meal.

After a good wash I prepared for my Welsh lesson and it was a disaster. Nothing whatever would sink into my head today. And being disrupted by the visit of the doctor didn’t help at all.

The car came for me later to take me to the Centre de Re-education and I don’t know why, but I fell into the pit with the Black Dog. And fell quite deeply too.

Not that that usually bothers me because I’ve fallen in there many times before, and sometimes much deeper than this, but I’ve always consoled myself with the thought that when things are really bad, they can only improve. However, at the moment, it’s difficult to see quite how.

Severine pulled and tugged me about for half an hour and then I had the ergotherapist who discussed her report with me.

Back here later I made my hot chocolate and biscuits, and then promptly crashed out.

The hospital and I had a chat at some point. My visit on Monday is now cancelled and I have to come on Tuesday, as previously advised, instead. However it still involves a stay. But that’s next week. There is still plenty of time for further changes before then.

My cleaner came round too. The doctor had given me a prescription for more medication so I’d sent her a message to ask her if she could fetch the products. I warned her that she’d need a shopping trolley

Tea was a taco roll, and there’s enough stuffing left over for a leftover curry tomorrow.

There’s the Centre de Re-education again tomorrow and then I’ll finish off the radio notes. I waded through a pile of them earlier before tea and I’ve done about 70% already.

But right now I’m exhausted again so despite how early it is, I reckon that I’ll go to bed. Not that it’ll do me much good but I have to show willing.

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Monday 11th December 2023 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

… showers might be back on the agenda at some point in the not-too-distant future.

The ergotherapist came around with a selection of useful gadgets and appliances for helping me and we managed to figure out something that I could adapt to help me into the bath and to stand up for a shower.

It’ll be a while until it arrives of course, because there are all kinds of hoops to jump through, and it’s a question first of awaiting her report and recommendations. That won’t be any time soon, I bet.

And then there’s also the question of whether I’ll be still here when it arrives. The way I felt today, that isn’t necessarily going to be the case.

It doesn’t seem to make any difference whether or not I go to bed early. Or whether I’m still fast asleep when the alarm goes off. Both of those situations took place through the night but the end result was still the same as usual – me flat out on my chair later on in the afternoon.

At least there was sparking water for my medication, flavoured with a dash of grape juice. And then back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at home last night. I can’t remember what I was doing but all my brothers and sisters were slowly coming home from school. We were having the usual kinds of arguments. There was a dog there too, an old dog, probably one of the collies that we used to have as kids. She was there being quite quiet. When people came to the door they’d knock and wait until someone opened it which was very difficult for me being on crutches. Every time it happened I’d go and open the door and let in another sibling until one occasion when there was a knock on the door, I went to open it and it was my mother. She was there with 2 great big dogs. They came into the kitchen and began to jump up and down at me. I don’t like dogs at the best of times but when I’m on crutches and not very steady I don’t like them jumping up at me at all. This was something that I just couldn’t accept. I became rather angry. There was some mention at some point of one of the daughters of my niece who was there. She turned up in a Volkswagen saloon. Another one of my cousins on my father’s side asked “do you have one of these now?” in some kind of derogatory tone. She replied “yes. It’s a lovely car, especially when it has some power in it”. Apparently it also doubled as an autonomous standard lamp of table lamp that could be used to throw some light on whatever it was that you were working.

And then we were in the middle of Covid, the height of it and we were going to school in California somewhere. There were no school buses running so we had to walk. It was a long walk away. We set out to walk on this long grass verge, a couple of us, and slowly began to climb this embankment which led to a road that passed over the motorway When we reached the top and looked down, it was one of these 16-lane motorways. Of all the traffic going in one direction there wasn’t a single vehicle at all. Going in the other direction were all the cars in the world, all parked nose to tail and looked as if they hadn’t moved for weeks. We couldn’t understand the folly of these people who even in the middle of a pandemic had felt it necessary to go out in their car and just sit in a traffic queue as if things were back to normal. We carried on walking and came to the school. There weren’t very many people around but there were plenty of police officers there interrogating everyone about why they’d come. To us it seemed quite obvious that we’d come in order to attend our lessons

Later on I’d gone to night school. My partner, whoever she might have been, had gone too for her lesson. In our Welsh class there were only 3 of us there and no tutor so we just chatted amongst ourselves quite vaguely for a while, talking about the history of the group, how we were learning and how I was miles off the pace. I did my best to recount a long rambling conversation about how I once went from Brussels to Austria for a pizza and came back again the same night in the Opel. Afterwards when we came out I met my partner again. I asked her if she’d done anything exciting. She replied that she’d found a body. I asked her to repeat it. It turned out that they’d had to go into a dark recess of one of the storerooms in the school to look for some ink for something. While they were rummaging around in the back corner they came across the mummified remains of a new-born baby. It was probably there 40 years. You could see from the deformed skeleton that it had had a fall. There was very little hair on it which implied that it was new-born. She was wondering about it. To me it seemed quite obvious that some girl at the school had had a child without telling anyone and concealed the birth. It wouldn’t be the first time that that had happened. Later on, for some reason when the police came round to our house to take a statement they took me with them to go back to a clothes shop near the school which they said had something to do with the crime. I went with the policeman. He had a Volvo 740 estate, one of the flat square ones. He lifted up the bonnet to look for something . I had a look underneath it and saw how simple the layout was and how much room there was. I began to regret that I hadn’t had a couple of those on the taxis.

Finally I was with a boy from my class at school last night. He wasn’t anyone special and so i’ve no idea whey he would suddenly put in an appearance. Several weeks earlier I’d been to church with Marianne, a new modern church in the south part of the city centre of Brussels. It was a place that she’s wanted to visit before she died so I’d taken her there. Later, I decided for some reason to go again. That was when I met him. We walked down a road past a big brick-built church dating from probably the late Victorian period. There were a lot of roadworks outside. I explained to him that there was a statue of Jesus inside who was preaching to the congregation over a lake. The lake was actually a river of which the exit had been blocked. It looked to me as if they were freeing the exits so that the water could flow through the church and out the other side because of so many stories of Jesus preaching by running water. he wondered if that was the church to which we should be going but I explained that it wasn’t. We carried on walking. By now I had a young girl with me instead. She was asking questions about the church so I explained things to her. We eventually arrived just as the service was about to begin. I had STRAWBERRY MOOSE with me whom I was holding. The girl as soon as she saw from the top of the bank of seats the service starting she dashed to grab a seat with a spare one next to it so that I could sit down. There were some people whom we knew who were there who had 2 small girls. Of course the 2 girls were chatting to Strawberry Moose. Most of the women and girls were in bathing costumes It was something to do with blessing the swimming or something like that. I didn’t quite understand it at the time so many of the girls and women were in swimming costumes.

When Marianne was dying I did my best to take her to places that she wanted to visit but it wasn’t easy because her illness advanced so quickly. I sat by her side for 5 months and watched her die, and it was the most horrible thing that I could ever imagine. She was quite religious and her response to anything was “my Saviour will call me when he’s ready”. I’m not going to put anyone at all through that kind of torture, and the medical staff where I’m being treated know what to and when to do it.

It reminds me of a story about Sidney Smith, a Home Office pathologist who was giving a talk on this subject.
"If ever I begin to lose my faculties, my coherence and my dignity" he said "I’ve told my wife that she must “have an accident” while cleaning the shotgun"
"Blimey!" shouted a voice from the back of the hall. "She’s leaving it rather late, isn’t she?"

After my morning coffee and fruit bun I began the process of tidying up. There’s not much that I can do and it takes me forever to do it but I have to show willing.

It’s not as if I mind people seeing for themselves that I’m struggling to manage, especially someone whose job it it, but even I have my pride and my limits. However, as was said in Proverbs Chapter 16 Verse 18, "Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall"

When the ergotherapist came round we ran through my routine about cooking, eating, working and all of that kind of thing and she didn’t have too many suggestions in that respect. It was the bathroom that drew most of her attention and we spent a lot of time in there working out a few things.

She did ask me if I wanted a raised seat in the WC and that is probably the most humiliating incident yet with this illness.

One thing that she wanted to do was to watch me make a pot of coffee, but I suspect that that didn’t have very much to do ergotherapy. She declined my biscuits though.

After she left I came in here I had a phone all to make to one of my neighbours, and then I crashed out definitively for quite some time. So much so that when I finally did awaken I felt absolutely dreadful. But once I’d finally come back round into the Land of the Living, I paired off the music for the next radio programme.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg, just as nice as usual, and there’s plenty of stuffing left over for the next couple of days

Tomorrow I have the doctor coming around, the Welsh lesson (the last of the year) and then the Centre de Re-education in the afternoon. And right now, I have never ever felt less like it. I hope that I have a good sleep tonight.

It’s one of those things for which I have sore misgivings, and even worse, I have no ointment to rub on them.

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