Category Archives: France

Wednesday 27th September 2023 – THEY’VE HAD ENOUGH…

… of me at this hospital. They’ve told me that I can leave

In fact I could have left this evening but there would have been an issue about trains going home, so instead I’m going home tomorrow .

The train that I’ve booked departs at 13:54 for Granville so my neighbour, who is in Paris at the moment, is coming to collect me at 11:00, we’ll find a taxi to take us to the station and then I’ve invited her for lunch before the train departs.

Last night I departed quite rapidly and actually had a good night’s sleep. Someone came to take a blood sample at 05:45 and someone else came in a little later but I didn’t pay much attention.

It was at about 08:00 when I arose from the dead and I had a slow start to the day, but it didn’t last long. My doctor came to see me, with a gaggle of students, to give me a thorough going over. And thorough it was too. They were here for quite a while.

After lunch I had a social worker come around. She had a lengthy chat with me about this and that and made copious notes. It remains to be seen why she did that and what the outcome of it all would be.

The next visitor was one of the students from this morning. She asked me a pile of questions again about my mobility, my capabilities and the like. And then she had a little game for me.

WHat I had to do was to pull a few phials from something like a honeycomb, and then put them back – a test designed presumably to test my co-ordination. With the right hand it took 25 seconds and with the left, 24. Apparently those times are quite good.

She then had me walking up and down the corridor for 6 minutes, timing me and measuring the distance that I walked. I can’t remember how far I walked but it was a depressingly small amount.

Finally, the doctor and her student came back later and sliced open my lip to extract a few living nerve cells that they are going to examine to see whether there’s any infection, or whether there’s an sign of my cancer having entered into the nervous system.

But the fact that they are going to these kinds of lengths goes to show that they haven’t found any signs of anything yet and so they are probing deeper and deeper into everything.

It’s quite likely that they won’t have finished analysing everything by the time that I leave, so they’ll probably reply to me by letter.

While all of this was going on, I was transcribing the dictaphone notes. I was having a really interesting dream about a CA camper that I had. I was living in the Auvergne but the Bedford was still in the UK and I was loaning it out to my friends who wanted to go camping or something like that. Nerina was in charge of looking after the keys, paperwork etc.. Liz and Terry had borrowed it and they were saying that they’d gone all the way to Southampton and it didn’t miss a beat all the way there. I don’t know why they went to Southampton but I ought to know. One of my friends from the Wirral asked if he could borrow it. I told him to contact Nerina and she’d organise it for him. Then I began to think about the insurance and MoT – do I know if these are still in effect? Do I need to do anything or change anything or Sign anything or are they renewed? I began to have this really complicated question going round in my head about the paperwork that was involved in looking after the camper.

At some point in the early 1980s I had a Bedford CA camper, a really old one with a three-speed gearbox. I bought it cheaply because I had a lot of plans for it but they never worked out and in any case the camper didn’t survive its MoT test.

And then I’d had another huge row with my brother. A short while later I was walking past his house and he came out and began to chase me – he and his wife. They were trying to catch me but they couldn’t. I managed to slip away. I ended up at some kind of meeting where they were present. It was extremely unpleasant. In the end he paid someone £100 to kill me. He gave them the money and asked them to meet him somewhere in a few days time to discuss the proceedings. Then he did the same with another couple. He paid them £400 to kill me. I thought that that was stupid, for giving them money in advance he would never see them again despite the arrangements that he had made to meet them on Winsford railway station on the Saturday. I somehow ended up in the same car with them and someone else. We were going towards Manchester. We stopped for a drink and his wife made some food and offered me some but I refused it. I was thinking that we’d stop at z chip shop on the way and I could find something there. The chip shop in this town had been voted the best chip shop in the Northwest so there was an enormous queue outside the door. At the one just down the road there was no-one there so I thought that I’d stop and buy some there. We ended up looking in a junk shop. My brother and his wife went off to look at something but the other guy and I just carried on walking. He said that if we were to run now and return to the van we could leave them stranded here. However my opinion was that we should stay with them – “Keep You Friends Close But Keep Your Enemies Closer” so that I could keep a really good eye on them and see what they were doing because I don’t think that they would have the courage to kill me – I’m sure that they would need someone else to do it. As long as I could keep an eye on them and keep them away from someone else I would be OK.

After that, Nerina and I were in a restaurant. It was like 05:00. We walked in and sat down. The waitress came over with her notes and a couple of small cakes which she left on the table for us. She asked what we wanted. I thought that we’d come here for a main meal because we’d had nothing to eat the previous evening. She went off and came back with 2 menus, 2 small bags of sweets with some 20p pieces in them. She said “we offer you a glass of port with your meal” which didn’t make any sense at all. I was looking through the menu but I couldn’t see anything vegetarian, never mind vegan. Then I noticed, written in biro on a corner “vegetarian meals available – add £1:00 to the price”. That piqued my interest so I hoped to catch the eye of the waitress when she came to ask her some more about the vegetarian options.

And finally there was something about a van for sale. Someone rang up but they had no way of going to see it. As I was going up that way I d=said that I’d take them. There was me and the girl with me in my old Reliant van that I’d had when I was at school. We picked them up, this couple, and picked up another person too. For some reason there was a load of children’s and dolls’ clothes hung up on the sides of the van. We set off but of course the van only had a 750cc engine in it. It was not very powerful so we weren’t going very fast. Hills were a struggle. Then I was stuck in a town centre. All the time this couple in the back were giving a running commentary, making remarks about the van thinking that they were funny but after a while it was really getting on my nerves. At a certain point I pulled into a lay-by, stopped and told everyone to get out. This led to quite some arguments and disputes. In the end they gathered their things and prepared to leave. They were still making remarks but by this time I didn’t care. The guy on his own who was with us had a few things to say too but I told him that I had an incurable disease that was going to kill me so anything that I wanted too do, I had to do it quickly. I couldn’t mess around waiting. He wasn’t convinced and tried to argue with me about it. In the end I was glad that I got rid of all of these people. There was just me and the girl in the van, going to where we wanted to go in the first place.

There was also a time when I had a Reliant van, anothet one that was a old as the hills. I’d had a motor bike when I was 16 but I had a serious accident when I broke both knees. My father refursed to allow me to have another nike and so I had the Reliant.

It was quite exciting. These vehicles had to weigh less than 5cwt in order to be classed as a motor cycle, so as it had a really old 750cc side-valve, the bodywork weighed next to nothing. However we found a 700cc all-alloy overhead valve engine and dropped it in. It weighed next to nothing and so it went like stink, but it sheared off half-shafts like nobody’s business. IN he end, when I left home and moved to Chester, the Reliant went the Way Of The West and I had an Ariel 250cc motorbike.

While I was chatting on the phone to Rosemary, the evening meal came round, with white fish again. That chat with the dietician really did some good.

So right now I’m off to bed. I’m going to have a good sleep (I hope) and prepare myself for my journey home. And then I have a couple of plans to put into action. I have had a couple of ideas for the future, always assuming that I have one.

0

Tuesday 2th September 2023 – THE MEDICAL STAFF …

… has certainly been earning its money today here at Ice Station Zebra. There has been an endless stream of visitors here today to see me.

There was a couple of people who came to see me quite early on but as you can imagine, I didn’t take much notice of them.

However I was wide awake at 07:42 and up and about a few minutes later.

The first job was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night. It was a really comfortable bed, which is a surprise for an Institution like this, so I had made the most of it. I was with Nerina. We’d gone to meet someone to find out anout French income tax. The guy with whom we spoke said that he knew someone who was an expert and he’d have us meet him. That turned out to be someone else whom we knew. We all arranged that we’d meet at a table in a café some time and have a big discussion. A shot while later Nerina and I went to a café for a coffee. There was very little room. There was a communal table with a couple of spaces at it and plenty of 2 and 4-person places but they were all filled so we decided that we’d grab these 2 spaces at this communal table As we reached there we saw that of the 2 chairs a girl had pulled one towards her and had her feet on it. Nerina had no choice but to sit on it. I saw the scowl that the girl gave on her face so I picked up the chair with Nerina on it and moved it right up against the table. I sad “you don’t want to sit so far away from the table. You’ll fall through the gap” which made everyone laugh. The girl who had her feet forcibly removed from the chair, they had now fallen to the floor was extremely upset and angry by it. But I didn’t care.

There was also a stroy about some cars for sale. I’d been and had a look at one – a C-registered Sierra but I thought that it was too expensive. A little later on I was driving down a country lane – it might have been Back Lane in Weston or something, and they were assembling a grader to scrape the road surface. I talked to the little girl who was in my car and explained to her what was going to happen; We saw 3 or 4 cars – they were driving away from the place where they’d been for sale. There was a red Chrysler PT Cruiser that someone was just getting into, tearing the price ticket from the window, and then the Sierra which was actually moving. We noticed that the Sierra was misfiring somewhat as it drove away so I was glad that I didn’t buy it. Then someone whom I knew – a girl, bought a car from here. She said that a cottage had been included in the price so she wanted to go to look at it. She wasn’t expecting much for her money, she said. We set out and had to climb into the hills. There was plenty of snow about on the hills. When she left the car she kept on slipping but we eventually found the cottage. It was really difficult and there was no parking or anything. It was in a line of terraced houses and was in a terrible condition. it was being used as a hay store. She said “that’s going to be something to keep Terry busy while he’s here”. We had a good look at it and began to make plan about it.

I was auditing some accounts for some kind of villagers’ association at some point during the night. While I was doing it someone handed me a letter demanding to know the latest minutes of the Parish council meeting and their annual accounts. First thing I did was to fix up some kind of street light in the village square, which everyone liked, a USB (… "he means “LED”" – ed …. light and one or to people could even read by it if they were close enough to it. That met with their approval. I asked them who was the local councillor. Someone eventually found me a list of names and telephone numbers in a local magazine so I began to ring round while everyone went out of the room for something to eat. Eventually I came across a German guy called Ede. I phoned him and we arranged to meet. When we met, he wouldn’t answer any of my questions at first. He wanted to know who I was, what I was doing, why I was here and what my interest was with him. Eventually I persuaded him to give me his name. He was in fact Mr Ede so we went to his house to chat about the letter that I’d received. On the way there I’d had a phone call from a lorry driver who was asking me some kind of question about something. I said that I’d have to answer him in a couple of minutes. Thee I was, trying to have this conversation with this German guy, trying to speak to someone on the phone and walking towards this guy’s house at the same time. It was all extremely confusing

Finally I was out driving and I ended up at some kind of outdoor exhibition. All my family and friends were there. I bumped into someone whom I knew. He was telling me about a place that we’d visited a few times, how there was plenty of stuff going on in there now. I said “ohh well, we’ll have to go to look. I couldn’t remember which night my free night was. I kept on proposing nights to him to go to see it, and suddenly realised that I had something else on. In the end he just smiled and said “go home, sort yourself out and telephone me, then we’ll arrange it like that. It really was confusing too. Later on I was having to go to the local market and needed someone to take me. In the end some foreign refugee guy said that he’d take me so we both went. I left the car on my crutches and put my head in this ten where the market was taking place. You could see the look of bewilderment on his face. As we went in there was a pile of second-hand clothes to sort through to see if you wanted to buy anything. I was much more interested in the second-hand record stall. You could see him sigh as I began to thumb through the albums but there were no albums there that interested me which was a shame because I always used to pick up something really nice from there.

Once I was finished I was going to do some more of the dictaphone notes from my previous hospital stay but to my surprise they aren’t on this computer. I can’t understand why because this is the laptop that I had back in those days and I’m absolutely certain that I had this SSD in here then.

In the middle of all of that there was an interruption as a nurse came by to take a blood sample. She took about 15 tubes from me quite quickly but there wasn’t enough blood to fill the other 5 that she had. She’ll come back tomorrow and take some more.

She also asked me for a urine sample, which I provided. But I thought that that was really taking the p****.

Once she’d gone, an orderly brought me my breakfast, which I ate while I was preparing for my Welsh lesson today.

But I needn’t have bothered. I was only there for 5 minutes before the dietician came to see me, and we spent a good half-hour talking about my diet and so on.

Obviously, the talk that we had worked wonders because the meal tonight included, as you might expect, white fish and a pot of cream cheese.

Once the dietician had left, I tried to reconnect with my Welsh lesson but instead, the pretty nurse came to see me.

"Lie down on the bed" she instructed "I’ll be back very soon"

It’s not every day that someone makes a proposition like that to me so I duly obliged Sure enough, she came back 5 minutes later – but with a technician and an electrocardiogram machine.

That took an age and after they left I tried to reconnect with what was left of my Welsh lesson. Instead, an orderly came in with my lunch so I gave up on the Welsh today.

Once everything had happened and everyone had gone I settled down on my comfy chair and had a little … err … relax. But not for long because the doctor came in and put a patch on my back. She didn’t say anything but having been through this before, I know what will be coming in an hour or so.

And I was correct too. She came back later with a nurse, told me to sit on the edge of the bed and curl up into a little ball. And then I suffered one of the most painful experiences that it was possible to have in a hospital – a lumbar puncture, where they take samples of the interior of your spine to check what they extract to see if there’s an infection.

While I was having the blood test the nurse stroked my arm, which I thought was sweet, and the one here with the doctor comforted me too. That was really nice too, but I don’t want to have to go through a lumbar puncture again, that’s for sure. Mind you, she did bring me a nice strong coffee afterwards. There’s not anything like enough coffee in this place.

After they had cleared off I thought that I could settle down. I’d been told to lie flat on the bed and not move for a couple of hours, so while I was drifting in ant out (mainly in) of sleep, a nurse came round with coffee. And then someone gave me a new water jug.

The final straw was when the doctor came back. She told me that the blood test had thrown up several anomalies and wanted to know if I had any medical reports from Castle Anthrax that she could use to compare.

Strange as it might seem, I’m trying to keep my Leuven details out of all of these tests. The reason is that if they discover them serendipitously, they might suggest another course of treatment or try something different. However, I couldn’t refuse. Leuven is all automated and their reports are available on line. Se we accessed a few and she took away the details.

A little earlier I talked about tea. I made do with pasta, beans, an apple purée and a green salad with vinaigrette. Not the best but I have to do what I can.

So that was today. I’ll be in bed early tonight again and hope for another good sleep. At least no-one disturbs me at 02:00 like they did in Leuven every night. I’m on my own here and that suits me just fine.

They are going to finish off the blood test tomorrow and there will probably be a few other things too. I have the impression that I won’t be here for long , at the speed at which they are working. They can take all of the tests they like and I won’t stop them at all. It’s not the results that interest me, it’s what they intend to propose to make things better for me.

0

Monday 25th September 2023 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not actually sitting in a rainbow but sitting by my bed in the Hôpital Pitié-Salpetrière in south-east central Paris.

My room is quite basic and not as luxurious as the rooms in Castle Anthrax but I’m on my own and, to my delight, there’s a shower in my private bathroom. The place is quite cold though and I’m going to go to bed in a moment in an effort to keep warm.

The alarm was set this morning for 04:30 and it will probably surprise you (because it surprised me!) that by that time I was already up and about making my sandwiches.

Last night I’d gone to bed quite early and was asleep quite quickly. However I awoke shortly later in some kind of panic thinking that I was on my way to Paris and I’d forgotten my computer. And as a result I couldn’t go back to sleep.

But sleep I must have done because there was some stuff on the dictaphone, as I discovered later. I was in my old caravan in Virlet. Liz had gone into the house for something and 2 children were sitting inside the house playing while I was making tea. I’d had some water in a solar oven in a window. It was really hot so I was going to put it on top of the telephone to bring it to the boil. I was having a root around in the cupboards underneath and came across a few packs of pasta, biscuits etc. Although they looked in good condition I wasn’t sure how long they had been there. I decided that I’d ask Liz when she came down about whether she thought that they could still be used. In the meantime she was busy talking to the children and singing with them while she was doing whatever it was. It looked as if she wouldn’t be here for quite some time yet and everything was coming to a head with the cooking

In connection with the previous dream I dreamt that I was running late. I dreamed that I was halfway to Paris before I began to worry about what would happen when I arrived at Montparnasse with all of my stuff etc and find that I’ve missed my train or something like that.

Having collected everything and sorted myself out I was downstairs stroking a wandering tomcat, busy patrolling his territory, at 05:10.

The taxi turned up a few minutes later and a rather chatty driver took me to the station. The coffee machine wasn’t switched on but my train was in so I staggered down the platform to find my seat aboard.

It didn’t take me long to update this computer and then I was able to settle down comfortably amongst the hordes of early-morning commuters on board, and when I moved seat to let someone sit down next to me I noticed that my water bottle had leaked all down my side.

We were on time arriving at Montparnasse and my neighbour was waiting to meet me, which was really nice. An SNCF assistant turned up with a wheelchair too and I was pushed along to the taxi rank where I was ushered into a VW Caddy taxi, which was actually quite comfortable.

The driver took us on a mystery tour, chatting and waving his arms about as he drove – probably the funniest drive that I’ve ever had – and then we had to negotiate the hospital.

It’s not like modern hospital at all. They are modern skyscrapers built on a small footprint with many floors. This is a very large, sprawling site with dozens of individual buildings. The earliest date from the 17th Century and are nearest the road. The further back you go, the more modern the buildings are until you reach the newest ones at the back.

The whole site is extremely confusing, and there’s an internal bus service to ferry people around and a fleet of electric vehicles equipped to carry wheelchairs and their passengers to their various examinations.

It didn’t take long to install me and after my neighbour left for whatever it was that she was in Paris to do, I had a relentless stream of visitors asking me a whole pile of questions and giving me all kinds of tests.

One of the visitors was the dietician and they have sorted out a meal plan for me. The food is typical Institution food that reminds me of what we used to eat at school back in the 1960s and when we used to say “Grace” before we ate – “Oh Lord, for what we are about to receive, the pigs have just refused”.

Still, in a hospital, controlled by a dietician, it’s probably a balanced diet and quite nutritious. I’m not convinced about giving me a plate of baked beans when I’m due to have a pile of doctors poking and prodding me.

At one point I was whizzed off in one of these electric vehicles to a laboratory where I was run through one of these Stargate time tunnels, and then had to wait an age to be picked up and taken back here.

A specialist has seen me and examined me, I’ve had an evening meal (of sorts) and that seems to be that. So although it’s early, I’m off to bed. I’ve crashed out on several occasions today which is no surprise with a bad night and a ridiculously early start. It won’t be long before I’m asleep and then I’ll see what tomorrow brings. At least they seem to be interested in me here, which is always a good sign.

0

Sunday 24th September 2023 – I WAS THINKING …

… and that’s always dangerous of course, about how much things have changed.

6 years ago to the day, I was in South Carolina visiting Rhys. I was at the end of a mega-voyage where I went to say goodbye to everyone whom I knew in North America and to cross off a few more things from my bucket list.

That voyage was because I felt that I was coming to the end of the road and didn’t want to forget anyone whom I knew.

However 6 years of living here in peace and quiet and comparative luxury gave me a new lease of life but tomorrow I shall be off to Paris for what will be a make-or-break hospital examination. During the next few days they’ll be examining me and it’ll either be good news or bad news. There’s nothing in between.

It’s a pity really that the decline in health over the last 18 months has happened at this time. I was having a lengthy chat on the internet today with one of the daughters of my niece currently in the USA. She’s getting married in November and, having followed her adventures quite closely, how I would love to be there to celebrate it with her.

However, as my trip to Leuven went to prove, I simply can’t make it. I even went to the lengths of costing how much it would cost to invite a friend to come with me for a week to hold my luggage and my hand. However there are few people whose company I would enjoy for that period of time and every one of them is either too ill to travel, otherwise occupied, or with other responsibilities.

My responsibility last night was to have a decent night’s sleep and for some reason, despite not going to bed until after 02:30, I was up and about by 09:45. That’s something that I don’t understand. It’s not like me at all on a Sunday.

For the morning I didn’t do very much – just a nice quiet relaxing morning, and then I had a listen to the dictaphone. I was back at home going through my record collection. There were some records there, some of this death-metal stuff. My brother decided that he didn’t particularly like it and this led to a huge argument between us. This argument turned violent. He started to attack me. At one point he was on my shoulders beating me so I took him to the top of the stairs and quite simply dropped my head forward. He fell off and went right down the stairs onto the floor of the hall below. I thought that this was really only a temporary solution. It’s just going to lead to yet more trouble and I really don’t know how I’m going to get myself out of this. It was another one of these occasions where I actually awoke with quite a start as if it was something that was extremely real.

And you really don’t want to know the rest of that, especially if you are eating your tea or something.

Later on, Alison had gone off to see some friends. I was at home having to get ready to go to Paris where someone was going to meet me to take me to the hospital. Rather than rush around I thought that I’d have a nice lie-in and then make myself ready to go. Then I realised that trains are only every three hours to Paris. If I didn’t catch the one that I intended I would be 3 hours late, no-one would be waiting for me, the hospital would have closed its admissions and I’d be left high and dry. I had to start to hurry. It took me a couple of minutes to realise that the best thing to do would be to just take what I could carry and leave everything here, hope that Alison won’t mind, come back for it when I’m out of hospital and then move on back home. I couldn’t see how I was going to do that either. I was just in a state of total confusion. I’d written to Alison previously about a couple of special offers on things. She’d been impressed by an offer on cheese and had taken a pile of tickets with her. She had written to tell me that the cheese was a great success and she wished that she had some more. Was there any way that I could obtain some before I left? Of course it was far too late to do it now. She was talking about another type of cheese she’d had but I didn’t understand the message. Of course all the time I was sitting there worrying about my train. Would it go? Will I miss it? What am I going to do? in a total state of confusion.

Feeling energetic at that moment, which is not like me at all, especially on a Sunday, I transcribed a couple of entries from my hospital stay last November. There’s still plenty that need to be done but if I do a couple each day, it won’t take long.

Having had a lengthy chat with my niece’s daughter in the USA, I finished off the afternoon by dealing with one of the sets of notes that I’d dictated for those radio programmes. It was a miserable attempt at dictating and took a great deal of editing. One of them is now almost completed and I’ll deal with the other in due course.

Earlier on I’d taken out a lump of dough from the freezer and I made another pizza for tea, just as delicious as usual.

So now I’m off to bed. I have to be up at 04;30 and that’s not going to be nice. But once I reach the hospital, if I ever do, I can crash out and sleep for several days until they throw me out. But at least I’ll know what’s going on and what, if anything, they can do about it.

0

Saturday 23rd September 2023 – AS I SAID …

… yesterday, I was going to have a quiet, relaxing day today without doing very much at all. And much to my surprise, I actually managed it too.

It was just as well because I had another miserable night last night. It took me an age to go off to sleep and then I awoke in the small hours and couldn’t go back to sleep for what seemed like an age.

However I must have gone off to sleep at some point because I awoke again later and was actually out of bed before the alarm went off. So what with all of that, I wasn’t feeling all that much like doing anything anyway.

After the medication I checked my mails and messages and then came in here for a little relax for a while. And although I didn’t actually crash out, I can’t say that I had a productive morning.

For a change today I had real sliced bread for my cheese on toast. I’d made a small loaf yesterday and if I’d have had any sheep’s eyes I would have put them in it so that it will see me through the weekend.

One thing that I have done is to transcribe the dictaphone notes. Not just from last night but from the rest of the time that I spent in Leuven too. You can read the arrears in due course when I upload them to the relevant entries, but meantime there were 4 of us last night, me on my crutches, someone in a wheelchair and 2 others. We piled into this Morris Traveller to go to the seaside. The person in the wheelchair might have been my neighbour who had her bad fall a few months ago. We arrived at the seaside and left the car, making our way as best as we could down to the promenade. There was something about staying one night here and a coupe of nights somewhere else but at this point I lost track of it all again

And then at a disciplinary meeting following an Olympic Games ice hockey match during which a female player had been sent off. She’d then been summoned before this committee for having abused the linesman and officials after the sending-off had been given. When it was announced that she was going to receive a further 10-match penalty she because exceedingly aggressive towards the committee that was disciplining her, with threats of physical violence etc. The committee then adjourned to consider taking further action.

Then I was with the 3 other people from earlier, one of whom might have been my cleaner. We’d gone for a walk around Granville. We ended up sitting on a bench overlooking the beach by the sailing school chatting about all kinds of things. I remember thinking about how bad all of this is for me when I can’t go anywhere except extremely slowly and with someone to look after me in case I fall.

There was football on the internet later in the afternoon, Caernarfon v Pontypridd. It was a dour mid-table struggle with several moments of real skill but also even more moments of less-than-skilful action.

There were several chances for each team but having in previous seasons criticised the defence of Caernarfon as being somewhat fragile, the current pairing of Dion Donohue and Phil Mooney in the centre of the defence looks as if they’ve finally found a good pairing and Wales under-21 keeper Lewis Webb didn’t have much to do.

The game was on the point of petering out as a 0-0 draw when with 5 minutes to go a deep cross into the box following a corner kick found the head of Phil Mooney to give them a victory that quite frankly I wasn’t expecting.

The strange thing was that many other referees would have disallowed the goal for a push in the box, and had the referee been better positioned on a couple of other occasions he might have blown for a couple of penalties at the other end. But he can only give what he can see.

For tea tonight I tried the silicon liners in the air fryer to make my chips. The potatoes didn’t stick and the fryer was much, much cleaner, which is a major improvement, but the food took longer to cook properly. And another thing is that I need even less oil that I’m currently using too.

So all in all, It’s a big step in the right direction.

While I was at it, I tried my various cake tins, and the smallest one fits in the air fryer. So when I come back from Paris, if I ever do, I might have a go at baking a cake in it to see what happens.

And now that I have my pudding steamer, I might even have a go at a chocolate pudding too.

But that’s for another time. Right now I’m off to bed when I’ve dictated the radio notes. Another Day of Rest tomorrow and then I’m off to Paris at some God-forsaken time on Monday morning. And I’m not looking forward to that.

0

Friday 22nd September 2023 – I MADE IT …

… down into town and back today doing a round of various places that I had to visit. And strangely enough, I felt much better for it too.

It rather reminds me of the time in my late teens when I was staggering back home after a visit to the Lion and Swan in Crewe and stopping at Crewe Bus Station for “obvious reasons”.

“Phew!” I said. “Just made it!” And the guy standing next to me said “blimey! Can you make me one just like it?”.

Unfortunately, Crewe Bust station and the public conveniences that it housed have been demolished, and that’s a shame. It was thanks to a careful study of the helpful diagrams on the wall that I passed my Biology “O” Levels.

They were at one time planning on giving guided tours of the public conveniences on the Bus Station. The cost would have been 2/6d per visit, or 2/7d if you wanted to see all of it.

Last night was one of those extremely turbulent nights where I travelled miles and consequently didn’t have much in the way of sleep. And so what with my trip into town today and my long walk around, I’m surprised, really surprised, that I kept going.

When the alarm went off I staggered out of bed and went for my medication and to read my mails and messages. Once I’d done all that I headed off for a shower to make myself look pretty.

When I awoke there was an enormous torrential rainstorm going on so I was really thinking about abandoning my trip out, but by the time that I hit the streets it had stopped.

The bus dropped me off at the Port and my first call was at the Credit Agricole to have them sign a form. The Belgian Government is starting to pay Old-Age pensions directly into bank accounts and I need a rubber stamp and signature on the bank details form.

And for such a simple task as that, I was there for about 15 minutes while they tried to work out how to apply a rubber stamp, a signature and a date to a form.

Next stop was the Post Office to post off a few letters that I’d written just recently, and then to the chemist’s to pick up the Aranesp that I’d ordered yesterday. And there I encountered my cleaner picking up some medication for another one of her clients.

At the Carrefour I did some basic shopping and then headed back for the bus home. It’s quite a climb into the bus because there’s no pavement where it pulls up but for some reason it was easier to climb in today.

Back here I put everything away and then made my coffee and cheese on toast. The Amazon fairy had been too and left me a package, the stuff that I’d ordered on line earlier in the week.

Apart from the silicon bowls that fit in the air fryer and the Christmas pudding steamer, highlight was my new waist bag. I’ve had various ones over the years and they are very handy when you go travelling, but the one that I’ve used for the last 12 years or so is falling to bits and one of the zips doesn’t work properly.

They had them on line that were bigger than that one, with more pockets and a holder for a bottle of water so I treated myself. And it really does seem to be the bee’s knees. It took a while to pack it because I wanted to make sure that it has everything that I need.

One of the most important items in my waist bag is a couple of sheets of … errr … tissue paper. I was caught out once in Romania 30 or so years ago and I won’t be caught like that again.

A little earlier I mentioned that it had been a turbulent night, and I wasn’t exaggerating. There was another long rambling dream that I seem to have lost. It concerns some things involving a lot of girls. They aren’t really what they seem to be, these things. There was one situation where we were on a train, a works train going back to the station after doing some work. On a train that was coming in behind us they loaded up some furniture. One woman said that she wanted it but I was hopeful of having it, a nice metal two-door cabinet. When we finally pulled in at the station we’d had to wait for a few minutes at a platform. Had I known, I would have nipped off there. When we pulled in, the train had caught up with us and they were wheeling the cabinet away. I woman in front of me was racing after it and of course I couldn’t go as quickly as I ought to do so I didn’t make it to have the cabinet. There was much more going on than this, including people, the kind of things that we’d bought. Someone came out with the name of an author – it might have been Richard Graves. I said that I knew his grand-daughter. She was a girl whom I knew and was hopeful of being friendly with her. They were asking if anyone wanted any torture equipment, but it was more like practical joke things, whoopie cushions etc rather than torture equipment. When I found out what it was I was rather disappointed. There was much more than this but it’s all melted away from this dream that went on for hours and was really exciting.

Did I dictate the dream about chasing after this furniture that was being brought into the station behind us on a works train, someone beating me and going ahead to the kiosk for it first? … “yes you did” – ed.. We’d then been out in town shopping. Everyone had his own chair that the restaurant or café kept. It had their name on it. Luckily the girl I’d brought with me was extremely new and only had an old T-shirt like that with a name on. It was called Carol or Caroline, just looking at this girl’s number, She told Caroline to go home and let the world know about your new hobby of collecting these T-shirts.

Did I mention that there was a story about some chairs of some description? … “yes you did” – ed. We had to sit on them in this café, some special luxury leather chairs. Someone would come over from one of the islands to the mainland, our friends, and treat us there instead of a workman (… at this point the dictaphone went quiet, except for my snoring …)

Something occurred that reminded me of something similar to the Lords of the Rings – 5 Lords of Darkness, a giant, an elf, a dwarf and a few others. They had cornered whoever was the hero and his friends on an island. The evil people decided that they wanted to capture them so they chose 3 of their number to assault the island. They were met by a rain of arrows from one of the party who was on the island. In the end 2 of these 3 people looked like pin cushions but the arrows weren’t particularly hurting them. In the end they charged the island. The biggest one of the 3, he was struck by a pike that one of the defenders was holding which ripped off his head from its socket. A second one was killed with a sword and the third was taken prisoner, the one who was mostly affected by arrows. The other 2 and their supporters were then disillusioned and disheartened and weren’t really sure what they could do now to resolve the situation.

Something else to do with this dream concerned the recital of a poem. I can’t remember how the poem went. It was something like “it’s not the eyes that provide the allure of …” (whatever it was). Once again it was something that evaporated immediately

At another moment I’d committed a robbery and stolen millions of Pounds. I had it hidden under the floor in the basement in the house where I was living in London, a 3-storey terraced house with the living room on the first floor, the bedroom on the second and a kind-of cellar/laundry room etc on the ground floor. The Police obviously suspected me. They were around searching my house. I was convinced that eventually they’d find it but I’d give them a run for their money in looking for it. I’d been outside somewhere and was on my way home. Word must have gone round Gangland – I’d noticed several people whom I’d not seen before loitering around. As I went to try to put the key in the door a couple of these people approached me quite quickly but discreetly. I turned to them and said “oh no you don’t!”. That slowed their tracks and I closed the door behind me. What I then did was with these people now loitering outside my door I told the police in my basement that there was some kind of street issue going on outside. A couple of policemen went out, took these people by surprise, harangued them and made them go away. I thought that it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. When they came back in we had a really good laugh about it. I told them that that’s really the first time that I’ve ever felt uncomfortable living in this particular house

Meanwhile 4 medieval soldiers had been trapped inside a gatehouse to a walled city for several days. With nothing else to do in a desperate situation they quite simply roared out of their building and charged the attackers and actually managed to drive them away which took everyone by surprise.

Finally, there was a group of us living in a house. We had to leave it quite quickly so I began to pack my basic essentials and there was still some stuff left over. I had a pile of small cardboard boxes. I told one of the guys living with us that he was far better placed than me that he could have the boxes and someone would have to take my stuff with him while I went to fetch Caliburn and come back to pick it up. At first he was being extremely difficult about it and I couldn’t understand why. In the end he asked “could I see these boxes?”. I showed him and his eyes lit up. He said “that’s no problem at all”. I explained to him that certain stuff was for throwing away, certain stuff was stuff that he could keep and the rest was mine. He should take everything away and I’d be round for my stuff again when I’ve managed to pick up Caliburn

Having done that, I transcribed another day’s worth of arrears and then finished off the notes for the radio programme.

In between everything I baked a small loaf of bread. I’m not going shopping tomorrow so I need something for my cheese on toast and for sandwiches on Monday. And then I made tea. Some kind of burger – I don’t know what it was – and a salad and baked potato seeing as I had the oven on to bake my bread.

Tomorrow will be a quiet day without very much excitement. It’ll do me good to have a quiet weekend ready to Fight the Good Fight on Monday morning. I’ll be ready for Paris, but will Paris be ready for me?

0

Thursday 21st September 2023 – DESPITE HAVING …

… spent most of the day dashing around doing things, it doesn’t seem as if I’ve accomplished all that much.

It’s quite true that for a while round about the early afternoon I was … errr … resting, but it wasn’t as if it was for hours on end.

This morning when the alarm went off I was flat out deep in the arms of Morpheus and it was a desperate stagger into the bathroom before the second alarm went off.

The letter from the hospital about my admission told me that I have to abstain from several medicaments. I couldn’t work out which ones they are so I’ve basically cut down to the bare minimum and hope that that’s the correct thing to do

Tomorrow I’m planning to go into town on the bus. There are some letters that need posting so I’ve had to collect up everything. It also involves a trip to the bank so that’s going to be interesting for sure.

There’s also a trip to the chemist’s as I’ve run out of Aranesp. That’s only available by special order so I had to telephone them to make sure that they have it in stock for tomorrow.

Something else that I’ll need to do is to have something of a more important shopping session in town. I’ve made an executive decision – which, for the benefit of new readers is a decision that you make that if it goes wrong you are executed – that I’m not going to the supermarket on Saturday. If I’m off to Paris on Monday I won’t need any shopping for the week.

So having written a pile of letters and made some plans I had a listen to the diictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was round at some girl’s house. She was extremely unhappy to see me, as if it was obvious that I shouldn’t be there. But with her having no parents there at that time I came in and stayed. Because she was so unhappy I kept to a small room upstairs. First of all there was a delivery of food with which someone in the house dealt. About 20 minutes later there was a knock at the door. I heard a voice from outside asking “is your dad in?”. Someone came up to shout for me. I went downstairs and saw that it was a man delivering two packets of soya milk and two packets of banana-flavoured soya milk in a couple of fancy little containers. I thanked him and said to the girl “don’t let such and such a girl see this. If she sees the banana-flavoured milk it’ll be gone within seconds”. It didn’t bring a smile out of her. All of this going on was extremely uncomfortable.

And a little later downstairs I went because someone else had come to the door. They’d brought some kind of special vegan food for me, followed a few minutes later by someone who had brought some vegan fruit but they’d disguised this as potatoes or something like that so I was making some kind of strange comments about these potato-looking vegetables. This girl who was there who seemed to be something to do with the owners of the house was extremely uneasy while I was there. I could certainly feel that atmosphere a great deal

There was another lengthy, really involved dream as well but I had a bad attack of cramp in the middle of it and it completely evaporated. I can’t remember a thing.

Later on I was going on an expedition to the Amazon. There was a group of us living in some kind of temporary accommodation near Edinburgh sorting out everything we would need and everything we were going to take. Once again, the thing that was worrying me was that there was no provision for any vegan food as far as I could see. That can’t have been right. We were all sitting around. Outside someone had put some tree trunks that they’d set alight that were a really bright light as they burnt. I asked for my shoes and socks back that someone else was wearing. he took his feet from his sleeping bag and gave them to me, and put on his own barefoot-type of shoe. We set off and I thought that we were going to the railway station across the road. Instead we walked for a while and boarded a train going somewhere else. I couldn’t understand why. They gave me a long complicated explanation about this. We alighted at a station and had to climb these stairs in this wrought-iron place like a Paris Metro. On the platform above we had to look for our tram to take us to wherever we needed to go. We couldn’t go to the platform until our tram was called. We waited there, then a TGV suddenly pulled in there. I asked if this was a tram but no-one seemed to be interested in replying. We wanted something like Tram 73 but this was Tram 9 so we had to wait for it to load up and clear off. It was really most extraordinary thing to see, a kind-of tram stop in a railway station.

Finally, we were in the foyer of a cinema or something waiting for something to happen. They were playing a piece of music that I recognised, a piece by Van Der Graaf Generator (as I thought in the dream) … “actually Alquin” – ed … I was humming a bass line along to it because there was no bass line. The girl with me looked at me and asked me what I was doing. I explained and she replied “yes, I was wondering what this would be like with a bass line added to it”. She said that the guy with us who wasn’t there at that particular moment knew Peter Hammill. She’d have him talk to Peter Hammill about playing it with a bassist. I replied that Peter Hammill wasn’t a big fan of bass guitar and quite often played without one. I didn’t think that he’d take very much notice. We were having this really intense discussion when the alarm went off.

Interestingly, I met Peter Hammill a few times when I lived in Manchester in the mid-70s and we had a good chat one night in Brussels when he was appearing in a café there one night not long after I moved there. And he didn’t like bassists all that much either. When Nic Potter, one of my heroes, left Van der Graaf, Hammill didn’t bother replacing him and had Hugh Banton play the bass parts on the foot-pedals of his organ.

While I was at it I waded through another pile of arrears on the dictaphone. Only 2 days to go and then I’ll have finished the stuff from Leuven last week. And then I have the stuff from the hospital last year to deal with. Despite all the time that I spent lying in bed during that couple of months, I couldn’t summon up the energy or enthusiasm to deal with them.

As for the rest of the day I’ve been going through the music again and I’ve sorted out another pile of stuff. Having had to load up this machine’s new hard drive from scratch I seem to have incorporated a great many duplicates into the mix and some of the stuff is in the wrong section of the hard drive.

That left some time to write out some more notes for the radio programme. They should be finished by tomorrow and then I can think about dictating them. Things are dropping slightly behind but when I come back from Paris and have finished with all of this health stuff I can concentrate better.

Tea tonight was fried rice and veg with some of those Chinese vegetable things. Fried in vegan margarine with piles of soy sauce it really was delicious.

So tomorrow I’ll be out and about, which means that I’ll be crashed out at some point somewhere. But once I come back from the shops I can pack my bags ready for Monday morning. That 04:30 start is going to kill me.

0

Wednesday 20th September 2023 – APPARENTLY THINGS ARE …

… hotting up around here.

My cleaner actually works for an association called APA – the Allocation Personnalisée d’autonomie, an association of which the aim is to help people in difficulty maintain their autonomy.

She’s recommended that I contact them with the details of my difficulties and see whether or not they may have something on offer that might be of help to me.

Consequently I’ve had an extremely busy day today doing all kinds of things.

For a change I had a nice deep sleep and awoke about 15 minutes before the alarm was due to go off. I was actually planning a dramatic raising from the dead but instead I fell asleep again and the alarm had to awaken me.

After the mails and medication I began to sort out the paperwork.

You have no idea the hoops through which I have to jump in order to go to this perishing hospital. As well as being admitted, I’ve been notified of several tests and I have to ring up to confirm each one.

And then there’s a form that I need to fill in in order to be admitted, with details of my health insurance, medication, all kinds of stuff like that.

Interestingly, one thing of which you don’t have to notify them is your dietary requirements. You are served a standard meal on the day of your arrival. That’s not much use to me, and probably many other people too, so I would have expected it to have been a priority.

Anyway, that took up a whole age of my time.

But there is some good news, and it just goes to underline why I like living here so much – and that’s the solidarity amongst the inhabitants that you don’t find in many other countries these days.

The president of the Residents’ Committee who helped me with the purchase of the apartment downstairs is in Paris next week. She wants to come to the station in Paris on Monday morning and help me on my way to the hospital.

That’s something that I found to be really sweet. It’s not really necessary because I will have the railway company’s personnel helping me, but I’m not going to discourage the best intentions and willingness of someone who is so keen to help

This afternoon I made a big batch of hummus. It’s been ages since I last made some, and this time I regrettably put too much salt in in. That’s not like me because I rarely use salt. But there’s plenty of garlic gone into it and I won’t have too much trouble with passing vampires once I start to eat it.

While the cleaner was here I made a start on writing the notes for the next radio programme, then after she left I had a listen to the dictaphone. We were going somewhere on a works outing from Crewe. We all piled into a coach and set out. We were supposed to be going to Stoke on Trent but we ended up round the Warmingham Road area. We went past the bit where they had straightened out the road. That would have been possible to go to Stoke on Trent that way. I thought that the road was too narrow so we carried on with the intention of going to the roundabout by the railway station and going down there. The guy in charge of the party came over and told me that we can’t go that way. There are all kinds of roadworks. I then suggested that we go to near Kidsgrove and drive down the A34 and took the A500 that way which he agreed. Then something happened and we ended up with not enough places on the bus or something. There was a motor bike there so I went on it and took someone as a passenger. I ended up being tangled up in a group of other motorcyclists. One one particular bend a woman fell off her motor bike. We carried on riding. We eventually ended up at our destination. Then I had a bad attack of cramp and awoke.

I was somewhere in the Philippines last night. There was a young boy doing some kind of DiY project to make some kind of really basic kitchen, basically no more than the size of a large tray. I could see immediately that there were several ways in which he could make things go better. We ended up having a talk about everything. I ended up giving him some help. He was pointing out a few things that I was doing that weren’t correct from his point of view. I was pointing out a few things that weren’t correct from mine. We were talking about all kinds of different things as we were assembling this kitchen arrangement that he was making out of scrap material

While I was at it I did another day’s worth of arrears from when I was at Alison’s just now. Just a couple more days of those to do and then I can attack the ones from when I was in hospital last year. I wish that I could organise myself better these days.

There were other things that I was hoping to do but instead I crashed out on the chair here in the office. Miles away I was too and I don’t understand that because it wasn’t as if I’d had a bad night. I’d been doing quite well just recently too.

Tea tonight was a chili sin carné, the leftovers in the fridge lengthened with a tin of kidney beans. It was actually quite nice too. The freezer is slowly emptying nowand if I’m not careful I might even be able to put the bag of carrots in there – the ones that are currently languishing in the fridge’s icebox.

With a bit of time left I went through another batch of music on the computer to weed out the duplicates, the live albums and to edit the metadata, now I know how to batch-edit it.

But now that I’ve finished the notes I’m off to bed. I’ve put all the clothes away that were loitering around here and it’s looking just a little more tidy. There’s still a lot to do but I’ll worry about that another time. I’ve done enough for one day.

0

Tuesday 19th September 2023 – A DECISION HAS …

…been made about my state of health. And considering that I only sent in the documentation on 24th July and was told that there’s a 4-month waiting list, that was extremely rapid, to say the least.

But to cut a long story short … “thank heavens” – ed … it has been decided that I have a Class II disability, which means that I am classed as between 50% and 80% disabled, with issues that impact my daily and social life.

As a result, I’m classed as a priority case, and shall (when they have been printed) receive a card to that effect and a disabled person’s parking permit.

Not that the parking permit will do me much good because if my mobility deteriorates any more, I shan’t be driving any more – and I won’t even be going out at all.

So all of this will give me something to think about when I’m in bed tonight.

There wasn’t much time to spend thinking last night because I was extremely late going to bed. I just couldn’t summon up the energy to retire.

As well as that, I was actually awake before the alarm went off and when it finally did start to ring I was sitting on the edge of the bed with some of my clothes already on.

After the medication I checked my mails and messages, dealt with a few bits of correspondence and then revised for my Welsh lesson. That passed off quite well today, much to my surprise.

When the lesson finished I had some fruit and then buckled down to work. I’ve booked my train for Paris on Monday, booked some assistance at the Gare Montparnasse (which I can now do, seeing as I have a certificate of entitlement while I await my card) and then booked a taxi to take me to the station –

As it happens, I’m not looking forward to the trip to Paris. My train is at 05:55 so the taxi is coming for me at 05:15 which means that I need to be up and about at … errr … 04:30. That is just crazy but it can’t be helped. I have to be at the hospital at 11:00 and unless I want to stay the night, there is just no other solution.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too, despite the short night that I’d had. 2 small boys went to the hospital in Athens – their parents had sent them there because maybe they were British and it was the English School there. Something had happened to one of the parents of one of these children and the children had to come back by bus which was a bit of an alarming trip for someone who had never done it before, especially in those kinds of circumstances.

There was something else about someone being involved in a kind-of internet game. There was a trap set in it that harvested everyone’s details off their computer, where they were etc, but I can’t remember very much about this at all

While I was at it, I transcribed a couple of days’ worth of notes from when I was at Alison’s. There’s still plenty to go at there but I’ll keep on plugging away at it ready for the next lot.

Tea tonight was a taco roll – quite delicious too with the stuffing. And I found something interesting today – which I should have known because I’ve used this technique before.

While the stuffing was still warm I put it in the glass storage container and put it straight into the fridge. And so the container sealed up with a perfect vacuum which was quite impressive.

With a few minutes that was left later on I went through and sorted out some more music, labelling stuff and disposing of duplicates. I’m slowly fighting my way through it all and one day I might actually be finished some day.

But now I’m off to bed. I’m going to be working on the radio stuff tomorrow and prepare a couple of programmes ready for the future. High time I got myself into gear and actually accomplished something. No-one else will do it if I won’t.

0

Monday 18th September 2023 – WALKING UPSTAIRS …

… to visit my neighbour this afternoon was rather a depressing climb. I’m noticing now that I’m losing the power in my left leg and that was all too evident.

As it was, I tried a few exercises in bed before I arose from the dead this morning and I couldn’t raise my left leg as much as I used to be able to do.

This morning I awoke several times during the ni ght and I was even planning a dramatic early rising but I dozed off again and had to rely upon the alarm clock to do the business.

After the medication and checking the messages I went for a shower. At least that kind of effort hadn’t deteriorated all that much but I don’t think that it will be long before that will become a major effort. I can remember just how bad things were when I came home from hospital.

This was the first decent shower that I had had since before I went away and you’ve no idea how much I enjoyed it.

The nurse came to inject me and then after he’d gone I sent an order off for some things that I need to buy. Jackie had found a steaming pot to make Christmas puddings and she had sent me a link, I need a couple of new USB cables and there was also a special offer on accessories for air fryers, such as a non-stick liner.

There was time too to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night too. I was back in Shavington. For some reason I had the occupants of 217 Crewe Road locked in their garage. I was just going by every couple of days to push some food in. I think that they were either crazy or something, I don’t really know. I was being really cruel to them and no-one was taking any notice or anything. Things were going along quite ordinarily. I was chatting to a couple of girls, one of whom (who I think might have been my Greek friend) had a crush on me. I heard the other girl call for a taxi and ask it to take her to 217 Crewe Road. By this time the first girl had her arms around me so I couldn’t get up and go to try to stop her etc. Off she went so I expected any moment that my little scheme would all come crashing to the ground.

We also had another long rambling dream again. It started off with me having to open a Post Office bank account because of things I needed to do. I turned up at the Post Office at about 11:00 and had to wait for someone to come to see me to fill in the forms. It came to about 11:45 and I thought that we’d be thrown out here and I’d miss the opportunity – they’ll close for lunch. Eventually someone came to see me. We filled in all the forms and did the necessary details so I could go back to carry out the transaction that I wanted to do. A little later I was with a guy and his wife, his 2 daughters and a very young girl. We were hanging around together and decided that we’d go out for a meal. We all eventually piled into his car and he said that we’d go to the Westminster branch of a particular restaurant chain. We drove off and went down this extremely narrow street with cars parked on one side. There was one occasion when a Morris 1000 tried to reverse into a parking space and hit another car that was already parked. We drove down to the end of the street where they’d realigned the junction. The guy driving didn’t realise and took the old way and came to a dead end. He had to reverse and take the new way down to the junction. A little later we were on foot walking through this old industrial estate, chatting. At one point I ended up miles away from everyone else which brought a light-hearted comment from some of the other people so I rejoined them. I didn’t understand that because I was quite keen on the younger of these 2 girls. I couldn’t see why I wasn’t with her. They suddenly realised that the other girl was missing from the group. She was with the extremely young one. We waited for them to catch up. One thing going through my mind was that I’d seen a car for sale, a Mk II Cortina, a green Cortina GT. I was hoping that my money would come through so I could buy it. I didn’t understand why my money wasn’t already there. I thought that I’d have to wait for ever for this money to come through. By the time that it does this car will probably be sold and I’d have to start thinking again. There was all this issue about what car would I then buy? Would it be good value etc? This was recurring through all this dream, this particular thought.

While I was at it, I transcribed another day’s worth or arrears and they will be on line in due course.

Before I went away, I had forgotten to do something with the fruit on the table so that was something of a mess so at lunchtime I had to tidy that up, throw away a pile of it (I hate throwing food away) and wash the rest thoroughly

And then I wandered off to see my neighbour. We were there chatting for quite a while and that’s not at all like me. And she gave me an anti-slip mat for my bath. That was really nice of her and it makes me feel much better about taking a shower. It was something quite high up on my list of things to buy at the weekend

While I was busy I’d had a washing machine going with all of the clothes from the last couple of weeks so I took them out once the cycle had finished and hung them up to dry.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper – one of the ones out of the freezer. And with cooking the frozen pepper on a lower heat for much longer, it was cooked to perfection. There’s plenty of stuffing left so if I can lengthen it with a sheep’s head that still contains the eyes, it will see me through the week.

So much later than usual, I’m off to bed. I have a Welsh lesson tomorrow so I’ll be busy. I have to register myself at the hospital and book my train ticket and a taxi to the station. I mustn’t forget to do that otherwise I’ll end up looking rather silly.

In fact, I can end up looking rather silly without making any mistakes or omissions, but there’s no need to go around asking for it.

0

Sunday 17th September 2023 – MY NICE LONG …

… lie-in came to a grinding halt at 08:44 this morning exactly.

Surprisingly, it was simply because I awoke – no noise, no phone calls, no nothing. And that was after something of a turbulent night as well. So I’ve absolutely no idea about what happened this morning.

Regardless of the early start, I have had my usual Sunday daytime activity of emulating my namesake the mathematician and doing three fifths of five eights of … errr … nothing.

That’s not exactly true. I made a large batch of pizza dough and managed to make enough room in the freezer to squeeze in a couple of lumps of it. And then I’ve been going through the music on my computer sorting it out. This is another one of these long weary projects that will take for ever and probably won’t ever be finished.

There was a pile of stuff on the dictaphone from the night too. There was another one of these spy thriller film dreams that went on for absolutely ages about disappearing people. There was a parrot who always walked his treadmill extremely slowly as I remember. People wondered what the reason was for all of this. This was another one of these dreams that went on for hours and hours and I forgot almost all of it when I grabbed hold of the dictaphone.

And then I was in Canada last night talking to a couple of guys about my experiences on the road while I was there. I seem to remember. They seemed to be fairly impressed. I was talking about the time that I had to be suspended towed for some reason and the driver drove it so close to the front of my Explorer that it left a scratch all down the vehicle. He showed me a Mercedes that was up on blocks with just two blemishes on the front valance. He said that the same had happened here. His friend asked him about the Mercedes and he said that it was up for sale for $500. My ears immediately pricked up. He said that it had a German engine in it that won’t run. I said “that’s not a problem. We can soon deal with that”. I began to be really interested in the idea of this Canadian Mercedes diesel saloon

There had also been a children’s party somewhere. One of the girls attending had been killed. There were some people who really wanted the party to go ahead, which one woman there thought was extremely indecent with the girl still lying there dead on the floor. When people were talking about it all, one or two people just thought that she’d died and hadn’t realised that she’d been murdered. That changed their attitude somewhat but there was still a couple who wanted to carry on enjoying themselves.

I was in Birmingham later on. I had to tow something away so I had to change the towbar on Caliburn. I was busy fitting a new tow ball on the back. A man came past and told me that I needed planning permission to do that. I asked him what was his problem. He explained that he was from the local Council and in Birmingham you had to have planning permission to work on your house yourself. Of course I was totally amazed by this. This led to quite a lengthy discussion. She was asking me all sorts of questions about what I was doing etc. I kept on asking why. She kept on talking about planning permission. Although I was in a rush I was rather enjoying this because it wasn’t my house so there wasn’t anything he could really do about it. She began to talk about “do you make your own jams? Do you make your own bread?”. She was asking me in great detail about doing this. In the end she decided that she was going to leave this guy. Just before she left I asked her specifically “do you seriously intend to tell me that you need planning permission for working on your own house yourself?”. She replied “yes. We need to make sure that houses are properly tidy, well-maintained and repaired properly”. I replied “what you’re going to have in that case is exactly the opposite, isn’t it? Loads of these little old people with plenty of time on their hands to do jobs but won’t have the funds or the means to apply for planning permission to have the work done by a tradesman. What you’re actually doing is to defeat the whole purpose”.

As well as that I made a start on dealing with the backlog of dictaphone notes. That will take a good while too but the sooner you start, the sooner you finish.

Tonight’s pizza was thoroughly excellent as usual. The pizza base that I had made contributed quite a great deal to that. In fact, the dough shot up like a mushroom while it was proofing.

So now I’m off to bed. The nurse is coming around to inject me tomorrow, and I’m expecting to hear something from the hospital about the dosage at some point too. If not, I’ll have to order some more later in the week.

I’ve also been invited out for coffee in the afternoon, an I have to book my rail ticket for next Monday when I have to go to Paris again. This is all going to keep me out of mischief for a while.

0

Saturday 16th September 2023 – I UPLOADED …

… all of the soundfiles from the dictaphone onto the computer this afternoon. You wouldn’t believe how many there are either that accumulated while I was away. I must have had a few really lively, mobile nights.

It’s going to take an age to transcribe them and there are also quite a few from when I was in hospital from last Autumn that I have yet to transcribe. I suppose that that will make a nice task for me when I’m away in hospital.

Strangely enough, there was only one soundfile from last night. And even more surprisingly, you don’t really want to know about it either, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

But there’s only the one because I had another bad night. Despite all of my efforts during the day I wasn’t in the least bit tired. It was long after 01:00 when I went to bed and I wasn’t in the least bit tired.

It took an absolute age to go to sleep and I was actually awake again at 06:30. I’d changed the alarm to 08:00 following my late night but I was already up and about by then.

The drive to the shops was a horror. My left leg is now giving out and I had some trouble even making it to Caliburn with one crutch and my shopping trolley. And then I had a great deal of difficulty climbing into the cab.

Trying to work the brake was difficult too so it was quite a slow drive to the supermarket. Unless they can work miracles at the hospital and at this physiotherapy place, I can see that it won’t be long before I have to abandon the idea of driving.

For obvious reasons, I didn’t go to Noz. I didn’t feel as if I could manoeuvre around on the car park and then walk around the shop with just one crutch. Instead, I went straight to Leclerc.

Being early, I was lucky enough to find a reasonable parking place. Even so, it was a desperate stagger around the supermarket leaning on a shopping trolley.

There wasn’t anything special on offer today but one or two things in the clearance bin were interesting, like vegan margarine and a pack of hamburger buns.

Another slow drive back home and I couldn’t manage my shopping trolley. I had to leave a few things in Caliburn to pick up another time. And someone going past from the other entrance to the building helped me by carrying my shopping trolley upstairs for me, which was very nice.

Having put everything away I made my coffee and cheese on toast, and then came in here where I crashed out for almost two hours. I suppose that it was the tiredness of the last few days and the effects of going to the shops this morning.

At Leclerc I’d bought 2kg of carrots because they were on offer. I cleaned them, diced them and blanched them. Later on I put them in the freezer – at least, as much as I could because the freezer is full to capacity. One of the two bags of carrots has gone into the ice-box in the fridge until I can make some space.

Tea tonight was strange. I found that I’d forgotten to buy a lettuce so in the end I made a potato salad. That would have been nice had I remembered to buy the salad dressing. Instead I had to make a vinaigrette dressing with olive oil, wine vinegar and herbs.

Now that everything is done, I’m off to bed. I’ve no intention of leaving my bed early tomorrow. I have a lot of sleep that I need to catch up and so I hope that I’ll have a comfortable, relaxing night back in my own bed.

After what has gone on over the last couple of days, I reckon that I’ve earned it.

0

Friday 15th September 2023 – AS BARRY HAY …

… once famously said, "there’s just one thing – IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK HOME".

And you’ve no idea the size of the sigh of relief that escaped from my lips when I collapsed into my chair here in my office.

Hardly surprising since I’ve been on the road since 05:20 this morning. That was when my alarm went off and I was already packed and dressed. It didn’t take too long to load up the car and then hit the road.

Alison dropped me off at the Kortenberg railway station and it took me a while to work out how to reach the platform. It’s not like a conventional station and things take some hunting down.

nevertheless I was soon on the platform and in time for the 06:28 to Brussels. And it was just as well that I chose that train because these are low-line commuter units where the floor is level with the platform, not like the urban express double-deckers where there’s a climb up into the carriage that I can no longer accomplish.

The rain pulled in bang on time so I had about 75 minutes to wait.

However, what I’d learnt so far today was that the 65 minutes to traverse Paris isn’t going to be enough. I need to think of another plan.

At the booking office they wouldn’t let me change my ticket, but up on the platform, speaking to the train manager I had better luck and she let me hop aboard one of the casual seats at the back of the bar, which I thought was very nice of her.

And it was just as well too because with the renovations taking place at the Gare du Nord they have moved the taxi rank from just outside the door and now it’s a real marathon trek to the rank. I really was finished long before I reached it.

As luck would have it, the taxi marshal waved me to the front of the queue and I had a really nice and chatty lady driver who drove me to Montparnasse.

There was 33 minutes to wait for the departure of my train so it was just as well that I’d caught the earlier train. I was able to grab a cup of coffee which was also just as well – that’s all that I had to eat or drink on the journey because I’d forgotten my bottle of ginger beer in Alison’s fridge.

The train was packed and we were crammed in like sardines. I managed a brief five minutes of … errr … relaxing, but that was all.

It was on time pulling into the station and I was lucky in that I only had to wait two minutes for the bus to the town centre. And from there I had a horrible, miserable walk to the bus stop at the port for my bus up here.

There’s no kerb there and the buses don’t kneel down very much so climbing in was a real effort. And then climbing up the stairs to here, I just couldn’t do it. In the end I had to take off my backpack and drag it on the floor behind me. I am not ever going to do this journey again.

Back here when I finally arrived I made myself an ice-cold drink and came in here where I crashed out on the chair and that was really that.

Tea tonight was sausage chips and beans (I’ll end up looking like a sausage after this week) and then we had football on the internet – Colwyn Bay v Aberystwyth.

The match was a real bottom-of-the-table shocker that Colwyn Bay won 3-1, and I have to be honest and say that they won’t ever have a victory as easy as that again. After only 40 minutes the commentator said “Mae Aberystwyth yn siomedig” – Aberystwyth are disappointing – and that was aun understatement.

One bright spark for Aberystwyth was that at half-time they brought on a left-back called Akeem Hinds. I hadn’t seen him before. He certainly livened up the team with some good interceptions and some beautiful crosses into the penalty area.

What with Colwyn Bay’s Nigerian forward Udoyen Akpan who has come to the club from Cyprus, here are two players on whom I shall be keeping a very close eye.

Mind you, I said the same about Okera Simmonds who played for Y Fflint last season, and he disappeared without trace. I must be the Kiss of Death.

Surprisingly, despite the short night there were tons of stuff on the dictaphone. I don’t know what was happening here but I was pulling nails and plastic skewers out of my foot. I took one out and it didn’t ‘arf hurt. I just wondered whether that was symbolic of the pains that I’m having in my feet or something at the moment.

The next thing was that the alarm went off so I trued to turn off the dictaphone and tried to turn off a couple of other things. I suddenly realised that it was the phone. I fell out of bed and crawled across the floor to turn off the phone. For some reason my brother wouldn’t leave the bed so the girl with me was wondering what on earth was the matter with him. Suddenly I looked at my watch and saw that it was 01:27. I’d awoken and actually dreamed of the alarm going off.

I was with my mother and brother. We pulled into Paris. We left the train and walked outside the station ready to walk across Paris to the next railway station. There were kids on bikes and scooters having fun in one of the squares. My mother said something like “we need to be careful around here because of all these kids” but they looked fairly harmless to me. For some eason we became separated. My mother and brother went off down one street and I went off down the other. I was sure that I was correct. This road took me to the top of a hill where I could see right over Paris. It looked miles away but the way my mother was going was even further away. I shouted for my mother but couldn’t hear anything so I carried on walking by myself in a field. I shouted again and this time she answered. The fence was quite high and I couldn’t climb it so I had to walk back to where the fence was low and then climb up a bank to go over the top. As I climbed up the bank the top kept falling down and I kept sliding down to the bottom again. This happened several times. In the end there was a vehicle, some kind of army lorry buried in the bank. Suddenly it gave a lurch and rolled over, throwing me onto the floor near where my mother and brother were . They said “quickly, grab that guy …” and mentioned someone’s name “… and he’ll take us”. But I couldn’t see who it was that she meant because I couldn’t see anyone around

I was with my friends from the weekend. We’d just left the train and gone walking. We came across a big bush that was on fire. We tried to stop the fire by stamping it but it burnt me. The fire gradually burnt itself out. All the climbing ivy over this object died so we scraped away some of the ivy and that was a job and a half of its own. We found a woman sitting there. Apparently she was with some kind of Social Services and had come to check up on us to make sure that we were all OK and not up to mischief. Of course we caught her like this.

When we finally did leave the house we ended up at the end of the drive and across the road into the chemist’s, nearly being knocked down by a big old Humber that stopped to let us through. I handed a form to the chemist and said “four dailies”. He said “this isn’t the correct form. Where’s the rest of it? It should be twice this size”. He showed me a full example of a form. The last thing I wanted was an argument so I took the form back and said “just give us four dailies”. She rattled off four dailies. One of my friends went to pay but it was £30 and something. That horrified him but I thought that this job of getting to the station to catch his train was just so complicated that we weren’t ever going to manage this at all at this rate. All we want is four tickets and it was turning into a right pantomime

I was in a butcher’s buying food for tea for about a dozen meals that I needed. He sat down with some huge piles of meat and began to give me things like brains of DH Lawrence etc. I wondered what on earth was going on because I was a vegan and he was giving me all these cuts of meat to eat for my tea

Anyway, I’m off to bed. Shopping tomorrow and I don’t feel at all like it. As I said, I’m not going to be doing this journey again. I just can’t.

0

Friday 8th September 2023 – THAT WAS A …

… horrible journey and I don’t ever want to do it again.

As usual, when I’m going away, I had a bad night’s sleep and spend much of the hours of darkness tossing and turning.

Nevertheless I was up and about (in principle) before the alarm went off

First thing that I did was to grab a shower and then I did a few last-minute things before going out for the bus.

The bus was there but the driver wasn’t so I had to wait a few minutes before he turned up. And then we set off with a bunch of kids who were staying at the youth hostel in the town and who had been for a morning run.

The bus threw me out at the port and I had a 200-metre walk to the bus stop around the corner where the next bus would pick me up. And it was this 200 metres so early in the journey that convinced me that my travelling days are over.

There was a 20-minute wait for the bus during which time firstly my cleaner went past and rearranged my backpack on my shoulders, and then one of the girls from the radio came past and said hello.

The bus didn’t drop me off at the station but across the road so it was a long walk. And with my carriage being right down at the far end it was something of a scramble to be seated before the train pulled out

Updating all of those files took an age, not helped by the fact that I had a little … errr …relax at some point, and we were late pulling into Montparnasse too.

What with one thing and another I’d decided long-since that I was going to throw caution to the wind and have a taxi across Paris, but the walk to the taxi rank was about as far as the walk to the underground, which is regrettable

The ride with a friendly taxi driver wasn’t as expensive as I thought, but my leg had collapsed again getting into his car so I wasn’t enjoying it one bit

To make matters worse I staggered into the Disabled Persons’ room and asked for assistance to board my train to Brussels but they told me to clear off because I hadn’t booked 24 hours in advance.

So four of the assistants there sat and watch me make my slow weary way all the way down the platform to my carriage right at the far end of the train.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone from the night. We were back at school – some kind of sports day with competitions etc. We were with our own House and had to stay with our own House all day. There were all kinds of things going on in the way of competition etc. The final one was a football match so we all had to go to our various common rooms afterwards to prepare. It was then that I realised that in all my things I didn’t have any shoes with me do it looked as if I would be playing in my socks. I didn’t really fancy playing too much because of that so when they began to talk about goalkeepers someone asked a girl “have you ever tried to be rather rough with a goalkeeper when you have the ball in the penalty area. I replied “you can always try it with me and see what happens” but no-one seemed to pick up on it so I didn’t bother all that much. I went up to the common room to prepare. One of the girls was closing the door so I had to insist and make some kind of rude comment before she’d open it again. There was a girl there from about 2 years younger than us whom I knew. Her boyfriend was in our year. The two of them were together and there was another girl in a green check dress – our colours were blue so I don’t know where she was from and what she was doing in there.

Back into this dream again, I eventually made it into the room when they let me in and sorted out into houses except these two girls and I don’t know what was happening with one of them. The other one was with her boyfriend, and we were joking about the football with my ingrowing toenail on my right foot and wasn’t going to be very happy for it especially as I didn’t have my shoes etc with me.

Back once more into the same dream and we were all back in our groups again, going back up Welsh Row towards the Grammar School dressed in our school uniform. Something happened and one of the boys pointed to another one in our class and called him names because he was more interested in eating a bar of chocolate than playing football. There were a few other things like that too.

This was another dream that took place in connection with a school. This time I was in a bath and the water was coming out with such a force that I was sure that it would break the porcelain fittings etc so I was prepared to be dumped into the middle of the bathroom. Somehow the contraption kept on running which surprised me greatly.

still on the theme of children, there was something going on about therapy for children who had been troubled. It was like a drawing and colouring class. What they had for adults was like a painting-by-numbers where you could go along and paint yourself a picture and hope to get rid of stress and tension by doing that.

This final part looks as if it might be something to do with the previous one. There was something about a clinic, people who have financial health problems. Part of the therapy there for children is drawing. For adults they had a few of these huge “painting by numbers” outfits with pictures even taller than the people themselves. The adults could spend as many hours as they wished simply painting the image.

At Brussels I didn’t have long to wait but climbing into the train was next-to impossible on these double-deckers with their steep stairs. Next time I go to Leuven I’ll have to wait around for one of the local stopping trains. These are all on the same level, and a level that is level with the platform so there’s no trying to climb in.

Leuven was roasting hot when I arrived and the walk along the platform to the lift finished me off.

And for some reason my phone wasn’t receiving messages so Alison and Jackie didn’t know that I’d arrived.

Eventually we met up and roared off to meet Hans at the Airport.

Alison knew a lovely Indian restaurant in Sterrebeek so we went there and had a delicious meal. Then we cam back here and sat outside in the heat until God Knows what time chatting.

My sofa is comfortable so I’m going to get in it and sleep for a week. I don’t ever want to do that journey again. Not on any terms.

0

Thursday 7th September 2023 – BY THE TIME …

… that you read this I probably won’t be here.

Well, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m not all here and I haven’t been all here for quite a while but tomorrow I shall be somewhere else.

What I have been doing today is preparing for my journey. And it’s taking some preparation too.

There is however some good news. You might think that the idea that my neighbour isn’t going to work tomorrow morning so can’t drop me off at the station on her way meant that I’d have to make other plans.

Before I phoned to book a taxi (yes, I really am that ill) I checked the bus times. The bus from outside here doesn’t for some reason that only the dispatcher will know, go into town or near the railway station. I have to change buses.

There are three places where it’s possible to do so and in the past, I’d miss a bus to the station by a couple of minutes. However I checked today and found that they seem to have adjusted the timetable, meaning that I have a 20-minute wait at the port for a connecting bus.

There’s only 15 minutes to leave the bus at the station and board the train before it departs, so I shall have to hurry as best as I can. But it seems to be the most logical way to go to the station.

If ever I had anything to say about it, I’d have a major re-route of the bus network. It defies all understanding that here in the walled city, where the population density is heaviest, the bus doesn’t go to the town centre, the railway station and the hospital, and stops a good few hundred metres away from the largest supermarket.

So be that as it may, I’ve been quite busy today.

last night was rather depressing because I went on several little voyages that completely evaporated out of my mind when I tried to dictate them. My brain is really turning to spaghetti right now.

When the alarm went off I was dead to the world and had something of a scramble to rise to my feet.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I had a chat with Alison and with Liz on the internet and we had a few things to say to each other. Rosemary also sent me an e-mail to say that the internet was down at her place. The Auvergne is definitely “The Land That Time Forgot”.

First thing that I needed to do is to book my train from Brussels to Leuven. I’m not going to have much time in Brussels to buy a ticket when I arrive and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m not as mobile as I used to be.

Once I’d done that, I had to track down all of my paperwork and print it off, and then organise my medical folder. I don’t need the stuff that I took with me to Paris last week.

But it really is a sign of the times that even one unnecessary piece of paper in the backpack makes such a difference in my mobility.

There was the backpack to pack too. And we had a slight catastrophe because I can’t find my box of medical stuff that I take with me. I’ve no idea where that might be. I’ve put it somewhere but I can’t think where.

That’ll teach me a lesson. I’m the world’s worst at organising myself so I have to have a place for everything and everything has to be in its place. And if it isn’t, than I am totally lost.

So now that my bag is packed as much as possible, complete with food to sustain me on my journey, I backed up the computer onto the USB key that I take with me when I travel.

And not having backed up the portable computer since my last trip to Leuven, which was in May, there will be tons of stuff to amend and append when I’m on the train tomorrow morning. A mere 2,338 files, to be precise.

There was even time to finish off sorting out the music for another programme. But I’ve not written any notes for it as yet as I’m going to have several days when I won’t have anything to do so I can catch up with it then.

A little earlier I talked about my nocturnal voyages. We were doing a remake of EL DORADO last night. I was accompanying John Wayne on his travels on his horse. Our version was much better than John Huston’s … "actually Howard Hawks’s" – ed. We did so much more in the film and went into it in much greater depth. It was another one of these that went on for absolutely hours but I ran out of steam while I was in the apartment of the girl who was trying to give him false information. It was nothing like the cabin in which the girl was living – it was an office block in a huge complex and an apartment above the Bank that was there, all modern glass and chrome etc. The person who gave John Wayne his information at the sheriff’s office, which was a huge place with lots of small offices was actually one of his ex-wives. She struck me as being quite a nice woman. But I ran out of steam while we were confronting the woman about the disappearance of the gang that we were trying to hunt down.

There was another long rambling dream, however as I mentioned earlier, I’ve forgotten almost all of it. The interesting thing about it was that we encountered the wife of a friend of mine. Her birthday was 5th September. I had another friend who was also a nurse. Her birthday was also 5th September. I thought that that was the most amazing coincidence.

Later on, there was another dream that I’d forgotten, one in which we encountered the body of a friend of ours in the Stores in a castle. She’d obviously been very unhappy and she’d committed suicide but I can’t remember any more of this.

However a little later I had something of a recollection of a few things relating to that last dream. There was something to do with hire cars. Whole fleets of cars had been hired out by big reputable companies but some were so old – quite a few “G” registration cars there as in the mid-80s. They had been hired out for this event. I was interested to know whether they’d hire them out again but the person concerned with whom I was talking didn’t know. All my colleagues at work were making remarks about the vehicle that I’d hired and about me driving it which I thought was awful but never mind! There was also something involving a bowlful of the dirtiest water you could ever imagine but I don’t now where that fitted in.

Tea tonight was fried rice and vegetables with some of those Chinese whatsits that I bought a while ago. It was a really nice tea too and i’ll have some more of those when I can

Actually I ought to have a think about making them myself. They are basically tofu and vegetables wrapped in some of that brick pastry stuff. I suppose that I could make them like sausage rolls and slice them into smaller lengths.

And that reminds me – I need to think about making my sausage rolls at some point.

Before I finished, I diced the remaining carrots, blanched them and put them in the freezer. There weren’t many of them but it would be a shame to throw them out.

So I’m off to bed, ready for tomorrow. I shall be in a rush so I need to get a move on. And it will be a long, tiring day which won’t end for quite a while. At least I can sleep on the train, if I’m not too busy with those 2,338 files.

0