Category Archives: France

Tuesday 22nd August 2023 – TO MY COMPLETE …

… surprise, I’ve actually had a good day today. So much so that I even picked up a mistake that our tutor had made in a translation.

That’s not something that happens every day, but it certainly shows that I’m paying attention and something is sinking in somewhere.

It might possibly be due to the fact that last night was a little better than things have been just recently. I was in bed later than I would have liked to be, but I must have gone to sleep quite quickly.

Mind you, when the alarm went off I was flat out asleep and it was the toughest struggle that I’ve had just recently to raise myself from the dead before the second alarm went off.

There were a few things that I wanted to do this morning so I hurried to deal with them but it didn’t leave much time to revise anything. But it didn’t seem to matter all that much because just for once I seemed to remember the important bits.

Even more surprisingly, I actually understood some of the work that we were set to do and even came up with the correct answers, and that’s something that doesn’t happen every day either.

During the various pauses during the day I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. I had a thirst that you could photograph so I went to find a glass so that I could have something to drink. The glass slipped out of my hand and landed on the table and broke the stem off. With the cup part of it I thought that that would do for now so I went to find the mint syrup and water. I couldn’t see it at all at first but then I found it all on a tray in the bedroom. I must have been thirsty one night and taken it in because I needed to drink something during the day. Then I had the situation about how I’m going to fill the glass with syrup and then water when I can’t actually put it down because there’s no stem so one of my hands is going to be permanently occupied holding the glass.

Someone then came to see me with a problem in connection with someone whose garage door had jammed closed and wouldn’t open. There had been some building work in the immediate vicinity. It was suspected that this building work had undermined the wall of the garage and tilted it blocking the door. This guy wanted to know if I could do anything to help the old guy whose house it was. I began to ask him questions but it was the most frustrating discussion I’d ever had because he wouldn’t answer the questions that I was asking. He kept on coming out with a lot of superfluous information that didn’t relate to the question. I was totally bewildered in the end by the fact that he just seemed to be so unwilling to co-operate in this discussion so that we could sort out this particular problem. In the end I had to walk away because I was slowly starting to lose my temper. It was an extremely difficult interview with this guy about all of this that was happening. We were getting absolutely nowhere. After I’d walked away someone else came to me to ask me about drawing up some plans for an extension to their house for a laundry room. They sent their little daughter, a teenaged daughter to ask e about becoming involved. She seemed to have only the vaguest idea. I could see that this was another thing that was going to be so complicated because of the fact that the people concerned didn’t want to speak to me directly.

Some people whom I knew were planning on moving so were going to put their house up for sale. They called a surveyor in to inspect it. He found a lot of problems, water was leaking through the roof into the insulation which was all sodden. The more he looked, the more other faults he began to find with the house. I had a feeling that this move is going to be something of a disaster at this rate

Finally, we’re going back into the realms of the 18th Century. There was a guy being sought for debt, an itinerant type of person with a wife and family. They’d been in a tavern and he’d made sure that his wife and children had left. When a couple of soldiers who were in the tavern left, he waited for a moment and then slipped out in the crowd but the debt collector was waiting for him, seized hold of him and put him in his wagon where his wife and children already were. Before they set off for London and the prison he explained to the man that the crowd could become quite noisy when they see the prison carriage approaching so maybe they’d need some means to distract the children etc. The debtor was impressed with the behaviour of the guy who arrested him and commented on his politeness etc. The guy just shrugged his shoulders and they all set off. The woman was trying to explain to her children that none of it was their fault and circumstances conspired against them etc, thinking that it’s better that they know some story than to be actually told the truth.

After the lesson finished, I didn’t do all that much. I’d been flagging somewhat during the lesson and although I didn’t actually wander off into the arms of Morpheus, I wasn’t really up to doing anything special.

What I did for most of the time was to listen to the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend and then send it off ready for feeding into the stream. And it’s a good programme too this weekend

Tea tonight was, as usual, a taco roll filled with some of the leftover stuffing and with some rive and veg too. And it was quite delicious.

Those containers that I bought at the weekend do the job really well, much better than the ad-hoc plastic arrangement that I was using previously. And it shows you what kind of exciting life I’m living these days when I wax lyrical about a storage container.

So that’s that then. I’ll think about arranging some music for the next radio programme and then go to bed ready to Fight the Good Fight tomorrow morning. We have a new tutor so I need to set a good example. I’m not likely to do that if I fall asleep in the middle of the lesson.

Monday 21st August 2023 – IT MIGHT NOT …

… seem like it, but I’ve been very busy today. It’s taken even me by surprise.

It was another late night last night and once more, when the alarm went off it was a real struggle to leave the bed. And I really wish that I could have stayed in there longer, especially after what happened on Sunday.

It took a while, as usual, for me to bring myself round into the Land of the Living but I did speed things up by going for an early shower. I don’t want to frighten away the nurse.

She was a few minutes late coming round today, but once she gave me her injection and left, I could crack on with revising my Welsh for the lesson today.

The lesson today seemed to pass OK, although I didn’t really get to say very much. I was in a side room with two young girls who know each other from College and so they were chatting away 13 to the dozen about pubs and night clubs, so I left them to it.

But we learnt a lot today and to my surprise, some of it actually stuck. I’m not sure what happened there.

During one of the breaks I had a listen to the dictaphone notes from the night. We’d been for a walk, a group of us, in some countryside area with plenty of mountains. I’d taken a camera with me but because of the weight issues I’d only taken the one. This time I’d taken the NIKON D3000 and telephoto lens. It wasn’t long before I realised that I’d made a mistake trying to take a photo of the sunlight coming out of the valley halfway up the mountains. I wanted to take a photo of the windows inside a storage cupboard in a castle where the lens was just overwhelming the image. I felt really sad that I hadn’t brought my standard lens and the NIKON 1 J5, hadn’t brought absolutely anything with me to make my photos work. It was just going to be too bad. In the end I tried to take a couple of photos with just the camera on the telephone which I don’t like doing anyway. It really was a shock when I realised that I didn’t have the camera bag with me, all the spare lenses etc.

There was also a play being put on about a murder. I was interested in doing something with it so I’d spoken to the producers and was hoping to have an appointment but it never happened. I turned up one day but no-one ever spoke to me or invited me so I decided that well maybe it’s quite simply not going to happen. There had also been some physiotherapy arranged for me by a doctor at the hospital but one of my friends went to this doctor on his own and there was no mention of anything being arranged for me, which disappointed me too.

Later on I went to Ramsgate to find out more about this play. That turned out to be something of a wild goose chase too as nothing seemed to happen about it when I arrived either.

When the lesson was over I had my hot chocolate and then spent the rest of the afternoon finishing off the radio programme. That’s all up and running now and there’s just one more in the pipeline. I shall be making a start on the next one this week too.

Tea tonight was one of the stuffed peppers that I bought on Friday. And seeing that I’d forgotten to put the herbs into it to season it, it tasted quite nice.

But what was good news is that the glass containers that I bought on Saturday to store the leftovers in the fridge instead of some kind of ad-hoc plastic arrangement are exactly the right size. I’m quite pleased about that because I’m trying slowly to move away from plastic if I can and when the opportunity arises.

Anyway, I’m off to bed now. Later than intended but I’ll do the best that I can. See where I end up during the night and then wake up fighting fit ready for tomorrow. God help them.

Sunday 20th August 2023 – THESE DAYS THE DAY …

… is dawning round about 06:30 in the morning. Ask me how I know.

Sometimes I don’t understand what’s going on (not that that’s anything new, of course) but last night I sat and watched the clock go round and round and wasn’t at all tired enough to go to bed.

It was just after 06:30 when I finally hauled myself off, but that was more by force of habit than anything else because it took me an absolute age to drift off into the Land of Nod.

What made things even worse was that I was awake again by 11:30 and after having tried valiantly to go back to sleep, by about 12:30 I gave it up as a bad job and raised myself from the dead.

After having had something to eat, the night’s efforts caught up with me and that was that for a while unfortunately.

It took me quite a while to come to my senses, which is a surprise given how few senses I have these days, and then I made a slow (and I DO mean “slow”) start on the radio programme.

It’s taking a total age to finish it because I’m not in any kind of state do do any work right now after everything else that has (or hasn’t) happened.

There was time to listen to whatever there was on the dictaphone. In fact it was a real surprise that there was something on there from the very short period when I must have drifted away into Neverland during the morning while I was in bed. We were talking about football in the Welsh class discussing bits of vocabulary etc that are important to know. I explained how much the lessons have helped me understand a lot more about what’s happening. A couple of people listened to the soundtrack of the game, the commentary. They seemed to think that it was easy to follow. I explained that that was because they already know some Welsh and had learnt some Welsh. When I first started listening to it years ago I hardly understood anything at all. I think that we’ve made enormous strides with what we’ve done today

Meanwhile, in other news, my pizzas are getting better and better.

Last weekend I’d used the last of the pizza dough in the freezer so I had to make some more today. a couple of lumps went into the freezer and I assembled the pizza for tonight’s tea on the third one which I had already rolled out

The vegan cheese from LeClerc and the cherry tomatoes on top make all of the difference. This new cheese melts quite nicely and the cherry tomatoes give it a certain je ne sais quoi and I wish that I knew what it was because I would make use of it more often.

So if I can summon up the energy and enthusiasm I’ll carry on with the radio programme and then crawl into bed. And I can’t say that I’ll regret it either because I’m exhausted, as you might expect.

The last week of my Welsh course starts tomorrow and then the following week I have to think about going to that hospital in Paris.

It’s never-ending, isn’t it?

Saturday 19th August 2023 – WE’RE JUST TWO …

… matches into the season and we already have a contender for “Goal of the Season”.

A long ball out of defence upfield by Colwyn Bay, Barry’s keeper Mike Lewis races out of his penalty area to head the ball to safety and THE REST IS HISTORY.

And while we’re on the subject, I probably had the Sleep of the Season this afternoon, crashed out on the chair in the office for several hours.

It all went wrong, as we might expect, last night when I took an age to go off to sleep, and then awoke at about 03:00 for several hours before dropping off back to sleep again.

When the alarm went of, I was flat out asleep and had a real struggle to pull myself to my feet. I don’t think that I’d recovered my senses (such as they are) when it was time to head out to the shops.

At Noz I didn’t buy any food as such but they did have a few things for which I’d been searching off and on for ages and ages. I’m slowly trying to move away from plastic and today they had some resealable glass containers suitable for storing my leftovers in the fridge.

LeClerc didn’t come up with anything special although the apricots did look nice so I bought myself half a kilo as a little treat. Looking though my notes, I noticed that last year they were giving grapes away for next to nothing but this year they seem to be more expensive than usual.

The drive back home through the tourists in the town was horrendous this afternoon, and then once back here I put away the frozen and chilled stuff and then came in here with my coffee and cheese on toast. And that was all that I remember for several hours.

Surprisingly, I had a conversation in Italian this afternoon. Someone keeps on ringing my doorbell, I don’t know why, and this afternoon I caught them.

It’s an Italian family staying in one of the let apartments in the building. There are a couple of apartments that are let on a weekly basis through one of these internet hosting services and we have all sorts coming to rent them.

Anyway, they seem to be trying all of the doorbells to make someone answering them and they’ve rung mine a few times. So having caught them at it, I “had words” with them.

While I was out and about this morning I decided that I wanted a burger on a bap for tea tonight with my chips and salad. I bought a couple of the burgers that I like but I couldn’t find any loose buns.

Consequently, I decided that I’d make one. After all, that’s why I have the air fryer. So anyway I made the dough enough for two and put half of it in the freezer for the next time I feel the urge.

That gave me an opportunity to deal with the dictaphone notes. We were in the heyday of Welsh radio, the period between the 2 World Wars. We had a family called the Hughes family. The radio programme described their adventures from their sons coming home at the end of World War I all the way up to the outbreak of World War II, all the way through the Depression etc. It was very interesting because of the social changes and the Great Depression, and the fact that many of the jobs went abroad in the 1930s and there was some kind of scheme to repatriate the jobs. Mr Hughes was really hopeful that he’d be one of the lucky beneficiaries of this but I didn’t reach the end before it finished.

Later we were on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR on our first trip. One of the things we had to do was to make a video. We were divided into groups and each had to make a video. I devised a plan whereby I’d ambush one of the trips that was going out in a lorry and change clothes with everyone who was on board. We managed to stop the lorry. Of course they were all women on it and we were mostly men so we swapped, put on their clothes, tied them up and left them at the side of the road. We’d arranged for them to be rescued and driven back to the ship. When there was a meeting, they were all there in their undies. We all came out of our cabins dressed in what they’d been wearing on the outside on their way out earlier in the evening.

Then we were with my usual Welsh tutor. She was teaching us how to turn our … errr … wind-breaking into weapons by the kind of food that we ate, things like dried peas etc were really good. There were certain foods that you had to avoid. She gave us a list and even helped us prepare a recipe and cook it ready to eat. This was interesting because the meeting took place in Canterbury. To reach there I had to walk through the town, walk through a church building, something like a monastery, climb these steps that were inside then go out of one of the doors onto a garden that was probably on the second floor then climb through the fence. Then I’d end up on a plateau-type of place with a lovely field etc. That’s where we were all meeting for our lesson

Finally, I was back living in Gainsborough Road. There were several other people living with me. Some girl had wanted to take over my house. of course I refused. I had no intention of leaving it. She turned quite violent so we had to barricade ourselves in. She turned up at about 04:00 banging on the windows. One of the people living there opened the window and began to talk to her. She said something like “How would you feel about swapping your house for a tent somewhere?” and they began to have a discussion. I felt that this was ridiculous. if this had been left to me I’d have been after her with a length of scaffolding pipe. I decided that I’d telephone the police but for some reason the telephone dial phone wasn’t working properly so it took much longer than it ought to have done. I had no intention whatever of giving up my house, certainly under any kind of threat like that. Barricading myself in my own property was totally ridiculous.

And then I settled down to the football. After their mauling at the hands of Caernarfon last week, Colwyn Bay made several changes for their second match of the season, against Y Barry.

They had been promoted from the Southern part of the second tier last season so it was going to be an interesting game. I was quite looking forward to it.

The first half of the game followed pretty much the pattern of the first half last week, with Colwyn Bay going on an all-out attack from the kick-off but gradually fading out and going behind to a goal after half an hour.

However, they didn’t fold up like they did last week. Steve Evans changed their shape around a little and they dug in, and Thomas Creamer wrote himself into Colwyn Bay immortality after an hour or so.

Barry were the better team, it has to be said, but the Bay rode their luck and clung on, and after all, that’s what counts. It’ll be a long hard season for the Bay but they should be encouraged by the result this evening.

Tea tonight was my burger on a bap. The bread was rather heavy, as most of my bread is, so it seems, but it was all nice and tasty and I enjoyed every mouthful of it.

So I’ll record the radio notes tonight and then go to bed. I’m hoping for a good lie-in but if those Italians keep on ringing my bell there will be yet more words said. I can’t be doing with all of this.

Friday 18th August 2023 – WHAT SURPRISES ME …

… is that I managed to keep on going for as long as I did today after all of my exertions.

As I predicted (well, it really wasn’t much of a prediction) I lay awake for hours after going to bed last night and just couldn’t settle down. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s no point going to bed early if I’m not able to go to sleep.

But sleep I must have done at some point during the night because when the alarm went off I was flat out miles away, deep in the Arms of Morpheus.

Leaving the bed before the second alarm was something of a struggle but I managed it all the same, and then had something of slow drag around into consciousness.

Despite everything else I managed to fall into the shower and have a good scrub up, and then I hit the town.

The bus was already at the bus stop so I staggered aboard, and then staggered out at the bus stop by the port.

First stop was at the doctor’s to pick up my prescription. I’m running out of medication so I need to stock up.

next stop was at the Carrefour around the corner where I bought a few supplies to keep me going, like peppers, mushrooms, potatoes and the like.

The reason why I buy my peppers here is that they sell two for €0:99 – teacup sized ones that are ideal for making stuffed peppers. The ones that you buy elsewhere are often quite enormous and overwhelm whatever it is that I’m cooking.

Final port of call was at the chemist for my Aranesp and to have the prescription dispensed.

By the time that I’d bought everything that I needed, my backpack was quite heavy and it was a struggle to come back up the hill. It took me an absolute age and I was exhausted. I had to make dozens of pauses

Back here I cleaned out one of the peppers and put it in the freezer and then armed with my coffee and cheese and toast I came in here, rather later then intended, for my Welsh lesson.

During the pause at lunchtime, I wrote up the dictaphone notes. I was waiting at Goodall’s Corner in Shavington for a bus to go to Nantwich for a hospital appointment. It seemed as if I’d been there for hours but no bus came. I’d seen buses coming in the other direction from Nantwich but none going that way. Eventually someone told me that there wzs a change on the route. He offered to take me to his house in Stock Lane because the buses were going past there at the moment. He took me down there. I went into his house. There were a few people in there, all denying that I was ill. In the end I had to show them my scars where the needles had been in my arms, the site of my old catheter etc before they eventually agreed that I was undergoing some medical treatment. Then we heard the bus so I went outside. The bus pulled up and I boarded. There was a driver and a couple of other passengers. The whole lower deck of this bus was covered in dolls etc. The driver, while he was driving, was playing a game of some kind like cards or something with another one of the passengers. I thought that this was the most weird bus trip that i’d ever had.

What was interesting about this dream was that I was waiting for the bus on the “wrong” side of the road, as I would do if I were in Europe. And all the traffic was driving on the right too.

And then, half an hour later we had a suddenly this dream came alive. The person who was being me began to take off after the girl in this particular scene. That caused a lot of embarrassment. First of all, what was happening was that we’d been paired off. There was a doll that was me, a doll that was a girl, there were several of these pairs and we’d been paired off each at someone’s house but at first nothing had ever happened until we suddenly began to come to life” and I have absolutely no recollection of this or no idea at all what it concerns.

Then we had a dream that was quite similar to that again with 2 dolls, a male and a female. It wasn’t until they’d been together for a while that people noticed that these dolls were starting to turn themselves into a couple

Next I was at a supermarket. There were these toy things, dolls or whatever, tied up at a kind of hitching rail outside the store. All of a sudden a few people came along and began to push themselves into the queue in the wrong place. I thought to myself that there’s going to be some kind of severe confrontation with this lot any minute now.

I was then with Mike Harris, the chairman from TNS. We were talking about the European Cup Final between his team and a team that I was representing from Wales. He said that he wanted to approach UEFA to see whether they’d agree to host the game in Budapest. I said that in principle I’d agree but I’d like to play the game in Leichtenstein. Apart from the fact that there’s a lovely stadium there, it’s the crossroads of Europe etc. He asked me how we’d go about it. I told him that I knew Mike Lee, the Press Officer who went on to lead the UK’s bid for the Olympics in London. I imagined that he’d have a replacement and we’d start of by contacting him.

What’s strange about this is that I BO – or did – know Mike Lee, and he was Press Officer for UEFA and he did leave to work as leader of the team what worked on bringing the Olympic Games to London. And the football stadium at Vaduz in Leichtenstein is quite nice, AS REGULAR READERS OF THIS RUBBISH WILL RECALL.

But no Zero last night, and no California either. I must be slipping.

The Welsh lesson went quite well for a change, even though I had to fight off several waves of sleep. But once it was over and I was armed with my hot chocolate I wasn’t so lucky and ended off drifting away for half an hour or so.

That actually makes a change. usually, going into tow and back exhausts me completely and I’m flat out on my chair a long time before this.

There was time to spend an hour or two writing radio programme notes and then I went for tea – chips with salad and some of those quorn nuggets that are really nice.

But now I’m ready for bed, I reckon, not that I’m particularly tired after having crashed out just now. But it’ll catch up with me sooner or later. Shopping tomorrow, and with some room in the freezer, I hope that there’s some good stuff in Noz now that I have room for it

And having been to the shops I’ll probably be flat out in the afternoon. As long as I don’t miss the football tomorrow evening.

Thursday 17th August 2023 – I’VE HAD A REALLY …

… horrible afternoon today.

There were a couple of moment during my Welsh lesson when, for some reason or other, I felt myself drifting away into never-land. Then later on, after I’d had my hot chocolate when the lesson finished, I crashed out completely.

And I DO mean “completely” too. For about 2.5 hours I was totally out like a light in probably the deepest sleep I’ve had for quite some considerable time. Not a thing was moving during that time.

It’s not as if I didn’t need it though. What with one thing and another I didn’t go to bed until after midnight last night. Just as I was on the point of going to bed a Paul Temple mystery came round on the playlist so I stayed up to listen to it.

Despite all of that, I had woken up and was out and about (after a fashion) before the alarm went off, which goes to prove that there’s no pattern to what’s going on inside what’s left of my brain right now.

As usual, it took a good while to wind myself up, and then I had a couple of phone calls to make. Firstly there was to the chemists to order the next month’s supply of Aranesp, and then to the doctor to order another supply of medicine as I’m running out of certain supplies.

There was the dictaphone to listen to, to find out where i’d been during the night. I was with someone like that guy whom I knew when I had my taxis, me and a girl. For some reason we’d gone to California in Caliburn but he was driving. We went all the way to California. The girl and I were talking about settling down there, going to school etc, creating a new life for ourselves. We had to go back to collect our equipment. They drove us back and they said “we’ve been in your bank accounts and paid back all the money that you spent on this trip”. I told them that they didn’t need to because it was for us anyway, but they insisted. I began to collect my things together. I disposed of one scrap car out of my garage but there was a gold Cortina MkIII in there where I had half the axle out but a rear wheel had seized on a bearing so that bearing was still in the axle. He brought a pile of screws and nuts for me. They were mine anyway but he said that he wanted me to have them back. I went into the garage to find a box for them but he followed me in. He was looking at my tools and equipment saying how wonderful they were. he looked at the Cortina. I told him about the wheel. He replied “we can have that off”. I explained that I’d tried just about everything for months but I’ll end up having to cut it off. In the end we were preparing to go. But this thing about him turning up looking around my garage began to fill me with unease. I’d no idea why that would have been

And later I was back in this dream again talking to a friend of mine about my illness. We were talking about Zero. He was saying that if I’d been in good health she would have probably been living with me by now. I was chatting to Zero (so welcome back to her, who has been absent from my voyages for quite a while) and I asked her how she fancied living in California. I explained to her about portable oxygen cylinders, how I could buy one and walk around etc. She was worried that the heat in California would be too much for me. I explained that if we were to live by the sea it would be quite comfortable. We had a long, lengthy chat about moving, living down there by the sea etc. This was another one of these rare dreams where everything seemed to be going so right. It really felt much more than just an ordinary boring dream, a lot more intense feeling that there was in most, which was quite a surprise.

And what’s going on with California? I’ve been going there quite a lot just recently which is bewildering because I’ve never been farther west THAN ARIZONA OR UTAH. So I’ve no idea what’s happening about that.

After spending some time doing my Welsh homework I went for my lesson. The morning didn’t go too badly but gradually as the afternoon went on I found myself fading away, and that kind of thing is doing me no good at all.

During my brief moments of lucidity today I’ve been writing notes for my forthcoming radio programme and then I went for tea.

Tonight’s tea was another really good one – mixed veg and falafel in a vegan cheese sauce. And I’ve got the hang of all of this now.

It makes a world of difference being able to lay my hands on what to date is proving to be a consistent supply of vegan cheese. In the past I’ve only been able to grab it when I can but it looks as if the supply from LeClerc is going to keep on running for the foreseeable future, although nothing in this World is certain.

Having done all of that I’m off to bed, ready for a trip down into town before my lesson. Mind you, I probably won’t sleep, having had a really good session this afternoon.

But it was nice to see Zero again last night and it would be even nicer to see her again tonight. But what on earth is going on about California?

STANDING ON A HILL IN MY MOUNTAIN OF DREAMS,
TELLING MYSELF IT’S NOT AS HARD, HARD, HARD AS IT SEEMS

Well, yes.

Wednesday 16th August 2023 – TODAY’S WELSH LESSON …

… passed off quite a bit better today.

The unit on which we were working was a revision unit which involved discussing several of a selection of about 30 different topics, chosen by lot.

It’s quite true to say that I don’t know much and I can’t remember much but one thing about talking and chatting at large is that basically you just talk about what you know with whatever bits of grammar and vocabulary you can remember.

It doesn’t need to be complicated, and if you can keep it simple, then that’s all you need.

In schools in the UK, languages are taught in a ridiculous way. The emphasis is on grammar and being absolutely 100% correct, with the result that kids are quite timid and rather afraid to speak in case they make a mistake.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I was in Belgium I worked with people of all different nationalities and it didn’t take long for me to get the message that grammar counted for next-to nothing.

Iit didn’t matter what you knew and what mistakes you made. The aim was to make yourself understood to people and to understand their reply.

Knowing 100 words and using them is much more important than knowing 10,000 words and all kinds of obscure rules of grammar but not being able or being unwilling to use them.

But I digress.

Once more, the night that I had was marginally better than things have been quite recently. I didn’t travel far either. It was the annual meeting of our Students Association. I was with my friend who is no longer with us. Instead of flying to Birmingham we caught the train. When we arrived we actually arrived at the airport. It was a long walk through security, check-in etc out into the concourse where we found some people who my friend knew from the Association who were sitting around so she waved at them. I asked who they were and she told me but it didn’t ring any bells with me at all. We walked past a hotel at the airport concourse. The guy with us said “that’s where we should have stayed. It’s a much better place”. We ended up at reception at our hotel and given the keys. We all went into our room. I was busy chopping and dicing an onion ready to make sandwiches but had the onion all over the floor, all over the carpet. I was picking it up. I asked my friend if she had a plastic bag but she said no. I asked if she’d go to fetch one so she did. There were some other people in this room too who were clearly members of the Association, talking to someone on the phone saying “you’ll be here by tonight. Look for the Ealing branch” and a few other things like that. The way they were going on it sounded extremely doubtful about anything really. I was expecting something much more professional.

There was also something about me being in the USA. I was on my way to meet someone. We came to a very steep hill, so steep that you couldn’t actually see over the bonnet of the car as you went down. I had to be very careful as there were lots of cyclists etc about. There were traffic lights at the bottom so I stopped. As the lights changed and the car set off, I fell out of it and the ca, an automatic, went off on its own. It went round and round in a circle at this interchange, not hitting anything. I was trying to catch it to stop it. A passer-by came to help but we couldn’t manage to do anything. All of a sudden it changed direction slightly, came round, rolled up to my stomach and stopped. I was so relieved because this was the kind of thing that could have gone on for hours and could have been disastrous.

That wasn’t everything either but you really don’t want to know about the rest, especially if you are having your tea right now.

It was another slow start to the day before I transcribed the dictaphone notes, and then what time was left was spent revising my Welsh ready for the lesson. and wouldn’t it be nice if some of the stuff would stick in my brain?

At lunchtime I went and had a shower and then did some tidying up ready for when the cleaner would come round.

After the lesson the cleaner and I had a chat. We’ve worked out some kind of plan of action about the place and she also filled me in on a few things about the place that I didn’t know before. It’s always good to know about things like that.

Tea tonight was a curry from the freezer – one of those special ones I made about a year ago. And having matured for as long as that in the freezer it really was quite delicious.

But while we’re on the subject of the freezer, it’s slowly starting to empty itself now. I’ll wait to see what’s on offer in Noz at the weekend and if it’s a disappointing day I might just bake a vegan pie at the weekend to fill up the space.

That’ll be a good idea because there’s stuff in there like vegan minced soya stuff and using some of that in a pie would be a good idea.

While i’m at it, I’ll see about finding a recipe for some vegan sausage stuffing so that I can have a go at making sausage rolls. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’ll have to buy pastry for that because making flaky or puff pastry is a difficult and complicated procedure that’s beyond my capabilities.

That’ll give me something to think about while I try to sleep.

Tuesday 15th August 2023 – NOW THAT THE …

… blog is back on line again, I can carry on.

It runs on a programming language called *.php and that’s a system of coding that I’ve never learnt and so it uses a proprietary coding package that is available from a major supplier.

And it’s mated to an *.sql database, a system of coding that I learnt at University 20-odd years ago.

Anyway, the major supplier updated its *.php coding to version 6.3at the weekend and ever since then the supplier’s helpdesk has been inundated with complaints about all kinds of things that have gone wrong.

And so I (and, presumably many others) received a mail this morning saying that a crucial line of coding was missed out of the upgrade and they hope that it’s now been fixed.

I can’t say that I’m very impressed.

It made up for the night that I had because even though I didn’t travel very far, I had a great deal of difficulty sleeping. Maybe going to bed late might have had something to do with that.

So when the alarm went off I was with a friend of mine waiting for her daughter to come from school. She was probably about 6 or 7. When she turned up she was being rather mischievous so I said that I would buy a fridge, I’d put her in it and take bits out to eat when I was feeling hungry.

So being asleep, it was yet another struggle to leave the bed this morning.

What didn’t help my humour was that I had forgotten to close the fridge door. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen so much ice.

First thing to do this morning was therefore to switch off the fridge and empty it out so that it would defrost during the course of the day. I’m glad that there was no longer any Aranesp in there.

What with all of this going on it took a while to organise myself. First thing to do was to listen to the dictaphone. We’d reached the North Pole somehow and were concerned by a few articles lying around. There was a sanitary object without a handle, whatever that is, and one or two things that I can’t say what they were. We were more interested in how they came to be there.

This was also another one of these really gruesome dreams about a motorcycle gang that raided a restaurant somewhere in the USA. They dealt with the patrons in the most evil kind of way

From there I was rolling pastry into ling tubes like you do when you’re making bread or pizza etc. I had to go shortly but carried on rolling this pizza for ages. In the end I put it in a plastic bag, picked up my things and began to head outside to my Ford Transit van ready to set off on my voyage wherever it was that I was going.

Next thing was that now that the blog was back on line I could update it with the missing entries. And then I had to do the homework for the Welsh lesson today.

The lesson was another one of these bits-and-pieces days where some of it was good and some of it was … errr … less so. I wish that I could remember half of the stuff that I’m supposed to have learnt. It just goes in one ear and right out of the other.

Homer Simpson once famously said “every time I learn something new, it pushes something old out” but I don’t even have that luxury.

When the lesson was over I cleaned the fridge and sorted it out. It’s quite surprising but there always seems to be much more room in there than there was before I started yet I don’t seem to have thrown anything away.

And then, armed with my hot chocolate, I came back in here and … errr … had a little relax – and for quite a while too.

Tea tonight was a taco roll and I don’t really like these new wraps that I bought the other day. I don’t think that I’ll be buying those again.

Having finished for the day, I’m off to bed now. I’ll be busy tomorrow because I need a shower and the cleaner will be here so there’s some tidying up that needs to be done.

There’s the Welsh lesson to organise too and then I have some things to organise about my forthcoming trips. I’ll be on my travels in early course so I have to make the arrangements, or else I’ll be up yet another gum tree.

Monday 14th August 2023 – MY WELSH LESSON …

… wasn’t as good as it might have been today.

It’s possible that it has something to do with the fact that I was absolutely exhausted and had a struggle to keep my eyes open for some of the time.

And I’ve no idea why that might be either because I was in bed at some kind of reasonable time for a change, and the night wasn’t quite so turbulent as some have been just recently.

When the alarm went off this morning I was flat out in bed and it was a struggle for me to haul myself out of bed. And the morning was a struggle to such an extent that I didn’t go for a shower before the nurse came round to give me my injection.

There was however some time enough to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night. We’d been to the library like the one at Crewe. We’d been in a friend’s taxi so I didn’t take my crutches with me. When it was time to leave, the steps down to the main road were quite long and steep so I was taking my time. I could see the taxi. It wasn’t parked on the street but in the car park backing up onto the steps at the bottom of the steps where we would come down. Of course everyone else was quite quick in getting to the taxi except me. They all piled in and it drove away. When I finally came down to where the taxi had been I couldn’t see it at all. I couldn’t believe that they’d driven off and abandoned me like this with no crutches or anything

Later on I was in the USA at San Francisco thinking about going home from work. I could see the Golden Gate Bridge from my office. There was plenty of traffic on it. It looked really nice in the dark with the lights of the vehicle so I tried to take a photo but it didn’t work out. Later on at some other point I had to go to the top floor of our building. That was impressively high, probably 30,000 feet. The view of San Francisco below and the clouds etc was really impressive. We had once again a view of the bridge and all of the traffic in the dark. I tried again to take a couple of photos. The first one didn’t come out very well so I reset the exposure and adjustment times, took another and that didn’t seem to work out either. I was extremely disappointed at this.

And then there I was in this high building and we went down in the lift. We didn’t know from which floor we had to exit. I guessed “n°10”. I was one of these express lifts that stopped quite rapidly so I couldn’t believe that we were at Floor 10 already. Someone convinced us that we were so we piled out. We found that we had to walk down a couple of flights of stairs to go out of the building. There was a river right outside the building and the end of the runway of a light airfield with a light aircraft going in to land. There was like a Plaza or something there with a few sandstone buttes, only tiny, so I walked over to there. I could see that there was a good view of the building etc so I went to take out my camera. I’d been walking through the desert at one point and the whole of the inside of the camera bag was filled with sand. The camera was covered with sand so I had to clean it off before I could take a photograph that I wanted of the building and surrounding area.

I was back in San Francisco yet again working on a car. A boy went past. There was a dog running around the street. He told me to keep my dog under control. I told him to clear off. The dog wasn’t mine. I carried on. Then some official turned up on a bike, a young guy. He said “I’m going to give you a citation for your dog being off its leash”. I asked “have you seen my dog off its leash?”. He replied “yes”. I said “you must have some extremely good eyes. My dog’s back at home in Europe”. He replied “that doesn’t matter. I’m going to give you a citation”. When he gave it to me I took a piece of paper out of Caliburn. He was looking at all the notes in my notebook so I told him to clear off. My notes were nothing to do with him. I wrote out my address, handed it to him and said “I’m not paying your citation. You summon me. This should be fun”. He took my piece of paper, tore it up and threw it away. I said “fair enough” and carried on doing what I was doing. He disappeared and then I set off back for home.

What’s surprising in all of this is that I’ve never been to San Francisco in my life

The Welsh lesson, as I said, didn’t go too well. Being as tired as I seem to be these days, I just can’t concentrate on anything at all. At least we were one person more than last week as someone new has joined the party so we’re spread out more.

During the lunch break and for a while afterwards I chose the music for the radio programme that I started. I even managed to pair off some of the tracks but I ended up being overwhelmed. I didn’t actually crash out, which is a miracle in itself, but I may as well have done for all the good that I did.

Tea was, as usual, a stuffed pepper with pasta and vegetables, and while I was taking a few things out of the freezer I actually tidied up the vegetable drawer. There’s a little more room in there now.

But right now I’m going to bed. I’ve really had enough for one day and I won’t be doing much else today. There’s some homework that I need to do tomorrow for my course so I need to be on form. But I think that it needs more than I have to offer right now.

Sunday 13th August 2023 – SO WHILE WE’RE WAITING …

… for my webhost to upgrade the *.php version to correspond with the latest *.sql configuration, we’ll continue the notes ready for upgrading.

And despite not going to bed until about 02:30 this morning, I was still up and about at 10:00 this morning and had I forced myself, I could have been up even earlier. But let’s not go berserk on a Sunday, hey?

It took me a while to wind myself up ready for work but once I was feeling up to it (which takes much longer than it really ought to) I made a start on the radio programme.

What with one thing and another (and once you make a start, you’ve no idea how many other things there are) it took me all day to finish one of them. I dictated the other set of notes last night too but I haven’t even started on that lot yet

It’s probably due to the fact that there was so much stuff on the dictaphone. I had a really busy night last night. A was working for a French radio company last night. We’d prepared a whole series of programmes. As they started, we found that there were changes to be made. One was the introduction to the programme. It needed someone to say something like “it’s now 09:00 and the following programme is ..” whatever. We decided that I’d do that. I picked up a microphone and one or two other things then set off on my motorbike and sidecar down Bedford Street into Gresty Road and headed out of Crewe. I’d no idea what time it was etc but it looked like the correct time so I pulled off the road onto a footpath where I could park a 2-wheeled vehicle. I had to force my way down the track on this motorbike and sidecar, damaging pillars etc until I came to the other end of the parking area where there was somewhere to park. I began to make my announcement but I couldn’t remember what to say at first. I had to give the matter a great deal of thought. Someone else had to help me with that. But the idea of recording all of these introductions then just pressing the relevant button before the programme began just didn’t enter into my head.

The people in these provocative tee-shirts set out, the Americans, these people for 24 hours, the British being much more polite. The people set out on this kind-of race. At the radio station we had to manage to cover it somehow but we had no real equipment and very little time spare left over, and not much size on the radio station’s internet storage on which to store it all. Whatever all that is about, I really don’t know.

There was also the question of the English boy’s vest and pants didn’t fit. They had to break into somewhere and steal another one, much to the annoyance of the Welsh tutor and that’s all that I can remember.

Then I was having another dream in French just now about all this food that was to be eaten at this horror show party. A mother cat came along and brought her kittens one by one. When she thought that each kitten had had enough to eat she took it out of the bowl where the food was, take it somewhere else and fetch another kitten, repeating the process. It was really interesting to watch, the way this mother was making sure that all of her kittens had enough food to eat without overdoing anything.

Later on when these important people took to the stage I began to dream in Welsh to present them. It’s all happening here.

I was back with my cats playing American Football again. I had a cat n°11 who was complaining that he had a stone in his eye. That was presumably while he’d been acting like a wild thing during the earlier stages of the game. Once more I’m missing loads of this dream that I knew happened but I can’t remember as soon as I picked up the dictaphone.

Then there was a discussion about the Saudi Arabian football team and their n°11. Sure enough he was the first name on the screen, a description about him and how he was going to be their star player during their next World Cup adventures.

Finally I was with my father and someone else. The other person and I had come into our village by coming through the mountains on an old road that was all overgrown with brambles and weeds etc. It had taken ages. We passed several old roads on the way that looked extremely interesting. When we met my father we recounted our journey so he asked us to take him. We agreed and set off back, fought our way back all the way up the hill through a forest, undergrowth etc. We came to a spot where someone’s back garden of a house backed onto the path. Those people were in there having a party. I told my father “what we’ll do is to climb over the hedge here, push those big weeds around there and climb over the one there and not take any notice or pay any attention to the people in their back garden”. We explained the procedures so he replied “fair enough”. He’d noticed a post box and said “I have to post a letter. I’ve already written it, it’s in an envelope with a stamp. Seeing as there’s a post box here I’ll put it in there”. I said “well ok but this is the kind of box that’s only emptied once every Preston Guild. You want at least to make sure when the next connection will be otherwise it could be in here for ever”.

It’s hardly surprising that it took ages to type out all of that. It’s even more surprising that I was up and about so early too

There was football on the internet too this afternoon so as well as trying to resolve my web-hosting issues I was watching the football – Colwyn Bay v Caernarfon in Colwyn Bay’s beautiful, modernised stadium.

Colwyn Bay’s first match in the Premier League watched by the biggest crowd in North Wales for several years, and they were treated to a full-blooded affair with no holds barred. A proper North Wales derby.

For the first hour or so Colwyn Bay had the upper hand although Caernarfon had far too many old hands on the field to be caught out and were actually leading 1-0.

But then lack of experience, lack of concentration and a few silly mistakes undid them and Caernarfon rattled in 3 more goals quite quickly and the game petered out.

If the final whistle had gone after an hour, Colwyn Bay could have been quite satisfied about their prospects for the rest of the season but how quickly the fell away at the end is bound to be a source of worry for the manager and the team.

But right now I’m going to worry about my Welsh course tomorrow, my *.php coding and whether I’m going to have a good night’s sleep. I need to make the most of whatever time I have in bed if I want to be fighting fit in the morning.

Saturday 12th August 2023 – HAVE YOU EVER …

… had one of those days when you have been half-way through doing something and suddenly realised that you should be something different?

This afternoon I was halfway through my third programme of the week when I suddenly realised the date on which it would be broadcast (if we stick to the plan) and that led to a rather rapid rethink and I started again with something different.

All of that work from yesterday and part of today has now been filed under CS because it can’t be used again – at least, not for another seven years, and I’ll be pushing up the daisies a long time before then.

Mind you, the way I felt today, I reckon that I’ll be pushing up the daisies by the end of the week because it’s been another difficult day.

The night was a slightly better night than in the recent past, and I managed once more to be up and about before the alarm went off, but that’s not to say that I was awake.

As the early part of the morning rolled on I gradually came round into the Land of the Living and then headed off to Noz.

My usual parking place was already taken even though the place wasn’t yet open, but there was another place at the front which involved a longer walk but was still a little more convenient than going around the back where I have a tendency to fall over.

There wasn’t much in there of any interest today, but I grabbed another couple of those jars of curry. They did however have some vegan ice cream made with oat milk and cookie dough. I had to grab a small tub of that.

At LeClerc I didn’t spend very much at all, but I’m still glad that I went because they had coffee on special offer (and about time too) so I grabbed a bag of 6 packets that cost less than 4 otherwise would have done.

Back here, the ice cream and I fought our way into the freezer and then I put everything away. I made my coffee and cheese on toast but regrettably I drifted off with the fairies and awoke several hours later (and I DO mean several hours later) to a mug of very cold coffee.

Once I was back on the same wavelength as everyone else I had a listen to the dictaphone. Not as much stuff on there as there has been just recently. There was someone dressed up as a King last night making some kind of exaggerated speech putting the emphasis on the pronouns in it. Some woman was calling him out saying that he didn’t really know his pronouns anyway and what he was saying was all wrong. She had the air of a schoolmaster or school woman-type of person

And then a new girl joined our office. She was very pleasant, chatty young girl but was covered from head to foot in tattoos. We had quite a few discussions about tattoos. She had a good sense of humour so it was fine. There was another guy in the office in a wheelchair who also had tattoos and in fact owned a parrot. In the relationship between the guy and the parrot it was the parrot that was in charge which caused some mirth. We suggested that the girl and the guy put on an Art exhibition of their bodies which she thought was quite funny. We had quite a chat about that too.

Finally, I was up at some kind of castle with a ginger cat and 2 kittens. The kittens were quite high up in the roof somewhere so I had to climb up a stone column all the way to the top. The cat and kittens crawled all over me. I gradually climbed down the column one of the scariest things I’d ever done. When I was near the bottom the cats began to climb back up so I had to climb back up after them. Again they climbed on top of me but for some reason or other I kept on going up. I went right to the top of the column. You could see that the cats were trying to work out how they would go down. If I were to drop them it’s a long way. I was worried about dropping them off. I was having to sit there to work out how. The first thing I needed to do was to turn round and face the column but I couldn’t do that with the cats all over me so I had to persuade them somehow to climb back onto a window ledge in the roof which was extremely complicated. I could see that they were not very happy about doing this but eventually I managed to persuade them. Then I had to deal with the 2 kittens. I was probably 200 feet up in the air clinging to this column with my back and a couple of kittens clambering all over me with no way whatever to move in any direction at all. This was a really frightening dream, which was quite surprising because heights don’t usually bother me at all.

Having done all that I had a tidy up of the stock of supplies under the shelf unit. There’s all kinds of stuff in there that has accumulated – herbs, spices, stuff like that picked up when I come across it and which I’ll never be able to find when I need it.

And then I made a start (and a finish) with the next radio programme.

Tea tonight was chips, salad and one of these breaded quorn fillets, delicious as usual, and then I tracked down the highlights of today’s football.

Tomorrow we have a live football game on the internet. Colwyn Bay making their debut in the Welsh Premier League against Caernarfon Town.

Caernarfon had a flaky defence and non-existent attack last season, but the best midfield unit that I’ve seen. However, a few significant changes have altered the team considerably and I’ll be watching them closely.

As for Colwyn Bay, the gap between the First and the Second Division is enormous, as Flint and Airbus will testify over the last couple of seasons. But a couple of canny signings and a team well-marshalled by former Wales international central defender Steve Evans should give them at least a fighting chance.

Their stadium was rebuilt over the summer and apparently it’s a full house, completely sold out, for the game tomorrow. So at least there will be a good atmosphere.

That’s tomorrow anyway. Tonight I’m going to dictate the radio notes so far and then go to bed. A nice lie-in, I hope and then I’ll be fighting fit for next week and the second week of my summer school.

And then I have other things to worry about.

Friday 11th August 2023 – I DIDN’T QUITE …

… manage to go for the rest of the week without crashing out. Having done so well over the last few days, I fell at the final fence this afternoon.

But then that’s hardly a surprise because the last few nights have been what one would call “mobile” and last night was no exception. And I was even up before the alarm went off this morning too.

After the medication I had a shower to clean myself up and then nipped out to the shops.

Caliburn and I went to LIDL for a change this morning and seeing as I didn’t want very much at all, it was quite an expensive shop. And I mean that too.

The fact is that there is always some stuff that I need from there to keep in stock, and as I don’t go there all that often these days, I made the most of my trip and stocked right up.

Amongst the things that I bought from LIDL were some carrots so back here, I cleaned, diced and blanched them ready for freezing. And then armed with my coffee and cheese-on-toast, I went for my Welsh lesson.

It was rather a mixed lesson. Some of it was quite good, and other parts of it were … errr … less so. But now it’s over for the weekend and we’ll live to fight again on Monday.

During the lunch break I transcribed the notes from the dictaphone. There was a claim to be made for some medical expenses. Everyone had to fill in some forms and send them off. I had my papers all over the place as usual. They asked me about mine. I replied “you’ll have to give me 5 minutes while I go upstairs and find them in the bedroom”. I went upstairs to loo, for my receipts. Nerina came in and began to harangue me about this so I shouted at her to leave me alone and let me get on with it otherwise I’ll never ever be able to find it. In the end she wandered off. I carried on looking. One of my sisters then came and asked me the same question. I became even more angry and shouted even more at her. But I just couldn’t find any of these papers. I’d no idea where they’d gone. The last I saw of them, they were on my bedroom windowsill but now they could be anywhere. I didn’t have a clue what had become of them.

And then someone had their babycam monitor focused on their child’s playpen area. every now and again it would take an automatic photograph of the child. On one occasion there was no child to be seen in the photograph. What they saw instead was the family cat, a big long-haired black one, climbing up against the play area opening the door. It had obviously opened the door and the child had gone out through it and was somewhere else around the house

Later on I was at work. Everyone else went off for their evening meal. I was left holding the baby for a while while they were away. After about a couple of hours no-one had come back. I walked out down to Hospital Street in Nantwich to see if I could find them. They were all in a restaurant and had only just begun to eat their meal. I asked how long they were going to be. They didn’t know so I suggested another couple of hours. They said “no” but I could see that that was what it was going to be. I asked “what am I going to do? I’m starving and I have to have my meal yet”. They replied “you can hang on a little longer can’t you?”. So I left. On the corner of Hospital Street and the other one and I’ll tell you the name in a minute … “Pratchett’s Row” – ed … there was a chip shop so I went in and ordered a bag of chips and a cheese toastie. That was an interesting thing because you ordered and paid. They gave you strips of what looked like brown parcel tape with the price of £1:00 on each strip. You then queued and when yours was ready they handed it to you and you handed over the strips of tape to show that you’d paid. I had my chips and cheese toastie and set off back to the office eating on the way back.

Meantime, everyone was talking about football grounds from the 1970s. Vale Park came up and also the subject of the railway station at Longport. I was telling people how I’d go to the game and then walk back to the railway station afterwards on a Friday night with a bag of chips.

Incidentally, during the day yesterday I was having exactly this discussion with someone on the internet, re-living old past glories.

After that I was back in the Auvergne last night in my house. Brigitte had a pile of stuff, food in bottles and cans that she didn’t need. She brought them down to me so I was busy stacking them away in my house ready for future use. There wasn’t anything there that was really appetising but it was free so I took it.

My friend from Congleton was starting a hairdressing business and was looking for premises. She came across a room to let on a farm. We went to look at it. It was a tiny room. You had to climb up there on a weird arrangement, a cross between stairs and a ladder. There was a really tiny window in the wall. Nevertheless she rented it. I thought that it was a strange decision. First of all the customers had to find it and then they had to climb up here. There was barely enough room for the 3 of us to stand upright in it once we left the bed that was in there. It was in High Street in Crewe but the view out of the window was looking at the area with a completely different perspective. I’d never seen that part of Crewe looking like that before. It was reminding me of the climb up Edleston Road but it was all wrong, all in reverse. I really couldn’t understand why it was as it was, for example Edleston Road climbed up towards the middle instead of going downhill towards the middle as it does. We went outside for a walk around. We could see some trees that were pretty much dead. They’d been trimmed off so that they were only growing on our side of the field and cut off where they grew over the neighbour’s field. It was all looking really weird. We went back in and climbed back up into our room. We’d seen when we were outside that this tiny window was actually a large window with most of it being blanked off. I was wondering about how I could take off the blanking so that the window would look a lot brighter and make the room look brighter.

That’s not everything aither, but then again you don’t really want to know the rest, especially if you’re eating a meal.

Rosemary had rung me up at some point during my lesson so I phoned her back as soon as it was over. We had another one of our long marathon chats. She has to go for some surgery on her knee very soon. It seems that old age is catching up on all of us.

That, regrettably, was that. I’d been feeling rather flaky for a little while and not long after we hung up, I drifted off into never-land for some time. It took me a while to recover afterwards, and then I began to look for music for the next radio programme, although I didn’t get very far.

Tea tonight was the last of the vegan sausage rolls with salad and chips, delicious as usual. But I’ll have to think about baking my own sausage rolls in future.

This calls for a cunning plan, and I need to find a recipe for vegan sausage stuffing. As for the pastry, I’ll have to buy it ready-name. making flaky pastry from scratch is an extremely complicated process.

Shopping tomorrow, not that I need all that much. But I’ll go out all the same. It won’t be for long but at least I’ll have some fresh air.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight, I’m off to bed and I’ll hope for a good night. If I don’t have a good sleep, I hope that I’ll go for a good wander around instead.

Thursday 10th August 2023 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… really mobile night last night. And a busy day too. Things seem to be warming up.

When the alarm went off this morning at 07:00 I was with a couple of people who were planning on going on a cycling tour. They were showing me their bikes and how the framework for the pannier fitted on. I could see that there was some recessed bolt holes in the frame and the pannier mounts slid down them and you just pushed a bolt through the frame and the bolt hole in the pannier outfit.

So not having beaten the first alarm I was still able to beat the second. And then after the medication and checking the mails and messages I listened to the rest of the night’s travels on the dictaphone. Nerina and I were going somewhere on a night out to Nantwich or Audlem, somewhere like that. We had to hurry to catch the bus. There was then some talk that we might stay over a couple of days so I had to find some clothes. I couldn’t find any so in the end I had to find an old suitcase of mine with some clothes in it. That was inside the cats’ house. I had to persuade the cats to leave their little house which took a long time. Then I had to take out my suitcase and look through it. I couldn’t find any trousers. I wasn’t sure if I could still fit in my jeans so I had to try on a pair. Then I couldn’t stand up. I needed help for that. In the end I tried them on when I was standing on the floor. I then looked at the time. It was something like 22:10 and the bus was going to leave any minute now. We were clearly going to miss the bus and then next one would make us ridiculously late so I began to think about going in the car and arriving quicker like that

And then I had another long dream that all immediately evaporated the moment I reached for the dictaphone. I can’t remember a thing at all about it. Not a thing. I’m soaked in sweat though so it must have been something interesting.

Later on I’d been somewhere to do something in connection with the group in which I played and we were on our way back. Coming from Congleton towards Crewe there was plenty of traffic. I had my foot down and was going quite quickly, passing the traffic wherever I could. There was a part where you came to a roundabout where the road split into two lanes. I went into the outside lane there and drove all the way down the outside of a line of vehicles, reached the roundabout, spun round the roundabout and came off at my exit, probably cutting in on someone else. The engine of the car cut out. I couldn’t restart it. I had to get out and push the car across the roundabout into a side road. There were vehicles in the way. I rolled into a vehicle. By now this roundabout had transformed itself. It wasn’t the roundabout in Hungerford Road where it was earlier on but now a roundabout back in Sandbach. It was where the guy who played drums lived. There was all sorts of things going on around this area, people using bad language etc. I thought “I wonder how my drummer’s family who were quite respectable people, were coping with what’s going on in the other houses and families around here”.

I was also at a huge factory place last night. 2 huge square glass buildings situated on the far side of a really wide river. The car parking was on one side of the river and you had to walk down a path and across a – not even a bridge but like a concrete path that went across the river and into the factory complex. We’d been there with a couple of people and walked back to the car park. I decided that I wanted to go back to look at some more of it. I said “I’ll be back shortly”, turned round and walked all the way back down the long path, across the concrete path across the river and back to the complex. It took me about 20 minutes to walk there and will take me another 20 minutes to walk back later plus however much time I’d want to spend walking around the factory complex. I’d left them sitting on a car park waiting for me. I’m not going to be very popular by the time I return. I thought to myself that I’d be lucky if they were still there waiting.

Finally my car needed some work doing on it so my father said that he’d help me if I took the car round to him. He lived in Norway north of Narvik so I said that I’d go round after work. While I was at work I was trying a cut-and-paste of a section of an image over an object in an image that I wanted to hide. For some reason I couldn’t make the piece that I’d cut out transfer over via a memory stick or an external hard drive or anything. There was a crowd of people round watching me including TOTGA. I carried on trying but it wouldn’t work. I said that I’d do it after work so a couple of people said that they’d stay behind to watch. Then I remembered that I had to go to see my father. At 16:00 I apologised to everyone who was disappointed that I was going, and set out. Narvik is a long way from Brussels and it was late in the evening. I was in Norway and seen the signs for Narvik. Somehow I’d missed my turning and ended up at a riverside on a gravel road looking at all these boats. I had to rurn round to retrace my steps to find where I’d gone wrong. Then I encountered a load of Volkswagens that had all been in accidents and were heading off somewhere. They had headlights taped into the wing with sellotape so that at least they’d have some light when it went dark. I remembered that my father’s wife had wanted me to sort out some money for her and do a couple of other things. By now it was really late at night. I was thinking that I have all this to do, fix my car, sort out my father’s wife, fix this image that needs doing and be back at work in Brussels in the morning. I’m just never going to fit all this in.

An hour or two were then spent working my way through my notes for my Welsh lesson. But as usual, with having a teflon brain, nothing is sticking.

The lesson itself passed quite quickly again but it was rather patchy. Some of the stuff I could do quite happily but some other stuff was rather … errr … challenging and I don’t know what I’m going to do about that. Nothing, I reckon. You can’t teach an old dog like me new tricks.

When the lesson was over I waded through the radio programme and finished off all of the notes for the second radio programme I’ve done this week. And who knows? I might even start a third tomorrow.

Another exciting task was to write an article for a Welsh newspaper. The new JD Cymru League season starts tomorrow so I’ve written a few hundred words about the teams competing and what I think of their chances

Whether or not it’s published is another thing entirely but it’s one of those things that has to be done by someone at some time.

Tea tonight was one of the vegan burgers out of the European Burger Mountain in the fridge with some pasta and veg in tomato sauce.

Tomorrow morning I have to nip into town early in the morning to do my shopping before the Welsh lesson. It’ll have me running around so I’ll need to have an early night and have some rest.

But if I go off on a few travels during the night in the same way that I have been just recently, I’ll need a rest to recover when I wake up.

Wednesday 9th August 2023 – THERE REALLY ISN’T …

… any point going to bed and trying to go to sleep early if I wake up at 03:00 and then can’t go back to sleep again. It really does defeat the point.

However, I did manage to go back to sleep again, but not for long and when the alarm went off I was already up and about (after a fashion).

Once I’d had my medication I attacked the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. I was down in the jungle last night with a pair of socks or something that wouldn’t behave themselves. It was like if I took them off they would keep on attacking me each tme that I turned over in bed or something like that.

Later on I did a lovely turn on the football pitch last night. A foul or offside or something was given in our favour so I went back to take the kick but the full-back decided that he’d take it and kicked it upfield. It was a really weak kick and 3 or 4 different players scrambled for it including me. I reached the ball and managed to flick it behind me. I turned and caught everyone totally unawares – including me – and had a shot at goal which hit the post, came back in but unfortunately broke back up the field. We were all caught out by a breakaway back down the field into our penalty area.

I was going away to a music festival at another point. I’d made enquiries and found out the pitch where my friend from the Wirral and his wife were staying which was one of the ones in the middle in a depression or hollow somewhere. I’d arranged to have a pitch very close nearby. We went down there and were one of the first to arrive. We had to sort through all our things to erect the tent. Then I decided that I wanted a shower. The only way to have a shower was to actually have a shower on your bed. My bed was in the middle of 2 or 3 others so I had to prepare for the shower, rig up a hosepipe or something then sit on my bed and wash myself with the hosepipe. The idea that this was going to ruin my bed and bedding never entered my head all at the moment. There was more stuff than this too, including something about the security arrangements. There was a company called Fitz Security that was doing it but I can’t think now what brought that into the conversation during the night.

Back at this folk festival again. It’s now mid-afternoon, everyone is arriving and starting to set up. There’s a food stall being set up somewhere and people are starting to queue for it. Again there’s much more going on than this but I can’t remember it. Some of it relates to the kind of food that was in some cases rather unpleasant.

Actually, if I were in the UK at the moment I would be on my way to a music festival even as we speak. It’s “Cropredy” this weekend, the Fairport Convention festival in Oxfordshire.

Did I dictate the dream that I was working for a taxi company? … “no you didn’t” – ed … A woman turned up and awoke me out of bed. I had to hunt around for my dressing gown. I was most uncomfortable but I let her in. She began to talk about another taxi company, how she’d seen their adverts everywhere and how she was looking forward to maybe working for them etc. I realised that she’d come for an interview at the wrong place. I let her carry on for a while. Suddenly she disappeared, I can’t remember how, during the dream and the interview finished. Then the boss came home and I told him about this incident. I also told him that the immersion heater wasn’t working again and I’d tried to fix it but I wasn’t able to. He was annoyed with having no hot water. he had a look around. The office was quite shabby. he asked “when are you going to paint it as you promised?”. I asked him what colour. he replied “lemon”. I said “yes OK. I’m glad about that. I don’t like white”. We made arrangements that I’d start to paint the place.

There was also something about a Zeppelin type of thing. It had a leak and there was condensation inside the gasbag that was leaking out in drips of water. We landed the Zeppelin, stripped down the valve and installed a new one, fitted it. That seemed to make the matter worse. In the end we went to a Government office where we could maybe find the parts. We were sitting around there for hours. In the end one of the women with us managed to buttonhole one of the clerks to ask him about it. He replied that these parts are special. They’re on the secret list and can only be sold to people who are bona fide citizens of the UK. The guy had a strange foreign accent so I went over to the woman and we had a laugh about the idea that the parts can only be used by bona-fide British people but can be sold by just about anyone in the whole wide world. It didn’t make any sense. We carried on chatting and ere there for quite a while talking about nothing in particular

We had a long rambling dream about being up in the Arctic ready to fly back. We had to wait for a couple of weeks while the weather ship went to pick up some weather information. It went all the way across to Greenland, round the Davis Strait and back. I grabbed hold of one of the officials and asked about the possibility of going out on the weather ship the next season next year. They said that it was simply not possible but I harassed and harangued them and generally tried to insist but it was no use at all. I was there for ages trying to convince them. Then we flew back. We arrived at the airport. I was with Nerina. As we left the plane she said that she’d forgotten something and she’d see me after Immigration. We had to run all the way round this spiral staircase thing going through different rooms, round and round to our left all the time down these stairs. We reached the bottom and had to board a bus. After the long descent down the stairs we boarded this bus. There was just one other man and me. He asked what I thought about the flight. I replied “I can’t remember anything at all about it. I remember boarding the plane and having a cup of coffee. The next thing that I remember was coming in to land at Fredericton and I had a cup of cold coffee”. He didn’t realise that we’d landed at Fredericton and was surprised when I told him the name of the town. He said “you’re wrong about the coffee. You had to go to the machine yourself and put a token in etc”. In the meantime the bus was going down the road at quite a rate of knots into the city. Suddenly it came to a spot where there was a car parked on either side of the road, a lot of cars on one side and just one on the right-hand side. They hadn’t left enough room for the bus to go through so it came to a grinding halt.

There’s no doubt about it – you’re certainly getting your money’s worth with this.

There was the Welsh homework to do and then we had the lesson. It passed reasonably well today, but we have a long way to go of course.

The strange thing was that while I was awake in the middle of the night I was working through my Welsh from yesterday. It’s preying on my mind, I suppose, and I hope that some of it might stick. I can’t remember any of the vocabulary though.

The cleaner came around too and we had a little chat in the middle of everything.

When the lesson was over I attacked another radio programme. I’ve chosen all the music, paired it off and even written the notes for about half of it. I really don’t know what’s happened to me.

Tea was leftovers with a half-helping of curry from the freezer and a naan bread. I won’t be bothered by any vampires for the next couple of days either – that new batch of garlic butter than I made is pretty good.

So now I’m going to try to go to bed early again, and hope that I can have a better sleep than last night. I haven’t paid all this money for this course not to take any benefit from it.

There’s plenty of other stuff going on too so I have my work cut out right now. At least it keeps me out of mischief.

Tuesday 8th August 2023 – TODAY WAS RATHER …

… better than it was yesterday.

At least I managed to keep on going without actually falling asleep at some point.

Mind you, it was pretty much touch and go at a couple of points during the day and I’m absolutely wasted right now, to such an extent that I’ll be off to bed in a moment, well before my usual bed-time.

In fact, last night I was in bed earlier than usual and despite another turbulent night, I was actually up and about before the alarm went off. Only a couple of minutes before, but it all counts.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages I had a listen to the mountain of stuff that was on the dictaphone from the night. I was having the silliest of arguments in LIDL. I was there with my brother – we’d gone to buy a few things. I went up to the cashier’s desk to pay whatever I’d selected. I had to hunt for my money in my little bag thing. While I was doing this the machine began to spew out a load of £5 notes. I asked the girl what it was doing. She replied that it was preparing your change. I replied that I’d not paid anything yet. She replied “no but it prepares your change while you organise yourself”. I told her how strange this situation was. A security guard came over to see what the hubbub was about. I explained and he explained too to this girl but she didn’t understand why we found it so strange. I said that I could just take the money, say goodbye and leave my shopping here now, couldn’t I, and not pay you at all. She still didn’t get it. The subject came round about magic and magic beasts, demons, wizards etc. I said “would you like to see my demon?” and I indicated to my brother to to the the bag on my back and pull out STRAWBERRY MOOSE. Instead he came out with a giant stuffed rat. I asked “Isn’t Strawberry Moose there?”. He replied “no” so I wondered where he had gone because I was convinced that I’d brought him into the shop. It was the strangest argument that I’ve had for quite some time.

There was then a group of is in Crewe walking down Walthall Street. I was as usual chatting up a young girl who was with us. We walked past a group of people standing at the side of the road with a stock car. They were talking about North Carolina so I asked them if they came from there and if they raced there. They replied that they did. I went to ask them if they knew someone whom I knew there but I couldn’t think of his name. I asked them if they knew such and such a town where he raced. I couldn’t think of that name either. We had the most astonishing conversation. I was trying to talk to these people but I couldn’t remember anything. We talked about the towns, how they were scattered out and round, how one town was pretty much the same as the other. This chat went on for quite a while. In the end a couple of my friends had moved on down the road. I went on to catch them up. The young girl was having her watch adjusted by another member of our party. It might have been her mother or something. It was a kind of fitbit that gave a printout on a piece of paper like a till receipt. They were fitting a new paper in it. When she finished the woman patted her on the head and said “right, you can run along to Eric now”. That was a comment that took me completely by surprise.

Later on I was back with the group of people from earlier, including the young girl with the black curly hair. I finally managed to persuade her to come round to my apartment and maybe even spend the night with me. Much to my surprise her mother didn’t make all that many objections to the idea at all. She even had a quiet little word with her about one or two things. That was something else that took me completely by surprise.

So there I was, with my meal on the plate, all poised and at the ready, and I’ve no idea what happened that caused it all to melt away just before I had my fork stuck in it. Just my luck, isn’t it?

Finally I was down at the bottom of Middlewich Street by the funeral parlour at the Cumberland bridge and there I met my journalist friend from Philadelphia. She was expressing her dismay about the new manner of speaking where people today are so touchy and easily offended about things that people write that don’t even concern them, and I was agreeing. In fact, in real life, I’m sure that there are more than just one or two people with nothing better to do than to crawl all over the internet looking for ways in which they might possibly be offended.

The Welsh lesson passed quite quickly today and we made a few long strides forward.

Regrettably though, I seem to have miscalculated, or they have. My three months away, either in Canada or in hospital, were right at the start of this year’s studies, but we’re only doing half a year – the second half. I really wanted to go back and redo the beginning of the course.

When the lesson was over I had my hot chocolate and then finished off all of the radio notes for the programme I’ll be preparing at the weekend. I might even start the next one tomorrow – who knows?

For a change, I managed to eat all my tea – a taco roll with some of the left-over stuffing. There’s not much left so I’ll have a leftover curry with a naan bread for tea tomorrow.

But that’s tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed. I’m thoroughly exhausted and an early night will do me good.

Here’s hoping for a nice little voyage or two in the company of some good friends. As Guildenstern said in “Hamlet”, “dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream”

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Category Archives: France

Tuesday 22nd August 2023 – TO MY COMPLETE …

Monday 21st August 2023 – IT MIGHT NOT …

Sunday 20th August 2023 – THESE DAYS THE DAY …

Saturday 19th August 2023 – WE’RE JUST TWO …

Friday 18th August 2023 – WHAT SURPRISES ME …

Thursday 17th August 2023 – I’VE HAD A REALLY …

Wednesday 16th August 2023 – TODAY’S WELSH LESSON …

Tuesday 15th August 2023 – NOW THAT THE …

Monday 14th August 2023 – MY WELSH LESSON …

Sunday 13th August 2023 – SO WHILE WE’RE WAITING …

Saturday 12th August 2023 – HAVE YOU EVER …

Friday 11th August 2023 – I DIDN’T QUITE …

Thursday 10th August 2023 – I HAD ANOTHER …

Wednesday 9th August 2023 – THERE REALLY ISN’T …

Tuesday 8th August 2023 – TODAY WAS RATHER …

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