Category Archives: France

Monday 7th August 2023 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I’ve tipped half a meal into the waste bin?

Usually I know exactly how much I can eat and make an appropriate amount, so having stuff left over on a plate is a very rare event indeed.

Whatever is happening right now to me is a total mystery because my appetite has gone again and I don’t feel like eating anything. I didn’t even have my lunchtime fruit.

Maybe it’s something to do with the rather mobile night that I had, because I travelled miles while I was asleep. I was in an apartment somewhere looking out over the street. There was a demonstration going on outside with strikers etc marching under banners. There were counter-demonstrators and people heckling the marchers and the marchers heckling them back like a good old-fashioned 1970s Trade Union argument. I was with some people who weren’t really taking it seriously but they weren’t as old as me so they didn’t remember very much. We were discussing the rights and wrongs of marching, demonstrating, etc.

There was then a programme on last night about fitting your wife or girlfriend with a towbar. They proposed that it would be the first job that you undertake when you set up your own workshop. This film showed you how to make it. The first thing that you did was to find a brick. It was absolutely gruesome and put me off, this kind of medical talk for the rest of my life I should think.

My friend from Holywell came to see me and we went out together. We ended up doing some shopping. I bought her a couple of items of clothes and a few little bits and pieces. We went on somewhere and had a small party with a group of people. I wasn’t really a party animal so I didn’t stay long. My friend said a few remarks that I didn’t pick up on at the time. I wish that I’d realised what she was saying because I had some really good comebacks that would have fitted in there and would have pushed the situation between the two of us forward a little. But she came round to my house later on. It was a tip as usual. She was rummaging around for something and came across some cat-flavoured teabags, apparently full of herbs that remind you of cats. She said “I’ll make some drinks. I know what drink you’ll like”. She started again, thank you for this, thank you for that, thank you for something else. I still couldn’t bring myself to say what needed to be said to advance my situation with her any further forward. That’s twice now that I’d had the opportunity and missed it.

I was also out with two of my friends last night. I thought that they were Zero and my friend from Congleton but they weren’t. I think that one was someone whom I used to know and I don’t know who the other one was. I’d ended up at a party with the two of them. We ended up going back to one of their houses. I was trying to make up my mind which one to invite out in the evening. I decided to leave and come back later so I said “who’s going to come to see me and say goodbye?” thinking to let them make up their mind. They both came to the door to see me off. That didn’t solve that problem. We chatted a bit and talked about Christmas. One of them wanted a set of sheets and the other wanted a bed gown. I thought that I’d go to buy two of each. On my way home I walled into Woolworth’s. There mas a massive queue that I stood in to wait and began to look around. I was totally spoilt for choice and the prices were really expensive so I didn’t know what to do. I had to do it quickly though because I was meeting up with them both again at 18:15 and we were going to go out for the evening. It was all so confusing. I didn’t know what to do and which way to turn at all. I felt hopeless.

Back in that dream again, in a shop I saw a bedside cabinet and table that looked really nice. It would be ideal for one of them to have in their bedroom. The table was right up on top of a rack on a row of shelves. I couldn’t reach it and needed some help from someone to bring it down so I could have a closer look at it.

Back in this dream again yet again. We were in a meeting and someone had gone to the bathroom. They were making an awful lot of noise about it. I wondered if it was one of these two women. Looking around I found that it was a man who I didn’t particularly like. He was there with his son. When he came out the girl said that she needed to visit the bathroom. The older one of the two said “Eric and I will come along. He said that he’d make some noise outside to annoy his girlfriend” which I thought was a strange thing to say. While she was in the bathroom the other two of us, the older woman and I were outside the bathroom flirting around and making a lot of noise about it so she could hear. I didn’t have a clue what was happening and what was going on about it. It was a most confusing situation.

Even with all of that going on, I was up and about before the alarm went off and after the medication I went and had a shower. The nurse came round and gave me my injection and then I transcribed the dictaphone notes, which took quite a while.

It was the first day of my intensive Welsh course. We were just 8 students. We probably won’t be many more than that if at all. We dashed through four hours of the passive tense with an hour off for lunch, and this is how it’s going to be for the next three weeks.

Still, it’ll keep me out of mischief.

Once the lesson was over I had my hot chocolate and then crashed out for an hour or so. I really had a struggle to keep on going throughout the afternoon, that’s for sure.

When I came round, I organised myself and then made a start on the next radio programme. I’ve collected all of the music, paired them off and even written the notes for some of the tracks. It’s amazing how much I can accomplish when I put my mind to it.

But that’s my lot for the day. With half my stuffed pepper and pasta ending up in the bin I’m absolutely exhausted. I’ll just have a quick drink of something and then go to bed, ready to fight another day.

There’s some homework to do from today but if I feel up to it, I’ll do it tomorrow morning. Nothing else will be done tonight.

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Sunday 6th August 2023 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what happened today but despite not having gone to bed until about 01:00 I was wide-awake at 08:45 this morning.

And not being able to go back to sleep, I was up and about by 09:30.

Imagine that happening on a Sunday. It’s not like me at all, is it?

Even more bizarrely, I didn’t crash out at all today. From that point of view, it was a really good day.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too from during the night, as I found out later on in the morning. I was back living in Shavington. I was in my bedroom when my telephone beeped to say that it had received a message. I didn’t pay any attention for a couple of minutes. Then I went to look. It was from my friend in Munich saying “I’m here”. I looked at the previous message which was something about him coming round. I stuck my head out of the bedroom window. I could see an olive-green W123 Mercedes saloon down on the street. I put my hand out to wave. He put his hand out of his car and waved so I went downstairs to open the door to let him in and make a coffee

Then we had a small kitten biting the arm of a big man. The mother of the kitten came up and took it away and jumped down to the floor with it.

Did I dictate the one that I was somewhere or other? … “no you didn’t” – ed …. There was a pub nearby. One of the guys came out and began to intimidate one of my employees. I went into the pub to find out who it was. He was the bodyguard of some well-known local hood or similar. I went over to him and told him in no uncertain terms to leave my staff alone. His response was to ask me what I was going to do about it. In response I came out with some kind of date like 19th August 2015 – a date that I’d picked randomly from nowhere. I said “I know all about that date and so will the police if you keep on threatening my employees”. It obviously struck a chord with him because he sat down and kept quiet after that. I’d love to know what happened on that particular date that I’d picked at random.

Did I dictate the dream where I had a little corner of a workshop garage somewhere? … “And you didn’t dictate this one either” – ed …I went there one day after work and spend a few minutes in the sink as soon as I arrived cleaning some potatoes and a plate. While they were around there, the people who owned it, their boy came over to talk to me. We chatted about this and that. he wasn’t so young – he was a teenager. I went and found some bread but it was quite rubbish. Some more people came in, sat down next to me and began to eat. I put a slice of bread in the toaster to toast so that I could eat it while I was making cheese on toast with beans and mashed potato. I had to scavenge around for the food and it all looked quite depressing. It had seen much better days. The place was absolutely filthy. I don’t know how I managed to keep it clean. Oil and dust etc everywhere.

Did I dictate the one about the hotel fire? … “not this one either as well” – ed …I was in my hotel room doing something. Something caught alight. I just sat there watching the fire spread and spread until suddenly I realised that everyone else would notice it as well and would wonder why I didn’t call the alarm. I pressed the alarm button and began to dress. At least I wanted to be dressed and have STRAWBERRY MOOSE with me but the fire spread so quickly that I was soon overwhelmed. I could hear everyone in the corridor panicking around after I’d pressed the button but I was still trying my best to dress in the middle of this huge conflagration.

Later on I’d picked up a train somewhere in the Balkans. I’d only booked on for a couple of stops. It was a slow, rambling train that went just about everywhere. I ended up being wedged into a compartment with a bunch of 7 or 8 girls. They were all speaking in a variety of languages so they ended up speaking English together. They seemed to be really interesting people. The train rattled on. In the end I decided that I didn’t want to alight but stay on and listen to all the conversation. Eventually I asked one of the girls where the train went to. She mentioned some small town in some obscure corner of the Balkans up Macedonia, Kosovo or Albania way. I asked where it came from. She told me some other small town way down in the south. She said “you’ll have a lot of trouble finding a place to stay at the destination you choose when the train ends because the authorities there aren’t very well disposed to foreigners. I can’t even take you home to lodge at my house for the night because everyone will ask questions”. Then she mentioned that somehow there is somewhere where I might have a room. I suddenly found myself involved in this deep conversation with this girl. All the other girls there were chatting away quite happily. I began to think that this was probably one of the most enjoyable train journeys that I’ve ever had, wedged in this crowded train with no food, not ticket, nothing. For some reason this trip felt as if it was something that I really ought to do. I was really disappointed when I found out that this was only a dream

My walk took me to another place where there was a 5-star hotel. I went in and managed to book a room very well known for very suspicious foreigners. It was in this room that the fire began. A little spark, and within 30 seconds there was a raging inferno. I had to press the fire button … fell asleep here …

Well, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, when I say that I fell asleep, I’m actually asleep while I’m dictating. I have this thing off to a fine art. But what actually happens is that suddenly everything on the dictaphone goes silent and then a few seconds later you can hear me snoring.

So my apologies to Percy Penguin (who doesn’t appear in these pages half as often as she deserves) for doubting her word.

For the rest of the day I’ve been dealing firstly with a couple of radio programmes.

Having dictated the notes for two radio programmes last night just before going to bed, I worked my way right through them and ended up with two completed programmes. So that’s something else out of the way.

Secondly, I made a big batch of fruit buns for the next couple of weeks. They look quite good too and I’ll tell you tomorrow what they are like.

Tonight’s pizza was another candidate for the best one ever. What helped, I reckon, was that the oven was stinking hot, having just been baking the fruit buns. It really did come out well.

Tomorrow is the start of my three-week Welsh crash course. I need to knuckle down and do some serious work and stop letting things slip away from me like this all the time.

What I need is another day like today, although that’s probably a bit too much to expect. Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.

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Saturday 5th August 2023 – IT’S REALLY WILD …

… outside. Some of the strongest winds that I have known since I have been here are howling around outside as I write these notes.

It’s been like this all day although maybe it’s a little worse now than it was. It certainly didn’t keep me awake during the night.

Plenty of other things did though, and I wish that I knew what they were, for it was another night when it seemed to take an age for me to go off to sleep, no matter how tired I was.

When the alarm went off I had to struggle out of bed. And later on it was even more of a struggle to make my way to Caliburn. I’m not very steady on my crutches at the best of times, but with my shopping trolley in a howling gale and torrential rainstorm made it even worse.

They were late opening up at Noz so I had to sit in the van for a while. And I’m glad that I went there because I was rather lucky.

While I’d been waiting, I’d been lamenting on the state of Caliburn’s wheels that are dirty, pitted and rusting. I’d painted the spare wheels a while ago and there in Noz today was some rustproofing wheel paint so I bought a couple of tins.

All I need now is for the wind to drop and the rain to stop.

There was also some jars of curry – vegan lentil Korma – so I grabbed a couple of jars of that too for use one of these days.

LeClerc didn’t come up with much but I seemed to have been in there for ages. I was quite late coming back. Especially as I was held up by a van crawling along at 20kph with a tannoy blaring out of it.

There’s a circus somewhere in town and this van was announcing it. Driven by one of the clowns, most likely.

There was quite a battle to make it back to the apartment with all of this wind.

Having sorted out the shopping I had my coffee and cheese on toast, then came back in here where, true to form just recently, I crashed out. Good and proper too.

There was quite a lot of stuff on the dictaphone from the night too, as I found out later on. I was back in hospital. They stuck an intravenous drip in my arm and connected a drip-feed to it. When they finished they disconnected the drip and strapped the catheter under a bandage of plasters and everything and sent me home to come back in a week or so. I then had to go to a check-up a day or two later. I can’t remember now where this check-up was but it was something significant. They checked me and from what they could see everything was back to normal. There were a couple more measurements and readings they wanted to take. They were underneath the bandages and strapping so they needed to take it all off. I was aware of how much all of this hurt, putting these needles in and taking them out again so I made something of a face about it. She told me that if all went well they would take it out today. I thought “what about if I have to come back here in a few days?”. She didn’t really have an answer to that. I felt just totally fed up at this point that they were thinking about all these things and no-one was actually thinking about me and the effect that the needles were having on me.

I had to join in last night with some people engaged in a tug of war with a gigantic ginger cat. Apparently it was a security cat that belonged to some kind of building and had been massively over-fed. It was having severe health problems and needed to be taken to the vet. They had so much difficulty catching it that eventually they managed to get a lead around it but they needed some help to try to pull it into a cage because it was so big.

Later on I was coming from Chester. As I approached Nantwich I was having a debate with myself about whether it would be quicker to go through the town centre or around the by-pass. Eventually I chose to go round the by-pass. It was the wrong decision because it was chucking-out time at Reaseheath College. The whole area was swarming with people, pedestrians, cyclists etc. We were held up for ages. I was bringing a coupe back to the area, 2 people sitting in the back seat. They were flirting around. I was having to keep a close watch in my mirror in all this traffic but I couldn’t see the road because of these two people. I was trying at the time to work out how best to tell them to sit still and not move about so that I could see what was going on behind me.

It was also the end of term. A bunch of kids from school were off to University. One girl in particular whom I liked, I’d been helping her with all of her paperwork, to prepare it. She was packing and I was going to take her to the University to install her there. I had my car in the car park. We were going through the final preparation getting the paperwork ready when one of her friends who was going to the same University said that we’d take her as well. She asked which car it was. I told her that it was a pale blue Ford Cortina RBY623R. I told her where it was parked. We collected the other girl’s things and went to draw out some money and to photocopy a few documents. She asked if we could stop somewhere as we were passing through France to pick up some alcohol. She was a small girl who looked younger than she was. I told her to print out an extra copy of her birth certificate and put it in her purse with her so that she wouldn’t have any problems in places like that. We then went to the printer, which was like a cash point. We had to insert a document. There was a keyboard where you had to type whatever information you wanted to insert. She inserted some documents, typed a few things and then printed them out. There was a couple of other people waiting to use the machine. They complained about how long she was taking which I thought was strange as it was the only one for the entire school. There must have been queues like this before.

As I went back to sleep I was on a bus with my passengers. I was collecting up my paperwork, tools and a box full of washers, drill bits etc, getting ready. I had prepared a map of the area. We set off in the coach on the way home, stopping by various places on the way.

Later on I finished off the radio notes ready for dictating and then went back to my Canada 2017 trip. I’ve now crossed the Churchill River and on my way north-east.

Churchill River was interesting. Trying to research it is not very easy because it wasn’t called Churchill River until 1965. When it was originally observed by Europeans, they named it “Grand River” but in 1821 it was renamed “Hamilton River” in honour of the then-Governor of Newfoundland.

So you can see what I mean.

And it’s likely to become even more complicated in due course as there is a movement afoot to petition the Government to change the name to represent its Innu heritage.

In case you’re wondering, which I’m sure you are, there are three, and maybe four, ethnic groups here in Labrador. Along the coast, north of Hamilton Inlet but formerly much further south too, are the Inuit.

In the southern part of Labrador and the interior of the north are the Innu, recognised by themselves as forming one ethnic grouo but some people, including our hero Viano Tanner, suggest that the southern people, known by the French in the past as Montagnais and the people in the interior further north , known in the past as Naskapi, are distinct and discrete groups.

And since 1982 the Métis have been recognised as a distinct and discrete ethnic group.

Something else that I’ve been doing is hunting down Court injunctions.

In 2012 Valard, the company that is building the dam at the Muskrat Falls and Nalcor, the energy corporation of the Newfoundland and Labrador Government were granted an injunction which prohibited “NunatuKavut (the local Innu) members and others from going within 50 meters of the Site which included any areas of land that Nalcor is authorized to use, or shall be authorized to use in the future”.

A Court of Appeal hearing in 2014 found that this injunction “prohibited the people of NunatuKavut from carrying out traditional activities and accessing their traditional lands” in defiance of a Treaty of Native Rights and overturned the injunction.

But the lesson we can learn from that is that not even a Treaty with native people is allowed to stand in the way of one of the Newfoundland Government’s sacred cows, if the Government thinks that it can get away with it.

Tea tonight was chips, salad and one of those kale and lentil burgers that I bought the other day. The burger wasn’t at all what I expected but it was actually quite nice and I wished that I’d bought some more of them.

Having written my notes now I’m going to dictate my notes for the radio if the wind dies down and I can hear myself think. And then I’m off to bed.

Tomorrow I have fruit buns to make and radio programmes to prepare, so by the looks of things I’ll be busy. Mind you, I’ll probably fall asleep instead. That seems to be how things work these days.

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Friday 4th August 2023 – AFTER ALL OF YESTERDAY’S …

… exertions, today followed pretty much the same pattern.

Although there wasn’t the same number of sound files on the dictaphone, it wasn’t far off. And I reckon that had I gone to bed last night at 23:00 as normal instead of … errr … 01:30 this morning, who knows how many there might have been?

When the alarm went off this morning I was actually in a record shop somewhere discussing a Wishbone Ash album with someone. Consequently it took me a few seconds to find my feet.

When the second alarm went off at 07:05 I was actually on my feet – but only just. And the shower that I had after my medication did little to revive me.

Just as last week, I was on the bus early, on the grounds that the sooner I go, the quicker I come back – rather like Tommy Handley’s Ali Oup and “I go – I come back”.

At Carrefour I did a little shopping and then for some reason had to wait quite a while for the bus. I’ve no idea why he took so long to come back this morning.

Back here I had a little accident. Having cleaned out a pepper ready for freezing, I dropped one of the freezer drawers on the floor. I ended up having to clean it, repair it and repack it And then I could sit down and have my cheese on toast and coffee.

There had been plenty of post in my letterbox. The most important letter was that the Physical Re-education Centre that contacted me by phone a couple of weeks ago has offered me 20 – yes, TWENTY sessions, starting in mid-October.

It seems that they are taking this nerve problem seriously. What with that and the hospital visit at the end of the month, who knows?

Also in the post was the acknowledgement of my application for a disabled person’s permit. They told me that I had sent in everything that they needed and I can expect a reply “within four months”. We shall see.

For a change, I managed to avoid falling asleep this afternoon, not that I actually felt like doing all that much. But eventually I had a listen to the dictaphone – piles and piles of it. I had a dream last night. I can’t remember very much about it but I remember that it was full of a lot of people watching it who were coming out of profanities. I had to post some kind of notice requesting everyone to mind their language as there were young children in the vicinity listening to all of it.

There was also the story of a whaler out of Dundee that ran onto rocks and sank as it was coming into the harbour. The crew took to the boats and came ashore but they must have been on an island because there was still no way to reach Dundee. They had to wait to be rescued. There were all kinds of accusations flying around. I was captain of the whaler so I had one of my crew discreetly count the number of people who were with us. He said “between 18 and 26”. That was not what I wanted to know. I was hoping that he’d give me an exact number so I’d know first of all how many we’d had starting out, how many had made it ashore and how many had subsequently been able to go ashore somewhere else. There was an old mariner on this island who was extremely critical of what we’d done. He was very domineering and told us to sit down even though we could see a ship coming in the distance. He told us to sit and watch television while we awaited rescue. I said that I wasn’t interested in watching anything on television. he made some kind of dismissive remark about that. My story was that the chart was deficient but he seemed to think that it was my fault completely, the sinking of the ship. I was looking forward to the subsequent examination where I could put forward my points of view.

Here we were on this island awaiting rescue and we came across a pile of railway carriages for the London Underground. That invited a lot of comment as to what they might be doing there in this rural outpost somewhere along the shore near Dundee. One thing though was that I was sure that looking at the men who had been saved I didn’t really recognise anyone who’d started out on the trip. They could have been different people for all I know

And then someone wanted to work out some kind of survey where any kind of activity took place on the island compared to life on there as normal. I told him to clear off and said that as far as I was concerned no-one was having anything to do with him and this particular survey. What with all of that, it must have been a quite interesting night on that island near Dundee.

And on another island in the middle of the Atlantic there were about 20 children. What they were doing was to play some kind of game with them to see how many could identify the places that were involved with many of the early explorers’ voyages around the world, like the Canary Islands and the Azores, Lanzarote, islands like that situated off the coast of Europe and North West Africa.

I was in a music shop last night. I’d bought a Wishbone Ash album years ago but I’d never got round to actually playing it. When I did, the tracks didn’t correspond with what was on the running order list. I did some research and found that it’s the wrong album that’s been pressed on the CD. The label was for the CD box but the album on the disc was a different one. I went back to the record shop to tell them about it and see what they could do, not that with all this immense lapse of time I expected them to do anything. I was in the middle of talking to them when the alarm went off.

There was some other stuff too but you don’t really want to know about that right now.

As I mentioned yesterday I spent some time on the radio programme that I started yesterday. Another pile of notes have been written and I can finish it off tomorrow. Then I can dictate the notes tomorrow night and if I’m lucky I can prepare two radio programmes on Sunday.

It’ll be a busy day on Sunday because I have some fruit buns to bake. I’ve almost run out of those.

Finally I spent some time tracking down some more stuff about Muskrat Falls. I managed to find not only the agreement that was signed between the Newfoundland and Labrador Government and the Innu community in 2011, I managed to find out how, why and when it all went pear-shaped.

Peter Penashue, the leader of the Innu community at Sheshatshiu, the Innu settlement whose tribal hunting grounds were most affected made an impassioned speech setting out the community’s grievances and the reasons for the blockade of the site.

Basically, there was some kind of profit-sharing agreement proposed in which the Innu community would be paid a percentage of the resale of the electricity generated.

However with massive cost and timescale overruns and structural failures, and much of the electricity being siphoned off by the residents of the Provincial capital in Newfoundland, something that has added millions and millions of dollars to the costs, even the most optimistic estimates reckon that there will be no profit generated for at least 30 years.

That’s assuming that nothing else goes wrong (and what are the odds on that?) of course. And by that time all of the people who were expected to profit from the development will have received nothing.

In the meantime, their hunting grounds and traditional way of life will have been destroyed.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on our first trip to Labrador before there was any sign of development, we saw moose a-plenty, and even bear. Since the development began, we’ve seen just one moose and that’s your lot. In 2017 we didn’t see anything at all.

Tea tonight was salad and chips with some of the falafel that I bought the other day. It was quite nice too, but then again that falafel is a proprietary brand rather than a generic one.

Back here I actually fell asleep for 15 minutes which was disappointing – I was hoping that I could keep going all day having gone “over the hump” this afternoon. But now that I’ve finished my notes I’m off to bed.

Shopping tomorrow, but I don’t want all that much. But supplies of coffee are beginning to run low so I’ll be on the lookout for a coffee sale. They haven’t had one for a while so they must be due for one. It’ll probably be the week after I’ve bought some at full price.

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Thursday 3rd August 2023 – YOU CAN TELL …

… what kind of night I had last night simply by looking at the dictaphone and counting the number of times I dictated something. We actually reached double figures, and it’s not every day that that happens.

Furthermore, I was actually up and about before the alarm went off too.

Only by a matter of a handful of seconds, it’s quite true, but nevertheless, it still counts. When I opened my eyes and saw that it was 06:59 on the fitbit I thought that I may as well make the effort.

One thing’s for sure is that I won’t be up early tomorrow. We had football tonight – Hwlffordd v B36 Torshavn in European competition.

1-0 down from the first leg, they rode their luck all through the first half and with half an hour to go actually managed to score a goal that made the score equal over the two legs.

The game went into extra time but Torshavn scored what can only be described as a “controversial penalty” to knock the Welsh side out. Manager Tony Pennock was quite right to be incensed but I notice that he kept very quiet about the penalty that I and the commentators would have awarded against his team earlier in the game to which the referee waved “play on”.

The post-match interviews were quite entertaining. Pennock came out with a few comments that reminded me of Ron Atkinson and his famous quote of “I never comment on referees – and I won’t break the habit of a lifetime for that prat!”

Centre-forward Ben Fawcett, who scored Hwlffordd’s goal, reminded me of Jim Finks, one-time coach of the New Orleans Saints gridiron team who once famously said “We’re not allowed to comment on the lousy officiating”

So with extra time being played, the game didn’t finish until long after 23:00 so it’s going to be a long night tonight.

It’ll be just like today when it took me an absolute age to actually start work – after a very late morning coffee.

And the first thing that I did was to sort out the music for the next radio programme. That took much longer than it ought to have done.

One thing that took the time was that I had to track down a certain track that I needed. In this programme, whenever it will be broadcast, we’ll be celebrating the birthday of a rather obscure musician.

Her partner plays a major rôle in our radio programmes and she actually wrote the words for one or two of his more rare songs and played keyboards on a couple. We can’t actually celebrate her birthday without playing some of her music.

While I was at it, I wrote the text for some of the music that I’ll be playing and I’ll write some more tomorrow. With a bit of luck, God’s help and a Bobby, I might have two radio programmes to prepare on Sunday.

And then there was the dictaphone. And I couldn’t believe the amount of stuff that was on it from the night. I was at the football last night. The town where I was living was a small French town roughly the size of Granville but in the interior down south. They were playing a game of football. I went along to watch the match. There was a lot happening that I’ve forgotten but something that sticks in my mind was that I was chatting to a group of people some of whom were young girls, schoolgirls or whatever. At one point the ball came over our way. I got off my chair and went to pick it up to throw it back in but then I found that I had real difficulty getting back to my feet. When I did, some girl had sat in my chair. I made some remark about it. She said that she’d sat in there first. I thought “never mind”. There was a couple of empty chairs around here and there so I took one of those, sat next to them and continued to watch the game. There was much more to it than this but I can’t remember now.

When the alarm went off I awoke with a real start. I was in such a deep sleep. I didn’t know where I was for a minute. When I looked round I thought that the cleaner was here. She was trying to tell me that she has to cut down her hours because one of her family needed help. I was trying to get my head round all this information. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 04:00 and I’d obviously dreamt the alarm somehow. That’s really surprising. It sounded so real too. It goes without saying that there was no cleaner here etc, just me waking up spontaneously for no good reason so I turned over and went back to sleep. I really couldn’t believe it.

Then a surprise for a friend of mine. We’d heard from a restaurant in St Malo that a well-known brand of gravy actually contained animal products. I went to make further enquiries and discovered that it was indeed true. I swapped a meal of greasy sausages and things like that for another kind of meal but I can’t remember what the other meal was now. I’m having a real problem remembering my dreams at the moment. I don’t know why that is.

There was another dream where I was having to see a heart specialist. He’d given me an appointment at 08:10. I went to see him and was there early. There were a couple of other doctors’ surgeries in the same place. One woman came in to sit down. Someone else came in, probably a doctor because he went into one of the side rooms. He then came out and began to talk to this woman about Patagonia and going to have an operation done there. That immediately appealed to me. I began to think about life in Patagonia, how I would go there, how I was going to travel, what I was going to do. I was all building myself up in this dream for a trip to Patagonia on the basis of absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

We were wandering around a place in rural Spain. I wanted to go to use the bathroom. I set out to find it. I went past a guy who had a box. He had 4 small logs in it. Sitting across the logs was a French bread pizza. He was trying to light the logs presumably to cook his pizza so I told him what a wonderful thing it was. He didn’t understand so I tried to say it in Spanish. He still didn’t understand me. Everyone with me asked me what I was doing so I explained. I found the bathroom and walked in. To my surprise it was just a communal room with about 6 WCs in it, no partitions or anything. You just sat there or stood there in full view of everyone else and did what you had to do. There was no blushing or anything like that from anyone except from me of course.

That was actually the first time that I’ve had a dream in Spanish.

There was a sequel to this dream as well. A young Spanish boy whose father went to discipline him. He suddenly had a huge pain in his groin that doubled him up. He was rolling around the floor in agony. While this was going on his son was there. This pain didn’t ease off until the guy decided that he’d change his mind about punishing his son. Once he’d made that decision the pain stopped

There was also something about a football match in Spain. While the father was doubled up in pain the opposition team grabbed hold of the football and tried to take a quick free kick and roared off down the field before the referee stopped them and brought them back. It was those two new players from Hwlffordd, Crossdale and the other one … “Owen” – ed … who were doing this.

There was something about cricket too, trying to explain it to a new player about how he could learn the game by watching so when his team was in he’d be out there and he could watch what was happening, then get himself out and come back in, then prepare to go back out again when his team was in, all kinds of stuff like that, this particular dream that I can’t remember the fine details now

And finally there was another dream that I’ve had before. I was with Nerina who was on a bike and I was on foot. We were chatting as she was cycling. We were in Stoke on Trent and came to a steep hill. Something had happened that she had done something that had not been the kind of thing that I would do. People had believed that we had separated. Nerina had strung them on a little. When we came to the steep hill there was a short cut for people on foot so I took it and she continued along the road. She fell in with one of these people who then began to ask her questions about what she was up to. When the short cut re-joined the road we joined up again. By now I was running up the hill and she was cycling. There was a couple of people standing on the pavement ahead of us, one of whom I recognised. A car that was coming up the hill suddenly mounted the pavement and hit these 2 people knocking them flying and drove off again. By now we’d all arrived at this particular point and we tried to ask one of these guys what exactly had happened

It’s no surprise that there was no time to do anything else other than this. There was tea of course, a leftover chili sin carné that was as delicious as ever, and then I dashed in here for the football.

Now the game is over and my notes are finished, I’m off to bed. I’m nipping into town on the bus tomorrow for a little shop and then I’ll probably be flat out asleep in the afternoon recovering from the effort.

That assumes that I wake up in time to go to the shops. Another night like last night and I won’t wake up for a week.

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Wednesday 2nd August 2023 – I MANAGED TO KEEP …

… on going this afternoon until about 17:00 before I crashed out. And then it was only for about 10 minutes or so.

That makes a change from how things have been just recently. But there’s no need to crow about it because one swallow doesn’t make a summer, as we all know.

And in any case, even if it were to be the situation, past experience tells us that what goes around comes around and it wouldn’t be too long before we’re back there again.

Mind you, it’s a real surprise that that’s all there was, considering the night that I’d had. Because I’d certainly been around the block, and more than once too. There was some kind of weird dream about cats and football goalkeepers and these wafers that you have on which you spread your food but I can’t remember any of it at all.

Then there was something to do with the town football club that had been playing in Wales. They’d played against three Welsh Premier League clubs and had been beaten comprehensively in each one 4-0. They went on some kind of outing. I was there and took part in it. We had to walk through a really old building. When we reached the far end someone opened the door and there was a very small yard outside. The tour must have stopped at this door but there was no-one about to talk to and we hadn’t actually seen anything. It was one of these dreams where one expects something to happen and you grip the edge of your seat waiting for it yet nothing does. You end up being in some kind of void about it. I was walking without crutches but having some mobility problems.

There was another distressing dream about being in the Southern Hemisphere where the penguins there were being fed live rodents, just tearing these rodents to shreds. The squeals were horrible. In the snow was a strange vehicle that went past. It looked like a tadpole travelling in reverse making a noise as it scrunched past the snow. But it was the squeals of these rodents that were being torn to bits that got me.

We were also talking about these animals that were watching a football match. They somehow managed to escape from the crowd and ran down this narrow footpath through the ice. People chased after them in different cars and machines and so on. One person was on foot and managed to corner them in the kitchen of a house somewhere but they threw some product onto the fire to make an explosion that broke these people’s trains of thought so that they could escape without being noticed

Later on I was back in Crewe. There was a wedding of a membr of our family. I’d no intention of going. My sister was going but there was no-one to do her job. They couldn’t find a replacement at the pub where she worked in Nantwich. I said that I’d go to do it. I prepared myself . That took me much longer than I expected. In the end I set off in this ancient Ford Transit van that was rusting and generally falling to bits. When I reached where I was going to park, an Indian guy came over to ask me what I was doing. I told him. He had a look inside my van and saw tons of stuff lying around. He went round to the passenger side and just with the force of his hands slid down the window from the outside. I shouted at him and told him what I thought. I said “if I come back here and find stuff missing I have a good idea of your face and I’ll call the police about it”. He asked “what would the police do?” as if the police wouldn’t be interested in a case like that. He explained that he owns several properties in the town and rented the rooms out to different people. I replied “God help them!”. Making sure that the van was locked I set out to walk to the pub but bumped into a friend of mine. As we were walking down towards the river bridge in Welsh Row the subject of Charles Hawtrey came up. I explained that I’d once actually met him. He replied “yes he’s a wonderful guy. You’re really lucky. I would really have liked to have met him”. I was thinking that I was already running late . Everything that’s happened since has been to delay me. I’ve no idea what the time is now. I was too afraid to look in case I’d messed the thing up totally and completely.

Finally I was back in Crewe again, this time for the first time in years. I’d gone to help out to work on the taxis. There was a job to pick up at 01:45 from a house. I didn’t recognise the address but someone said that it’s next to a certain pub near Nantwich. I knew where the pub was soo I thought that I could find the house. I set out but the whole entire road layout had changed. New roads had been added. I completely and utterly lost my bearings. In the end I had to retreat to a place that I knew in the centre of Nantwich and walk the way that I would walk 30 years ago. I found out where I’d made a mistake and eventually found my way to this house. I was running ever so late because of all this confusion but it really was bewildering how all of the roads had changed. I didn’t recognise anything.

As you can tell, it took me quite a while to type out all of that. It was quite a voyage last night.

Something else that I had to do was to re-do part of the radio programme that will be broadcast at the weekend.

As you might expect, being so far in advance causes all of its own problems, and we had the usual one that having dictated something along the lines of “and is still performing even now” about a musician, he then duly obliges by shuffling off this mortal coil to go to that Great Gig In The Sky.

It’s all very well being “not frightened of dying – Any time will do, I don’t mind” but I wish they wouldn’t do it a week or so before the programme is to be broadcast.

While the cleaner was here I finished off the notes for the next radio programme and then after she left I turned m attention to the notes for the trip around Canada in 2017.

Right now, I’m coming off the Eagle Plateau and out of the Mealy Mountains down into the valley of the Churchill River where I’ll be heading east and then north to North West River, the furthest north that it’s possible to go by road.

Well in fact, it’s possible to go further north, but not in a continuous drive. Strider and I would have to take a freighter and head north to one of the Mission Stations where the Moravian missionaries attend to the spiritual needs of the Inuit.

That would have been an interesting trip prior to the Influenza epidemic of 1918. There were about a dozen or so Mission Stations but several of them were wiped out and abandoned. There are now just five.

But as for the road, that didn’t go to North West River in the past. Access was by boat and then a cable car across the river.

However, the discovery of a deposit of uranium at Makkovik at the height of the Cold War led to the construction of a road, which reached as far as North West River before the deposit was found to be uneconomic.

The road was thus abandoned and piles of radioactive rock was left lying around causing a health risk to the local inhabitants.

Tea tonight was one of the best that I’ve made. It should have been a leftover curry but I’m saving that for tomorrow because I won’t have much time.

Instead, I had the meal that I promised myself – steamed vegetables in a cheese sauce with a spicy vegan sausage. It really was delicious.

So I’m off to bed, hoping to have a really good sleep. Or if not, a really good voyage. The other night several of my favourite characters came to accompany me and it would be really nice if they were to turn up again.

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Tuesday 1st August 2023 – I’VE HAD AN …

… early tea tonight.

There’s football on the radio (not, unfortunately, on the internet) tonight, the return leg of Swift Hesperange of Luxembourg v TNS and I don’t want to miss it.

But I’m surprised that I was awake enough to listen to it because, once again, I’ve been asleep for much of the day unfortunately. It was another one of those nights about which I promised not to speak.

When the alarm went off I was flat out yet again and struggle to get to my feet before the second alarm went off.

After the medication it took me a while to wake up, and another late coffee again today. And once I was back in the Land of the Living, whenever that might have been, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a whole night spent wandering around in the most bizarre kinds of places with all kinds of strange people. It went on for ever and ever and ever. I was in Canada at one point and all kinds of exciting places. The moment that I picked up the dictaphone everything completely evaporated. I remember nothing whatsoever except the fact of the huge variety of different things that I’d been doing but not exactly what I’d been doing.

And then we were at a football match. The opposition was taking a corner. A TNS defender yelled at everyone to leave the ball as it flew over. A Holywell player complained to all his team-mates about it. Everyone seemed to complain to everyone else about not intercepting this ball that flashed across the defence.

Later on at one point last night 3 or 4 of us were walking on the beach round by Parkgate, Neston, that area looking across to what was going on in Wales but we couldn’t see anything happening over there. Ironically, when I lived in Chester in the early 1970s I walked along the beach at Parkgate and Little Neston on several occasions

Someone posted a photo of a rare S-series Foden lorry with a showman’s body on the back of it, saying that he was going to part it out if anyone needed any spares. Someone took an injunction out in the Court against him doing that on the grounds that it was an extremely rare and historic vehicle and shouldn’t be broken up.

Finallt I’d been to school in Nantwich and met up with my mother and brother (I can’t keep them out of my dreams, can I?). We decided that we’d cycle home. We reached Shavington and went out on the old road towards the Hough. They’d been resurfacing it and there was a lot of loose gravel and stone etc. Cars were sliding everywhere. I made my way through to the other end to near Cobb’s Lane. When I turned round the other two weren’t behind me. I waited there but they didn’t show up. There was a huge car accident, cars and lorries etc sliding on the loose gravel, ending up on the wrong side of the road and shooting through the roundabout there. It was complete mayhem for a while. I was sitting there waiting thinking that if they have a problem they’ll phone me. The bus to Crewe turned up so I went to sit on the bus out of the rain – by now it was raining heavily. Still no-one showed up. Suddenly the bus started and set off. It went in a strange way that I’d travelled before in another dream at some point in the past, past a huge skyscraper-type building at the back of North Staffordshire that was some form of Bible college, past a historic church and a couple of castles. Everyone on this bus was asking the driver about these castles. He said that they’ll see 10 before the bus reaches the end of its run but they’s only counted 4 at this point. I was looking at my watch thinking that considering that I left at 17:00 for what would be a 15-minute run it will be 19:30 before I return home. I’m not going to want to take this trip more than once in my life. There’s still no phone call message from anyone to find out where they were for the last stretch of road that they hadn’t come to join me.

That road, incidentally, reminded me of the road alongside the Sioule from Menat towards St Gervais where Chateau Rocher is, and the road that runs at the back of Audley down towards Keele past where Heighley Castle used to be.

For the rest of the day, when I’ve been awake, I’ve been back in Canada with my trip around Labrador. Right now I’ve started to stumble across the Valard and Nalcor site operations.

All of that is extremely controversial. Having built the huge power station at Churchill Falls in the 50s and 60s and finding that they had no customers for the electricity, they sold the electricity to Québec Hydro for peanuts.

When Labrador developed in the 1980s the region had no other source of electricity to they had to buy their own electricity back from Québec at an extortionate price.

Since then, there has been a variety of projects to generate electricity, of which Muskrat Falls is the most controversial. Tribal areas have been devastated, hunting grounds destroyed, settlements flooded and electricity generated “somehow” ending up at St John’s, the Province’s capital in Newfoundland.

Add to all that the fact that cost and timescales have been dreadfully overrun, and even the conservative Canadian Broadcasting Corporation refers to “years of scandals related to Muskrat Falls”.

Financial and Project management in Newfoundland and Labrador is a history of calamity and disaster. It seems to me that no-one in the Government has the first clue about what they are trying to accomplish and end up lurching from one catastrophe to another.

Tea was a taco roll with rice and veg (and very nice it was too) and now that the football has had its disappointing end I’m going to bed.

Ready to fight another day, I don’t think. I may not be doing so well during the day but you’re certainly having your money’s worth during the night.

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Monday 31st July 2023 – I’M GOING TO STOP …

… discussing my miserable nights because you’re probably just as fed up reading about them as I am having them.

So when the alarm went off I was fast asleep in the bed and it was something of a struggle to crawl out of bed before the second alarm went off.

After the medication I went and had a shower to try to awaken me but that didn’t work very well. After the nurse had been to give me my weekly injection I came back in here.

It took an age for me to come round into the Land of the Living and it was a very late mid-morning coffee. And then I had a listen to the dictaphone.

There were tons of stuff on the dictaphone from the night there too. Someone’s name turned up on my social network, a boy whom I knew from a foreign country when I was at school. We got in touch and agreed to meet. I could recognise him from his photo. He was with some kind of little dog. When they came close to me they suddenly disappeared. I had a walk around this park and couldn’t see them. I walked across the park to the other end and that was when I caught a glimpse of them. I waved and they waved back. Eventually after many attempts we managed to meet up. It turned out this he had stopped to buy a sandwich on his way to meet me and his dog had seen someone with a sandwich and gone haring after it so he’d gone haring after the dog. he wanted to know why I hadn’t written to ask him where he was. I thought “it’s only been like 15 minutes” but something inside told me that it was in fact a couple of years that i’d been wandering around that park. That was a lapse of time that I couldn’t explain

There was something about Zero too last night. My friend from Congleton had had some good luck. She’d had her house up for sale for a considerable amount of time and it had suddenly sold for a much better price than she had anticipated too. She already had another property lined up that she could buy so she didn’t need the money and her doctor was asking her what she planned to do. She could come up with thousands of things. One was to buy a house at Prestatyn where they could go at weekends but would in fact be Zero’s house when she’s a little older. The other doctor thought that a good idea. He also mentioned about her becoming a private patient and having to pay for her medical treatment saying that private patients had so much better treatment than NHS ones etc. He also asked her when she was going to marry again. She made some kind of vague nebulous reply about that.

I can’t remember who I was with in the next one. It wasn’t TOTGA because her name came up in the conversation but it was a girl with whom I used to work who had a good job that involved projects. The thing was that you came up with your own project and this firm would back you and provide you with the resources to do it. She was telling me all about it and how good the other situation was. In fact it might have been someone I used to know quite well, saying how much of a change it was from her previous employment. She said that any kind of project was considered, whether fitting tyres on a car, rock groups practising etc. It’s the sort of thing that had I been able I would have been interested in doing. I had an appointment somewhere else but she was talking away so much about this that I didn’t really want to leave. I wanted to stay to listen to the rest of it even though I was running late. We said that the only way to do a job like this is to go at it 100% give it everything you have and take what opportunities are offered. While this might not suit some people’s mentality it certainly suits others and those are the kind of people who would benefit from some situation like this

Later on we had an old small FIAT saloon, the type that you could load things in through the back window. I was putting some electrical equipment in but knocked the amplifier on the back seat forward into the footwell. As I was locking up the car I told Nerina what I’d done and told her not to let me drive away in the morning like that. She asked why I didn’t do it now. I said that it’s too complicated being in the dark and I can’t see what I’m doing. I might start pulling wires out. She still thought that it would be a good idea to do it now. To be quite honest I was absolutely exhausted. I just really wanted to stop doing it and go to bed but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to explain it as a good reason to Nerina. I was busy finding all kinds of other reasons not to do the job right now.

And finally I was doing some research so I joined an institute. I was in their offices looking through some paperwork. I came across someone’s file. It was a huge front and back piece with hooks on it where you could hang it from a rail with the spine upwards. I took one of these out to have a look at it. It was really just full of notes etc and various items of correspondence, one of which was someone asking around if anyone had an Opel Omega or Corsa that they could take a ride in to see what they were like ready to purchase. Someone scrawled underneath “God, are they asking for a taxi here?”. I had a look through it and went to put it back but I caught my right ankle on a stone on the wall and that caused me to drop to my knees. I don’t know why that happened but I couldn’t stand back up again. And I can’t stand up if I end on my knees either. That’s what’s really stopping me from going very far – the fear of falling over.

So we had Zero, TOTGA, Nerina and a few other regulars out there with us last night. It was nice to see so many of our friends. Still no Castor though, which is a shame. In a couple of weeks time it will be four years since our Brief Encounter in Peel Sound and the Coronation Gulf.

So when I’ve not been asleep I’ve been dealing with the next radio programme. The music is sorted out, paired off and much of the text has been written.

From now on I’m going to try to do things in a slightly different way. Usually I leave the very last track until last but in the programme that I’m preparing, the very last track has already been chosen, and for a very good reason too.

Inserting a track and its relevant text into the middle of a programme is quite complicated and takes much more time but I’ve been giving that a great deal of thought in order to find a work-around.

Tea was a stuffed pepper as usual and it was of course quite nice too. Made with fresh carrots too. There was not enough room in the freezer to buy a bulk lot of carrots to freeze so I just bought a couple to see me through until next weekend.

I’ll need to make some space in the freezer for more veg so I reckon that on Thursday I’ll be having mixed veg in cheese sauce. Now that I can buy vegan cheese in good quantities I can have much more of that, and quite right too.

But that’s for Thursday. There are a few more days in between. I’ll wander off to bed and prepare myself for battle tomorrow. Here’s Hoping that it’s a better day.

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Sunday 30th July 2023 – LOOKING AT THE …

… timestamps on the dictaphone, the time of the first recording was at 07:05 this morning.

And having been in bed at 01:00 this morning, it looks as if I might have actually had 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep. And it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say that.

Of course, it all depends on whether I was asleep quite quickly. And I can’t remember lying awake very long.

What actually made a change was that I actually felt better when I awoke too. I might have actually left my bed at 10:30 this morning but I was awake long before that so I made the most of a nice relax.

Having dictated the radio notes last night before going to bed, I edited them today and assembled the radio programme, found a final track, dictated the notes for that, edited them, and in the end finished with the usual hour-long programme.

It won’t be broadcast for several months yet because I’m a considerable way ahead of where I am right now, but when it’s broadcast it will be more of a folk-rock type of programme. We have all sorts of rock in our broadcasts.

And not just Anglo-Saxon either. Many people believe that rock music is merely an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon but we’ve had rock music from all around the world. The programme that I prepared last week had some African rock musicians, the one this week has a Greek rock group and in the past we’ve had amongst our many trans-continental musicians Maoris from New Zealand, Japanese from Yokohama, Danes from Aarhus and, probably the most surprising, Inuit from Greenland singing rock music in Inuktitut.

You can’t have it more cosmopolitan than that.

A little earlier, I mentioned the dictaphone. I’d been to see my doctor, the nerve specialist. After that i’d gone back to work. My boss was a new boss and didn’t know Brussels very well. he asked me where I’d been so I told him that I’d been to the doctor’s. He asked me which one I’d used. I explained, and he asked me how he could contact him. I gave him a form with the contact details on it. My boss was confused and was going to ring the wrong number so I had to point out to him the correct one. He telephoned. At first it was the case that someone said something about Lisieux on the telephone. He replied “no, it’s not there” so someone connected him and he talked. The subject of his eyes came up. The conversation finished by saying “I’ll send a cheque round for my glasses”. I wondered what that was about. His wife came over and began to talk to me. She said “you know it’s Ramadan, don’t you?”. I replied “it would be, wouldn’t it?”. Then she began to talk about things that people had given up for Lent. This conversation was becoming terribly confusing. I was half-expecting to have to go to take the cheque round to the doctor for these spectacles or whatever it was but by now he’d gone back to his work and he didn’t mention anything about the doctor or the spectacles so I’d no idea about what was happening or what would happen.

And then a whole group of us had been somewhere and were coming back on a ship. The ship got into distress and they had to send a Royal Navy destroyer to rescue us. It turned up and we all clambered aboard. I ended up sitting next to a girl and we began to talk. We found that we had a fair amount in common so the conversation went on for quite some time. When we docked we boarded a bus that took us as far as Gresty and we had to alight and walk from there to Shavington. I began to walk next to this girl. For some reason I held her hand. She didn’t take it away. We carried on walking. Each time we crossed the road I put her on the inside and held her other hand. She didn’t say a thing. We just carried on talking as if it was normal. We ended up walking through a narrow deserted street like a run-down area of a French village. There was some rock music pounding out from someone’s back garden. I said that that’s one thing that I like about areas like this. With all different alternative people who have moved in you’d walk down a place like this and find rock music. You’d never ever find anything like this in the UK. I ended up back at this girl’s house and found out that she had a boyfriend which really upset me. The group conversation went on. We ended up talking about English humour and Carry On films. By now I had one of my cards in my hand. I was going to give it to this girl and make some excuse that she could call me back to continue this chat sometime. But I never came round to that because there wasn’t a break in the conversation. We were all chatting away. It was a really lively evening, but once again I can’t even get the girl when I get the girl.

But it was true what I said about France. The flight to the towns in the 50s and 60s as France industrialised left a deserted and abandoned rural interior where abandoned houses and land could be bought for next to nothing. Consequently loads of people seeking a change of lifestyle, whether early-retired Brits and Dutch or young marginalised people dropping out, could buy a house and land and go back to their roots.

That period in the early years of the 21st Century when I was out there was one of the most exciting times that I’ve ever had and how I miss it. But with the nearest shop being 16kms away, no neighbours around for when I was ill, all of that, it was impossible once my health gave way.

But back to the dictaphone, I was off on another dream that had a connection with the previous one, about Christmas presents and wrapping packages but the church bells began to ring and it awoke me. Everything immediately evaporated from my head.

With having no pizza dough left I made another batch. 2 balls went into the freezer and the third went in the oven and as usual, it ended up being a really nice pizza. That grated vegan cheese is really nice.

So tomorrow, having finished the radio programme I’ll make a start on the next one. I might even have an early night and hope that I can have another good sleep like today. That will do me the world of good.

But I’ll have to have a shower in the morning quite early. The nurse is coming to give me my injection so I need to smell my best.

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Saturday 29th July 2023 – JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT …

… that it was safe to go back into the water, along came Len Fairclough.

And just when I thought that I was slowly pulling myself out of this quite depressing run of bad nights, there I go again

There’s not really much point in going to bed early if I can’t go off to sleep. And even when I do manage to go to sleep, if I’m waking up every five minutes it’s pretty pointless.

There are always sleeping pills of course, and this has been discussed before, but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my little voyages during the night are much more interesting and exciting than anything that ever happens to me during the day.

Life would be much less interesting if I never remembered where I went after dark.

When the alarm went off I was fast asleep and it really was quite an effort for me to haul myself out of bed.

It was even more of an effort to haul myself out of the apartment to go to the shops.

There wasn’t any point going to Noz because they had nothing there that I needed. It’s not all that often that I come away with nothing

LeClerc wasn’t all that much better either. There was nothing there of any interest today. They had one last box of falafel left so I threw that in my trolley to put in the freezer with the others. I don’t really need them but they are only on sale quite rarely so I stock up when I can.

Thinking on though, there are only three meals that I have that aren’t planned in advance. So now I have the falafel, sausages, sausage rolls, some Chinese whatsits, burgers, breaded quorn fillets, curries and once there’s some more room in the freezer there will be some vegan pie.

There’s enough in there to keep me going for a good while. I don’t have to worry too much about food.

Back here I had my cheese on toast and I hadn’t even finished my coffee before I crashed out. I was gone away with the fairies for hours and I felt absolutely dreadful afterwards.

Once I was awake again it took an age to gather up my wits, and then I had a listen to the dictaphone. I had a kind of manservant last night. I was going somewhere so I asked him to prepare some kind of meal that I could take with me. When I went to pick things up I couldn’t exactly tell what it was. It looked as if it was a curry. He said “no, it’s a green bean thing”. I had a look. I could see that it was enormous, what he’d cooked. It was in a vacuum-packed plastic bag thing. There looked enough in there for a couple of meals. It looked really interesting to take with me.

And then I was out on the Labrador coast last night trapping furs and animals. I was doing OK but felt that the agent guy whatever his name was was taking advantage of the power that he had over the people. A TV crew came to interview him and what he was doing there. It turns out that he was leaving after just a couple of years in his post and going somewhere. This was another dream with lots more to it than this but I can’t remember now.

Next I had to go to Manchester for work. As I was passing the railway company offices I thought that I’d call in there to book a ticket on the train. I went in there and they began to look through the timetable and wrote out an itinerary which was to leave Crewe, go to Chester, Chester-Liverpool, Liverpool-Manchester. The return was an express back at about 20:00. I thought “how is this possible? Why aren’t you booking a ticket for me on the local stopping train direct?”. The replied “you can’t buy that ticket from here at the railway offices, only the long-distance tickets you can have”. We had a really lengthy discussion about what were my plans, what I usually did etc. In the end they insisted and gave me this piece of paper with my itinerary on it. I realised that I had to return back to my office to pick up my possessions and return for the train. I only had 15 minutes to do that before the train leaves. I looked at the ticket and it wasn’t actually a ticket but a simple itinerary and told me that I had to call at the ticket office to pick up and pay for the ticket. I thought “I’m never going to be back here on that train in 15 minutes”. Back at my office I then had to enter a lift to go upstairs. There was a queue for the lift and it seemed to take ages. When I left the lift I was nearly knocked over by my boss. That led to some kind of discussion. All the time, time was ticking away. I could see that this was just going to be totally out of the question and absolutely impossible.

Back in that dream again about the railway tickets. We all climbed into the lift to leave the building. The first thing that I noticed was a CA Bedford ice cream van registered in Turkey. As the lift was going down I asked one of the guys if I could take a photo of it. He replied that it was his girlfriend’s so we had a big discussion about caravans. I told him about the two that I had down in the Auvergne and how I’d scrapped them. When I went to take a photo with my telephone it wouldn’t work. The one that I took with the big camera came out blurred and indistinct so I had to run to the car, give my things to someone to pack away and run back to the building to try to take another photo of it again. There was a dog there that I wanted to photograph too. All the while, time was just disappearing and I would never catch this train.

At one moment I was walking down a footpath with someone but as soon as I awoke all of it disappeared and I can’t remember anything more about that other than walking down the footpath with someone.

I was back in that dream about the railway again. We were all cramming into the lift ready to go back down again. I can’t remember now what happened once we were in the lift but again it was something else that went on for quite some time. All the time, time was just ebbing away and it was going to be impossible to pick up this ticket and be on this train at 09:00 or whatever.

What was left of the day was spent out on the Trans Labrador Highway back in 2017 making my way towards Goose Bay

Tea tonight was chips (now that I have some potatoes) and a breaded quorn fillet with salad and quite enjoyable it was too, as usual. Meals are quite nice around here these days.

Having now written my notes I’m going to dictate the radio stuff and then go to bed. If I’m lucky I might even have a decent sleep, but that’s really not all that likely. Tomorrow I have some pizza dough to make as I’ve now run out, but I have the digestive biscuits to keep me going.

So why knows? Maybe I might even find something else to do too, if I can stay awake long enough to do it.

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Friday 28th July 2023 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about what was going to happen this afternoon.

Flat out on my chair, not once but twice, and for quite a while too.

But really that was no surprise the way that things are right now.

As it happens, I’d had a good night’s sleep for a change too. In bed early and I can’t remember very much of anything at all until the alarm went off.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I went and had a shower to clean myself up and make myself look pretty ready for my bus to the town

It was early when I went out too. I decided that the sooner I start the sooner I finish and so I was on the bus at 09:10. I just went to the little Carrefour and then came straight back. I didn’t really want to hand around and I didn’t want to buy very much anyway.

Back here I made myself some coffee and cheese on toast and then came back in here where I crashed out – for the first time.

And in between then and crashing out later on, I was out in Canada back in 2017.

Out on the Trans-Labrador Highway I went to visit my favourite spot on Otter Brook, a tributary of the Eagle River, and then dealt with the knotty problem of the Labrador Border Dispute

The border between Labrador and Québec wasn’t officially delineated until 1927 and while Québec is quite happy to incorporate into its territory a couple of areas of land that it never claimed, it refuses to acknowledge the territory that was awarded to Labrador that Labrador didn’t claim.

Of course, the reason why Labrador never claimed that territory was because it didn’t need to – the border in that area having been decided by a Letter Patent of 1876 – but we mustn’t let facts get in the way of a good Qhébecois rant, of course.

As well as that, I’ve been exploring a couple or peri-Arctic meadows.

When William Munn proposed in 1914 that the Norse voyagers’ settlement was in Newfoundland he was ridiculed by many people. In the Norse sagas they talk about meadows and grassland and taking cattle with them to feed on the grass.

“As if that is ever going to be likely in the region of Newfoundland and Labrador” was the cry.

However the critics failed to take into account a few things – such as

  • There’s plenty of contemporary evidence of cattle in Labrador – the census of 1911 actually counts them
  • When Munn suggested that “maybe the climate in those days was different” he was roundly criticised. “There is no evidence whatever that the climate was different 900 years ago” said various people. That aged well, didn’t it?
  • Any comparison between any two places is merely relative. An agriculturalist from the Temperate Zone might not think much of the peri-Arctic meadows out here in Labrador, but the Norse voyagers came from Greenland and I’ve seen meadows in Greenland, and these meadows here in Labrador are relatively luxurious by comparison

So as well as falling asleep yet again, I had a bash at the dictaphone notes from the night. I was trying to do some tidying up at home (as if that is ever likely to happen). I’d set out to clean the kitchen floor. I’d brushed it and had it ready for the mop. The woman who helped my mother seemed to criticise it so I asked her if it wasn’t good enough. She said it wasn’t so I asked her to point out to me a few things where it was wrong. She pointed to some glue or something on the floor. It turned out that the kids had put sticky labels on the soles of their shoes for some reason. These sticky labels had in time worn off their shoes and stuck to the lino. I had to go through and scrape it all off before I could wash the floor. While I was washing it with the mop I went and rubbed the damp mop over my bedding too thinking that this would clean it and make it really nice. Everyone looked at me strangely but I carried on doing it. On one occasion I didn’t even squeeze the mop after I’d dipped it in the bucket of water before giving the bedclothes a good scrub with the mop. My mother said that my bed would be terribly wet tonight. I told her that it would soon dry. She replied “yes but it will have a strange odour for a while”.

There was another long, rambling dream about being with my niece and her husband, them dealing in cars at night, going up and down into the cellar for things – that was quite complicated and difficult. We were finishing off the erection of a wind turbine at the side of the barn. I was given the job to do that. They had a huge pneumatic drill that had been drilling holes everywhere. It was my job to tighten up the bolts with a big electric impact driver thing. I drove in a couple that I wasn’t very happy with but the final bolt was just spinning round. I eventually managed to fit the proper head on it and drove it straight into the wood. I told my niece’s husband that I wasn’t very happy at all with this mounting. When I stepped back to have a look I could see that it was a really complicated system and there were strains and stresses everywhere there shouldn’t be. The wind turbine itself was actually in the shadow of the house mounted on the wall. I didn’t think that it would be a particularly successful installation. In any case I was thinking that it would come down in the first strong wind. There was lots more to it in this dream. It went on for hours but I can’t remember very much of it now.

At one point we were in Middlewich driving a bus. I’d dropped off a couple of people to go to fetch some chips from somewhere. I went back and parked at the side of a house, just sitting there in a car. 2 people turned up, one waving a pair of drumsticks asking where the others were. I told them that they were in the chip shop. he made some kind of sarcastic comment. There were tons to this dream but I can only remember a fraction of it.

For tea tonight I was planning on having my chips but the potatoes weren’t so good and I hadn’t bought any this morning. So with my salad and quorn nuggets I had a handful of pasta and tomato sauce with some vegan cheese. And that was quite nice as well for a change.

So tonight I’m off to bed. Shopping tomorrow morning so I suppose that that’s going to be another afternoon crashed out on the chair in the bedroom. I hope that there are some interesting things in the shops to make up for the discomfort.

0

Thursday 27th July 2023 – THERE WAS ANOTHER …

… football match tonight.

Hwlffordd, after their heroics last week, were away in the Faroe Islands playing B36 Torshavn.

With 6 Albanian, 1 Latvian and 1 Afghan international in their side and a fairly successful history in Europe it was always going to be a struggle for Hwlffordd and when they were 2-0 down with 30 minutes to go, that looked as if it was going to be that.

But late in the game, during what was probably their only serious attack during the entire 90 minutes, to everyone’s surprise they managed to score a goal – being in the right place at the right time with a lucky ricochet in the penalty area.

So all is not lost. They are still within touching distance for the second leg back in Wales next week. And who knows? It’ll be most unlikely if they manage to pull it off but stranger things have happened.

And stranger things have happened too. Like I seem to have had a reasonable night’s sleep. It took me a while to go to sleep, even though I was in bed early, and I don’t recall waking up until about 06:30.

After waking up I somehow managed to go back to sleep again and had to fall out of bed when the alarm went off.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages, it took me quite a while to go wind myself up and start work, and today I’ve spent much of the day in Canada back in 2017.

So far, I’m somewhere down the Trans-Labrador Highway on my way to Goose Bay.

Part of my trip involved having a read of the controversial AP Low’s book written at the end of the 19th Century. He explored the Interior of Labrador on behalf of the Government of Newfoundland and of Canada, missed much of what was important and drew a rather inaccurate map that led several explorers to their deaths.

On the subject of maps, I’ve been having a close look at a hand-drawn map by a Moravian missionary called Reichel who visited the area in 1872.

What’s interesting about his map is that he draws on it the location of all of the isolated cabins, who lived in them and whether they were European, Inuit, Innu or Métis. It’s the closest thing that there is to a Census of Labrador in the 19th Century.

There was also the dictaphone. I was in North America. We’d been to see someone in a Social Security department about some Unemployment Benefit or National Assistance etc because my partner was unable to work and neither was I. We were in this waiting room. Eventually my partner was seen and was told that she’d have to go to Mexico so we set out for there. We ended up in a waiting room in a Government office there that was 10 times worse and 10 times more crowded than anything in the USA. She had a ticket with a number on it. It was all extremely chaotic. We were talking to a couple of people, one girl in particular who kept on being called to the front then having to come back to chat to a couple of her friends who were there. I made a joke to my partner “it seems that the response to when you’re being served is that it’s always going to be next time, you’re the next one”. She didn’t understand what I was trying to say and asked me to explain. Of course it’s very difficult to explain a joke like that. We were sitting there in this crowded, uncomfortable waiting room, waiting to be called to the desk. It looked as if we were going to be there for ever.

Later on there was the dream where I was being tortured by that guy dropping rocks on my head somewhere or other. Every now and again there’s a dream that I don’t write out because of its gruesome nature but this one was so distressing that I couldn’t even bring myself to dictate it. And that’s not happened more than a couple of times in the whole of the 20-odd years that I’ve been doing this.

It makes me wonder if this was the reason why I had one of the worst night-sweats that I’ve ever had.

Some of the time was also spent crashed out on my chair again and I’ve really been doing far too much of that just recently, especially as this was one of the better nights of sleep that I’ve had.

Tea tonight was some of those Chinese whatsits with vegetable fried rice, delicious as usual, and then I had to rush to watch the football.

Now I’m off to bed hoping for a good night’s sleep again. I’m going into town tomorrow, on the bus as it happens, but I reckon that I’ll still be flat out on the chair in the afternoon. I’m rather fed up of all this.

0

Wednesday 26th July 2023 – I WAS WELL AWAY …

… with the fairies when the alarm went off this morning.

Mind you, it didn’t seem as if I’d had any sleep at all. I know that it took me a while to go off to sleep again once I finally went to bed and I suppose that that’s the reason.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too so it must have been a restless night. My parents had gone out for the evening. I was at home with my sister. I was working on the computer and she was doing something. Later in the evening I noticed that it had all gone quiet. There was only me. It seemed that she had gone off to bed and not said anything. I carried on working. All of a sudden the door burst open. It was my parents back. They had brought with them another couple and 6 or 7 children aged from about 9 to about late teenage. I was watching Connah’s Quay play on the internet against another Welsh club. A couple of boys sat down and started to watch it. One of them made a suggestion about who it might be so I said that it was Connah’s Quay. he said “I have a season ticket for them” so we began to watch the football. But I was much more interested in watching the 2 girls who had come with these boys and their parents who I thought were quite nice. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t heard about these girls beforehand

Then I was at the airport waiting to pass through Immigration or Boarding or whatever it is to go down to where the planes are. We all had forms to fill in. I filled in mine and handed it immediately to the guy at the small desk place. So did a few others. We weren’t allowed to pass through yet. Then they called the flight so everyone else formed a queue there. All their documents were read and stamped etc. I was wondering why there were a couple of agents standing round doing nothing and why people were just forming a queue with one guy and not going to the others. Eventually the others began to call people to them and we were all through. I was expecting that he’d give me back all these papers so I’d take them on to the next stage. The first thing that he said was “I’d better go to fetch the ones that are filled in” which for some unknown reason had found themselves back on the table where we started. They were all in envelopes so we had to go through the envelopes again. I was still hanging around there in limbo waiting for something to happen which didn’t happen, thinking that I would have these back but he didn’t seem to want to give them back to me. We were just standing there looking at each other.

We also had a couple of cats. My partner and I went for a walk and the cats came with us. One of them found a potato so it picked up the potato in its mouth and began to carry it around as if it was a kitten. Then it came to another one so it tried to carry both but they were far too heavy. In the end I was carrying these 2 potatoes for the cat. We set out to return home through Nantwich. It was early in the morning so there wasn’t much traffic about so we were lucky that we could do this. I didn’t fancy the cats running around on the side of the road in Hospital Street when there was plenty of traffic. We managed to shepherd them along even through the busy interchange at the roundabout outside Churche’s Mansions. A policeman in an American car gave us some strange looks. At one stage one of these cats was a duck waddling along but then it became a cat again a little later on. It was a really weird situation with these 2 cats that had come with us for a walk and these potatoes that they were trying to nurse.

Later on there was someone with a big van pulling a mobile home which they were using as a caravan. They’d parked at this camp site blocking everyone’s view so that they could see the lake while they had lunch. I was trying to have them move to a more convenient space because this wasn’t very good. In the end they agreed to move but the area to where I wanted them to move, there was no access to vehicles so they were there blocked with this vehicle somewhere. The guy got out to go for a look around on foot. He ended up being stranded somewhere. We were left with this mobile home blocking just about everyone with loads of people wandering around.

Finally I was somewhere else with a group of people, one of whom was my friend from North Wales. We were staying in digs somewhere. I’d had a wash and a shower. They decided that they wanted to go to the pub called “The Great Eastern”. It was quite late at night but we set off to walk. Halfway through it I realised that I didn’t have my watch. I wondered if I’d left it back at my room or whether it had fallen off my hand somewhere. We ended up on a main road. I joked with my friend that the pub she wanted to visit had closed down and was now a night club. I found that on this particular corner there was the pub, some kind of café and a night club too. All the people with me, including my friend waltzed off into the night club. I supposed that I had to follow but I really had no interest at all in going to a night club but that was what everyone wanted to do.

It’s no surprise that after all of that I was flat out at 07:00.

Not that I could do all that much either once I was up and about. It took me an age to get going yet again. Eventually I gave up trying and went for a shower to try to wake myself up and to make myself smell nice for the cleaner when she comes.

And then I transcribed the dictaphone notes that you read just now.

After lunch I did some tidying up and sorted out the clothes that I’d washed last week, and then while the cleaner was here I finished off the notes for the next radio programme.

There was also some time to carry on with my notes from Canada 2017. Not much though because firstly, regrettably, I fell asleep again.

Secondly, I’ve been trying, rather unsuccessfully, to track down the details of the supposed settlements of Salome’s Point and Crooked House Point on Earl Island.

What would really help would be if the Newfoundland Museum Antiquities Department would publish an itemised list of all known or suspected archaeological sites instead of having to pick through the theses of various researchers.

Tea tonight was a chili sin carné with the leftovers in the fridge with a small tin of kidney beans added in. It was delicious as usual, and then regrettably I crashed out again once I came back here to sit down.

But right now even though it’s early I’m going to bed. I really need a decent night’s sleep and I know that I won’t get it, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t make an effort.

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Tuesday 25th July 2023 – TODAY WAS SOMETHING …

… of a better day today, which is just as well because it couldn’t have been any worse than yesterday.

Not that I was expecting it to be because even though I was in bed at something like a reasonable time, once more it took me an age to go off to sleep.

Not as much on the dictaphone as last night either, and when the alarm went off I was flat out asleep. So at least that’s something.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages it took me another age to actually wind myself up to start work. I seem to have a very great difficulty getting going these days.

First thing to do was to check the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. It was wartime. A group of soldiers had been sent to a barracks. They had been given their equipment, including hooks for hanging up their clothes. The sergeant was going through this, interrogating the privates who were already there about certain of the things. He pointed to one of these clothes hooks and asked about it. They came out with some kind of nebulous opinion about what they thought it might be. He dropped it and it was spring-loaded so it sprang right across the road and embedded itself in the front bumper of an old car that was going past in the street.

Later on I came across an obscure reference to some kind of line-of-sight between somewhere in Sinai across to the coast in the Spanish Sahara and then back from French West Africa to the east coast of Africa. It looked quite interesting so I went to the library and borrowed probably a dozen books. I sat there for the whole day reading them. It turned out to be the report of 4 people who’d gone on a cycle trip between these places, what they’d seen and what they’d done. But they didn’t mention the cycles very often. I was busy plotting their route trying to work out the things that they’d seen and cross-reference it with other books. Then the librarian came up to me and asked me for several books back because the library was closing. I was on the point of asking him if I could keep the others somewhere so they aren’t filed away so they’ll be here tomorrow morning for me.

There was also a woman and girl. We were in Ramsgate and had to go somewhere down in the south of Kent so we set out to drive. The woman driving was confused about the way out of Ramsgate so I gave directions. We ended up talking to another couple of women so somehow we began to walk out of the town. We walked for quite a long way. I was saying about where my mother used to live and talking about the evacuation in 1940 etc, saying that I’d show everyone where my mother used to live. I suddenly realised that we didn’t have the car. I asked the woman “where have you left the car?”. She replied “back in Ramsgate”. We carried on walking and came to the main road, Thanet Way. We decided that we’d better go back to fetch the car. There was some talk about some tea in the oven etc. I volunteered to run back with the keys and fetch the car but the girl wanted to go on the bus. I hadn’t a clue what the buses were like, where they ran to and their times etc. It was beginning to go dark now. The first thing was that a tram appeared. They were thinking about boarding the tram but I remembered that there were no tram lines anywhere near where we were with the car so I didn’t think that going on the tram was a good idea. We had a big argument or discussion about going back to pick up the car. This is the kind of thing that would drag on for hours, we won’t resolve anything and we’ll still end up without a car. It could all be resolved in half an hour If I were to run back to fetch it.

Actually, there’s a lot of truth in this story, believe it or not. I’ve been asked several times why I seem to be so concerned with the plight of refugees, and the answer to this is that my mother and her sister were refugees.

They had a very peripatetic childhood and when World War II broke out they were living in Birchington on Sea, not too far from Ramsgate, at the end of the runway at Manston Airfield, an RAF station on the Isle of Thanet.

At the fall of France in June 1940 the Luftwaffe began to drop bombs on all of the airfields in South-East England and Manston was particularly devastated. After one major attack early in the Battle of Britain, all of the children in the area were rounded up, taken to the railway station with just one suitcase, then stuck on a train and sent to live with complete strangers.

For girls who were not yet teenagers it was completely and utterly traumatic and I think in all honesty that it scarred my mother for life. She told us many stories about her life in Somerset and so I have a great deal of sympathy for these people who are fleeing a war zone.

Every time I see some of the hatred and vitriol that’s poured out about refugees, I just reflect that thank God those people weren’t around when my mother and her sister were desperately looking for shelter in 1940

When the alarm went off I was in bed with a girlfriend of mine. The question of motor bikes came up. I was going to buy a new motor bike but for some unknown reason my girlfriend hadn’t ordered a new helmet. That, for some reason, sent me into a fierce temper. I couldn’t understand why I was in such a bad mood about the fact that no helmet had been ordered. Even though I was tired I forced myself out of bed to go to order one myself. I threw a few things across the bedroom. I couldn’t understand why I was in such a bad mood. Had it happened 30 or 40 years ago I could have understood but I’m a different person these days than I used to be.

So having got that out of the way I turned my attention to the radio programme. I listened to the one that will be broadcast this weekend and then sent it off. Once it had gone off, I made a start on preparing another one. The music has been chosen, paired off and I’ve dictated quite a few notes for it.

For much of the rest of the day when I’ve not been asleep on my chair, I’ve been working on my Canada 2017 trip, but not actually doing much in the way of notes but doing some research.

There’s an island off the coast of Cartwright that is known by the locals as “Prisoner’s Island”. The local story was that there was a murder in a fishing gang and as there was no Law Enforcement in Labrador, the alleged perpetrator was cast away on the island and taken back to England at the end of the fishing season.

It occurred to me that if he had been taken back to England, it’s likely that he would have been put ashore at the Port of London and if so, had there been a criminal case, it would have been heard at the Central Criminal Court, otherwise known as “The Old Bailey”.

Consequently I’ve been browsing my way through the records of the Central Criminal Court – and guess what?

On 14th January 1818 “His Majesty’s Special Commission was then put in and read, authorizing the Court to proceed to the Trial of Samuel Harvey Brown who was indicted for feloniously killing and slaying Thomas Pearse , on the 13th of July, at Dumpling Island, in North America, without England “

It just goes to show that many of these very old rumours have a great deal of foundation in fact.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice which was delicious as usual, but I had to eat it quickly because there was football on the internet. Having been eliminated from the Champions League last week, TNS were competing in the Europa League against Swift Hesperange of Luxembourg.

TNS went behind quite quickly and were under the cosh for much of the game, with the Luxembourgers missing a penalty and having several excellent chances. However they rode their luck and played much better than they did against the Swedes of Hacken and pulled a goal back late in the game.

And so it’s all to play for next week.

But that’s next week. Right now, later than usual, I’m off to bed. I won’t have much time for sleep unfortunately but I’ll try to make the best of what I’ve got. The cleaner will be around in the afternoon so I’ll need to do some tidying up before she arrives.

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Monday 24th July 2024 – SO MUCH FOR …

… my plans for today.

Usually there are about 2 or 3 entries on the dictaphone most nights. If I’ve had a particularly restless night there might be as many as 5.

But if you want to know about the kind of night that I had last night, there were actually as many as 10 entries. TEN!

And between 02:18 and 03:50 there were seven of them recorded. That was some night.

On a few occasions too I actually stepped back into dreams where I’d left off. That’s no real surprise I suppose, with a night as mobile as that.

It took me quite an age to go off to sleep too, and then later on I was actually up and about before the alarm went off.

And so, as you can gather, I haven’t been in any kind of condition today to do anything. The only surprise was that I managed to keep awake until 15:30. But once I’d gone, I’d really gone.

However, back to this morning. After the medication I went and had a shower ready for the nurse. She came round later to inject me and then I came back in here and didn’t do very muct at all. It was a real struggle to keep awake and in the end I gave up trying.

later on I had a listen to the dictaphone and that took most of the rest of the day. I went into our kitchen. There was a strange cat in there. All the other cats and kittens were confronting this silver tabby which was doing its best to hide under a piece of cardboard. When I came in it tried to sneak out underneath the cardboard and through a pack of kittens that were trying to fight it. It made its way to the front door but couldn’t work out how to find its way out of the cat flap again so it was cowering in a corner. I couldn’t take a good shot at it because other kittens were around it. In the end I managed to corner it on its own. It hid behind a stuffed giraffe as a gun fighter would do if you tried to draw a gun on him. It looked so interesting and so intelligent this cat so I called my brother to come and see. By the time he arrived the cat had come out from behind the giraffe. I had the door open and was trying to usher it out with my feet. My brother thought that I won’t have many marks for kindness and politeness by doing that. I replied that it’s soon going to go out anyway. After a couple of attempts I managed to put my foot underneath its stomach and heave it out through the open door then close the front door behind it so it couldn’t re-enter. The thought then occurred to me that I hope that the kittens that went outside can work their way through the cat flap to find their way back in otherwise we’ll have problems with that too

TOTGA appeared last night, so hello to TOTGA. She had an audition for a modelling agency so someone was coming round to see her. I spent some time choreographing some dances and had been putting her through them. On the final morning that we were working through them there was so much that still needed to be done that while she was rehearsing I was buzzing around. Someone who was there watching suggested that I was distracting her and getting in her way. My response was first of all that we needed this information and secondly, when she’s taking her exam there will be people getting in her way then. She needs to work out her routine based on the movements of other people anyway. After this discussion I went into the storeroom to try to find something from one of her earlier sessions. She came in, still dancing, saying that she needed to find the heat treatment for a twinge in her muscle. We discussed where that might be, which box it was in. She had to find it but she needed to be quick because the person would b ehere in a minute.

Back on the subject of ballet again. This time I had a couple of groups of young toddlers and small children who were being put through their routines. They were extremely interesting, especially one who could barely walk and had one of her front teeth missing. She did a really nice dance. I told her how now it was but I was thinking that it’s such a shame that she couldn’t have waiting another half-hour for that performance because the examiner would have been here and he would have loved to have seen that dance.

I went straight back to sleep and immediately saw the housekeeper or cleaner of the hall where we dance looking totally aghast. I asked her what was the matter. She replied that she had seen the first ever seal killed by another seal. It was that that had upset her.

After that I stepped back into the previous dream again with my ballet class of toddlers. There was a police inspector who was there. For some unknown reason he was in a bad mood. I asked him whether it was because of the lack of preparation on his behalf that was causing the problem or whether there was something else we needed to know

I bet that you didn’t know that I was an ace at the ballet! But actually I had two younger sisters who needed taking to dance class on a Saturday afternoon and when my elder sister started a Saturday job I drew the short straw and I spent many an hour watching what was going on.

That’s why I used to go to watch Port Vale play football in the late 1960s. Our local team played on a Saturday afternoon so I couldn’t go, but the Vale always played on a Friday night. It was actually a good night out, walking back from Burslem to the railway station at Longport late at night, grabbing a bag of chips on the way.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed, there was more trouble later about a kid who wanted someone here to cut off some material for him, a length of dark green and a length of red so that he could wrap them around himself to pretend that he was a school mascot. That way he’d stop being annoyed by these other people at the gate of the school

I was going into Crewe town centre for an interview for a job in a shop. I was having to change my employment because of my illness and needed something less stressful with less travel. I was chatting to a girl when the bus came in. She boarded it. I suddenly realised just as it was about to pull away that it was my bus too so I leapt aboard and just about managed to scramble onto the platform before it took off. I saw the girl so I waved to her. We came into Crewe town centre and I alighted. I thought that I’d go to my brother’s shop for a form for a CV and fill it in to hand in at this other place. It was just after midday so I wondered if he’d be at lunch. I went there and began to climb the steps into his front door

Then I had the first part of that dream again about having to prepare for this meeting or exam whatever it was, finding all my things etc before going out for the bus

I was also giving a lecture on brewing last night. I’d ordered some beer but it hadn’t come so I contacted the brewery. They launched one by catapult. It flew through the air, 8 miles high, this barrel of beer through the sky all the way and dropped to earth in my living room where there was a crowd of people. They denied having received this beer at first but I think that they were teasing me. In the end they gave me a glassful. It had a huge head on it of course. I tasted it and said that it was the most beautiful beer that I’ve ever tasted. I let 1 or 2 other people have a drink. Some girl asked me about the secrets of brewing. I explained that the real secret is in the water. The underlying soils are all on different rocks. The rainfall that percolates through the rocks picks up different minerals depending on the area where it is and what the rocks are. The water that they take to make the beer depends on the area from where it comes, different minerals in the water react in different ways with the yeast and barley and grain etc. That’s why beers are different, because of the minerals in the water. Some ares have really good water for brewing but others don’t. There’s different beers made with different kinds of water. I was impressed that I could give a lecture on brewing and breweries while I was asleep.

Finally, Caliburn and I were on our way back from Virlet to Brussels going the way that we used to go through the mountains. When we left one town heading north it seemed that all the traffic was being diverted over a rough tarmac path through a field. The old road was overgrown with weeds. There were no signs or anything so I carried on down the old road. After about 50 yard all the weeds etc had gone and it was the normal road again. I was travelling down there at a good rate of knots in a rainstorm. It suddenly occurred to me that this isn’t the town that I know where I was entering. There was a steep hill down into the town centre to a T junction where I had to turn left. As I was three quarters of the way down the hill a lorry began to reverse out of a parking space into the road in front of me. I blew the horn and the horn stuck. Eventually the lorry got the message and drove back in so that I could go past. There was a milk float on the corner that was reversing up the hill on my side of the road. He received a horn blast too because I couldn’t go past him because of the road junction. Eventually I had to get out and push the milk float out of the way. He got the message too and drove off the right way this time so that I could reach the bottom of this hill to turn left. There were hordes of people milling around here, so much traffic, the rainstorm. I didn’t recognise anything of this. I didn’t know where I was at all.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper which was really nice but for some reason or other I seem to have lost my appetite again

Anyway, that’s enough for this horrible day. I’m glad that it’s over. I’m going to bed and I’ll start again tomorrow – if I wake up. I really do feel as if I could sleep for a week with no problem whatsoever.

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