Category Archives: France

Wednesday 24th May 2023 – I AWOKE AT …

… about 05:55 with the idea in my head of some woman who was dressed in some kind of Eighteenth-Century formal Court dress like someone out of the French Empire. It was such a shock but it awoke me bolt-upright and there was a very uncomfortable feeling for a few minutes as to how this had come about for I remember absolutely nothing at all of what happened, just the image of this woman that had appeared in my head so dramatically.

So as a result, when the alarm went off this morning at 07:00 I was already up and about. Not by much, I have to say, because it took me a while to come to my senses (not that I have too many senses to come to these days) after I awoke.

After I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages the first thing that I did was to check the curry that had been simmering away in the slow cooker over night. It was fairly liquid, more than I expected, so I bunged in a couple of potatoes duly diced and some bulghour and let it carry on simmering.

In case you are wondering what spices I use these days in a carry, there’s cumin (ground as well as seeds) turmeric and coriander of course, and then some hot chili powder, fenugreek and fennel. There was also some garlic salt too, as I always put in if I’m leaving something simmering overnight. I’ve no idea of the proportions of the spices though. I just add the stuff until it tastes right.

Next task was to telephone the doctor. I need some more Aranesp and much more of it too, what with having to take it every week with effect from next week. So on Friday at 10:45 I have to stagger down the hill into town. And, presumably, stagger back too. That’s the bit that finishes me off these days.

Checking the dictaphone next because there was more stuff on there from the night. I’d been left alone in my parents’ house while they’d gone out. I’d been doing a few things like the washing up and tidying up, getting everything ready and then feeding the cats. By now it was sometime really late at night so I thought that I’d just go outside for 5 minutes for a breath of air or something and then go to bed. I went outside and there was plenty of snow around. I was just standing there at the side of the house when almost immediately my parents pulled up. They had one of our cats with them but it was on a lead. Of course it wasn’t my parents in real life. They wanted to know what I was doing and why I was outside. It was very difficult to explain that you’d just go out for some fresh air.

So my family again, and also a few cats. This is becoming rather monotonous.

This afternoon the cleaner has been here tidying up for me. I had a shower before she came so that at least I’ll smell nice, instead of just smelling. And that reminds me – the laundry basket is rather full now so I’ll have to let the washing machine do some washing on Friday while I’m in the town.

While she was doing her stuff I’ve been choosing the music for the next series of radio programmes. Once again we’re back into the obscure artists bit, including a track recorded by someone who was at one time Pete Townshend’s chauffeur.

And I also had a little … errr … relax. The strain of the early morning was rather too much.

By the time that I was ready to make tea, the potato and bulghour had done their stuff and the mixture in the slow cooker was now nice and thick. So I fried a couple of large onions, a few lumps of garlic, the leftovers out of the fridge and then added the pile of stuff out of the slow cooker.

There’s enough for 6 helpings so five of them will be going into the freezer (now that there’s room) when they have cooled and the sixth one went down really nicely with rice and vegetables and one of my naan breads.

Tomorrow I’ll finish off selecting the music and then make a start on writing the notes. But I really need to have a good think about what I’m going to de for my 200th radio programme.

For my 100th, I did an overnight 12-hour rock festival of the various groups and musicians who I’ve encountered on my travels around the Northern Hemisphere but I’m not sure that I’ll be doing the same thing again. Going through the back-up drive I’ve found a few tracks on which I played back in the 70s but the quality isn’t good enough and the there isn’t enough of it anyway.

However, there is always that infamous Colosseum concert. It’s accompanied me on many of my voyages around and about, including the time that I sailed across the Atlantic on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR when I reckoned that I would have plenty of time to remix and re-edit it.

But it was on those voyages while I was trying to re-edit it that I had my strange encounters, firstly with The Vanilla Queen and then with Castor so it’s a concert that has a … errr … certain significance. If it ever does find its way onto the airwaves it should certainly stir up something.

And that’s the idea, I suppose. Life is quite boring these days without being able to go off and make things happen. It’s high time that I made some excitement happen, although I’ve no idea how I can manage it. Finally getting the Colosseum concert onto the airwaves is a good place to start.

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 – REMEMBER YESTERDAY …

… when I said that I was feeling that my injections weren’t doing what they used to do?

You probably won’t believe this, but I promise you that it happened. But this afternoon I had a phone call from the hospital in Leuven.
“Over the last two weeks we’ve been examining your medical results from your last visit to the hospital. We’ve noticed several anomalies in the tests and so we want you to have your Aranesp injections every week instead of every fortnight starting from next Monday, and for your doctor at home to have blood tests taken every four weeks to control the results”

Things are obviously heating up around here now. So whatever will happen next?

Actually, I know what didn’t happen. And that was that it was today, not Thursday, that I should have had my appointment with the nerve specialist but I mixed up the dates. So I’ll have to contact him tomorrow too and rearrange the appointment.

It’s been one of those days where not all that much has gone right. For a start, I didn’t beat the alarm this morning. I’d had a late night but even so, it’s not very often that I sleep right through until the alarm. But at least, I awoke in bed rather than on top of it.

And then I couldn’t get going. It took an age to finally come round into the Land of the Living and start to prepare for my Welsh lesson.

And then we had a tragedy. The college at Mold doesn’t have much money so we’ve been making do with whatever on-line video conferencing has been available. And the one that we used until recently revoked all of the free licences so we had to go elsewhere.

The only free video-conferencing that they could find is one that’s very resource-hungry and it won’t run on any of the portable computers around here (there are, for various reasons, five of those that work at the moment, including the one that I bought in desperation in North Dakota in 2019).

However, luckily, ages ago I’d bought a cheap webcam so I had to configure all of that and run it off the big desktop machine, something that I didn’t want to do.

And then to configure a microphone to run directly off the computer because everything here usually runs through various mixer desks

In the end I missed half of the lesson with all of this messing around but at least it worked. And once the lesson was up and running it passed off quite well too.

This afternoon, sorting out a few things that I needed to do, I came across a football match that I’d missed from 2 years ago, Caernarfon Town v Barry Town in a Europa Cup playoff match. So despite everything else going on, I took a couple of hours off to watch it.

And in news that will surprise almost everyone (because it certainly surprised me) I carried on with what I started last week and did some more rearranging of the bedroom. It’s starting to look a bit more like home now, which is always nice.

After a good session on the guitars, I had a listen to the dictaphone. Despite being stark out during the night there was some stuff on there from a little voyage. There was some kind of case going on about a large company where there was some manipulation about to take place with the shareholding in respect of a battle over who had control. Whilst I didn’t fully understand the implications of what was happening, it all sounded extremely suspicious to me. When I was looking through some paperwork I found that the company had been brought to the attention of the authorities on another occasion in respect of something or other underhand and was undergoing investigation. I thought that I should make a report of this conversation and pass it through to whoever it was who was investigating it but as I couldn’t grasp the implications of it and couldn’t really understand much of what was taking place, it was very difficult to write a note. I thought that the more I keep it waiting while I make up my mind what to write, the more distant this is going to be and the more I’m going to forget. It’s not going to help anyone by me waiting for too long. I need to pull myself together and write something down immediately

After the ‘phone call from the hospital and missing my nerve specialist, the physiotherapist came round. He gave me a really good workout – the longest session that we have had so far and I was exhausted at the end of it.

Tea was a taco roll with rice and veg, but the cooking session isn’t over by any means. There’s not very much in the way of leftovers for a curry tomorrow night so as I have plenty of tofu and some lentils, I’ve set the slow cooker on the go.

The lentils are being cleaned right now and as soon as I’ve finished this, I’ll take them out of the slow cooker and rinse them, and then put them back in with the spinach-flavoured tofu that I have and a load of spices, and leave it all to marinade in the slow cooker until tomorrow evening

That should make a really good curry, and I do have to admit that I’m in the right kind of mood for one of those.

In fact, anything to distract me because I’m not very happy about the idea of doubling the dose of Aranesp. It’s the medicine of last resort and there’s a warning that it is “recommended for patients with chronic kidney failure or cancer to use the lowest possible dose”.

Over the last year or so I’ve gone from 20mg a week to 60mg a week to keep me going and I’m not sure where you can go after all of this.

Monday 22nd May 2023 – WHEN I AWOKE …

… this morning, I was actually fully clothed flat out on top of the bed. I’ve no idea what happened there but I must have been really tired.

However not so tired that I didn’t get up early. Once more, when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about.

Yes, that was one strange night.

Once I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages I started work. And by the time I finished at tea-time, I’d finished two radio programmes.

Had things been different they would have been finished a lot earlier too but there were plenty of interruptions.

Firstly, the nurse came round and gave me my fortnightly injection. It’s supposed to perk me up and keep me going for another two weeks but it doesn’t feel like it. The effects of the product are definitely not working as well as they did at first and wearing off quicker.

They’ve already increased the dose from 40mg to 60 mg and I suppose that the next step will be to have the injections every 10 days instead of every 14.

The “release and retained” lists for the clubs in the Welsh pyramid were released today as well – 9 days early and already, players are on the move around. Consequently I’ve had to start to update my lists earlier than usual.

And then someone with whom I wanted to have a word came on line so we were chatting for some considerable time too.

Going back to the radio programme, when I was in France during my schooldays I met a Swiss bassist called Walter Fröhlich. He was one of the bassists who, along with Felix Pappalardi and Gerry McAvoy, inspired me to play bass in the days before I heard “Quadrophenia”. Wandering around in the depths of my back-up drive I came across one of the songs on which Fröhlich played so of course I had to include it in one of the programmes.

All in all, I accomplished a lot today although it doesn’t much look like it.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta and vegetables. Yes, pasta. I said I would, and there was some nice spicy tomato sauce to go with it too.

There was the dictaphone too. I had my own apartment in Granville somewhere last night. It wasn’t by the sea at all but in the St Nicolas area. I’d spoken to Percy Penguin (who doesn’t appear in these pages half as often as she deserves) about coming round but she was with another guy and said “the two of us would come round”. She put her boyfriend on the phone and he spoke to me. We agreed to meet up at 20:45. He asked what the weather was like because it was pouring down with rain. I said that it’s really wet under foot but not waterlogged or anything like that so it’s OK to move around. He replied “yes but the big difficulty is that Percy Penguin is the same height as you so we’d end up with 3 of us on my motor bike”. My response was “that’s OK. We can go out in Caliburn. I decided that the best thing was for me to go round at 21:00 and pick them both up. They were living here in this building at the time so I thought that it would be nice for Caliburn and me to come back.

And later on I was at a strange kind of roundabout or road junction somewhere. To negotiate it was extremely complicated and I ended up flattening a couple of trees that had been planted because of the way that some vehicles had been parked on it. A car and I merged in together on this junction but the other driver felt that he should have had priority although there wasn’t a road sign anywhere. It certainly wasn’t clear. When I stopped he left his car and came to start an argument. I explained the situation as I’d seen it but he carried on and on and on. I said “look, something happened there and something wasn’t correct but it doesn’t make any difference. No-one had any problems. The vehicles didn’t touch each other” but he still carried on. I went on saying “if you become upset like this every time you see something happen that’s not what you think is correct then I’m surprised that you ever get anywhere”. But so it continued.

The interesting thing about it was that all of this took place in French.

So I’ll be off to bed in a minute. There’s a Welsh lesson tomorrow so I need to do some revision and be ready to go. But I don’t feel like it. In fact I don’t feel much like anything right now. But I dunno. It’ll all work out in Boomland, as T2 told us back in 1970. And that reminds me – where the heck is my copy of that? I haven’t seen that around for absolute ages.

Sunday 21st May 2023 – HAVING A LOOK …

… at the timestamps of some of the files on which I was working last night – 03:25, 03:33 etc, it was a very late night. Or more like an early morning. I was still rewriting some radio programme stuff and re-dictating it at some silly hour of the morning.

Consequently, being wide-awake at 10:30 and up and about at 10:45 is really quite astonishing. I can’t even usually do that on a Sunday when I’ve had a GOOD night’s sleep.

Ahh well. Life is full of surprises.

Not that I actually did very much. I have to confess that for at least part of it, I was flat-out on the chair in here instead of working.

Another thing that I did this afternoon as I didn’t feel much like working was to telephone Ingrid and have a good chat. It’s been ages since we last spoke to each other and so we were on the ‘phone for a Rosemaryesque marathon.

She’s not doing so well with her own health problems so we spent quite a long time commiserating with each other.

But the conversation was quite interesting. The subject of “small-town mentality” came up in our discussion.

Due to her father’s work she spent a lot of time as a child in the far-flung corners of the Dutch Empire as a child and encountered all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds.

My own background was exactly the opposite. Small-village, small-town mentality, totally unprepared for what the big wide world had to offer and it was an enormous culture shock when I was 16 and first set foot in the big wild world.

However, how are you going to keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree? I was itching to break away from that kind of mentality and the Big City didn’t work out. I didn’t enjoy my spell living in Manchester in 1974-75, although on reflection I should have stuck it out.

No mistake though about deciding to emigrate. I left all of the negativity behind me and I was glad about that. Life in Crewe was really dragging me down.

It was somehow difficult for Ingrid to understand things like that because she’s never experienced it, but meeting different people from different cultures and background was exciting as a child to her as it was to me when I moved to Brussels.

Thinking about it, there’s still the story about that Burmese girl going round in my head. And on further research, I found that she’d appeared in my nocturnal rambles on a previous occasion, and once again it had been a whole series of recurring dreams on one particular night.

While we’re on the subject of dreams … “well, one of us is” – ed … there was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. There was something going on at one point but as usual I’ve forgotten most of it. But there was something that made me sit up when I accosted someone and said “this is something that YOU voted for so you can own up and accept the ownership of this sh*tshow. It wasn’t about Brexit either but to do with something personal involving me but, as I said, I can’t remember what it was.

We were talking about Cortinas again last night, all of the Cortinas and bits and pieces in my garages, thinking that it might be the time to start to liquidate everything. People were saying that they didn’t really want anything that’s been lying around rusting in a garage for years. Someone else replied “it’s been lying around abroad and brought back to the UK so that’ll make a big difference”. We went into one of the garages that was heaving with stuff. My mother found a few bags of children’s clothing. She said “here, you can take these to the tip”. She gave me 2 bags, and then gave me a third. I said “I can’t go to the tip if you’re going to give me all of this”. I thought “I suppose I could go in the van”. She said “yes and I’ve seen some more too” and there was another pile by the front door still on hangers so she picked up all of these clothes still on hangers and handed them to me too to take to the tip.

And while we’re on that subject too … “well, on eof us is” – ed … whoever gets the short straw and has to clear out the stuff left down on the farm will have their hands full. But judging by the prices that things are fetching these days, it’ll be worth their while.

In between everything else I’ve been editing the stuff that I dictated before going to bed. I haven’t got very far because I ended up going out socialising. Someone here in the building was having a little soiree so I went for a couple of hours.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m not usually the socialising type but I actually like the people here and we have a nice and friendly little community. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … this is the first place where I have ever lived that has felt like home.

Consequently it was a rather late tea and having left the pizza base to fester for quite a while it had risen perfectly and it was another candidate for the title of “best pizza ever”.

Anyway, I’m off to bed in a moment ready for tomorrow. I have a radio programme to finish and the nurse will be round in the morning to give me my fortnightly injection.

And that reminds me – it’s the last injection that I have here so I’ll need to see the doctor some time to order some more. And with having to see the nerve specialist on Thursday I’m going to be having a busy week.

It’ll keep me out of mischief, I suppose.

Saturday 20th May 2023 – YOU CAN TELL …

… that it’s THAT time of the year again.

All the way back from the shops this morning, stuck behind two perishing motorhomes crawling along at 10 miles per hour admiring the scenery and occasionally coming to a dead stop. “Ohh look Petunia! A seagull!” all the way to the motor home camp site which, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is just 200 yards down the road from here on the way to the lighthouse.

So it won’t be long before Caliburn and I will be playing skittles with the hordes of tourists swarming across the road without even looking before they step off the edge of the pavement.

Anyway, that’s for later on in the season.

Right now I’m more interested in what happened today, and especially this morning when just as I was on the point of throwing the bedclothes off and raising myself from the dead, the alarm went off. So we’ll call than a honourable draw this morning.

There was some paperwork that needed doing first thing after my medication so I did that and then it was time for me to nip out to the shops. And I noticed the tenant in my new apartment cleaning the windows. Word has spread around quite quickly.

Noz came up with a few things, including a new non-stick pie tin to replace the old cheap metal ones that I had. It’s the same pattern design as the frying pan I bought the other week.

Matching frying pan and pie tin? Whatever next? I’ll be going for colour-co-ordinated curtains at this rate. They were having a “cat accessory” sale as well. After what I’ve been dreaming just recently, do you think that someone is trying to tell me something?

At Leclerc I hardly spend anything. There wasn’t much that I needed apart from the fruit and some soya desserts that were in the clearance bin. And then I had to go across the road to post a letter to the property management company of this building.

Back here I had coffee and breakfast – more cheese on toast (it’s lovely being able to buy vegan cheese) – and then checked the dictaphone. I was in Caliburn at one point. We were driving somewhere through the countryside and came to what looked like a steep hill. I got out to push Caliburn up the hill but it wasn’t actually an uphill but a downhill. Caliburn roared away all on his own and I had to run after him. I ran for a couple of miles and came eventually to a bad bend. There was a Bova-bodied coach that Caliburn had hit. Several people in it were badly injured. There was shattered wood and a couple of other cars badly damaged all around there. My first thought was that I was really really sorry about all of this. I said it about 3 or 4 times. One guy on the coach who seemed to be uninjured said “I’ve bandaged some of the people over here as best as I can but there’s all that side down there. I felt really dreadful

And then I was with, of all people, that strange Burmese girl whom I met in Brussels. We were in Egypt and I had to go to Cairo to pick up a hire car but I was the wrong side of the Nile. I met some friends of mine – it might have been my friends from the Wirral in fact – and we were chatting. Then I thought “God! I’m going to have to go”. I had a choice between saying goodbye to the Burmese girl or to a cat and strangely I chose the cat. I picked up the cat and stroked it. everyone else in the area came round and started to stroke it. In the meantime the Burmese girl was hiding in a little recess somewhere. She wouldn’t come out and her mother was scolding her for this and that. In the end she asked me when I was coming back. I said a date and she said “I’ll make sure that she’s here to see you”. I thought that that was strange but anyway that was what we arranged. I had to set off to walk to Cairo. They rang me up from the hire company and said that they’d dropped off the car somewhere. I thought “I now have to go to walk and pick up this car and come all the way back and load it. Why couldn’t they have dropped it off at the hotel where I could simply have loaded the car and gone?”. I set off and met the husband from the Wirral. The vehicle that they had for me was one of these big American semi-trailer rigs, just the cab unit. I thought “this is enormous”. Alvin got out and said that it’s a 5-speed and started to give me a whole run-down but I couldn’t hear a word that he said. He wandered off and the Burmese girl and I climbed in – what she was doing there with me – she said something like “wouldn’t it have been a better idea to have arranged this vehicle differently?”. I was beginning to think that driving something big like this through the streets of Cairo she was probably right. I wish that I’d done it differently now but it’s too late. She was nervous and asked “shouldn’t we have this vehicle towed?”. I said that if anyone is going to do any towing it’s going to be this. This is the correct vehicle to do that. We set off anyway and I suddenly realised that I didn’t know whether this was a petrol or diesel engine. What’s going to happen now when I come to fuel up?

I stepped back into this dream later on and she was wandering around a supermarket looking for some hamburger buns so she could make hamburgers for tea.

And then she was there again a third time. The two of us were actually at a rifle range at a fairground, in a booth, a sort-of shooting gallery. The guy in control of the place was behaving rather strangely so we were keeping some kind of eye on him at the same time that we were shooting to find out what was going on.

Finally, we were talking about history later and Pliny the Younger whose eye-witness accounts of things like the eruption at Pompeii in which his father was killed was the basis of a lot of modern history.

It’s strange though, thinking about that Burmese girl turning up in the middle of the night. What brought her into the proceedings?

In fact, it was pretty strange all round. About 20 or so years ago (I was still working and had the armoured Opel Omega) she sent me an e-mail. “I’m a Burmese illegal and I need help. I think you can help me”.

What help I would be to a young desperate girl is anyone’s guess, and how did she find my e-mail address?.

That’s the kind of thing that piques my interest and has brought me more than my fair share of trouble in the past, as events in the High Arctic will demonstrate, but anyway, I must know more about this.

We met and I took her for a drive and then a walk, taking all of the usual precautions. She regaled me about how she’d fled Myanmar through the jungle swamps and into Thailand and stowed away on an aeroplane – you know, the usual story.

But while she was telling me this I was looking her over. Perfectly manicured hands and skin, designer denim jacket and jeans – someone who’s fled through the jungle and stowed away on an aeroplane? If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck and that’s all there is to it.

So I was wondering where all of this was going to go, so seeing as we were close to Valentine’s Day I sent her a bunch or red roses a couple of days later to try to draw her out but I don’t think that she was born yesterday because she cottoned on to my game, I reckon. After she’d tried to up the ante with a story about how she “really did have a passport” and I still didn’t take the bait, it petered out.

There have been a few bizarre encounters in my life, and that was certainly one of them. And I wasn’t on a ship remixing a Colosseum live concert either. I must have been losing my touch.

For the rest of the day I haven’t done very much. Just a leisurely ramble around here and there, and I had the guitars out for a while a well.

For tea there were no chips because the potatoes aren’t big enough. So I cubed them and fried them and they were just as good with a salad and some of those small breaded quornburgers. There’s still a few left before I start on the big ones, but the freezer is now emptying quite quickly and I’ll have to start another marathon baking session soon.

Hence the new pie dish.

So before I go to bed I’ll dictate some radio notes. That will give me something to do tomorrow and at least make sure that i’ve actually achieved something this weekend. High time I did some work.

Friday 19th May 2023 – AT LONG LAST …

… the internet is back up and running, as you might have noticed.

What has apparently happened, as the technician who came round just after lunch told me, was that there was a short-circuit in one of the apartments that had fused the main installation in the building.

They had repaired the installation but the short circuit persisted so they had to disconnect the circuit and gradually reinstate it apartment by apartment until they could find out which one it was.

Of course, it was in one of the apartments that is a “second home” for someone from Paris who wasn’t here so it couldn’t be fixed until they’d contacted the apartment owner and found a keyholder so they could go in, and of course it was in the circuit before mine which meant that I was disconnected while all of this was going on.

Whether that’s the case or not, I don’t know. But it will explain why the connection flickered on a couple of times quite briefly during all of this.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and it’s a real ill wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good. It gave me an opportunity to catch up on a mountain of outstanding work, which isn’t all done but it’s still progress, and also, because the technicians were coming to check my installation, it meant that I had to tidy up the bedroom. I even had the vacuum cleaner going for a while.

And while I was tidying up, I found the missing spare battery for the NIKON D3000 that I lost a long time (as in several years) ago. It had fallen underneath one of my bookcase units.

So how did I celebrate everything? Well, while I was in town this afternoon I treated myself to an ice cream. I felt that I deserved it.

Especially after last night. I was so engrossed in a couple of tasks that it was long after midnight when I finally crawled into bed. And when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was stark out. It was an effort to haul myself up out of bed before the second alarm went off five minutes later.

Mind you, after the distance that I travelled durning the night, I was surprised that I made it back in time for the alarm. At one point I was living with a group of Mexicans from 100 or so years ago, the time of the Revolution. We were living on the margins. We weren’t actually revolutionaries or criminals. I can’t remember most of this but there was one part where we were in a cave and there was some kind of event taking place concerning someone who had made a promise that he’d pay to have his wine crop blessed and fruitful but hadn’t done so. And so they held him to submitting his youngest daughter, who was 10, to be sacrificed. He had to fill in all this form to state about her etc and that he was willing for her to go and that he recognised that he was in default for not having thanked whoever it was properly for promoting the fruitfulness of his crops

Did I mention the story … “no you didn’t” – ed … about the 2 girls who had tried to buy some wine from an off-licence to get a teacher at school into trouble? The server recognised them and wouldn’t sell it to them. He had his revenge quite accidentally. It was the school outing and he’d forgotten to tell the parents of one of these girls. She hadn’t gone to school that day – she was paying truant. She thought that everyone else would be at school and cover for her but of course not being there on a day when there were so few students her absence was noticed and someone complained to her parents. When this all came out, the shopkeeper had forgotten to tell the parents about the trip as well, he said “don’t forget that I remember you from the day when you were in my shop so be careful not to make a fuss. You can see why karma has caught up with you”.

And then I had to go to meet someone in the centre of London so Aunt Mary had given me a book, an ancient book about Civil Engineering that she wanted to sell and have some money. All of the booksellers were around Angel Bridge Railway Station. I arrived at the Metro and the guy in the ticket office saw me coming. He had a ticket all ready. I asked for a return too but he replied “no. This is a weekend ticket and you can use it any time like but you’ll have to hurry. The train is in”. I took the ticket, paid for it and dashed downstairs but missed the train, found that I was on the wrong platform, walk back up halfway and enquire of the guard or look at the sign to find myself on the correct platform ready to go. But there was something else in this dream about someone being pregnant. They were discussing the pregnancy and talking about gifts that they should buy. One of the girls was very upset that someone else had been chosen to buy the nappies etc because she said that she didn’t have all that much money. That would have been an ideal present for her bearing in mind her shortage of money.

And we’ve had quite a few dreams when I’ve been wandering around the Underground in London, haven’t we?

Finally I had to go to do some research on Emerson Lake and Palmer. I found someone who had some information on them who lived in London so I went down. She was a bus conductor on the buses. Rummaging around in her office I came across a book that was an assembly of photocopied press cuttings going back all the way to 1967, news articles and everything. It was an absolute goldmine and I was enthralled reading it. It mentioned a whole load of clubs and places in London that you could see from the window of this woman’s house. I was there making notes. When she came up onto the top deck of the bus to show someone some damage that needed to be repaired I told her about the book and told her that on no account was she to let it out of her sight. It’s something that she really ought to keep for posterity. When I finished I was going back downstairs to her house. They were talking about a car going for an MoT. I thought “I’m not doing anything this afternoon so I can take it”. I put the book in my rucksack hoping that no-one noticed and went round to see about this car. It turned out to be a pedal car for children. I thought “this is strange” but I’d already offered now so I’ll have to go. I asked her where I’d go. She replied “turn out of here, go up the hill to the roundabout and it’s the 5th street on the right down there”. I was trying to make a mental note of this but it sounded like more than 5 minutes away but I was already committed now so I’d have to go and do it. This book of press cuttings is a little gold mine. I’ve never seen anything quite like this, especially in a dream.

After the medication I came here and slowly unwound myself and then attacked another project. A while ago I’d found the soundtrack of an obscure German rock band that had performed at one of the Hawkfests some time ago.

Back in those days technology wasn’t what it is today and this was full of holes from a worn recording tape. Using the techniques that I’d been practising just recently about “cutting in” pieces of music from elsewhere in the track, I set about repairing the holes. It wasn’t easy, but I managed in the end to make something quite presentable and you’d never find the joins. Even I was impressed.

There was a break for coffee and a fruit bun and I do have to say that the fruit buns that I made in the week are excellent. And as for the biscuits, that I have yet to mention, they have really worked and are even better than the chocolate ones that I made a while back

By now it wasn’t far off lunchtime so seeing as I was expecting visitors I started to prepare for a shower but bang on the dot Rosemary rang me for one of our marathon chats.

Just as she finished, Christian from the radio came round for the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend. We had a drink and chat, and he told me about a local musician who is looking for a bassist. That piqued my interest, as you can imagine. It’s quite lonely here sitting in my bedroom playing with myself.

As soon as he left, the technician came round and checked that everything was working properly, and once he’d gone I could finally have my shower.

It was a painful walk into town to find some mushrooms for my salad tonight, and whet there were were pretty grim. Mind you they had some of those small peppers so I bought a couple for future use.

Next stop was the estate agent to drop off this paperwork, and then the long painful walk back up the hill to home, punctuated by a call at the new ice cream parlour that’s just opened

Back here I cleaned the peppers and put them in the freezer, and finally the physiotherapist turned up. His “marathon session” turned out to be 20 minutes but he had me working quite hard. I was glad when he left and I could have my hot chocolate and delicious ginger oatmeal biscuits.

And then , regrettably, I crashed out for about an hour.

Liz awoke me and we had a chat on the internet (now that I have an internet on which to chat) for a while and then I ended up with a late tea. Chips and mini sausage rolls cooked in the air fryer with a salad.

The mini sausage rolls are starting to run out now so I’m going to have to search for a vegan savoury stuffing so that I can make my own. Puff pastry is quite time-consuming and difficult to make so I might have to by a roll of ready-made stuff and use that.

So shopping to morrow, so I’d better have an early night. I’ll pop into Noz and see what there is there on offer. I could do with a change of diet. I’m still wading my way through the asparagus tips that they had but there are bound to be other exciting things.

Mustn’t forget the vegan yoghurt either. I’ve run out of that and it makes a lovely addition to my leftover curries. Things are definitely looking up around here.

Thursday 18th May 2023 – IF YOU CAN …

… read this posting, then the internet is finally back on.

Well, actually it was on this evening at about 17:00, for all of about 30 seconds. There was just a flicker from the modem, it began to initialise and then it packed up again.

And then checking the error ticket that I registered, it’s still an active ticket so even they don’t believe that they’ve repaired it yet.

But I have to go out tomorrow so while I’m there I’ll stagger up the hill to the Internet suppliers, and instead of crutches I’ll take a pickaxe handle with me. That will sort out the men from the boys right enough.

Last night actually was something along those lines too because I had another reasonable sleep – just waking up a couple of times here and there during the night. There have been one or two like that just recently, I’m pleased to say.

Even more pleasing is that when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was actually up and about. There have been one or two of those just recently too.

So after the medication, there was no internet to check the mails and messages. And no work that I could undertake either.

But I’ve not been idle. Far from it in fact. I’ve been making the most of having no internet.

First thing that I did was to go through the memory stick in the back of the computer. It’s 128GB and it lives in its little socket. Every night before I go to bed I back up the files that I’ve used during the day by copying them onto the memory stick.

Since I reconfigured this computer (in August 2021) it’s become pretty full up so I went through and reviewed all of the files on there. Many of them are superfluous, having been overtaken by events or saved elsewhere. And that freed a pile of empty space.

Having done that, I turned my attention to the main backup. There’s one of these server boxes in here with a couple of hard drives in it. I bought my first PC would you believe 30 years ago, in 1993, a 386SX (prior to that, Nerina and I had an Apple II).

Since then I’ve gone through about 20 or 30 hard drives of different descriptions and everything has been copied onto some kind of backup hard drive all of which has been copied onto bigger and better back-up hard drives over the years.

About 18 months ago, my backup storage became full and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I began to go through and merge everything in to try to free up some space.

That’s what I’ve been doing for most of the rest of the day and although the project is far from finished, I ended up with enough free space to perform a complete and thorough back-up of the big computer, and there’s plenty more free space left.

There will be even more too as this project keeps on going, as long as the internet doesn’t start up again. If it does, I’ll have to go back to work.

But what’s exciting about this is all of the stuff that I’ve been finding, including all of our texts and programmes from when Liz and I were running “Radio Anglais” in the Auvergne.

Something else that I also found was all of my old University stuff. Those were the good old days when I was studying in the back seat of my car while I was waiting for my boss to finish his meetings.

Unfortunately I wasn’t a particularly good student because I couldn’t stick to the curriculum. I’d pick up something during the course and then go to put it into practice instead of reaching the end of the block. ONE OF THE THREE theses that I did for my degree was really good, well researched and involved a great deal of effort. I enjoyed every minute of doing it and learnt a great deal. But it was rather a shame that it went miles off-topic.

That’s the story of my life unfortunately.

There was some time left to transcribe the dictaphone notes. I had actually been away during the night, but not to anywhere exciting and not with anyone of interest either. However a young girl came over to me at some point during the night. She asked me how the door-locks on Caliburn worked so I took her over there and gave her and her her friend a demonstration. They didn’t say why they wanted to know that and I didn’t ask but it certainly seemed to be a curious thing to me that they’d be interested in something like that.

And later on the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union and I was fighting in the Soviet Union Army. Our unit was at the rear and the General refused to order us to the front. We prepared ourselves anyway and were waiting and waiting. In the end the General came to see us and told us that we weren’t going. I marched up to him in a very formal voice “we are going to the front and you aren’t going to stop us”. It was a very tense situation but in the end he gave us instructions and we set off. We set up some kind of preliminary camp somewhere. The front line was several miles away and we were going to walk to it. I gave instructions to the chauffeur to follow us with the car and caravan which would be our office. People thought that it was best to leave it where it was but I wanted it closer to the front line. He and the other chauffeurs were chatting to a bunch of girls in a field. We set off to march. There were one or two people heading our way as if they’d come from the battle. We could see planes overhead. We made ourselves psychologically ready for confrontation

Finally, I was in Crewe. I was body-filling a car door, making a bit of a mess of it. Someone else was with me. An old L-reg Duple-bodied coach pulled up. Although it had a couple of other operators’ liveries on it I recognised it as one of Barratts. Someone with me asked whose it was so I replied that it was one of Barratts. They asked how I knew. After the driver parked it he walked round the corner, boarded another one that was there and drove away. I said “let’s go and check the legal writing on it”. We set off to walk around the corner to where he’d parked the coach. Just as we were coming up to it someone else boarded it and drove it away. I said “ahh well, never mind”.

The physiotherapist rang me up to say that he wasn’t going to come (once again!) and it’s just as well that he rang because at that moment I was stark out on my chair. The excitement of finding all of these files must have overwhelmed me.

Tea tonight was a burger with pasta and veg in a spicy tomato sauce. It’s been a while since I had pasta and there’s quite a bit lying around here, as I discovered when I was sorting through stuff the other day. I might actually try some pasta instead of rice with my stuffed pepper next week, if I remember to buy an peppers.

But after all of this thrilling day that I had, I’ll transcribe a couple of the backlog of dictaphone notes and then go to bed. I’ll need a shower in the morning because the radio guy is coming to pick up my work as I can’t e-transfer it right now, and I have to go out to the letting agent at some point.

The physiotherapist says that he will come too, but we shall see. I’ve heard all of that before.

Wednesday 17th May 2023 – AND IF YOU CAN …

… read this, then normal service has finally been resumed. And not before time either because I’m pretty much fed up of this. I did think that their estimate of the time that the internet would be back up was rather optimistic.

In actual fact, the internet did come back up – but only for a very brief moment and then it went again. I received a message from my provider telling me “to contact the service department”.

And so I did. And it’s all automated these days, but my complaint has been recognised and registered because when I tried to log in again to register another complaint, it explained that there “is already an intervention signalled for this number”.

So I just have to sit and wait, and contemplate my navel.

There wasn’t much time for contemplation in bed last night because I seem to have been extremely busy, as I discovered when I listened to the dictaphone. I started off regrettably with my brother. It was coming up to Christmas. We were talking about everything. The subject of presents came up and I said that I’d only bought one Christmas present for someone this year. I couldn’t think of what to buy anyone so I hoped that no-one had bought anything for me because I didn’t want anything. When my father asked me what I wanted for Christmas I had to think for about half an hour before I could come up with anything. My brother said “I would straight away have been able to answer that. I’ve seen this beautiful chandelier”. I replied “yes but that’s for a special purpose, isn’t it, a special thing like that? That’s understandable but I don’t really need anything at all”. When I said that I’d only bought one Christmas present what I meant was one present gratuitously. There were a few people who had done me favours throughout the year and I’d bought something for them but I wasn’t including that.

There was something else about a space probe that had just come back to land on Earth. The guy had undergone some kind of spiritual conversion and was going on about how the Vatican had ordered the rainforest to be destroyed, lots of other kinds of similar things. The Press mocked him about it for thinking that he’d become such an important and new, different person since his exploration, that people would spend more time listening to him. They were having a bit of a Field Day at his expense. There were lots more to it than this but I can’t remember now.

And then a little girl who was barely a toddler had been left at home to learn to walk etc while the rest of her family had gone away. She learnt quite quickly. One thing that they left was all these films about “baby’s first steps” and “baby discovers that she has arms”, all these patronising kinds of films that were aimed at making her grow up quicker and a little earlier if she felt so inclined.

Later on I’d gone away for a weekend. It was in Amsterdam but no Amsterdam that I ever knew. I’d gone to retrace the steps of a journey that I’d made a few years earlier. The Saturday was OK but the Sunday morning before I caught my aeroplane home I went back to do the second part of it. I ended up in an underground tunnel where there were all these cars etc. There were some extremely tight 90° bends in there. These coaches were having a hell of a job trying to negotiate their way round. I was walking round and I saw the girl whom I was with. She was sitting in a waiting room at the far end of this subterranean tunnel. I ran quickly back to a parking space halfway along to collect a few things. I was interrupted by a coach trying to manoeuvre its way around again. Then a load of people came through the double door. At first I thought that one of them was a bear but it was a small rotund man in a fur coat. But it was really so surprising. I made my way back to this waiting room and had to go down all these metal steps. I thought “I hadn’t gone down these metal steps when I saw her and she certainly wasn’t in the ante-room”. When I reached the bottom I found that I’d actually climbed to the very top of a huge radio mast. The view was terrifying. I just looked down at my feet al the time. At the top they were doing some work on it so they had to help me go round to find a place to stand. I made the remark “Oh God! I don’t want to know how high up I am here”. Someone said “you’re at 5000 feet”. Of course I went berserk. I just said that I didn’t want to know. There was some tension. There was a guy there pointing out all these people on these advertising posters that you could see from the top. I tried my best not to look and he was prattling on about this and that. What was going through my mind was “how on earth am I going to get down again from here because I’m paralysed”. And I never did find that girl again.

Finally I was in New Brunswick at my niece’s. I had to go to the solicitor to sign a document so we agreed to meet on the Sunday afternoon. Another woman from the village wanted to come with me too. Sunday at 14:00 I presented myself at this woman’s house and knocked on the door but she didn’t come. A few minutes later a guy turned up with a few young girls. They all went in the house but I still waited. 10 minutes later a couple of women and a pile of children came out. I wasn’t sure whether one of these women was one of the women for whom I was waiting so I said something about going to the solicitor. She replied “you’re lucky”. I said “eh?” but she wandered off with all of the kids down to the lake. I began to go back to the bus stop. Just then a council employee on a moped and pillion went past. I thought “this must be the bus” so I shouted and ran after it but he took no notice and rode past. I walked up to the top of the street because I knew that he’d be coming back along the main street and walked a little way to where there was a bus stop. Sure enough, bus routes 3 and 4 stopped here. I suddenly realised that it’s Sunday. There’s no public transport on Sunday. How am I going to get to town to see the solicitor? I suppose that I’d have to go back, pick up my car and drive there. Then I wondered what I would do if he wasn’t there. I don’t have a Canadian ‘phone and I wouldn’t be able to contact anyone if I were out there wandering around waiting for things to happen.

And not only that – when the alarm went off this morning i was already up and about.

You can imagine that a good part of my morning was spent transcribing that lot of dictaphone stuff. No cats, no TOTGA, no Zero, no Castor either but once again, member of my family rear their ugly heads in the middle of my nightmares. I’ve no idea why either because during my waking (notice that I didn’t say “lucid”) hours I don’t spend a single moment thinking about them.

But what was interesting about the night was me being terrified (not even simply “scared”) of heights. That’s not like me at all. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I reroofed my farm back in 2009 I was working off a ladder overhanging a steep drop down onto solid rock and I didn’t bat an eyelid.

But anyway, I digrsss … “yet again” – ed.

With there being no internet, and hence no work, I spent some time this morning tidying up a few of the directories on the hard drive, making things a little easier to find my way around.

And the rest of the day has been spent going through the arrears on the dictaphone from when I was in hospital. Only 37 entries to transcribe now and if this internet breakdown carries on, I might even finish them at some point.

Updating the relevant blog entries might be problematic however. We shall have to work on that somehow.

The cleaner came round this afternoon. She told me that the neighbour to whom I referred yesterday has had a really bad fall and is off to the hospital to have an x-ray and all that kind of thing. Not that anything is broken (otherwise she’d have been in hospital a long time before this) but I gather that there are other issues. She’s quite elderly.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry and naan bread. The naan was really nice but for some reason it didn’t cook as well as the previous ones. I think that I must be losing my touch

So now there’s not a lot else that I can do. This internet issue is getting on my nerves, not simply because it’s not working but because I have to take my work physically to the radio station tomorrow rather than sending it by e-mail. I can really do without that but it’s a case of “needs must when the devil drives”.

So I’ll sit and twiddle my thumbs for a while and then go off to bed, unless some other inspiration comes my way. But I’m a bit short on inspiration right now.

Tuesday 16th May 2023 – IF YOU CAN …

… read this, then normal service has been resumed and we have our internet back. Round about 08:00 this morning when I was trying to do something interesting, the internet went “phut”.

Having contacted the Internet provider, they informed me that there was a “technical issue” and it will be out until at least Wednesday morning. As a gesture, they have offered us 200mb of mobile internet per day via our smartphones, but have you ever tried to type out on a smartphone keyboard the rubbish that I churn out?

Anyway, I had another more reasonable night last night and that makes quite a change. It’s a shame that I was rather busy and ended up not going to bed until later than I intended. It would have been quite nice to have had a longer more reasonable night.

And that’s not all either. I awoke bolt-upright at about 06:25 and couldn’t go back to sleep. Consequently, when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about.

with the internet crashing out, I wasn’t able to do anything of the things that I needed to do and so in the end I transcribed the notes on the dictaphone from the night. I was with 2 friends at some point. We were driving somewhere down a narrow lane. As we continued a cement mixer came towards us. For some reason he had a change of opinion and decided to perform a U-turn and return the way that he had come. He stopped and reversed off to the side of the road ready to pull back round the other way but the bank of the road gave way underneath him and the lorry fell over on its side. We dashed over there. When we arrived he was busy extricating himself from the wreck. We asked him if he was OK. he replied “yes, there’s no problem”. We then wanted to know if there was anything that we could do but he couldn’t think of anything that needed doing. He could quite happily arrange all of that himself. To be on the safe side I took his phone number and gave him mine. I said that I’d phone him in half an hour and se what he was up to. where this happened was near a railway line. Just as we were talking a 4-4-2 tank engine fitted with condensing apparatus went past on the railway line obviously pulling an old London Underground train. We climbed back into our van and set off. These 2 people with me, 1 was a guy and 1 was a girl. They were a couple. I know who they are but I just can’t think who.

There was a group of us going into the house. We’d been out shopping, buying stuff. As we went in, one of the people noticed that my shoelaces were undone so he bent down to tie them for me. Of course I had a lot of trouble with my legs. Where he put his hand was right on one of my sore spots. I told him to stop, that he was hurting but he couldn’t understand and carried on trying to tie my laces. I was going berserk. I told him that I had cancer. He replied that I must be imagining the pain. For some reason it became a very complicated thing. In the end we went in. He was sulking somewhat. He asked “what about that think we were going to do if we had the part?”. I replied “I don’t have it but I know that it’s in here. It can’t be anywhere else”. He sat down and looked at his watch and made a note of the date and time, sitting there with his arms folded waiting for it to be produced.

With not much to do until my Welsh lesson, I did some revision, However, the trouble is that with having a teflon brain, nothing sticks to it and I needn’t have bothered really. My memory issues are quite annoying. And it’s strange – I can remember the words of some kind of extremely obscure rock song from the mid-60s but ask me why I wanted to go into the kitchen 5 minutes ago.

Trying to have a Welsh lesson on a smartphone isn’t easy either but it went so much better than I expected, and far better than when I tried it in Canada back in October.

Once the lesson was over, I had a really big baking session.

There is now another pile of fruit buns, most of which are in the freezer waiting for another day, and there’s a mountain of lovely biscuits. And I DO mean “lovely”, because I sampled them.

It’s the basic 4/8/10 recipe (sugar, vegan butter and flour) with vanilla essence, fleur d’orange, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder and yeast.

Added to that was some diced fresh ginger and then some honey, and several tablespoons of oatmeal to restore the consistency after the addition of the honey.

You won’t find me telling you about times and temperatures because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my oven is pretty much hit-and-miss and nothing is consistent. Here in this apartment, it’s all done by trial and error.

While I was waiting for everything to happen I sorted through my collection of herbs and spices. And just like the bathroom stuff at the weekend, I found that I’d actually bought the spices that I needed when I was there on a previous occasion and had forgotten about them.

Ahh well! See my bit about “memory” above.

The rest of the day has been spent dealing with the dictaphone notes from when I was in hospital. The coughing, spluttering and rasping throat were difficult to decipher so I hadn’t really touched them until I would feel more like it, so I had a bash today, with nothing better to do.

There are still plenty more to go at of course – this isn’t something that will be done in 5 minutes, or even in the next week or so. It’s taken me 6 months to reach this point.

When the physiotherapist came round, I was actually … errr … relaxing, so he awoke me. But he needn’t have bothered because my neighbour in this building, whon he also sees, has had a bad fall and he’ll be spending all of his time with her.

How many sessions is this that he’s missed with me just recently?

Tea was a lovely taco roll with rice, using some of the stuffing left over from yesterday. There’s still a bit left so I’ll have a leftover curry tomorrow, with one of my naan breads from out of the freezer.

Looking back (and forward) to my meals just recently and my cooking and baking, things are definitely taking a turn for the better around here. Living down on the farm was enjoyable when I was fit and healthy, but cooking was somewhat limited and for obvious reasons too. Things are so much better here and when I eventually have a real and proper kitchen things will be even better.

But that’s something about which to worry on another occasion. Right now, I have things to do before going to bed. And with a bit of luck, the internet might be back up tomorrow and I catch up with whatever needs doing.

Monday 15th May 2023 – AFTER ALL THAT …

…I said last night about my radio programme, I did actually finish it today, and before tea too.

Mind you, it was a case of “only just”. There wasn’t all that much time left.

As I said yesterday, the trip to and from Leuven is really tiring and trying to do it in three days instead of four (missing out on my day of recovery following my treatment) is just contributing to the problems.

However, knowing that the walk from the hospital back to the station is possible, the shorter walk to and from the old place where I used to stay will become theoretically possible. The major issue though is that it’s far away from places to go to eat, and even farther from the shops if I wanted to buy my own food.

However, there’s bound to be a solution somehow, I reckon.

Anyway, when the alarm went off this morning at 07:00 I was stark out and isn’t that a change? In fact, by the looks of things I must have had a good night. I can’t really remember too much in the way of disturbances.

After the medication I made a start on the radio programme. But I wasn’t really in the mood and there seemed to be plenty of distractions to divert me from the job at hand.

One of them, which will come as a huge surprise to many people, is that I rearranged things in the bathroom.

Having gone overboard at the weekend stocking up on bathroom products that I didn’t really need because I’d stocked up the last time that they’d had a sale, I was running out of place to put them. And so that was a nice little job for a while.

And I do stress the word “little”. The way things are at the moment, I can only work for about 10 minutes and then I have to go to sit down for an hour to catch my breath.

No physiotherapist today. he sent me a message to say that he’ll be coming on Tuesday and Friday this week. That’s despite me saying to him that I’d like him to come on the same days and at the same time all the time. I can’t do with this continual disruption. Of course, I didn’t get the message until I’d had a shower and a good clean-up, but I don’t suppose that prettying myself up is a bad idea.

Another thing that I’ll have to do tomorrow, straight after my Welsh lesson, is to bake some more biscuits. I used the last ones today. I have plenty of fresh ginger and plenty of honey, so I might go for some kind of honey and oatmeal biscuits. But I don’t think that anything will be as good as those chocolate biscuits that I made a while back. They were special.

So with the radio programme finished, I had a listen to the dictaphone. But that was rather disappointing. There was something to do with a calendar and some cats last night but that’s really all that I remember. I can’t remember a thing apart from that.

And then I was on my travels again later on and that evaporated too as soon as I took hold of the dictaphone. I’m really not doing very well at the moment remembering all of these and I’m really puzzled as to whether any of my favourite companions have been coming to see me and slipping away without me remembering. Wouldn’t that be a tragedy?.

Finally, I’d heard a noise outside my apartment so I went out to see. There was a small kitten in the gutter, a tortoiseshell kitten that was crying. It looked as if it had been abandoned and was starving. I went over to look at at and while I was looking at it, another one appeared. A group of people assembled. They said that they hadn’t noticed these kittens around before. I went to go back into my apartment but noticed that I’d left the front door open. I walked in and could see kitten footmarks in the hall. I followed them into the living room. These 2 kittens had come inside and had started to make themselves comfortable. I couldn’t grab hold of them and put them outside so I had to sit down and ponder my next move. One of them came to sit on me and began to purr. I thought to myself “it looks as if I’ve acquired a couple of cats, doesn’t it?”.

One of the plans that I have for my new apartment is to think about whether I can have a cat. If I’m not going on any more mega-voyages to North America and not going so often to Leuven, it’s something that wouldn’t be impossible.

But the amount of time that my subconscious has been dwelling on the question of cats, maybe there will be one or two here sooner rather than later. Some people whom I know in the USA have a Serval, an African savannah cat, and that would be something really interesting to have around the area. Have you seen the size of them? It would scare the tourists and holidaymakers to death.

Tea was a stuffed pepper, the pepper coming from out of the freezer again. But in the air fryer at a lower temperature but for a longer iime, the stuffing wasn’t cooked sufficiently. I’m going to have to spend more time working on this to do it properly. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

But that’s enough for tonight. I’m off to bed, later rather than earlier, and I’ll probably dream about cats again, I dunno. It would be nice to have some kind of company round here seeing as I don’t go out very often these days, and cats certainly aren’t demanding.

Sunday 14th May 2023 – AFTER ALL OF …

… the excitement over the last day or two, I was expecting to have a really decent sleep last night and probably not raise my ugly head from the pillow until midday or something like that.

And so you are probably just as surprised as I am that I was actually up and about at 09:30 this morning.

Considering that I didn’t go to bed until after midnight either, it’s something of a surprise.

In actual fact, I was awake quite a good deal earlier than that and if I’d have applied myself I could have heaved myself out of bed quite a while earlier than 09:30. But it IS Sunday after all.

Anyway, once I was up and about I didn’t do very much at all today. I’ve paired off the music for the radio programme I’ll be preparing and I’ve made a start – a slow start – on writing the notes. I’ll finish it off tomorrow but I shan’t be breaking any records. I’m still not wound up sufficiently after my gruelling few days on the move.

And that’s another thing. Rosemary has asked me if I’d like to go down to the Auvergne for a while to recover but 500 kilometres down to Menat and then 500 kilometres back in Caliburn is totally out of my reach, the way things are right now.

There was something on the dictaphone from last night. I’d been to collect Caliburn from the garage after he’d had his starter fixed. There was a young girl there. I knew her from the Auvergne. They were discussing the signing of the certificate for her controle technique. Because her vehicle was registered in the Auvergne it had to be someone from there who signed it. She was wondering whether if the guy here signed it, if it would be valid. He replied “no-one checks up on things like that”. I asked “has it passed now?”. She looked at me and suddenly realised that she’d been with me at the garage in the Auvergne when there had been some kind of issue with her car when Caliburn had passed his controle technique. We began to chat. She was very curious about the electric cable coming down my arm. She asked what it was for. I showed her a clip on my belt and said “that’s where my mobile phone normally goes. It plugs into this wire here at this end and at the other end where you see the cable I can put a solar panel on my back and plug the phone into the solar panel while I’m walking around. When you’re on an expedition that’s how you keep your phone charged”. She thought that that was a wonderful idea.

When I’d finished that I made some hot chocolate and came back in here where I regrettably … errr … relaxed for a while.

After I’d had lunch I’d taken out some pizza dough from the freezer and it had been defrosting during the afternoon. Later on, I kneaded it and rolled it out to put on the pan

However, it didn’t seem to want to spread out correctly and began to shrink. In the end I had to roll it all back up, knead it again and roll it out a second time.

When it was cooked the dough had risen to perfection and it really was a pizza as good as the one that I’d made the other day. Cutting these cherry tomatoes in half and putting them on top of the vegan cheese instead of slicing normal tomatoes and putting them on the bottom underneath the rest of the toppings is really the way to go.

So now, having emulated my namesake the mathematician and done three fifth of five eights of … errr … nothing all day, I’m going to bed. I’ll tackle the radio programme tomorrow but don’t expect it to be done quickly. I’m just not in the mood.

But it’s really nice to be back home. In the words of Steve Marriott, I’M SICK AND TIRED OF HOTELS, HARD BEDS

Saturday 13th May 2023 – I WAS RIGHT …

… when I said that I couldn’t go to bed last night. My head was still spinning and everything was still churning up inside and it was 02:30 in the morning and I still hadn’t gone to bed.

At some point afterwards I finally did manage to stagger into bed and then it took me an age to drop off.

Surprisingly, when the alarm went off at 07:00 (because I forgot to switch it off) I awoke quite rapidly and although I turned over to go back to sleep, it was pretty pointless and it wasn’t long before I arose from the dead.

Had I remembered to switch on the immersion heater yesterday I would have had a shower but as I forgot I had to content myself with a cold water wash.

Despite everything else that was going on I decided that I’d go to the shops to pick up some stuff even though I didn’t need all that much. I couldn’t face Noz though so I went straight to LeClerc.

Not that I needed much but they had a sale of personal cleaning stuff like shampoo, shower gel and the like when they do ridiculous discounts for bulk, so I bought a pile of stuff to keep in the bathroom cabinet for whenever, totally forgetting that I did that last time that they had a sale and the stuff is still in the bathroom cupboard as yet untouched.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … two things happen to you when you reach my age

you forget absolutely everything
I can’t remember what the second thing is

One thing that I did remember was the fresh ginger. I’ll now have to find a good recipe for honey and ginger biscuits.

Back here I had a coffee and some cheese on toast, and then came in here to recover from my exertions. To my surprise (and yours too) I managed to keep on going all day without crashing out despite the rather short night, although I didn’t actually accomplish anything.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too, and that was surprising. I was living with someone but I can’t remember who it was. She’d had some friends round. I had to go out to do something and when I came back, fed up, cold and miserable and I thought that I’d go and have a bath to warm myself up properly. When I arrived there her friend was having a bath. She turned to me and said “so-and-so is having a bath now. You’ll just have to wait”. She turned round and walked away. I was already in a foul humour. There was a huge jar of catering-size mayonnaise on a table on the edge of a balcony. I kicked the jar off the table. it rolled onto the floor, rolled over the edge of the balcony onto the floor downstairs with a great big “smash” and spread mayonnaise everywhere. I remember thinking “that’s rather too bad, isn’t it?” and went to find some more stuff to kick over and generally disturb. There was much more to it than that but I can’t remember now.

Rosemary telephoned me later on and we had another one of our marathon chats. She’s having a few issues right now and although she knows how to resolve them, it’s a case of talking them through with people so that thoughts can be marshalled in the correct order

This led me nicely up to the football this evening. Haverfordwest County were playing Y Drenewydd for the final European place. In a match of few chances the score after 120 minutes was 1-1. This led to a penalty shootout and Haverfordwest’s New Zealand international keeper Zak Turner did it again, saving a shot from Aron Williams to put them through.

The first time that Haverfordwest have been in Europe since 2004 and it’s nice to see that former Hull City coach Tony Pennock has managed to accomplish something for the club after many years out in the wilderness.

Tea was a burger on a bap with a baked potato and salad. It was quite a nice tea too. Those vegan burgers that I found in Avranches a couple of weeks ago are quite nice.

Tomorrow I might even feel like doing some work. I’m always quite exhausted after a visit to the hospital at Leuven and it does take a while for me to recover.

However, my posting that “I couldn’t even run for my life” yesterday has brought forth a couple of invitations from some of my friends to go with them on another expedition or two to the High Arctic.

Don’t be misled by this. It’s not a gesture of solidarity. It relates to something else completely.

It’s a complete fallacy that in order to escape an attack by a polar bear, you have to be able to run faster than the bear. In fact, all you need to do is to run faster than one other person in your party. And I suppose that the thinking behind Mike’s and Jerry’s invitations is that if I go with them they will all be quite safe.

Friday 12th May 2023 – AS BARRY HAY …

… once famously said – “What else can I say except IT’S ALWAYS GOOD TO BE BACK HOME“

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … out of all of the places where I have ever lived, the only place where I’ve ever experienced homesickness when I’ve been away is this beautiful building here with the spectacular scenery and wonderful neighbours.

Mind you, it was a struggle to get back here. having crowed so lustily about the outward trip, the return was nothing like the same.

It always seems to be at railway stations where it all seems to go wrong, as witness my rather dramatic and spectacular fall on a railway station in Montreal in October.

And so it was today. To pass through the automatic barriers at the Metro at the Gare du Nord in Paris you have to move smartly. I wasn’t smart enough and ended up being trapped as the barriers closed between me and my backpack. It took the combined efforts of three passers-by to free me from my trap.

And the struggle was clearly far too much for me because I had another bad fall straight away afterwards, and a couple of people had to pick me up because I couldn’t pick myself up.

One of the guys was going my way so he took my backpack and helped me onto the Metro as far as Montparnasse. Ahh well.

As usual, when I have a reason to leave the bed, I have a fitful restless night. And so it was last night. But when the alarm went off at 06:25 I was up quite quickly.

Once I’d packed, I was down to the railway station and as usual with the SNCB it was an antediluvian AM80 that came in this morning and I have all kinds of difficulties climbing into one of those. And climbing out at Gare du Midi in Brussels too.

The TGV was already in but they wouldn’t let us board for ages. And we had a “security issue” that delayed the loading even more.

The train did however set off on time and I spent the journey doing some research for my High Arctic photos of 2019. And you have to admire the naming conventions of James Rae as he roamed around the High Arctic explaining his reasons for the names that he gave to the geographical features that he encountered, such as, for example, Bence Jones Island in the Rae Strait “after the distinguished medical man and analytical chemist of that name, to whose kindness I and my party were much indebted for having proposed the use of, and prepared, some extract of tea for the expedition.’”.

One of the Inuit ladies I encountered on Devon Island gave me some of her native Labrador Tea to try. I shall probably have to name my new apartment after her because the tea was “much enjoyed”. She was so pleased that I enjoyed it that she performed a drum dance for STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I’m sure that you think that I’m making this up.

At the Gare du Nord I had my “issues” but with an aching leg and wounded pride I made it down the Rue du Départ to Montparnasse and my train without encountering anyone I know. And with catching a later train out of Brussels this morning I didn’t have long to wait.

The train was acually half-empty but for some reason they had me sharing a seat with someone. But once I was sure that evryone who was on was on, I went across the gangway and had a seat all to myself.

At Granville we pulled into one of the older platforms that the Caen-Rennes diesels use and with our train being higher you’ve no idea the struggle that I had to exit the train.

The leg is definitely weakened though because hauling myself into Caliburn was a struggle and I was back to how I was in January without the force to press the brake pedal properly. As I’ve said before, each time that I have a fall, it takes longer and longer to recover.

back here I made a nice strong coffee and came in here to collapse in a chair, from where I didn’t move for hours.

Earlier on, I mentioned my restless night. Tons of stuff on the dictaphone to prove it too. I’d bought a property last night. I’d paid a lot of money for it but I could afford it. It was in rural Normandy somewhere. We were discussing plans to move into it etc but I wanted to have a closer look at what was involved. I managed to dig up an old sale brochure for it from years ago where there was a house, an annexe and a Plaxton Embassy-bodied coach that had been converted into a race car transporter with some kind of car that had been modified for racing. There was a big garage and workshop area. I thought that this was absolutely fine if I could find someone else to come to share it with me. We’d be away with all of this if it turns out to be the same kind of place.

Someone wanted a letter posting but for various reasons they weren’t able to do it. They asked me if I would go. After much persuasion I went on the pushbike. The first thing that I noticed was that there were no brakes on it. I thought that I’d be really running a risk going all the way to the post box particularly as I’d have to cycle through Crewe town centre. But cycle I did, nearly knocking people over, taking wide turns and nearly ending up on the wrong side of the traffic island. I eventually reached the cinema which was absolutely packed because there was an extremely controversial film being shown. There were 2 pillar poxes outside, one of which had a stamp machine attached. I didn’t know which pillar box to put the letter because the time of the collections was exactly the same. It looked as if they were both receiving the correct attention. In the end I simply put it in the newer one of the two.

And then I was in a fast-food restaurant last night in the USA. I tool a banana. There was a guy there mopping the floor. He took three bananas and put them on the scales with mine. I told him to clear off and it led to a strange argument where he insisted that I was paying for his bananas. The clerk behind the counter also thought that I was. We had something of an argument for about 5 minutes. In the end I took my banana off the scales, pout $0:60 down on the countertop and began to walk away. That ended up into another discussion that turned out to be much more friendly and I’d no idea why. We ended up talking about shift rotas etc. The cashier showed me how her shift rota worked and how she had to change a few things round. I bet that you’re really enjoying these exciting moments.

We were working on something for the radio. We needed a troupe of dancing children. We recruited a couple of kids whom we knew but we were short on numbers. I went past a sports field and there was a group of kids there. There were two who were controlling the crowd and dancing in time to some music that was going on in the background, a boy and a girl. They looked quite good so I thought that I’d go over to talk to them. I went over and said “hello”. They replied “we aren’t allowed to talk to strange men” … “obviously your reputation is spreading wider than you realise” – ed … “and there’s no teacher here at the moment”. I said “no problem. The headmaster knows me from something else so I’ll give you a note, you can give it to him and he’ll decide what to do”. The idea was to write a little note to the headmaster say what was happening and take the matter from there. Going through my pockets, first of all I couldn’t find a pen. I asked if anyone had a pen. One of the people standing around, I could see that he had some pens in this top pocket but he didn’t volunteer. Eventually I borrowed one from someone but then I couldn’t find any paper on which to write. I thought “here I am snatching defeat from the jaws of victory yet again!”.

Finally I wanted a new ladder so I was going to go to the DiY shop. Half a dozen people said that they wanted things so we all piled into my van and went. I bought my ladder and a couple of things. Someone else bought a roof ladder etc. Then I had to go to pay for it. Then we’d all go to sit in someone’s car. There were quite a few people crowded around in cars and it was really cramped. I told the driver to pull down the road and stop. I had to pay with a credit card. he said “ohh not another credit card”. I replied that it’s far better walking around the streets with a credit card than a wad of cash. I was about to give him a few other good reasons but the guy in the back began to be annoyed because we were driving through an area full of local police. For some reason he didn’t want to involve them. The guy in this car wasn’t going to stop. It looked as if he was going to take me all the way home to drop off this ladder and for me to pay him. Then of course I had to return to pick up everyone else and pick up Caliburn. I thought “for just a simple ladder, this is something else that’s becoming extremely complicated” and that wouldn’t be a first time, would it?

Tea was sausage chips and beans – some of the vegan sausages that I’d bought in Jersey and beans with vegan cheese now that I’ve found a reliable and hopefully constant source.

But I dunno about going to bed because as usual after all of this effort I can’t relax. Back in the old days when I was stressed out after chauffeuring around Brussels I’d go for a long run around the area where I lived. These days though I couldn’t even run for my life.

Tuesday 9th May 2023 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… this morning I was flat-out fast asleep when the alarm went off at 07:00. And looking at the timestamps on the dictaphone files it looks as if I had a peaceful night.

Consequently I have absolutely no idea at all why I crashed out not once but twice this afternoon. But stranger things have happened as far as I’m concerned, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Nevertheless, despite everything, I did manage to beat the second alarm. And after the medication and checking my mails and messages I revised for my Welsh class.

The Welsh lesson was something of a mess and the improvement that I’ve been making over the last few weeks seems to have disappeared.

During the lesson, I was having to do my best not to speak Flemish and I’ve no idea why, so what will probably happen over the next few days when I’m in Leuven is that I’ll be speaking Welsh to everyone rather than Flemish.

When the lesson was over I went off for a shower because the physiotherapist would be coming round. So once I was nice and clean and tidy (well, relatively, as much as I can be) the physio rang me up to say that he couldn’t be round today. And that’s quite typical, isn’t it?

First thing that I did after my lunchtime fruit was to listen to the dictaphone. There was some stuff on there from during the night. I was with a couple of cats last night. There was a girl round at my house. I can’t remember who she was. We were talking about the cats, talking about how I’d trained them to do certain things. One of the things was when it was food time I just took a box of Munchies and shook it. They came running from wherever it was that they were and I made them their food – a handful of dry biscuits with some wet catfood. I gave her a little demonstration that worked quite well. I have a feeling that there’s much more to it than this but I can’t remember now.

Our four cats would actually do that too. If ever I wanted them for some reason, I’d just go outside and shake a box of Munchies. And then be trampled to death in the stampede. I must admit that I’m missing a cat or two.

Later on I’d been in midwestern USA staying in a motel. I got up next morning and got on my motorbike and headed off. I was listening on the radio to an interview about people living in Tennessee who had a kind of natural spring that was pumping compressed air instead of water. They had all kinds of inflatable objects that they were blowing up and putting in their yard. There was a company with a whole fleet of inflatable diggers and pump machinery. I rode past a place that had a load of inflatable cars there including an early 1950s Vauxhall Wyvern. I continued along the road but it suddenly petered out into a circle by an old demolished factory. I had to turn round and go back. I thought “at least it will give me an opportunity to take the photo of that car”. I turned round and set off back but for some reason I can’t have been concentrating because I left the road on the motorbike and slammed myself head-on into a tree trunk and did myself a mischief

The rest of the day has been spent filling in forms, printing off rail tickets and packing my bags ready for my trip to Leuven tomorrow. Not that I’m looking forward to it, trying to make my way around Paris on crutches. The Metro isn’t particularly disabled-friendly and there’s the long walk from Gare Montparnasse to the metro stop.

Add to that the fact that the last time that I was in Paris, the escalator from the platform up to the Gare de Nord was out of order and I had to climb up all the stairs, about 60 of them, with my huge suitcase and STRAWBERRY MOOSE. I won’t forget that trip in a hurry.

As well as all of that, there has been talk of changing all of the metro ticketing. Of course I have a batch of the old magnetic strip tickets that I hope are still operational, because being on crutches I’m going to be rather stuck for time if I have to queue to buy some more.

Having been quite careful about what I ate over the last few days, there wasn’t anything really in the way of leftovers to make a curry. However, it was a curry made of tinned bits and pieces that I made for tea.

And a big double-helping too because I’m taking the other half with me to eat in Leuven tomorrow night. I seem to remember a microwave oven in the hotel where I’ll be staying so I can warm it up. There’s a fritkot over the road but their vegan burgers are prepacked with tomato ketchup, which I detest with a passion.

But all of that is tomorrow. Tonight I’m off to bed ready for my 07:00 start tomorrow. Caliburn will whizz me off to the station and then I’ll be in the lap of the Gods. Heaven help me!

Monday 8th May 2023 – AND THE ANSWER …

… to yesterday’s question was indeed “not very much”.

It’s actually a Bank Holiday here today when the country celebrates VE Day and strictly speaking I ought to be having a lie-in as I try to do on as many Bank Holidays as I can, but with the threatened arrival of the nurse to give me my fortnightly injection, that’s out of the question.

What usually happens is that when I try to lie in on a day that he is due to come to visit, he usually has a blood test to carry out in the building so he’s here before breakfast. Consequently, we had an alarm set today for 07:00 as usual.

Mind you, I needn’t have bothered because when the alarm did go off, I was sitting on the edge of the bed dressing. we’ve had another one of those nights – and mornings.

It was about 08:50 when he came round to give me my injection. And here’s a thing that’s totally unexpected – the database paperwork that he has to keep to record the injections that he gives me is now full.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“I don’t know” he replied. “It’s never reached this stage before”

So clearly I’m continuing to defy all expectations. No-one with this illness has lived longer than 11 years and I was diagnosed in 2015, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall (and I expect that I had it a good while before then) but while it’s true to say that I know all about ill-health, I’m still fighting on. Not exactly fighting fit, just fighting for breath and fit to drop.

With it being a Bank Holiday I’ve had a very relaxing day doing too much of nothing at all. I did finish the radio programme today, as I said that I would, and listened to the one that is to be broadcast this coming weekend but that’s about it.

There’s just one more now that is half-done and I’ll do that this coming weekend. And then I’ll have to start off again. I’m months ahead, which is good news, but there’s always this feeling that some of it will have to be done again as some of these artists can’t go on for ever. I remember back a few years ago in the old “Radio Anglais” days when I spent quite some time waxing lyrical about Chris Squire, only for him to begin to manger les pissenlits par les racines the morning the programme was due to be broadcast.

There was also the stuff on the dictaphone that needed transcribing too. We’re back on the Sherlock Holmes murders again. A couple of people had been struck down in a park by someone dressed entirely in black. There was some woman who dressed herself in black ready to go out just as 2 people were starting to walk on a common in Balham. These 2 people were talking about their past, the girl saying “wasn’t it to this common that you brought such-and-such a girl with whom you used to go out, but she was rather strange?”. The name that they used was the name of this girl. There were police loitering in attendance. They arrested someone dressed all in black in the vicinity of this couple and dragged him away. It turned out that he was actually a mime artist dressed in black ready to perform his act to collect money. As the camera panned to see him dragged away it panned through a figure in black sitting in a café on the common overlooking the events that were taking place

Later on I was going on a coach trip with work for some kind of sports event. One of my colleagues asked me if I went on the previous one two weeks ago to Carlisle. I said no because I had something else to do that evening. While we were waiting for the coach back on this draughty bus station it just didn’t appear. We sat there waiting. There were several tomatoes rolling around, coming and going. One of them came back so I asked it if it had come to pick us up. Someone said “I’ve already asked him and it’s not him” so we sat there and waited. Suddenly I realised that I didn’t have my watch or my key to the office. I’d left them at home. I was wondering what I was going to do. I thought that I’d better take a gamble and go to fetch them. I ran, which was the first time in ages, all the way home to our house in Vine Tree Avenue. All the lights were on. I could hear people moving around. The front door was unlatched so I walked in and ran lightly up the stairs. The taps were all dripping in the bathroom but no-one was in there. My brother was asleep in bed with the light on so I walked quietly in, picked up the key card and my watch that was on the bed, came out and came downstairs again. I could hear my parents in the front room talking about me but I didn’t have the time to stay and listen. I managed to open the door again without making too much noise and set off to run back to the bus station.

It’s a total mystery to me why it is that my family keeps on intruding into my nocturnal voyages. During my waking hours I don’t even waste a minute thinking about them so what’s going on in my subconscious? I don’t mind Nerina putting in an appearance every now and again – after all I invited her into my life for better or for worse, but one of the reasons of leaving the UK was to escape the negativity of everything that was weighing me down and I thought that I’d left them all behind.

But it was interesting to read the bit about “running”, given how I’ve not been out running for a couple of years and I couldn’t do so these days anyway. When we started this programme at University we had all kinds of people recording their dreams, one of whom was a girl who was born without legs. She would tell us that although she’s never walked a single step in the whole of her life (for obvious reasons) she still dreamt about herself going for a walk. So clearly, dreaming isn’t completely tied up with your own personal experiences.

Finally I’d had some issues at work about sick leave, that kind of thing. In the end what I used to do was that at night I’d take a van from work without authority and do furniture removals etc. On one occasion I came back with my Luton Transit. We dropped it off at Zero’s father and began to strip it for spares so we could sell the bits and move on. It wasn’t until we had it pretty much dismantled that it suddenly occurred to me that in the back of it was an old Volkswagen estate, another estate car, a motorbike and lots of other bits and pieces. I’d been using it as a shed I went round to see his wife and said “you’ll never guess what I’ve just remembered” but she told me. She asked me what the plan was. One thing going through my mind was to hire a vehicle, put the Luton Transit on the back and drive al lthe way to France, unload it, drive back and carry on. I said that it would probably take us about a week. If you like, you, your husband and Zero could come along as well. She looked dubious at that point and asked “could it be done in a weekend?”. I replied “we could get there and back in a weekend but unloading it is something else”. She said “the difficulty is with Zero. She could go to her grandfather’s who could take a day off work to look after her but I don’t think that we could do anything else. Are you sure that it couldn’t be done in a weeked?”. I had to describe the journey to her etc. She said “the next question of course is whether we have any money”. I repled “you won’t need any money. Everything will be on me of course”. We had this huge discussion.

Interestingly, I do have a Luton Transit, as regular readers of this rubbish in one of its previous versions will recall. I bought it for scrap because I wanted the box off the back to use as a garden shed and it’s still down on the farm 20-odd years later. And there is a Volkswagen estate in the back of it too, albeit in pieces. A diesel estate that was crashed in Spain and which I recovered to use for spares for mine.

And even more interestingly, while I was waiting to take it down to the farm, I did use it around Brussels doing furniture removals at night and weekends. No tax, no MoT, no nothing in fact. But back then in those days no-one really cared. I remember reading the story of Sir Daniel Gooch, Chairman of the Great Western Railway, reminiscing about the experiences of the way that the GWR operated in its early days, and commenting “what would be said of such a mode of proceeding today?”.

And, interestingly, once more as Tom Petty would have it, “HOW COULD I GET SO CLOSE TO” ZERO “AND STILL BE SO FAR AWAY?”. I’m not sure how many times this is just recently that she’s just been tantalisingly dangled out of reach during one of my nocturnal rambles. It seems that I can summon up members of my family at the drop of a hat but Zero, TOTGA and Castor are totally eluding me. And the Vanilla Queen dropped off the radar a long time ago.

Looking back on things, each time that I’ve been up in the High Arctic, and each time I’ve been trying to edit that Colosseum live concert late at night on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR I’ve had a strange encounter with a mysterious young lady of the opposite sex. First there was The Vanilla Queen, and the next time there was Castor. Jamais deux sans trois as they say around here, but the way my health is going, there won’t be another trip out there. 700 miles from the North Pole we were in 2018 and it looks like that will be that. No Rensselaer Harbour, no Thank God Harbour (where my namesake is buried after they poisoned him 150 years ago) and no Fort Conger.

All of this reminiscing probably means that I have too much time on my hands. But nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

So having crashed out here and there, I went for tea. Steamed veg with falafel balls and a vegan cheese sauce. It’s amazing just how different things have become since mainstream French supermarkets are now selling vegan cheese. It’s expensive of course, but it saves me having to bring back a rucksack full every time that I return from Leuven.

Tomorrow is a Welsh lesson of course, so I’m off to bed early. I don’t want to go crashing out in the middle of my lesson. And then I’ll have to pack my stuff ready for Leuven. Three hospital appointments I have on Thursday so I’m going to be busy.

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: France

Wednesday 24th May 2023 – I AWOKE AT …

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 – REMEMBER YESTERDAY …

Monday 22nd May 2023 – WHEN I AWOKE …

Sunday 21st May 2023 – HAVING A LOOK …

Saturday 20th May 2023 – YOU CAN TELL …

Friday 19th May 2023 – AT LONG LAST …

Thursday 18th May 2023 – IF YOU CAN …

Wednesday 17th May 2023 – AND IF YOU CAN …

Tuesday 16th May 2023 – IF YOU CAN …

Monday 15th May 2023 – AFTER ALL THAT …

Sunday 14th May 2023 – AFTER ALL OF …

Saturday 13th May 2023 – I WAS RIGHT …

Friday 12th May 2023 – AS BARRY HAY …

Tuesday 9th May 2023 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

Monday 8th May 2023 – AND THE ANSWER …

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