… turning out to be a desperate run of dreadful nights, last night was probably about when I reached the nadir.

Although I was in bed quite early bearing in mind my 06:00 start, there was no possibility of going to sleep.

Hordes of people swarming up and down the street outside at all kinds of hours on their way back to the caravanettes parked on the car parks around here. Even at 05:00 they were still coming back from whatever was going on down in the town.

And when I did manage to go off to sleep at some strange time of night, I went on so many travels that I’m surprised that I ever made it back home again afterwards. A girl from school came to see me last night. I can’t remember who she is now. We were both learning Welsh together. During the lesson she’d been exhibiting photos and writing captions for them. We had a translation to do and our teacher was wondering why it took us so long. I explained to the girl first of all that we have to identify the words and then translate them and then arrange them into some kind of lucid sentence. I showed her 3 or 4 books that I’d bought recently that didn’t seem to help me at all with any grammar or any vocabulary. I remember one that I showed her and said “that was 50p wasted wasn’t it?”. We had a bit of a laugh. She said “I don’t think the teacher understands exactly how difficult it is for non-native speakers to grasp the principles of a foreign language”. I wish that I could remember who she was.

There was someone else at some point trying to import a Moldavian diesel engine for a project that he was building that had been interrupted by the war. He described everything that he had to do, such as take out Moldovan nationality etc. But as I started to dictate this I had the stabbing pains in my foot again so I missed an awful lot of most of what he was saying. I know that it was an incredibly complicated procedure.

This next one was a dream where many students at a school in a class had to find a Will because someone had allegedly died. They found a Will but after investigation it turned out that it didn’t belong to that person at all. There was also a tv remote there that wouldn’t change the television. They found out in the end that it was the wrong remote. There were all kinds of strange things going on about removal and substitution of documents and things. These students turned out the classroom but couldn’t find what they were looking for so they started hunting down through the school. I made a few suggestions. I doubted that the document had been destroyed because it had value other than for what they were trying to use it etc. It was a really weird supernatural kind of dream involving all these children and went on for what seemed like hours while they searched for everything and tried to make sense of what was going on with these substitutions

And later we were back in that dream again. There was something about the discovery of a motorbike in the forest and something to do with the casserole lid off the huge casserole frying pan. I can’t remember what was going on in this second part of the dream very well either.

Then I had a garage somewhere on the Pointe du Roc where the zigzags are that climb up the hill. A little yard on the right where you can park 3 cars. It wasn’t very convenient but that was where I was. In this particular dream i’m left the carpark outside this particular building. There was a police car there dealing with a pedestrian and another vehicle. I went off in the Senator, discussing with someone about the yard, saying that it was very small but it was all that was available etc. When I came back into the car park the policeman was still there but one of these guys was wandering around. I asked him what the policeman was doing. He replied that he was waiting for someone else to come. I was wondering what was happening about this with the policeman being outside our building trying to sort out whatever was happening.

And we’re still going onwards. It was late at night. I had to go to do some shopping. The only place was the petrol station so I did some shopping there, a few bits and pieces. I didn’t think much of the pears. They also had banana bread but it was sold in packs of 10 or 20 loaves which was far too many for me. I collected what I wanted. To check out you had to go to a window and hold up your products while she scanned them. I asked her if she found it extremely difficult, which she did because she was never sure if she’d scanned everything that the customer had. I moaned about the bananas and this bread. In the end I cashed out and started to go home.

Finally I was in my apartment building. It was a completely different building and a completely different apartment than this, much more modern. I had to go down and out again. When I came back I lost my way. I couldn’t remember where the lift was. Eventually I found it and went upstairs. I suddenly remembered that I had Marianne’s apartment that she’d left to me. I’d started to decorate it a while back but had somehow run out of energy. That was still waiting to be worked on. I could be doing that instead of messing around. Then it was the Annual General Meeting of the House Owners’ Association. There had been arguments about people weairing striped shirts and a few other things so there was a huge rebellion at this meeting. Everyone was coming along to overthrow some of the ridiculous rules about what you could and couldn’t do. It was so busy that I put my coffee down on this seat and couldn’t find it again because there were so many people all around. I was chatting to someone about my coffee. They said that I should be careful because I’m likely to be sued if it burns someone. I remember having to go to fetch endless cups of coffee because I was so thirsty. I had about 3 or 4 cups of coffee during this meeting.

How about that lot for a series of nocturnal rambles?

The crowds going past here at 05:00 awoke me (I must have been asleep at that point) and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep. So by the time the alarm went off at 06:00 I was up and about, medicated and working on the radio programmes to finish them off and get them out of the way.

And when I’d finished them I made a start on choosing the music for the next radio programme or two but at some point I dozed off to sleep again, which was no surprise given how much sleep I didn’t have during the night. I was away with the fairies for about an hour or so and I was surprised that it wasn’t for any longer.

However, before I dozed off I managed to have my toast and coffee for a late breakfast. And I do have to say that the break that I baked in the air fryer on Sunday, although it wasn’t as aerated as it might have been, was absolute perfection. The best that I have ever made, I reckon. I was really proud of that.

There’s another bread roll as well but I’ll be having it on Wednesday because tomorrow I’m going to have a bash at making pancakes for breakfast and see how they work out.

So with the music for one programme chosen, remixed and paired off already I turned my attention to the dictaphone notes, and that wasn’t the work of five minutes, as you can tell. It took quite a while to type them all out. But what was interesting was that no-one from my family came to visit me in all of that.

But there again, neither did any of my favourite characters and that’s a disappointment. Still, you can’t have everything. Mind you, I wish that I knew who that girl was. The name “Simpson” rang a bell but I can’t remember any girl with that surname whom I might have known at school.

Tea tonight was another stuffed pepper. Quite delicious as well. I’m getting to be quite good at making the stuffing for these. It was only a small one, so I was rather glad that I’d had some soup with pasta at lunchtime. It had been a very long day today and I was actually quite hungry.

There are a couple of things that I have to do right now and then I’m off to bed. To dream about making pancakes and hoping that they turn out as well as I would like them to.

But before I go to bed, I’ll just leave you with a woman who has just posted in a “Shipping” group on my Social Network that her father worked for Cunard. I replied that my father put a great deal of effort into his work as well.

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