… we’re getting back in the old routine again, at least as far as sleeping goes. I had yet another night of tossing and turning and only intermittent sleep and that’s disappointed me.
And I was thinking too, the other day, that with having stopped the Montlucon medication, these exotic, vivid and somewhat outrageous dreams that I’ve been having just recently have stopped too. But that’s not the case, because I was off again. And a welcome “hello” to Caroline who made her debut last night, accompanying me on a visit to a huge house on the edge of town (although I’ve no idea which town) in connection with someone who has appealed against a rating assessment on the grounds that she had been assessed as the occupier of a discrete property rather than part of a joint property. And so we went round, and it’s true to say that there was a big house that was divided into flats, and she was the occupier of one of those flats. However, there was an individual house there that caught my eye, not because of the house itself, but parked outside and clearly the worse for having stood for 30 years or so, was an old white Mini. In fact, it wasn’t a Mini at all but an Austin Seven, which was what the original Minis were called when they first came on the market and its registration number (576BMR) showed it, according to my 1958 Motor Dealer handbook which I had somehow managed to bring with me on my travels during the night (it’s actually upstairs in the attic of my place in France right now) showed that it had been registered in 1957, which meant that it was actually a pre-production factory demonstrator, as rare as hen’s teeth, so you’ve no idea just how excited I was by this find and I was determined to buy it.
And as we have said once or twice, sometimes, after a trip down the corridor or whatever, I can step right back into a nocturnal ramble right where I left off at a previous moment. And sure enough, there were Caroline and I in a car spares shop, buying plugs, points, a condenser, plug leads, distributor cap and all kinds of things for the car ready to have a good go at starting it up.
For breakfast, I didn’t have any fruit juice or soya yoghurt, but I finished off the last of the soya dessert instead. And then I came back, had a good wash and packed all of my possessions ready to leave. I paid the bill for my accommodation but I couldn’t get into the shower as it seemed to be in constant use.
On the bus on the way here, I realised that I’ve forgotten all of the stuff that was in the fridge back at Sint Pieters. I’ll have to remember all of that for when they throw me out of here, and go back to pick it up.
I’m now installed in my room with a much more sociable companion than last time (I’ll tell you tomorrow whether he snores or not) and I’ve been for my x-rays. They sent a wheelchair for me but badger that for a game of soldiers – I’m not dead or dying quite yet so I insisted on walking.
Much to my dismay, I have a male nurse looking after me – no young and nubile Danish student nurse unfortunately. Things had better start looking up for me tomorrow or I’ll be insisting on a change of hospital. What’s the point of being in a hospital if you aren’t going to be surrounded by a bevy of beautiful student nurses? But Hannelore the doctor is in charge of me again so that’s one thing for which I’m grateful because she can soothe my fevered brow any time she likes, and I’ve had several visits from other members of staff already. I’m certainly not going to be lonely.
But tomorrow morning at 08:30 is D-Day. This is when I’m having my operation so I mustn’t eat or drink anything after midnight. I’m not looking forward to this one little bit and I wish that I didn’t have to go through it. Everyone is doing their best to reassure me but I’m probably going to have a panic attack or something – I can feel it coming on already.
, there’s a scene in there where an elderly man turns up on parade with a shotgun, the only weapon the troop has, and Mainwaring insists that he should have it. I’ve always thought that that was rather a silly decision, not the least reason being that because he would have been the only person with a gun, he would have been the only person firing at the Germans, so they would naturally fire back at him and that would remove the head of command from the Home Guard troops (with Mainwaring, that wouldn’t have been much of a loss, but there you go). Anyway, last night, there I was, and there the subject cropped up again. I suggested making the owner of the gun a Lance-Corporal, giving him two privates to assist him (all of which would have enhanced his ego and brought him on board) and thus forming a ready-made light artillery section whenever more substantial weapons appeared on the scene. I’d seen some builders and they had a stack of about two dozen trenching shovels – very thin-bladed shovels on long pole handles – and I’d fancied liberating one of those for use on the farm. But here I was on parade with a three-metre pole with a spoon on the end (with no idea what I would do with this). I was sent off to patrol around the corner of Richard Moon Street (which bore no resemblance whatever to the real Richard Moon Street) and down there was an ancient garage that I had never seen before. It had a bodyshell of an old Lotus Elan and the bodyshell of an old 105E Ford Anglia, both white, both covered with dust and green mould from standing for so long and both on sale at £100. Behind them was what remained of an old Mark II Ford Zodiac, yellow, and which was also for sale. But this place was a treasure trove. There were the remains of a 1920s hand-cranked petrol pump and all kinds of things like that, all overgrown and abandoned and I would have loved to have spent a day or two going through everything that was here.
which I found streamed on the internet. Not a classic “Carry On” film but it certainly has its moments.