Category Archives: n°6

Tuesday 6th January 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

But that’s not surprising. After all, if you don’t go to sleep, you can’t dream, can you?

Last night, I remember saying “The biggest problem right now is the pain in my foot, and it’s killing me. It’s the worst that I’ve ever known it to be”. And I was not wrong either. It really was total agony.

What was the worst thing about this was that it really was an early night. I’d put a lot of effort into finishing off my notes etc and was in bed by 22:15, looking forward to at least eight hours of beauty sleep … "and he needs it too" – ed …

However, being wracked one minute by a fierce, stabbing pain in the foot and the next minute by an intense coughing fit, I just lay there in agony, watching the clock go round and round. When it reached about 05:30, I thought “I’m bound to fall asleep at some point” so I switched off the alarm, thinking that I’d at least sleep through until Isabelle the Nurse would come.

That didn’t work, though, and at 07:25, I couldn’t stand it any more and sat on the edge of the bed.

It took a good fifteen minutes to raise myself to my feet, and then I cleared off into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then went for my hot drink and medication. Surprisingly, I began to feel a little better after the hot drink. I wonder if I’m being dehydrated too much at dialysis, or whether the liquid is coming from the wrong place.

Back in here, I’d barely sat down to restart work when Isabelle the Nurse came in. While she sorted out my legs, she showed me some photos of her daughter in Paris yesterday. It wasn’t the daughter she wanted me to see but the snow. And it was impressive, although not as impressive as my galvanised steel dustbin, nor as impressive as all of the snow around St.Lô that my taxi driver had shown me yesterday.

After she left, I made breakfast. But strangely, and for the first time ever, I didn’t finish my porridge. I wasn’t in the mood for it and I don’t know why. Usually, it’s the food that I most look forward to. I didn’t even finish my toast, complete with the last serving of mushroom pâté, but that was for a different reason.

What happened instead was that my head slowly began to spin around and I started to feel light-headed. I decided that the best place for me to be would be in bed, so I tried to stand up.

The first attempt was a miserable failure, so I breathed deeply and made a superhuman effort to try to rise to my feet, and then all the lights went out.

Some time later, I awoke. I was lying on the floor, surrounded by a fallen chair and a few other bits and pieces.

“This isn’t going me much good” I said to myself, although there wasn’t really much that I could do about it. I can’t rise to my feet at all if I’m flat out on the ground. And my ‘phone was in the bedroom. So I went on all fours into the bedroom to find the phone to send a message to see if my faithful cleaner was still at home. But no, she’d gone out.

In the end, I rolled over onto my back and, pushing with my feet against the office chair that was wedged against the desk, I managed to slide up and onto the bed It took me twenty minutes to do it, though.

To recover, I lay on the bed for a while until I felt better. And that was when I noticed, to my dismay, that there were only twenty minutes to the start of my Welsh class and I’d done no revision yet. I was seriously thinking of abandoning it today, but I did what I could and then I went to join it.

Surprisingly, it all went quite well and I actually enjoyed it. It’s a shame that I won’t be present next week, but I have to go to Paris for the news about how the chemotherapy went. Not that I need to be told, because I already have a good idea of that they will tell me.

Once the lesson was over, I sent my order off to the supermarket. I saw that the only delivery slot left was between 16:00 and 18:00 so I booked it quickly before it was taken.

My faithful cleaner turned up at about 14:15 to do her stuff and to put me in the shower, but I declined. It’s not a sensible idea for me to shower if I’m unsteady on my feet as I am right now. “We’ll see how I am on Friday” I told her.

Margaret Thatcher once said something like "anyone can do a good day’s work when they are feeling like it. The secret of success is to do a hard day’s work when you aren’t feeling like it."

And so it was today; even though I was feeling wretched, I attacked the next radio programme. And by the time that I’d finished, I’d edited a concert track down to about fifty-eight minutes and written enough speech to cover about two and a half minutes. That’s plenty to be going on with. There was even time to start the next one too, which is also a concert.

The LeCLerc order should have arrived by 18:00 at the latest. They had telephoned me at 17:56 to say that they are running late, which is no surprise in this weather. What was a surprise was that they turned up at 19:35, just as I was taking a bag of frozen food out of the freezer. Never mind though – I put the cooling and cold stuff in the fridge or the freezer and I’ll tackle the rest tomorrow, and I continued.to make tea.

Tonight, it was a taco roll with beans à la mexicaine, but not as à la mexicaine as I like them, of course and veg, followed by Christmas cake. Once more, it was a struggle to eat them, although I managed it. And right now, I’m off to bed, hoping yet again for another good sleep and another hard-working day on the radio. The new laptop should be coming too, which should make things a little easier.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about falling down … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was in a pub once where there was a man staggering around, falling over, not being able to stand upright.
The landlord came over to throw him out, but I intervened. "Let me see if I can find his address and I’ll take him home."
So I reached down and rummaged through his pockets. I found an address. It wasn’t too far away so two friends helped me carry him to his doorstep.
His wife opened the door so we explained what had happened, about him staggering about, falling over and not being able to stand up, so we brought him home to save him the disgrace of being thrown out.
"Very good" she replied. "Now, where’s his wheelchair?"

Monday 5th January 2025 – WHAT A NIGHT …

… that was!

When i checked the time at one point, it was 02:15 and I was still up, working. And it’s been a very long time since that has happened, a very long time indeed.

The irony of it all was that it could have been an early night. I’d finished my notes early and had done everything else quite rapidly that I’d needed to do, but I was … errr … detained.

Earlier in the day on Sunday, I’d been doing some housekeeping on the hard drives and I ended up with a massive 335 GB that needed to be transferred from one external drive to another.

However, I had unfortunately forgotten just how slow this computer is compared to the desktop one. A task that would have taken three or four hours went on – and on – and on, and by about 22:45, when I was thinking of going to bed, it was still grinding away with hours still to go.

It was really out of the question to stop it, because I’d just have to start all the way from the beginning again, so I decided to let it run its course and to find something else to do while I was waiting.

So there I was, trying to find a lot to do because it just kept on going. Round about 02:20, it finally ground to a halt and no-one was more relieved than me to crawl into my bed after all that. I didn’t need much rocking, that’s for sure.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I decided that that was rather over-optimistic so I switched it off and curled back under the bedclothes. I’d reset it for 08:00, but when that went off, I did likewise.

The nurse, surprised to find me still in bed, awoke me to sort out my legs, and then threw the covers back over me and left. I was disappointed that he didn’t read me a bedtime story, but I don’t suppose that you can have everything.

Back to sleep I went, to awaken finally at about 10:00. It took me a good half-hour to summon up the energy to leave the bed, and I crawled off into the bathroom for a wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

It was rather late to think about breakfast, so I just had half a bowl of porridge and a coffee to keep the lupus from the porte, as they would have said in Ancient Rome.

Back in here, I transcribed the dictaphone notes, and no-one was more surprised than me to actually find something.

I was in my Welsh class last night and we were doing some revision. We came across a revision exercise and I’d had a look at it beforehand so I knew a little bit of the answers. She asked this woman the first question, but th woman couldn’t think of the Welsh word for “couple”. The teacher in the end suggested dyllint or something. So she answered the first question, and I was expecting the second question to be passed on to someone else but instead, she asked the same woman. I thought that if she’s asking the same person all these questions, what does she have lined up in store for the rest of us? If I haven’t revised it, I’m going to be looking very foolish. I was sitting on a bench by the docks and there were fishing rods and everything all around me. There were two little girls sitting on a bench. I knew who they were but i just couldn’t put a name to them. I noticed that every now and again, one of them was giving a glance at me so I gave her a little wave and next time, I gave her a little wave again. She said “Eric, could we come to sit by you?”. I said “well, I have a class exam at the moment but you can come and sit on this bench with me afterwards if you like when I’ve finished this exam.

This must be a premonition because I didn’t have time to revise my Welsh this morning ready for class tomorrow. I’ve no idea who the little girls were, but they obviously knew me. And As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … what would I be doing with fishing rods?

By the way, the Welsh word for “couple” is cwpl

Once I’d done that, I went into the kitchen to prepare for dialysis. My cleaner turned up as usual to apply the anaesthetic, and in return I gave her the other half of her Christmas present that had been delivered yesterday, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Believe it or not, I’d forgotten that I was going early for this X-ray. But it made no difference because the taxi was late arriving. Apparently, in all the snow that we were having, my driver had taken ninety minutes to come from St.Lô instead of the usual forty-five.

There were two other people to collect too, one in Sartilly where the roads hadn’t been cleared at all, so the time was just out of control.

To make matters worse, there was no-one at reception when we arrived at the hospital and we had to wait fifteen minutes for someone to appear.

There was no-one at X-ray either so it was another long, uncomfortable wait for someone to appear. So never mind my 14:00 appointment at dialysis – it was 15:09 when I was finally plugged in.

While I was there, I was introduced to Julie the Cook’s replacement. Unfortunately, she doesn’t bake so we’ll have to find other things to talk about.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me, which was nice. She’d seen the X-ray and there’s no obstruction or infection, so she’s at a loss what to do next.

Eventually, I was liberated and ws able to come home, hours later than usual. It was the young chatty guy who brought me home so we had an interesting conversation all the way home.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me in the sub-Arctic conditions and she helped me home. And after she left, I had the other half of yesterday’s pizza followed by a slice of Christmas cake. I must finish that off too. However, we’re back at the “everything tastes of salt” stage and it was all most unpleasant.

Right now though, even though it’s tremendously early, I’m going to bed. I’m hoping for a good sleep to make up for last night, but I doubt it very much. We can but hope. The biggest problem right now is the pain in my foot, and it’s killing me. It’s the worst that I’ve ever known it to be.

But seeing as we have been talking about Emilie the Cute Consultant … "well, one of us has" – ed … when she told me about the results of the x-ray, I asked her "so how do I stand now?"
"Well, " she replied, after a moment’s thought, "having watched you staggering about on your crutches for the last eighteen months, I’ve been wondering that myself."

Sunday 4th January 2026 – I HAD A …

… parcels delivery this morning, on a Sunday! What kind of strange idea was that? There was nothing in my e-mails to suggest that one would be arriving today.

Not only that, I wasn’t anything like prepared for its arrival either. What with one ting and another, like a late restart after tea, falling asleep on my chair for almost an hour, all of that, it was long after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out. It was probably 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

That’s why I was so surprised and disappointed to be awake at 03:20. There was something about being in a strange place and some American expected me to be in charge of the gentlemen’s restroom when I knew nothing at all about the exact situation.

The next time that I awoke, it was 07:50. I was in two minds whether to leave the bed at that point but I decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle and went back to sleep.

At about 08:15, there was this insistent ringing on the doorbell. The nurse usually rings when he arrives to make sure that I’m about, but I ignore it as he has a key to the building and my door. And then it rang again. “Don’t worry” I thought. He’ll work it out.

But a third time? And a fourth one? At that point, streaming profanities and vulgar abuse, I began to leave the bed but the door opened and in came the nurse, carrying a parcel. I quickly nipped back under the covers.

"Parcel delivery for you".
"Where was it?" I asked. "On the doorstep?"
"Oh, no" he replied. "The courier was ringing your bell to deliver it when I arrived"

So a courier delivering parcels at 08:15 on a Sunday morning? Whatever is going on here? It’s rather an extreme way of behaving, dragging people from their beds at silly times on a Sunday morning when all respectable people should still be asleep.

The nurse fitted my socks while I was lying in bed, and after he left, I have it a few minutes and the left the bed.

This morning, I didn’t bother with a wash. I just sorted myself out and then went to make breakfast – porridge, coffee and the last of the inside-out croissants. I must make some more next week, but I’ll make them the correct way round this time.

Back in here, there was some football from last night. I started off with Connah’s Quay beating Y Barri 3-1, despite being 1-0 down with only twenty minutes to play. And that’s as far as I went because this computer is just not up to watching streamed programmes

Instead, I transcribed the dictaphone notes.

There was some kind of party going on in Stoke-on-Trent and I’d been invited by my friend. So I turned up, and I was in my van. I had some things in the back to drop off. He noticed the spare wheel in the back and the large sheet of wood – pallet wood made into a sheet.I explained that one of my tyres was down somewhat on tread so I need to replace it. He said that it’s no surprise that it’s down on tread because it’s always sagging down to one side He had a look inside and said “yes, we have a jack. Yes we have a wheelbrace. There’s a DC socket in the back for the compressor and a few other things”, and he said that we’ll deal with it, but right now, there were other things to do. We had to go round to the front, but people kept on appearing with things wrapped in towels. They were unwrapping the towels and handing them to us. There were all kinds of different food supplies, piles and piles of stuff, loads and loads of loose mint sweets in wrappers. There was so much that we were just dropping it on the floor because we couldn’t carry it all at once. We decided to make a couple of runs and then come back for it, hoping that no-one else comes back for it in the meantime. Some of the people coming back were my youngest sister and her husband. They were dressed as if for Hallowe’en, with blackened faces. I went in to drop off these things, and all my family was in there. My mother said “oh Eric, you’re looking smart today”. I replied “meaning that I don’t look very smart any other day?”. There were all these children around, children whom I knew, children and grandchildren of all the people whom I knew in my circle of friends. There was one particular girl whom I would have liked to have seen, but she hadn’t come. I was particularly disappointed, but so was everyone else. However, she had sent a letter saying “don’t think that I am being rude but ..” and I didn’t manage to hear the rest of it. I was quite disappointed. We dropped these things off, and all these children whom we knew milling around. A couple of young teenage girls came over to chat. I thankedt one of them for doing something for me in the past, but I can’t remember what it was. She went to pat me on the chest and I replied “be careful. I have a catheter port in there” so she apologised. We began to chat, and that was that.

“all my family was in there” – how about that for a scary nightmare Hallowe’en scenario? But this was a dream with all kinds of things going on. A friend and I had had been talking about her children and grandchildren a day or two back, and this probably is where the scenario about all these kids comes from.

As for the missing girl, I am sure that you can all guess who it was, so I’m going to award Zero marks for that.

Caernarfon were playing in the Welsh Premier League and were very close to the top. With the final game to play, it was extremely important. If they were to win, they would qualify for Europe. However, they were hemmed in and surrounded by a large force of Apache warriors and i was very difficult to do anything under these events. The captain of the fort found two of his players fighting . He broke them up, and gave them a lecture about tomorrow being the most important day in the club’s history, all of this, In the meantime, he sent two people out during the night through the enemy lines. They were successful and managed to meet up with a large force of cavalry that was heading their way to try to relieve them. Having been told of the forces and their positions etc, the cavalry commander decided to sleep the night in a dry gulch in the immediate area so that his troops would be fresh and rested ready for battle that he would give on the first of the month as soon as it becomes daylight

If you think that the previous dream was all mixed up, then this one was even worse. The root of the word “Caernarfon” – “Caer” – implies a Roman fort or camp of course and there was a Roman camp there, but they were hardly likely to be defending it against Native Americans. The idea of resting after a march and launching an attack at daybreak was quite a common US Army military tactic in those days.

Did I dictate the dream about the guy going on the bus to the neighbouring town? … “No you didn’t” – ed … He was disabled too, just like me, and couldn’t walk properly. He had no force in his legs. He managed to climb aboard the bus and it set off. Its destination was this town and was going no further so it didn’t pick up anyone as it entered the town. When it came to the edge of the pedestrian area, the bus stopped and everyone alighted. The disabled guy went up to the bus driver and asked if this was where they would come back on board later. He replied “yes” so the guy said that he wouldn’t manage to climb back aboard. The driver recommended that he go to one of the bus stops a little further out of the town centre where the pavements were raised. In the meantime, back at home, there was an absolutely tremendous shower of snow. Within half an hour, there was maybe half a metre of snow everywhere. Some was some poor guy, a footballer, standing by the door of his apartment looking very miserable because he had been planning on breaking some kind of record for his team that afternoon but all the matches had been postponed. People began to shovel, but it wasn’t really much good because the snow was coming down too fast. They wondered if they should bring in some professional snowmen. They thought that that might be a good idea, but they remembered reading that one professional snowman had been killed a couple of days earlier during an incident involving heavy snow. Someone else had the idea of picking up a couple of laptops and taking them outside to put on chairs so that when the snow fell down, the warm laptop would actually melt it and it would be somewhere for people to sit while they were taking a little break from shovelling snow.

We’ve had a few dreams abut buses in built-up areas just recently. And having difficulty climbing aboard a bus is another one of those issues. Here in Granville, some of the pavements have been raised to bus-door height but, ironically, the ones outside the medical centres and in the town centre, where most disabled people are likely to go, have not.

Leaving a laptop outside to melt the snow that falls on it is an interesting idea. It might work for te minutes, but it would be an expensive way of doing it.

The rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon were spent doing some housekeeping on the travelling laptop and the external hard drive, trying to tidy everything up before the new computer arrives.

Later on, I tried a different way of making bread. I’d seen a “no-knead” recipe for making bread in the air fryer, so I thought that I’d give it a try.

It’s very long-winded and takes a fair bit of time and the result wasn’t anything spectacularly good. It was only half a loaf too (my air fryer is quite small) so I might persevere and next time, make a full-sized loaf but bake it in the conventional oven.

While I was at it, I baked a small pizza and managed to eat half of it. I’ll save the other half for tea tomorrow night. But it was a weird pizza, because I had no fresh mushrooms. My cleaner hadn’t been to the shops this weekend.

Instead, I used frozen mushrooms, a great big handful, and I simmered them to dry the water out. And when I’d finished, there were hardly any mushrooms left. You’ll be amazed at how much water thee is in frozen mushrooms.

So right now, I’m off to bed, if the pain in my foot will subside. Dialysis tomorrow, unfortunately. We are back in our usual routine. And my new laptop might be here for Wednesday so that I can start working again. Steam-driven computing is not an ideal way forward.

But seeing as we have been talking about dreaming … “well, one of us has” – ed … one of my friends told me about a dream that she had.
"I dreamed that I was to have a new washing machine" she said. "If I went to sleep on my right side, I dreamed that I would have an Indesit, but if I went to sleep on my left side, I dreamed that I was t have an Electrolux."
"So what happened?" I enquired wearily
"I woke up my husband and told him"
"And what did he say?"
"He said ‘if you lie there on your back like that, quite still, I’ll give you a hotpoint"

Saturday 3rd January 2026 – WHAT A DAY …

… this has been today!

There hasn’t been a moment, I reckon, when I’ve stopped to relax. It’s been non-stop all day and the irony of it all is that there was very little of it that was actually in my plans this morning when I awoke.

It all went wrong this morning at … errr … 03:20, when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. Sitting bolt-upright wondering what on earth was happening, totally bewildered when I looked at the time, and then not being able to go back to sleep.

Not that it had been a long night either. By the time that I’d written my notes, done the stats, done the back-up and everything else, it was abut 23:30 when I slid underneath the covers. And although I went to sleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long.

So there I lay, for a good few hours, tossing and turning and trying to go to sleep without any success whatsoever, and in the end, round about 05:30,I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And, regrettably, I’d not gone far

I was in hospital in Ancient Rome. I was a member of the military for some particular reason, although I’m not quite sure why. That was really all that I remember except that song again, THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T HOE CORN somewhere in the background, sung by a choir rather than a musical piece, that kind of thing, with no music – just the voices singing it.

As if anyone would be likely to find me in the military. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … if it had ever come down to a war when I was of fighting age, I’d have been in the Merchant Navy. But there is more relevance in this dream than meets the eye at first sight.

After than, I went to chck on where I was with the radio programmes and although this laptop isn’t powerful enough to undertake any serious radio work, I began to prepare the next two radio programmes. Both of these will be concerts, from my inexhaustible supply of concert tapes thanks to several frinds of mine in the past who worked on sound desks.

When the alarm went off, I staggered off into the bathroom for a good wash and change of clothes, and then set the washing machine off on a cycle … "it’s a clever machine, this!" – ed … Once it was under way, I went into the kitchen for the hot ginger, lemon and honey drink qnd my medication.

Back in here, I carried on with the radio programmes, going through the thousands of concert tapes and trying to identify the dates thereof, but the nurse breezed in early so I was interrupted. He sorted out my legs, had a little chat, saying how ill he’d been during the night, and then he departed. I went to make breakfast, but no reading matter as the laptop is in the office substituting for the dead desktop machine.

By the time that I’d finished, the washing machine had stopped so I went to hang out the washing – my cleaner had put out the clothes airer yesterday when she was here. But hanging up the washing is now becoming a difficult task and I might have to ask for help before long. What kind of a state am I in?

Many years ago, I had an older laptop that was runnng on Windows 7 but had died unceremoniosly not long after the support for Windows 7 was discontinued. I went on a mission to hunt it down and when I found it, I took it into the office.

The plan was to take out the hard drive and see whether it could be resurrected. That, however, was easier said than done. There was no hatch for quick access to the hard drive (which was probably why I hadn’t upgraded it to an SSD when I upgraded everything else) so I had to dismantle the entire case.

Eventually, after much binding in the marsh, I managed to extract it. I stuck it into my 2.5 inch caddy and plugged it into the travelling laptop, but “nothing”. The Disk Managemet picked up a phantom drive but wouldn’t let me initialise it, so that was that.

And then I had a rather wild idea.

Rummaging about on my shelves, I came across my box of old hard drives. There was a 500GB hard drive (not a SSD) that was not marked as defective so I plugged it into the computer. And aafter an hour or two of careful coaxing, I managed to persuade everything to fire up.

Bu to give you some idea of how old this hard drive is, I couldn’t at first make it accept the password. It was only after much thought and many attempts that I realised that the language settings were not “French French” but “Belgian French” – and I’d left Belgium in 2006.

So once it was running, which was a surprise in itself, I changed the language settings and screwed the case back together. And if you think that this one that I’m using now is steam-drivn computing, the other one mus be horse-drawn computing, that’s for sure.

And then we had another problem. And you won’t believe this … "or maybe you will" – ed … but the hard drive on this laptop had now failed. That was all that I needed! After an hour or so of trying some superficial checks, I went for an in-depth examination and finally afte about five hours of working on it, it’s now restored and working, minus the last three Windows ugrades.

But every cloud has a silver lining. A lot of the process was automatic and needed no input from me, so I began to tidy out the boxes that were littlering the room after the house move. THey are now unpacked and sorted, and the place looks much tidier.

There were several unexpeced finds too. The wi-fi aerials for the big desktop computer than I knew I had and couldn’t find, for example, which was why I’d been running that machine off an ethernet cable. I’d been looking for them for months and it’s a shame that I found them a week after I no longer had any use for them.

And finally, I found the power pack for the Roland bass cube, also after many months of searching. At least, I think that it’s the correct one. It’s a generic Chinese thing, so I asked my Artificial Intellignce sourse to describe the power characteristics of the correct power pack, and this one fits the bill. In the past, I used to mark things like this so that I knew where they went and what they were for, so I hunted down one of my metalic markers and wrote “Roland Cube” on the power pack.

Something else I came across was the power pack and cables for the 2TB external hard drive that I found the other day, so that’s now plugged in and running. Piles of rubbish on it, so I’m slowly going through it all to either transfer or delete it. But plugging that in led to a tidying up of the plate of spaghetti of cables that is on the shelf above my head where the back-up disks, the printer, the studio amplifier and the internet box are

But here’s a thing. Since I bought my first “Acer” laptop in 2006, I have had five of them in total and they are all here – the earliest three in bits, the one that I repaired this morning and the travelling laptop that is now up and running again after its blip this morning. But would you believe – I can only find one power cable. The idea of repairing the older one early this morning was to use it just as a library and keep it on the kitchen table, storing all of my E-nooks, but that plan is a non-starter if I can’t find a cable.

So now, with a nice, tidy office, all of that took me right up to teatime. Tonight, it was baked potato, veg and a burger in a bun followed by Christmas pudding and vegan ice-cream. I’m running low on milk so no custard tonight. That’s all of the Christmas pudding gone now so on Monday, I’ll go back and attack the jam roly-poly.

Back in here again, I crashed out, and for an hour or so too, which is hardly a surprise after everything that I’ve done today. I’m totally exhausted, and I’ve hardly done anything that I had planned to do. Not that it’s important tonight that I’m running late, because I’m planning on a lie-in tomorrow morning and the nurse can shake me awake.

But seeing as we have been talking abou language confiusion … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a story concerning Oscar Wilde that took place in Paris after he had been exiled there following his conviction for improper conduct in the UK.
Hearing an Englishman in a café struggling to place an order, he went over to see if he could be of any help.
"I can manage quite well" retorted the Englishman, indignantly.
"I thought differently" said Wilde "when I heard you ask the waiter to bring you a pair of stairs."

Friday 2nd January 2026 – HERE WE GO …

… again!

Tonight, I made myself a pretty small meal of a handful of chips, a couple of those little vegan nuggets and a small salad. One of the smallest meals that I’ve made for quite some considerable time. But even so, still about half of it ended up in the bin.

That’s a shame because last night, I was feeling somewhat better despite not having had any tea. I finished my notes off at some kind of reasonable time and was in bed not long afterwards once I’d finished the backing up and the stats, etc.

Now only was I soon asleep, there I stayed until the alarm went off at 06:29, dead to the World and it took me a good few minutes to raise myself to my feet.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then went off to take my medication and to have my nice, hot ginger, honey and lemon drink.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was back on the taxis last night again and was living in an apartment over an old shop. I’d actually bought the building, and the reason why was because behind the shop there was a large parking area where you could park six cars. So when my boss was talking about having to move from where he was, I recommended my place. He came to see it, and as a result, decided to lease it. So for once in my life, I had a lot of money so I decided that I’d decorate my apartment and do something with it with wallpaper. I bought this cheap fibreglass stuff to put on the wall and began to paint it

And there’s a lot more relevance to this dream than anyone might think at first glance too.

The nurse turned up as usual, with his happy smiling face, and we had a little chat about nothing in particular, and then he cleared off. I made my breakfast, but there was no book to read because the laptop is currently in the office filling in for the defunct office computer.

Back in here, I prepared an order for my online retailer.

Most importantly, give it a few days and I’ll have a new portable computer. I’ve been meaning to change this for quite some time, especially since I started dialysis. I bought it in 2017, not long after I moved here. It has always been quite slow, and I put a new SSD in it a good few years ago, but it’s creaking and groaning. With the price of laptops these days, I reckoned that I may as well treat myself to a new, up-to-date one that will do the job much better than this one while I keep on searching for a supplier for a new office computer. I have a feeling that that might be a long job.

There are a few other bits and pieces on their way too, but nothing exciting. I’m past the stage of excitement these days.

Next task was to sort out the array. I dismantled and salvaged the hard drives from the office computer and fitted the data drive into the array. It needed some … errr … persuasion to fire up, but now it’s all up and running and seems to be working well. Here’s hoping that it keeps on going because I don’t want that to go wrong.

What was surprising was that when I performed a compare of the data drive with the files that I’d transferred over onto the laptop in the past, the laptop was considerably short. So much for all of my careful planning in the past. I shall have to improve my technique somehow and take more care.

My faithful cleaner came along to sort out the anaesthetic on my arm and then I had to wait for the taxi. It was on time, but we had to go to pick up someone else. He kept us waiting, and so we were late again arriving at dialysis.

For once, I was seen quite quickly. I only had to wait around for fifteen minutes before being plugged in, and then everyone left me to it. No-one came to bother me at all, not even a doctor. I spent a very pleasant afternoon trawling through the laptop doing some housekeeping and uninstalling programs that I no longer use. I’ve cleaned up quite a large amount of free space and the computer functions a little better.

Just for once, I was unplugged rapidly too. My taxi was waiting, so I had a quick drive home . I was here before 19:00, and it’s always nice when that happens. The driver even had time to take me through the town centre for once to see what was going on. The lights were still up but they were slowly dismantling the Christmas stalls.

Bck here, my cleaner helped me in and after she left, I made tea. A disappointingly small meal and then only half of it, as I said just now. It looks as if I’m losing my appetite again before I’ve even got it back I did manage some Christmas pudding and custard though, and it’s just as nice as ever.

So right now, I’m off to bed. I’ve already fallen asleep once, and I don’t want to fall asleep again. And a nice early night will do me some good.

But seeing as we have been talking about driving through town … "well, one of us has" – ed … while we were there, a man came out of the chemist’s carrying two small babies.
"What’s going on here?" I asked.
"I’m a condom salesman" he replied
"And these?" I said, pointing to the babies.
"These are this week’s refunds that I’m taking back to the factory."

Thursday 1st January 2026 – AND A HAPPY …

… this has been today!

It all went wrong this morning at … err … 03:20, when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings that I sometimes have. Sitting bolt-upright wondering what on earth was happening, totally bewildered when I looked at the time, and then not being able to go back to sleep.

Not that it had been a long night either. By the time that I’d written my notes, done the stats, done the back-up and everything else, it was about 23:30 when I slid underneath the covers. And although I went to sleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long.

So there I lay, for a good few hours, tossing and turning and trying to go to sleep without any success whatsoever, and in the end, round about 05:30,I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And, regrettably, I’d not gone far

I went down to town in my van and wanted to park it in an area where parking was free, so I parked up at the back on the way to the Val ès Fleurs. On the way back, into the centre do do my shopping, I bumped into one of the other residents. He was surprised that I had parked so far away, so he took me and showed me where I ought to park, which was right in the town centre but was a “pay and display” park. I explained that this was where I parked in the evenings when there was no “pay and display”, otherwise I’ll look for a free place. He seemed to be surprised that I was willing to walk a little distance rather than to pay a parking fee. After we’d finished our discussion, I asked him if I could give him a lift back up to our building, but he said “no”, he had other things to do.

When I was healthy, whenever that was, walking here and there would never bother me all that much, not even in inclement weather. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that i’ve walked home from my girlfriend’s in Chester, all twenty-five or thirty miles, on several occasions when I’ve missed the last bus, and it’s never bothered me.

The next thing that I remember was being in some kind of hall. I walked in and there were quite a few people around. I went to sit on a bench against the wall, a nice, comfortable, padded bench. Gradually, as more people came in, I moved along to give them space. When it came time to go, and I tried to stand up, there wasn’t enough headroom to put myself straight. In the end, I had to say to a girl who was sitting on the bench a lot further up, if she’d mind if I slid along to sit there because that was where the roof had a greater clearance. She tried to help me to stand up but I explained that it was something that only I could do. In the end, I managed to struggle to my feet with bending my head and back forward. I thanked her for her help anyway. She replied “yes, have a nice time where you’re going. It’s a shame that we are going to be one Welsh person less in this hall. I couldn’t understand how it was that she had guessed that I was Welsh.

That’s something that many people can’t understand. I can’t be helped to stand up because my legs need to lock in one position and if I don’t have that correct, nothing on earth will enable me to stay upright, no matter how much help I have. And I don’t have a Welsh accent either. “Part of Flint” spoke very much with a South Cheshire – North Shropshire accent and my mother was brought up in polite society but nevertheless within the sound of Bow Bells.

After than, I went to check on where I was with the radio programmes and although this laptop isn’t powerful enough to undertake any serious radio work, I began to prepare the next two radio programmes. Both of these will be concerts, from my inexhaustible supply of concert tapes thanks to several friends of mine in the past who worked on sound desks.

When the alarm went off, I staggered off into the bathroom for a good wash and change of clothes, and then set the washing machine off on a cycle … “it’s a clever machine, this!” – ed … Once it was under way, I went into the kitchen for the hot ginger, lemon and honey drink qnd my medication.

Back in here, I carried on with the radio programmes, going through the thousands of concert tapes and trying to identify the dates thereof, but the nurse breezed in early, so I was interrupted. He sorted out my legs, had a little chat, saying how ill he’d been during the night, and then he departed. I went to make breakfast, but no reading matter as the laptop is in the office substituting for the dead desktop machine.

Many years ago, I had an older laptop that was running on Windows 7 but had died unceremoniously not long after the support for Windows 7 was discontinued. I went on a mission to hunt it down and when I found it, I took it into the office.

Eventually, after much binding in the marsh, I managed to extract it. I stuck it into my 2.5 inch caddy and plugged it into the travelling laptop, but “nothing”. The Disk Management picked up a phantom drive but wouldn’t let me initialise it, so that was that.

And then I had a rather wild idea.

Rummaging about on my shelves, I came across my box of old hard drives. There was a 500GB hard drive (not a SSD) that was not marked as defective so I plugged it into the computer. And after an hour or two of careful coaxing, I managed to persuade everything to fire up.

So once it was running, which was a surprise in itself, I changed the language settings and screwed the case back together. And if you think that this one that I’m using now is steam-driven computing, the other one must be horse-drawn computing, that’s for sure.

And then we had another problem. And you won’t believe this … “or maybe you will” – ed … but the hard drive on this laptop had now failed. That was all that I needed! After an hour or so of trying some superficial checks, I went for an in-depth examination and finally afte about five hours of working on it, it’s now restored and working, minus the last three Windows upgrades.

But every cloud has a silver lining. A lot of the process was automatic and needed no input from me, so I began to tidy out the boxes that were littlering the room after the house moveThey are now unpacked and sorted, and the place looks much tidier.

There were several unexpected finds too. The wi-fi aerials for the big desktop computer than I knew I had and couldn’t find, for example, which was why I’d been running that machine off an ethernet cable. I’d been looking for them for months and it’s a shame that I found them a week after I no longer had any use for them.

And finally, I found the power pack for the Roland bass cube, also after many months of searching. At least, I think that it’s the correct one. It’s a generic Chinese thing, so I asked my Artificial Intelligence sourse to describe the power characteristics of the correct power pack, and this one fits the bill. In the past, I used to mark things like this so that I knew where they went and what they were for, so I hunted down one of my metallic markers and wrote “Roland Cube” on the power pack.

But seeing as we have been talking about language confusion … “well, one of us has” – ed … it reminds me of a story concerning Oscar Wilde that took place in Paris after he had been exiled there following his conviction for improper conduct in the UK.
Hearing an Englishman in a café struggling to place an order, he went over to see if he could be of any help.
“I can manage quite well” retorted the Englishman, indignantly.
“I thought differently” said Wilde “when I heard you ask the waiter to bring you a pair of stairs.”

… this has been today!

So there I lay, for a good few hours, tossing and turning and trying to go to sleep without any success whatsoever, and in the end, round about 05:30,I gave it up as a bad job and left the bed.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And, regrettably, I’d not gone far

As if anyone would be likely to find me in the military. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … if it had ever come down to a war when I was of fighting age, I’d have been in the Merchant Navy. But there is more relevance in this dream than meets the eye at first sight.

And then I had a rather wild idea.

So once it was running, which was a surprise in itself, I changed the language settings and screwed the case back together. And if you think that this one that I’m using now is steam-driven computing, the other one must be horse-drawn computing, that’s for sure.

And finally, I found the power pack for the Roland bass cube, also after many months of searching. At least, I think that it’s the correct one. It’s a generic Chinese thing, so I asked my Artificial Intelligence sourse to describe the power characteristics of the correct power pack, and this one fits the bill. In the past, I used to mark things like this so that I knew where they went and what they were for, so I hunted down one of my metallic markers and wrote “Roland Cube” on the power pack.

Wednesday 31st December 2025 – HAPPY NEW YEAR …

… to all of my readers. If you are reading these notes before midnight, I wish you an excellent reveillon. For those of you reading after midnight, I hope that you had a wonderful evening.

My best New Year’s Eve was, of course, that of 1999/2000 where I was interviewed on Flemish TV – in Flemish – as I flew out from Brussels and spent a week on Long Beach Island off the coast of New Jersey. But that’s another story.

Instead, let’s turn our attention to last night.

For once just recently, I managed to go for a whole day without crashing out and even managed to complete the notes too. I must be feeling better than I did at the weekend.

By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do, it was about 23:15 when I crawled into my beautiful bed, and it wasn’t long until I was asleep either. It was so comfortable in there.

So comfortable that I really didn’t want to wake up, but I did nevertheless. I didn’t check the time, though. Instead, I thought “I’ll heave myself out of bed when the alarm sounds. It’ll go off in a couple of minutes, probably”.

After about half an hour of waiting, I had a look at the time. It was 03:20, meaning that I had been awake since about 02:50. Consequently, I tried my best to go back to sleep but instead, I watched the clock go round and round.

When it reached 04:55, I thought that I’d give it ten minutes and then go off an start work. The next thing that I remembered, though, was that it was 06:10. I must have gone back to sleep again.

When the alarm sounded, I hauled myself off into the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication. I took my time sorting myself out. It was nice to have a slow start to the day.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back in Davenport Avenue and someone came to the house. They said that they wanted the catalogue for the records over the road at the social club. I must have lent them my records and I presumably wanted to play them and let people search through them for their favourites. I found the book with everything in it and set out to go across the road with the book. There were a couple of young boys loitering around the entrance to the place and they asked me what I was doing. I said that I was minding my own business. What were they doing? They cycled off and I walked down to the clubhouse. It was heaving with people and you couldn’t approach the door at first. I eventually worked out where the door was, walked through and began to ask around for whoever had asked for this. The first place that I tried was in the lounge bar but there was no-one there who seemed to be interested. In the sports room, there was no-one there either. In the end, I went through to the dance room. The barman was there with a crowd of people waiting to be served so I handed him the book and he took it.

We did have a social club across the road from our house in Davenport Avenue that was indeed laid out like that. It was quite popular too and there were times when it was very difficult to fight your way in. Today though, when I looked at an aerial photo of the site, it was yet another housing estate.

Later on, I was running my taxis again from Shavington. There were probably about a dozen people in the house. They were all doing different things, ironing clothes, cleaning shoes, etc., presumably for some big meeting or something. A couple of years earlier, there had been a taxi driver around Crewe whom my mother liked but he’d disappeared. The last we’d heard was that he was in Portugal. So my mother then disappeared and these people were all still trying to sort out their shoes and clothes. I was trying to find my shoes, which had disappeared somewhere amongst the chaos. My mother came back and said that she was off to see this guy. She was going to take him this, take him that and take him something else. I said “don’t take him everything like that. You don’t know anything about this guy”. She replied “that’s where you’re wrong. As a matter of fact, he has some kind of virus and he set up a business out there and it all went wrong. He’s really poverty-stricken”. I replied “so he made a bad business decision, so he’s ill but that happens to a lot of people. I’ve made bad business decisions, and I’ve been ill, but no-one came running halfway across the continent for me”. She was totally adamant that she was going and taking all this stuff so in the end, I just turned round, walked into the other room and carried on looking for my shoes, and everyone else carried on sorting out their clothes. Then someone else came in and was talking about the current situation and asking me how I was. I said that I’d just had a huge, blazing row with my mother. They asked me if I was bothered and I replied “not in the least. I’ve won the field and she’s cleared off so I’m not bothered in the least”.

So I was back on the taxis again after a couple of nights off – a very rare event indeed when I was actually driving.

As for my mother, I often had rows with her. It never bothered me, though, because I was quite used to her unpredictable and sometimes illogical nature. I’d heard it all before and so I was immune to it all.

However, I did find this dream to be extremely embarrassing. Now that I am ill, I have in fact had people who have come halfway across Europe and even further vide Canada to see me. I’m hardly likely to go criticising others.

The nurse turned up again but he didn’t stay long. We talked about his chiropodist and how nice she seemed to be – a vast improvement on whoever I’ve had before.

After he left, I made breakfast and carried on with reading about Roman military engineering. Today, we’ve been talking about Hero engines and Heron fountains and both of those are interesting concepts. Had I been down on the farm, I would have built an example of each and had an experiment to see whether I could harness the energy and put it to use.

We were also discussing reverse overshot waterwheels. These are interesting because rather than water falling into buckets on a kind of treadmill to turn the treadmill and power machinery, there were men inside the treadmill turning it by walking, as in a mediaeval crane, and the buckets attached to the treadmill were used to lift the water up and out. That was how they drained mines and quarries in Roman days.

Back in here, I had some football to watch. Cardiff Metropolitan were at home to Hwlffordd in the JD Cymru League, and there were highlights to see. And hats off to the producers who managed to squeeze something out of the game because the fact that it was a 0-0 draw summed up just about everything there was to say about the game. I shan’t waste any more time watching a repeat. Someone ought to present Hwlffordd manager Tony Pennock with a stringed musical instrument and a ruminant animal for his team to use in the opponent’s penalty area next game.

There were computer issues later on. One of the discs in the array decided not to fire up and it was shorting out all of the others. After I’d taken it out, the others worked perfectly. I was trying for hours to fix the disc, but in the end, I had to call it a day. I “repaired” it about three weeks ago and it’s developed the same fault so I figure that it’s a hardware issue.

There should be a ruck of spare hard drives around here somewhere but God alone knows where. I found a 2 TB external drive, but the power pack for it is missing.

The rest of the day was spent on the radio programmes. All of the text is now written, and I started on another one. This one is going to be another Rock Festival and they are hard work to prepare

Tea was falafel and pasta, followed by Christmas pudding and custard. And now I’m off to bed, to celebrate the New Year by sleeping through it. I wish you all the best.

But seeing as we have been talking about that club in Crewe … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I was in there, a ‘phone on the bar suddenly began to ring. A man right by it picked it up and answered the call
"Darling" said a female voice. "There’s a beautiful leather coat here in this shop on sale at £1000. I know we can’t afford it but it’s so lovely … "
"Just this once, ike it so much" said the man. "I’m sure that we can manage somehow."
"But you said that we couldn’t afford that £3000 holiday for our wedding anniversary " said the female voice
"If it means that much to you dear, go ahead and book it too. We’ll manage somehow."
The conversation finished at that point, and the guy with the ‘phone looked around at the people standing nearby and asked "Does anyone know whose ‘phone this is?"

Tuesday 30th December 2025 – AFTER LAST NIGHT’S …

… catastrophe, I’m feeling a little better again today. However, it will be interesting to see if I can keep on going until I finish everything.

Not like last night, when I ground to a halt round about 22:00 and couldn’t carry on. That was the quickest slide into fatigue that I have ever had, because half an hour earlier, I was feeling quite sprightly.

Anyway, after I’d fallen asleep in the chair yet again, once I’d awoken, I decided to go straight to bed and finish off everything the next morning. That’s why those of you who came to read my notes overnight may have found some rather terse notes instead of the entry that is there now.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly. And there I stayed, flat out and dead to the World, until all of … errr … 03:20. Mind you, I was able to go to sleep quite quickly until at least … errr … 03:50.

That was, unfortunately, my lot. Despite trying everything that I could, I wasn’t able to go back to sleep so round about 05:45, I gave it up and arose from the Dead. That was when I attacked the rest of the notes.

As well as that, I was chatting online to Alison, who is also ill and can’t sleep. We really are a right pair. There’s no hope for us. What a way to spend the Christmas break – flat out ill in bed!

While I was pondering over the aforesaid, I was beginning to wonder. Falling asleep at 22:00 or thereabouts and waking up at 04:00? Has my body clock reset itself somehow? So how do I reset it to how it was before?

When the alarm went off, I staggered into the bathroom for a good wash and brush-up and then into the kitchen for the medication. Everything today, though, was done at a rather leisurely pace. I was in no mood to hurry.

Back in here, there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. I was with one of the nurses from dialysis last night. We were in my car heading back towards Crewe when the song THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T HOE CORN came onto the radio. We were listening to that on the way home. That’s really all of this that I remember. It’s another one that evaporated the moment that I grabbed hold of the dictaphone.

She’s a girl who fascinates me. She’s small, with masses and masses of wild, dark hair, and I could easily imagine her playing a demon violin. That’s why the song is so relevant. You probably know the song – it’s based on a traditional American folk song from the Nineteenth Century and first recorded by Buster Carter and Preston Young in 1931 under the title “A Lazy Farmer Boy”

It was popularised by Alison Krauss and Union Station, but you have never ever heard it played quite like in the video clip. Along with Le Vent du Nord’s “Forillon”, which you can find AT ABOUT 49:00 ON THIS VIDEO CLIP, it’s probably one of the most extraordinary pieces of music you’ll ever hear. If you don’t know what the French word ‘déchainé’ means, just listen to, or watch, the solos in the songs, and you’ll need no further explanation.

And later on, I was up in the High Arctic, up in Goose Bay with someone else. It might even have been the aforementioned nurse from dialysis. We had to go back to Québec, so there’s a bus that leaves, and we climbed aboard the bus, an old yellow school bus, and it set off. There were about half a dozen passengers on it and there was a woman driving it. But before we climbed on board, we were sitting in another bus somewhere. As it pulled into Goose Bay, whoever was with me was asleep at the other end of the bus. We saw a VW camper with a caravan on the back pull off the road into a rest area. Instead of going in a complete arc and round, the driver tried to cut off the arc to make the entry smaller and became stuck on a rock. I nudged whoever was with me, or shouted to her, or gesticulated to her. As she turned round, the driver tried to go a little further on, but he overturned the vehicle. Our bus stopped and the driver alighted – it was a woman – and she helped them roll this camper thing back onto its four wheels. Then, we drove into the town where we picked up some more people. It was school chucking-out time and the kids were all there in British school uniforms, hanging around on this corner by this petrol station. I thought that this was weird for Labrador. On the bus back, we were talking, and some people were saying “whatever would we have done before we had the current crop of social media?”. I asked “does anyone remember ‘MySpace’?”. Apparently, no-one did, and I felt terribly old at that point. Then someone mentioned that it might have been the first, so I asked “what about First Class that we had at the university? The only thing was that all of the computers had to be physically connected by a server. If they were all working off the same server, you would have a really impressive social network, which many of us did at the time”. Then it began to go dark and I began to feel tired. I was thinking to myself “how long is it going to be before we reach Québec? Should we have brought some food with us?. I thought that I’d go down to the front to talk to the driver to find out if there’s any chance of stopping somewhere, maybe at Labrador City, to go to buy some food, but I fell asleep at that point.

It’s impressive that I could recognise in a dream that some British school uniforms would be totally out of place in Labrador. Not so impressive, though, that I thought that Goose Bay was in the High Arctic, which of course it isn’t.

Does anyone else remember social networks like MySpace? Last time I checked, a couple of years ago, my Myspace account was still active after all these years. And “First Class” – that was the university’s social network. It was quite primitive but still, thirty years ago, what did you expect? And it was designed by one man and one man only, whom I actually met. You didn’t have to be physically connected to the university’s intranet to use it, but it was only accessible by logging in to the intranet, which you could do via an internet connection.

And those were the days, weren’t they? Internet at 9.6 kbps. But then again, in the 1980s I was running a taxi business on an Apple II computer, and all that had was 2 x 5.25-inch floppy discs. Look at my setup now!

The nurse turned up, still as cheerful as ever. We had a brief chat and then he cleared off, leaving me to make breakfast.

And I’m still reading about Roman military engineering, although what the book on “Congreve’s Rockets” that I was reading had to do with Roman military engineering I really don’t know. It shows just how easily I can be sidetracked.

After breakfast, the chiropodist arrived. She took one look at my feet and sighed with despair. But in the half-hour that she was here, she did a really good job on my feet and toenails, and I was so impressed. Almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin.

Back in here, I began to choose the music for the next radio programme, and by the time that I’d knocked off for a disgusting drink break, all of the music had been chosen, edited, remixed, paired and segued.

After my drink, I was sitting here slowly sinking into a semi-daze when the door burst open and in came my faithful cleaner. Any chance of a rest evaporated at that moment and when she’d done her stuff, I was ushered into the bathroom ad stuck under the shower. So now, I’m a nice, clean boy again … "well, clean anyway" – ed …

While I was in the shower, my cleaner was changing my bedding, putting my new sheet, quilt cover and pillowcases on – my Christmas presents to myself. And the setup is beautiful. It’s a very dark blue with planets, stars and asteroids all over it. I saw it in an online store and had a coup de coeur. I’m glad that I did. It goes really nicely with the dark blue of my bedroom curtains.

After she had left, I began to write the notes for the music that I’d just sorted out. I also had a chat with Liz too but she disappeared before I’d had a chance to tell her that Santa had paid me another visit last night or early this morning.

Tea tonight was the last of those strange curry-filled burgers with rice and veg followed by Christmas pudding and … CUSTARD! As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. I don’t have many friends but those whom I do have are the best friends in the World. No-one could wish for better

What I wish for now, though, is my bed. I’ve managed to fight my way through to the end without falling asleep, and seeing that I’ve been awake since 03:50, that’s something of a miracle. And a nice clean me in a nice clean bed is something to anticipate, that’s for sure. Who knows where we’ll be tomorrow?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about asteroids … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once told me that Asterix the Gaul went into the European Space Centre.
"And what did he come out with?" I asked
"He came out with some asteroids" he replied. "And then a polar bear went into the optician’s"
"And what did he come out with?" I asked
"He came out with some polaroids" he replied. "And then hurdler David Hemery went into the waste room at the local hospital’s surgical centre"
"And what did he come out with?" I asked
"I don’t know" he replied. "He didn’t say."

Monday 29th December 2025 – I AM FEELING …

… a little better today.

But there again, that’s not too difficult because I’m convinced that I couldn’t possibly have felt as bad as I did for two days running.

You’ve really no idea of how I was feeling yesterday evening. Not eating any tea is a testament in itself because that’s something that very rarely happens. Instead, I just wrote out my notes and by 21:30, I was in bed.

Being awake at 02:45 was definitely not part of the plan though. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s pretty pointless going to bed early because all that it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

This time, however, I was lucky. I managed to go back to sleep quite quickly, and there I lay until about … errr … 05:45. Having checked the time, I decided that I’d give it ten minutes and then make an early start. However, what I remember after that was the alarm going off at 06:29.

And after that, the next thing that I remember was the repeater a few minutes later. That’s the first time that I’ve actually been asleep for the repeater alarm, as far as I can remember.

It took a good few minutes to haul myself to my feet and head off into the bathroom. As well as having a wash and scrub up, I also had a shave just in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis today.

After the medication and hot drink, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was walking home from the bus stop – I’d just alighted from the bus – and a dark green MG Midget went past and pulled up at the side of the road just ahead of me. As I approached it, the driver hopped out. He was one of the people from work. He said “come on, Eric, hop in. I’ll take you home”. I thought that that was nice of him but I didn’t have far to go. But I hopped in anyway, and I asked him about the car, if it was a 1967 model. He replied that it was a 1969 one. I thought that it was in very good condition for its age. We drove a little way further along Rope Lane and turned into Vine Tree Avenue. Eventually, I managed to tell him where to stop and he had to reverse a little way. I pointed to our house and said that that had been our family home as children since 1956. My brother came out then and helped me take my shopping out of the car. The driver then asked if he could have a drink of water. That was all that I needed because the house was probably in a total tip and I didn’t want anyone from work coming in because I didn’t want details of my private life like that being the subject of discussion, but there was nothing that I could do about it except to let him in. He came in and went up to the bathroom. I went into the living room and all over the floor were bottles and jars and things so we started to have a quick tidy-up. There was a huge pile of plastic bottle tops, so I asked my brother where he kept them. he opened the door so I put them all in there. Then the guy came down and said “quick, find me a chair!”. I asked “what on earth has happened?”. He replied that he was putting his contact lenses in but he’s put them in the wrong eyes. He needs to change them. I had to find a chair then and let him sit in the kitchen. I thought “this situation here is going from bad to worse”.

Why on earth would I suddenly start to dream about a former colleague, about whom I haven’t given a moment’s thought in over twenty years? But this idea of living in total chaos is nothing new, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It seems to be how I spend most of my life.

There was a situation where I was in the clutches of some evil guy. He’d imprisoned my sidekick, a young girl. He was trying to find out a few things from me that I wasn’t all that keen on telling him. Then his sidekick came in and suggested that the two of us, my sidekick and me, be put in the same room together. If we were locked in there for a while, things might change. Eventually, the boss agreed and the sidekick took me off. When we reached the room where he’d locked up my sidekick, he opened the door and let her out. He said to the two of us “right clear off while I go and sort him out”. We didn’t need telling twice. We dashed off down the stairs to the half-landing and caught the lift. The lift was quite full but we squeezed in, reached the ground floor and cleared off. It was pouring down with rain outside, and I thought that I had well over an hour to drive now so I’m going to leave the top down on the car. We climbed aboard a bus and it set off, but we had to stand, and we were standing near the back. When it arrived at the bus stop near the car park, we pressed the bell and went to alight but there were too many people in the way. The bus was just about to start off again so my sidekick shouted and he stopped again. We managed to climb out. I could see my car on the car park. It was the yellow Mustang, covered in dust from its long drive across the desert abd currently being soaked in rain. When we climbed out of the bus, there was an old lorry there, a four-wheeled lorry with a tipper body on the back, an old Dodge, and it was carrying licence discs from the past. The earliest one was 1966. There was even one from 1935 that said “two times”, which made me think that there must be an identical lorry to this one somewhere in the vicinity used by the same person. It was nice to see an old lorry like this, and even at that age, it wasn’t all that unusual in the USA to see lorries of that age driving around – these old Dodges

And where has this all come from? It reminds me of nothing whatsoever that is relevant to anything recent. However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall I did once DRIVE THROUGH AN AMERICAN DESERT IN A YELLOW FORD MUSTANG

Isabelle the Nurse came around as usual to sort out my legs. It’s her last day for a week so when she left, I wished her a really nice break. It’s her oppo tomorrow for a week. I wonder how cheerful he’s going to be.

Then it was time for breakfast and some reading. I’m still on this Roman military engineering right now. But as usual, I was sidetracked off into reading about the Roman Emperor Caligula. And what I read drew some very disturbing parallels with a certain person in a position of power across on the other side of the North Atlantic Ocean. It’s really uncanny. HERE’S ONE TYPICAL EXAMPLE

After breakfast, I came back in here where there were things to do and then a radio programme to review before sending it off for broadcast. With what time was left, I began to edit the next radio programme notes and they are now almost all completed.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi. It was late arriving but as I was the only passenger, we still arrived on time. Even so, I had to wait forty-one minutes before they could come and sort me out.

They asked me how I was feeling so I explained my woes. They insisted on a full blood sample and a few other tests too. They asked me if I would have a full COVID test. My usual response is in the negative but seeing as it was Emilie the Cute Consultant on duty today and remembering what had happened in the past with her requests for COVID tests that I didn’t want to take, I didn’t dare refuse.

She came to see me later, telling me that what they had examined so far had been negative. However, she gave me an appointment for an X-ray on my chest and lungs to see what’s going on with this cough. For that, I’ll have to travel back in time because the appointment is dated 5th January 2025. Still, that’s not going to be a problem for someone as intelligent and resourceful … "and modest" – ed … as me.

Unfortunately, she didn’t hang around chatting very long. The days when, eighteen months ago, she was perched on the edge of my bed chatting away about nothing are long gone.

There was some bad news at the dialysis centre today too. This was the last time that I shall see Julie the Cook. She lives forty-five minutes away from there and the travelling is getting her down, so she applied for a job at a local hospital within walking distance of where she lives. She’s been accepted and she starts in the New Year. I wished her luck, of course, but it’s sad to see one of this very cheerful, pleasant group of nurses fly the nest. In fact, the only reason that I go to dialysis is to be cheered up by them, and they do a wonderful job.

Eventually, late as usual, they unplugged me and I headed for home. The taxi was waiting and it was an interesting drive back because the driver was one of those interesting people who has a lot to say for himself. We always have some very good discussions.

Back here, my cleaner helped me into the apartment and after she left, I made tea – baked potato with a taco roll filled with salad and vegan cheese. Only a small portion, but I managed to clear the plate. I had some steamed Christmas pudding for afterwards and that was nice too.

But thinking about steamed puddings, I wonder how a steamed fruit pudding or treacle pudding, or even chocolate pudding, would turn out. I shall have to experiment. And that reminds me – I still have some fruitcake and the rest of the jam roly-poly in the fridge too.

Back in here, I began to write out the notes, feeling better than I had for a while, but found myself crashed out in the chair after a while. I couldn’t keep on going, so once more, I abandoned the notes, to be finished in the morning. This is becoming ridiculous.

That “feeling better” feeling didn’t last for long, did it?

But seeing as we have been talking about Caligula … "well, one of us has" – ed … he was infamous for his … err … excesses.
One day at the Circus Maximus in the middle of a chariot race, he notices a small boy amongst the crowd who looks exactly like him. He sends for a Praetorian Guard to bring the boy to him
"Tell me" he says. "Did your mother ever visit Rome?"
"Oh no" replies the boy."But my father did, years ago."

Sunday 28th December 2025 – YOU CAN TELL …

… that I’m not very well at all right now.

In a few minutes, I’ll be going to bed, without any tea. If I’m off my food, then things are really bad, but I’m just not hungry.

As well as that, I’ve suddenly gone freezing cold all over, which is a surprise because the heater in my room is belting the heat out.

In fact, whatever I seem to have caught, I’ve had it for a few days now and it was even worse last night. I’d managed to write out about half of my notes before an uncontrollable wave of fatigue swept over me. I was away with the fairies for about twenty minutes and when I awoke, I just couldn’t go on.

In the end, I gave up and crawled into bed, and that was that.

When I awoke, it was 03:35. I wasn’t expecting that. I’d been so tired that I was expecting to sleep for a hundred years. What was worse was that I couldn’t go back to sleep. I ended up tossing and turning about in bed for hours. When I next looked at the clock, it was 05:25 so I thought that I’d heave myself out of bed in ten minutes and start work.

Whatever happened after that, I’m not at all sure but when I had a quick glance at the clock, it was 08:25. Apparently I’d gone back to sleep again after all of that.

The next thing was Isabelle the Nurse shaking me awake. I’d gone back to sleep yet again, but not for very long that time.

After she had left, it took a good while to heave myself out of bed. And after the bathroom, I went into the kitchen, where I looked at the clock on the microwave. It was 09:30. That’s rather a late time to start my day.

For breakfast, I made my full meal that I should have had on Boxing Day, with porridge, coffee, baked beans on toast, sausage, hash browns and more toast with mushroom pate. It was all totally delicious, although I could do with finding some better beans than these haricots lingots to make my baked beans.

While I was eating, I was doing some more reading. Not of my book right now, but of Roman military architecture. And here’s something fascinating – with their trebuchets, as well as hurling stones and rocks, they would also hurl hollowed-out logs filled with charcoal. These made really good incendiary devices for setting fire to the wooden houses in fortified villages.

Back in here, I finished off yesterday’s notes and now they are online. And it was really depressing having to read through them to see how ill I was becoming, as I suspect that reading through these will be.

But having done that, I went to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was on the taxis last night, and I had two cars, a yellow MkIII and a green MkIII.I was sitting in the office and another girl was sitting on the sofa in there. The girl who was working the radio was a nice, quiet girl, and I really liked her. We’d established some kind of unofficial relationship which I hoped would actually lead to something. For some reason, this other girl was extremely jealous and how she showed it was by, while we were sitting there, putting her hands on me, putting her arm around me, etc. In the end, I went to sit on the floor because I didn’t really want to upset the other girl. It was all extremely uncomfortable. There was much more to it than that too but I seem to have forgotten what it was.

It’s a shame that I’d forgotten some of this dream. However, it’s perfectly true to say that at one stage I did have a yellow MkIII – VBH742N and a green MkIII – PGJ362P. Cortinas, of course. There was also a blue one – LND9P before I moved onto MkIVs, of which there were more than I care to remember.

I was up in the Austrian Alps last night. I was running some kind of business at the side of the road by a great big lake. I was discussing the general situation with one or two people, one of whom was a musician with Crosby, Stills and Nash. We’d lived by this lake for years and we decided to drag it to see what was in it. There were hundreds and hundreds of glass bottles so we set about raking them out. We had quite a pile that we could send off for recycling. While we were in there, we struck something like a large motor vehicle. I had a look down, and it was a coach, or was it a bus? But it was something like that, a large passenger-carrying vehicle. We set about trying to drag that out. I was surprised because we were talking about vehicles that were in the bottoms of lakes in the Alps. I was saying that coaches generally have a body type number so-and-so and buses generally have a type designation so-and-so, one of which was EA but I can’t remember the others. So we hauled this bus or coach out as well and that went off for recycling. I was saying that I was astonished because usually, with coaches, they would all be recovered immediately. It was only the odd bus or two that you’d find still in there in the lake, although I knew personally of where there was at least one coach still in a lake somewhere up here. I carried on fishing out the bottles and could see my tabby cat walking around the edge of the lake, actually in the water but around the edge of the lake, heading towards an island or a lump of mud. When I’d finished, I had three or four bottles left and I didn’t know what to do with them so quite simply, I filled them with water and threw them back.

This reminds me of the stories of all of those missing German gold bars that disappeared at the end of World War II. They were believed to have been sunk in Lake Toplitz along with a huge amount of counterfeit British banknotes that the Germans intended to use to undermine the British economy.

The money was actually found in the lake, but the gold was not, although conspiracy theorists will say otherwise. Mind you, there’s also a conspiracy theory that says that there’s a flying saucer in the lake.

Of all the cats that I’ve ever owned, I’ve never had a tabby cat so I don’t know why I’d dream about having one.

There was football on the internet afterwards, Stranraer away at Annan Athletic. The unbeaten run goes on, but they could and should have done much better than to draw 2-2.

After that, I unfortunately fell asleep, and for a good while too. What is happening to me?

It took me a good while to recover after that, but once I was back in the Land of the Living, I finished off the radio notes and then dictated them, along with the notes for the joining track for the previous programme.

Earlier on, I’d taken some of the frozen pizza dough from a good while ago out of the freezer and it had been defrosting. When I went to look at it, it was certainly past its best and so it went into the bin. The rest of the frozen dough in the freezer then followed it because I don’t think that it will be any better.

The rest of the day was spent editing the notes that I’d dictated just now. The joining track was added in to the two halves of the earlier programme, along with the edited text, and that’s now complete.

There was time to do some editing on the notes for the following programme and I’m about a quarter of the way through. I’ll do the rest whenever.

Right now though, this quite ill, quite depressed me is going to go to bed, even if it is only 21:00. I’ve had quite enough of today and I really want to pull through into a better state of health. Sleep has always been my favourite medicine for that and a lot more won’t go amiss.

But seeing as we have been talking about Stranraer FC … "well, one of us has" – ed … they are one of the few football clubs in Scotland that doesn’t have a women’s football team.
When I asked manager Chris Aitken why, he replied "we had eleven women sign up, but they all flatly refused to wear the same outfit as each other. "

Saturday 27th December 2025 – AFTER LAST NIGHT’S …

… excitement, things are slightly back to normal here and I’m feeling slightly better. Still, I couldn’t have felt much worse than I did then.

Last night, I crawled into bed at 22:00 or thereabouts, dead to the World, and went straight to sleep. I was so tired that the last thing that I expected was to be awake at 03:39.

Not to worry, though, because I went back to sleep shortly afterwards. And there I lay, until … errr … 04:46. And after that, there was no chance of going back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried.

In the end, round about 05:50, I left the bed and began to write up yesterday’s notes. But for some reason or other, I was feeling quite nauseous this morning. It was extremely uncomfortable for quite a while.

At 06:29 I headed for the bathroom and had a good scrub up and then went into the kitchen for the morning’s hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, and I was really surprised at how far I’d travelled last night. There was something about a couple of Roman towns and a complicated street layout that I was examining. But when I came to take hold of the dictaphone, the dream evaporated and I can’t remember anything more about it other than that

Dreaming about Roman towns is no surprise these days, seeing how much reading I’ve been doing on the subject.

There was another dream too about a friend of mine in the USA. I’d sent him a really long letter setting out all kinds of different reasons for this, reasons for that, and something. He wrote back, saying “well OK then, what is it that you want me to do? I’m working under a lot of difficulty and problems too. I wrote back to say that what I wanted was a Ryobi angle grinder with another battery and to ask whether he could find one for me from Home Depot or something like that. But there was somewhere in this dream that I was wandering down a labyrinth of hospital corridors but I don’t know where this fitted in

There is plenty of Ryobi battery-powered stuff around here and down on the farm. It was my favourite brand of tool for all the work that I was doing and it rarely let me down. It was, however, the circular saw that I burnt out, not the angle grinder.

I was either in the Middle East last night or in a Middle Eastern shop in Brussels. It was run by someone from the Levant, something like that. There was a young boy serving behind the counter. I watched him with a customer and he was doing everything that he should have done correctly. He was doing a really nice job of serving these people. When the people left, his boss came out and gave him congratulations about how well he’d been doing and how impressed he was with the sale. But he did have something to say, so I chipped in and said “there’s always a ‘but’, isn’t there?”. He asked him “what time were you out until last night?”. The boy said something like “in the very small hours”. The owner of the shop gave him quite a rebuke – he’s never going to make a good commercant or shopkeeper if he isn’t going to concentrate all of his efforts on his job and make sure that he has a proper night’s sleep before coming into work.

There are plenty of these Middle Eastern shops in Brussels and Leuven and when I lived there, I was a frequent visitor and bought tonnes of spices from there. I’ve run out of cumin just recently and I’ve no idea how or when I’m going to replenish my supplies now that I no longer go there.

From there, I moved on to Gainsborough Road. I was living back in Gainsborough Road and it was all overgrown with weeds and grass growing through the cracks in the concrete, etc. It was a real mess and really untidy. I was finding it really depressing. It was pouring down with rain outside and I was trying to organise a few things so I went down to the shed to fetch something. When I went into the shed, I couldn’t remember what it was that I wanted to fetch so I went back into the house again. I looked at the time and it was 10:35 and I wondered what was happening down at the taxi office. Whether they had come in to work, whether they were working or something like that because the ‘phone in the house hadn’t rung at all at that point. I hoped that there was someone down there. Then I suddenly realised that I wasn’t at work. I thought that I’d better ring my boss and tell him that I was ill, or something like that, and that I’d be in that afternoon. However, I couldn’t remember the ‘phone number. I was sitting there, drumming my fingers on the table trying to recall the ‘phone number, and then I thought “I’m seventy-one years old. What am I doing going in to work? Why am I supposed to be going into work? Why haven’t I retired already? At seventy-one, this is absolutely ridiculous!”.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I did actually retire from work in my dreams the other week. So how come I’m still thinking of going? I’m quite impressed, though, that I can remember my age, even in a dream.

Something else that regular readers of this rubbish will recall is that going somewhere to fetch something but forgetting what it was is also a regular habit.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and brought back my empty box. She enjoyed the Christmas cake but found the mince pies rather too sweet for her taste. She’s probably quite right there, because so do I.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE. However, as usual, I was sidetracked down another alley.

This time, it was all about Roman artillery and siege weapons, so I had a browse around in cyberspace to see what I could find. After some searching, I came across DE RE MILITARI by Vegetius Renatus Flavius.

It’s a book about recruiting, training and equipping the Roman Army. The copy is horrible, having been printed in 1767 on transparent paper, but it’s the only English translation available.

Back in here, we had a footfest, with all of the highlights of the games in the JD Cymru League.

And there were some impressive crowds at the matches. The Caernarfon v Colwyn Bay game in the Premier League attracted 1333 spectators, which for a town of just under 10,000 inhabitants, is some good going.

At Ruthun, a town of about 5,700 people, the Vale of Clwyd derby in the Second Division against Denbigh attracted a crowd of 1047, and at Porthmadog, a town of 4,100 or so people, a crowd of 827 saw the Third Division match against neighbours Pwllheli, a town of about 4,000 inhabitants.

After all of that, there was the Stranraer FC Christmas Special, during which, regrettably, I fell asleep. It’s becoming ridiculous, all of this, isn’t it?

This afternoon, I began one or two outstanding jobs, such as tidying up a couple of the drawers in one of the pieces of office furniture. They have been mixed up and in a mess since the removal and it’s high time that I began to sort things out.

The truth is that I can’t seem to find the power pack for the little Roland bass amp. I’ve no idea where it’s gone. It must be somewhere, I suppose, but I can’t see it. Mind you, with the removal that we did in something of a hurry, it’s hardly surprising that some stuff has been misplaced.

When I’d finished the drawers, I began to write the notes for the next radio programme, and I’d completed about sixty percent when it was time to knock off for tea.

Whilst I managed to stay awake while preparing and eating my tea, it didn’t last long. Back in here, while I was typing out these notes, I fell asleep three times and the final time, I couldn’t even see the keyboard when I pulled myself through. So in the end, I crawled off to bed and tomorrow will be another day.

But seeing as we have been talking about pulling ourselves through … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember when I was driving the taxis and I’d heard that one of my regulars was extremely ill.
Consequently, I asked his wife how he was. She replied "I’m afraid he’s at death’s door"
A couole of weeks later, I saw her again and asked how he was
"The doctors have managed to pull him through" she replied.

Friday 26th December 2025 – I SHALL BE GLAD …

… when today is over and I’m tucked up in my little cot. It’s not been a very good day today.

It all went wrong last night when it seemed to take an age to make and eat my tea. As a result, everything else was running horribly late. It took hours to finish my notes and it was long after 23:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

What hadn’t helped was the fact that I’d fallen asleep several times while at the computer. It wasn’t as if it had done me any good either because I still felt just as tired as I had been earlier

And as usual, we had the very disappointing situation of being awake at 04:35 and not being able to go back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried.

Every cloud has a silver lining, though. After about an hour or so, I hauled myself out of bed, moved over to the desk and dictated the radio notes that I’d typed earlier in the week. When it was time to go for a scrub up, I’d even begun to edit them.

In the bathroom I had a wash, a shave and a good scrub of some of the clothes, and then wandered into the kitchen for the medication and the hot drink. I wasn’t very impressed with the state of the kitchen, though. Although I’d done all of the washing-up, there was still other stuff lying around that I should have tidied up. I’m not doing very well at the moment.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And last night, TOTGA put in an appearance. So “welcome back, TOTGA”. We’d been talking about two of her children who were still at primary school at the moment. They were just finishing Year 5. I asked how they were doing and she said that they seemed to be doing fine. I mentioned something about them being twins, always being promoted, going up to the next year together etc. But if one had to double a year, what would the other one do? She said that the girl is already well in advance of all of her fellow pupils so she’s almost certainly going to have no problems, but the boy is a typical boy and we’ll have to see. “I don’t know what they’d do if that ever were to happen”.

In British schools, children don’t double a year as they do in France. They push on to the next year, regardless of their academic abilities. Or, at least, they used to. I’ve no idea what the situation is now. Just like everything else, times have evolved.

In the meantime, something else that was happening was that I was walking and I had no idea why I was doing it but I was walking miles along this path at the sid of this main road. As I came into a town, I saw a lorry ahead of me suddenly swerve onto the wrong side of the road and stop. It was foggy so I couldn’t see what had happened but I imagined that there had almost been an accident or something. When I was further on, I could see that some lorry, like the red one of my brother-in-law, had come out of a workshop doing body repair. When it was turning to join the route, it hit a parked car. I thought “that’s an expensive body job that he’s just had done, isn’t it?”. I walked on down this steep hill into the centre of the town. I remember seeing a shop, closed and boarded up that was a former “Boots” shop. And then up the steep hill and out of the town. There was someone else walking up that hill but I walked past them. The woman said “did you receive that image that I sent to you?”. I’d no idea what she was talking about so I just said “I can’t remember now for the moment”. She went on and on about this image as I was walking past her and walking further on. At the top of the hill, there was a beautiful view across the countryside. The sun was starting to go down and I suddenly realised that I had to go back to fetch the van. I’d walked miles, so how on earth was I going to go back and fetch the van in the couple of hours before it’s dark? So I crossed over the road and began to hitchhike back the way that I had come. When I came into town, there was a crowd of people gathered round some kind of office. I stopped and went to see what was happening. It was the local planning consent people so I produced a baguette and a loaf of bread that I had in my van. I interrupted the proceedings and said that I’d like to apply for planning permission to open a bakery. I explained that the reason why I hadn’t made an application in time was that I’d only just been made redundant. In the end, they turned down my application on the spot. I asked if it was because it was late. They replied “no” because I needed to check out all these other kinds of things. So I climbed back into my van but he stopped me. He asked for the keys to the van so I gave them to him. he opened the side door and he could see that it was full of total rubbish so he closed the door again and handed me the keys. He said “the inside of your van is disgusting”.

What was impressive about that was that in the dream, I could recognise the red lorry. But although I said “brother-in-law”, it actually belongs to my niece’s husband and it’s the one that I drove from New Brunswick in Canada down to New Hampshire one year to deliver for repair an engine that had thrown a con-rod out of the side of the block.

Walking aimlessly around like that is something that I probably would have done in my youth. I often wandered over the hills and moors from one youth hostel to the next. It was lovely and peaceful and gave me plenty of time to reflect. But the inside of my van being a total tip? Now there’s a surprise!

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in later, bringing with her the news that outside, it was minus two degrees and she’d had to scrape the ice off her windscreen. So winter is a-cumen in. Lhude sing Rudolph, hey? No wonder I was feeling cold.

As she left, I gave her a little present – a slice of my Christmas cake and a mince pie in a plastic box. I’m feeling generous this year.

The plan was to make my Boxing Day breakfast as yesterday, but for some reason, I couldn’t face it. I decided to postpone it until Sunday when I’d have more time and went with the more usual breakfast of porridge, toast and coffee.

However, I did allow myself the luxury of mushroom pâté on the toast. And that gave me an idea. I make my own hummus every now and again, so why not try to find a recipe to make mushroom pâté?

In A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE, our author James Curle is now beginning to describe the excavations.

This is the interesting part because although we’re only on page 68 (of 708!), I’ve already learnt a great deal about how it all works and how they were able to identify the different layers of building and demolition. He makes plenty of assumptions about what he’s seeing, but most importantly, he explains exactly why he’s made those assumptions, and I wish that more people would do that.

Not for nothing has this book been described as " … a standard reference work, ahead of its time and still the most decisive work published in Scotland covering this period of Roman occupation, expansion and retreat."

Back in here, the first thing that I did when I sat down at my chair was to crash out. I’ve no idea why because I hadn’t seen it coming. I know that I’d been feeling out-of-sorts this morning, but I had simply brushed it off as one of those things.

It wasn’t just for five minutes either. I worked out that it was about 09:45 when I came back in here, and it was 11:20 when I awoke.

That had rather snookered my plans for today. I had wanted to finish this radio programme before going to dialysis but I was now lagging way behind and I was nowhere near finished when my cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic.

The taxi driver had a struggle to find me today. He hadn’t been to pick me up for ages, this one, so having come into the building with someone else instead of ringing my doorbell, he went up to the old place and was hanging around there when my cleaner discovered him.

We had to go to pick up someone else on the way, and he kept us hanging around for hours, so we were late arriving at dialysis. And there, they were in the middle of a crisis so instead of about 14:00 as is supposed to be, it was 14:50 when I was plugged in.

There had been another crisis too. On the way in, I nipped to the bathroom. And there, I found that I couldn’t rise up after the performance was finished. I had no end of a struggle, and it exhausted me. I’ve mentioned just recently that I’ve noticed a further weakening of the muscles, and it looks like I’m not wrong. This really is the end.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d ended up making two Christmas cakes, due to the fact that I’d made too much mix. I took the smaller one into dialysis and presented it to the staff and let them demolish it. It’s probably the last time that I’ll see Julie the Cook, who is moving on to pastures new in the New Year, and I wanted her and her colleagues to sample my delights. She came to tell me how impressed she was with the cake, and that pleased me enormously.

There was football on the internet this afternoon – Penybont v Llansawel. I’ve mentioned in the past that Penybont have gone right off the boil just recently and have fallen down the table from a commanding second position to an also-ran fourth place. Today was more of the same as they ground out a 1-1 draw at home to a team third from bottom.

What didn’t help them was having to play eighty-three minutes with ten men, having had a player sent off after seven minutes for “striking an opponent”. Ironically, it’s the same player who was also sent off after seven minutes for “serious foul play” in his previous match.

The comments that his manager made after the first sending-off have led to him being charged with “bringing the game into disrepute” and “insulting and offensive language”, or some such, so I’ll be interested to hear what he has to say this time. But having seen both incidents numerous times, I don’t think that there’s any real cause to complain about either.

Eventually, they came to unplug me, hours later than I would have liked, and I staggered out to the taxi. I clearly wasn’t well, and I don’t know why.

Back here, my faithful cleaner helped me into the apartment, and after she left, I made tea. I wasn’t really in the mood for it, and a fair proportion ended up in the bin. I did manage a small slice of Christmas pudding afterwards, and that was excellent. I’m well-impressed with my Christmas cooking and baking, that’s for sure.

One sad part about it though was the number of times that I fell asleep while I was trying to eat. I almost fell off my chair at least twice.

Back in here, I began to type out my notes, but I couldn’t. I’d done four lines and that was that. I really couldn’t keep going any longer. I simply typed out a somewhat … err … terse remark and went to bed where I don’t care if I sleep for a week.

But seeing as we have been talking about archaeology … "well, one of us has" – ed … Nerina once told me that instead of marrying me, she should have married an archaeologist.
"Why is that, dear?"
"As I grow older, the more interesting he’d find me."

Thursday 25th December 2025 – AND A MERRY …

… Christmas to all our readers.

That was something that we would always see on the front cover of our “Beano” and “Dandy” annuals when I was a small child.

A few years later, when I was an adolescent, coming home from the pubs in Crewe late at night, I would see it too, amongst the many cheery greetings written on the walls of the … errr … Gentlemen’s Restrooms at Crewe Bus Station.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I passed my Biology “O” Levels thanks to a careful study of the helpful notes and diagrams on the walls therein and shall always be grateful for their help, but I feel for the current generation of schoolkids who will no longer have the opportunity to do so.

That’s because in anticipation of all of this money coming to the town from HS2 and the new Northern Rail Centre, they demolished the bus station and the shopping precinct. But then, HS2 was cancelled, and the Northern Rail Centre went to Derby instead, so now they have an area that looks like the Gaza Strip after a Zionist peacekeeping mission, with no plans to do anything and no money with which to do anything.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

So today, I have emulated my namesake, the mathematician, and done three fifths of five eighths of … errr … nothing. And I really mean that too. It’s been the laziest day that I can ever imagine.

No surprise though. Last night, I was horribly late again, as I mentioned yesterday. And so, waking up at … errr … 01:30 was a total surprise to me. I stayed awake for a while too but eventually managed to go back to sleep, where I remained until the alarm went off at 06:29.

It took a good few minutes for me to summon up the energy and struggle into the bathroom, and then I had a leisurely start to the day in the kitchen for the hot lemon, ginger and honey drink and medication. I was in no hurry at all.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been working for Shearings again on the coaches. I’d done a feeder for them from all over the Greater Manchester area into the depot. I had to have a map to find out where I was supposed to be and it was sitting in my lap. However, the roundabout round which you went into the depot – you had to go two hundred and seventy degrees around it, swing very sharply to the right and then very sharply to the left, then in through a door like the door of a house and it was very tight. You had to get it exactly right or you would have problems. However, as I was going round this roundabout, I dropped the map and I couldn’t put my foot on the brake so I had to do this at twenty mph. I was closing my eyes and gritting my teeth all the way and eventually managed to go in without hitting anything. The transport manager was on the gate controlling everyone’s entry. He was in a wheelchair. He said “did you have any trouble picking up at the marketplace in Swinton?”. I replied “not really, but they weren’t very happy but I picked up all the same”. He replied “yes, but they’ve been on to us again about that place”. I asked him what had happened to him that he was in a wheelchair. He replied that during his holidays he had had an accident with a garden roller that had run over him. I thought that that was a horrible thing to do. I then started up the coach and went to look for my bay to unload the passengers.

Well, at least driving coaches is better than driving taxis, I suppose. But that roundabout where you go round two hundred and seventy degrees and then immediately on leaving, the road takes a dramatic turn, but to the right, is the St. Gaud roundabout here in Granville.

There was an occasion when I was doing a feeder around east Manchester for Shearings, and another driver had missed some passengers at Swinton. When I ‘phoned in to check things, they sent me across the city to pick up the missed passengers.

Isabelle the Nurse was much, much later than usual, and she brought us a Christmas gift – a small box of chocolates. It was very nice of her, but they are of no use to me, as they are all milk chocolates.

She had her Father Christmas earrings in today, and they looked quite cute.

She brought with her some dramatic news – at 03:00 this morning we had had a heavy snowfall and when she went out to start her round at 06:00, some of the cars still had a covering of snow

After she left, I prepared breakfast. Porridge and coffee, baked beans on toast with hash browns and vegan sausage finished off with toast and mushroom pâté.

Despite all the time that the beans had been in the slow cooker, they were still quite hard. However, the sauce was excellent. I shall have to find another type of white bean to try. The hash browns, though, were perfection. Just as good, if not better, than shop-bought ones.

It took two hours to make breakfast and to eat it. I was in no hurry here either. It gave me plenty of time to carry on reading A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

James Curle has now finished the preamble and the excavations have begun. He makes several notes about the standard construction of many of these forts, as if there was a standard design, and mentions on several occasions that "Hyginus advises …"

And so accordingly, I went in search of works by Hyginus and found that there is a book entitled De Munitionibus Castrorum – “Concerning The Fortifications Of A Military Camp” of which at one time (although no longer) he was considered to be the author.

The book does indeed describe the “correct” construction and layout of a Roman fort and its defences. I actually found an English translation from the Latin but it’s not downloadable as a *.pdf so I’ve been making my own *.pdf version.

Back in here, I lounged about for a few hours and then went for my Christmas cake and mince pie. The cake is also perfection – I’ve never tasted one as good as mine and for a change, it doesn’t crumble into crumbs. The pastry for the mince pies is overbaked and too hard. I’ll have to steam the next one in the microwave before I eat it.

At 16:00, Ingrid rang me up for a chat. Long time, no see. We were on the line for fifty minutes talking about not very much. It’s lovely to talk to old friends, and I miss the Auvergne.

After we hung up, I … errr … closed my eyes for a while – some time, in fact – and when I finally awoke, I just mooched around until tea time.

Tea tonight was vegan wellington with carrots, leeks, peas, sprouts, mashed sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes and gravy. It was lovely too. There should have been Christmas pudding and custard for afters but by now I was totally full and couldn’t manage it.

Anyway, I’m all washed and changed, so now I’m off to bed, hoping that it’s not another one of these 01:30 starts. I want a good sleep.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the … errr … Gentleman’s Restroom on Crewe Bus Station as was … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember when they were opened in 1963.
Crewe Borough Council had advertised that there would be a guided tour around the “facilities” on Crewe Bus Station so I rang up to enquire about the price.
"Two shillings and sixpence" came the voice in reply. And, after a pause, "or two shillings and sevenpence if you want to see all of it. "

Wednesday 24th December 2025 – SO HERE I AM …

… horribly late again and totally exhausted. I’ve done all that I’m going to do and what isn’t done won’t be done now.

And “exhausted” is really the word too because I’ve been on the go since … errr … 03:55 this morning.

Last night, what with running really late again, it was about 23:30 by the time that I’d finished everything that needed finishing and crawled into bed. But once in bed, I didn’t have long to enjoy it. A little less than four and a half hours, in fact.

Once I was awake, I couldn’t go back to sleep no matter how hard I tried. In the end, round about 05:00, I gave up the idea and left the bed.

Yesterday, I said that I was determined to finish a radio programme today, come what may, and so I made a start. I’m not sure what happened, or from where all of this energy came, but from 05:00 until 06:29 when the alarm went off, I wrote the text for eight of the ten songs that will be included in the programme. I don’t think that I’ve ever worked as hard or as quickly as that in all the time that I’ve been preparing them.

When the alarm went off, I headed into the bathroom to have a good tidy-up and then into the kitchen.

It was one of the earliest that I’d ever been in the kitchen, so I took full advantage and had a leisurely start to the day with my medication and my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink. I wasn’t in any rush.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We had a meeting of our little travel group here in Granville and everyone came to see me. It was about a week before I was due to move house so we’d been putting everything in boxes etc. They had all gone out for a meal or something and I was still at home. While they were away, someone else was here , a young girl. I don’t know who she was. She was talking about medical affairs and I was talking about my legs. She asked me if I would be better off with one of my legs amputated and an artificial leg fitted. I told her that that would be the last thing that I wanted. If that ever were to happen, I would probably want to commit suicide. She made a couple of statements assuming that God would intervene and I’d be defying God for this suicide. I replied that I don’t believe in God anyway. She was horrified that I was planning to do that. Meanwhile, while I’d been going through everything, I noticed that the following weekend, the 1st of March, was a holiday, the Monday. So when everyone came back, I tried to begin to talk about seeing what would happen if everyone could come down that following week and help me move. For some reason, I didn’t find a little gap in which to talk so I was sitting there with this pent-up statement in my mind and I wasn’t able to fit a word in edgeways as everyone else was in mid-chat. Somewhere along the line, I had been out and I’d met someone from my Welsh class. We had a chat in the middle of the street and that was how I’d learnt that the Monday was a bank holiday. Where I’d been was that I’d been to some kind of office for something or other. When i’d gone in and introduced myself, someone in the background made some kind of remark in a phoney English accent. I turned to her and quite angrily said “there’s no need to take the mickey”. I did what I wanted to do and said goodbye. As I was walking out of the building, the window at the side was open and I heard someone say “I thought that you had to have three ‘O’ Levels in the UK to be able to do that. I shouted through the window “as a matter of fact, I have eleven ‘O’ levels, three ‘A’ levels and a university degree. She replied “how rude it is to be listening at a window”, to which I said “with a voice like yours, it’s impossible not to”.

It’s certainly true about my legs. There is no way on this earth that anyone is going to amputate them, and if it’s the only solution, I shall head off to Switzerland or Belgium and “the needle”. The rest of the dream is quite meaningless. It doesn’t seem to fit in with anything that’s happened in my life, as far as I can remember.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual, but today, she was wearing her Christmas tree earrings. It’s nice to see someone else in the Christmas spirit. It’s lonely around here, with me being the only person to have coloured lights. It’s disappointing that no-one else has made an effort.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

And here we go again! A few months ago I posted examples of a very Anglo-centric view of the United Kingdom and today, when discussing the size of the fort at Trimontium we have "In Scotland the only one of the excavated camps that compares with it in size is Inchtuthil, with its fifty-six acres. In England, Caerleon on Usk, fifty acres in extent, occupied by the Second Legion, corresponds" that is presumably a totally different Caerleon-on-Usk that is situated just a stone’s throw from Casnewydd and Cwmbran in Gwent.

It really is sad when you see postings like that scattered all through these books.

After breakfast, I sorted out the food that I’d made yesterday that needs to be put away. That involved sorting out and tidying the freezer in the bathroom (yes, folks, I have a freezer in the bathroom) and that took an age. And then the one in the kitchen (because I have one there too) needed tidying.

The job isn’t perfect by any means but I found that I could fit in everything that needed fitting and there’s still room for more, although I shall try to resist the temptation. But it was almost midday by the time that I’d finished and everything was put away quite nicely.

After the disgusting drink break, I came in here to play with the rest of the radio programme and it didn’t take long to finish. On the next early start day, I’ll dictate all of the notes and edit them.

Once I’d reached that point, I called it a day and began to catch up with the outstanding correspondence. I had no idea how much there was that needed attention. That couple of weeks while I’d been ill, I’d really let things slide away from me.

As far as I can see, I’ve dealt with all outstanding correspondence. If you are still awaiting a reply to something you have sent me, let me know.

The postie interrupted me yet again with a packet. I expressed my disappointment that she didn’t come down the chimney dressed as Santa Claus, and she made some kind of gesture in response.

However, there is still one parcel that has not arrived, and it would have to be the one with half of my cleaner’s Christmas present in it, wouldn’t it?. And then, I couldn’t find the Christmas wrapping paper for the parcel so I had to wrap up what I had of her present in a large Amazon envelope. Hardly festive, but you do what you can.

Back in here, I crashed out on the chair again. I was totally disorientated when I awoke, wondering if I should go for breakfast. What kind of state am I in?

Anyway, I invited my cleaner down to give her whatever I had for her and wished her a Merry Christmas. There was also another present for one of the people who had helped with the removal, and I popped that into his letterbox. The third one had gone directly by post a few days ago.

Tea tonight was mashed potato, veg and a strange lump of something filled with curry sauce. It looked totally bizarre but tasted quite nice. I wish that I’d bought some more now but I shan’t be going to that cheap shop again, which is a pity. In fact, I shan’t be going anywhere.

Pudding was fruitcake with vegan mango, quite nice as usual, but once Christmas is over, I’ll have a go at making some real vegan ice cream and see what happens.

But right now, I’m off to bed. When we all wake up in the morning it will be Christmas so I hope that Santa will be kind to you. Season’s greetings to everyone.

But seeing as we have been talking about the disrespect of Wales and the Welsh a hundred years ago … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s those kinds of comments that go to create a lot of animosity that is felt in Wales towards the English colonists who have squashed the Welsh language and culture.
For example, a shepherd on an isolated hilltop saw a well-dressed hiker bend down to take a drink of water from a stream.
He shouted at him "peidiwch ag yfed y dwr. Mae’r defaid wedi bod yn glaf ynddo. Byddwch chi’n dal afiechyd." – don’t drink the water. The sheep have been sick in it. You’ll catch a disease.
"I’m sorry, my good man" said the stranger, in a perfect Received Pronunciation. "I don’t understand your language. What did you say?"
"I said ‘would you like to borrow my mug? You can drink much more with that’"

Tuesday 23rd December 2025 – GUESS WHO …

… has been a very busy boy today?

It’s been non-stop from start to finish here today and I’m thoroughly exhausted after all of it. And the worst of it all is that it all started at about … errr … 04:30 this morning too.

Last night was busy too. Apart from falling asleep several times while I was trying to write out my notes, there were the usual man-made distractions and everything else. What should have been an early night ended up at 23:15. Still, it’s earlier than some have been just recently.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly, but not for long. Mind you, 04:30 is later than some have been just recently too.

Round about 05:30, I gave up any further hope of going back to sleep and heaved myself out of my stinking pit. And taking advantage of the early start, I dictated the notes for the joining track for the radio programme that I’d been preparing, edited them and then assembled the programme.

This one was just about eleven seconds over the hour, but editing that out is no real problem.

Just as I was finishing, the 06:29 alarm went off so I scurried off into the bathroom to organise myself and then into the kitchen for my medication and hot ginger, honey and lemon drink.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was out at my niece’s and my father was there. A couple of years ago, my brother had been to visit but no-one had seen hide nor hair of him since then. My father and everyone else were talking about going off on holiday – they’d arranged a camping holiday for two weeks, leaving the following morning. I had to go down to Sartilly to pick up their tent ready for an early start. Just at that moment, the door burst open and my brother walked in and said “hello” to everyone. Of course, everyone was pleased to see him but the timing was all totally wrong. Everyone would be off on holiday that following morning. He’d come all this way and no-one was going to stay with him. He said that it didn’t matter anyway. He couldn’t stop because the alternator on his car was giving up. My niece’s husband turned to me and said “while you’re out at the shop picking up the tent, pick up a voltage regulator 1071. That’s the one for his alternator”. I walked out and left them to it and set off for Sartilly. For some reason, I was in a coach, and when I reached Sartilly I found myself going to reverse all the way through the town centre. It wasn’t the real town centre at Sartilly but somewhere else. I was trying to reverse this coach and making a real dog’s breakfast of it. A few people on board were talking about another coach driver, a woman who owned her own business so I immediately thought of Dolly Barratt. I was busy trying to sort out this coach, reversing through this town centre in all this kind of chaos, but eventually I arrived at the shop, which was something like Boots in Crewe. I went in and found the counter. There was a guy serving behind it, and he had a port wine birthmark on his face. Where it was was not in the car part or the camping part, but his post was surrounded all by seeds of flowers and vegetables

The chances of us all being together and pleased to see each other are … errr … somewhat remote, especially as spread out as we are. As for my father, someone would have to drag him up from shovelling the coals in the depths of Hades and that would be rather a complicated task for someone.

What else impressed me was how much of that dream was actually based on real events, people and situations too.

Another thing is that, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we had another dream, only a few days ago, where I was with my brother and trying to reverse a coach through another city centre. There’s obviously some kind of significance here.

Isabelle the Nurse beamed herself into the apartment at that point. I asked her how her week’s break had been, and she told me that she’d spent the week ill in bed. Now that’s what I call sad. However, she was still smiling, so I definitely want a mug of whatever she drinks before she comes out.

After she left, I went and made breakfast and then started my new book – A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

This is the report, all seven hundred and more pages of it, of the archaeological excavations of the Roman fort of Trimontium near Newstead in the Scottish Borders by James Curle at the start of the twentieth century. The book has been described as " … a standard reference work, ahead of its time and still the most decisive work published in Scotland covering this period of Roman occupation, expansion and retreat."

It was an outlier fort, built beyond Hadrian’s Wall and after the Antonine Wall across the Forth-Clyde gap was abandoned, it was heavily fortified, presumably because then it was deep into enemy territory. It was finally abandoned, presumably as untenable, round about 184 AD.

After breakfast, I began the hard work. The first task was to make my vegan Wellington for Christmas and New Year. It’s a roll of flaky pastry filled with a stuffing made of chestnuts, mushrooms and sweet potato. I made one a couple of years ago and it was delicious, so I hope that this one is as good. It took several hours and a lot of hard work to make.

After I’d finished and it was all nicely baked, I was about to move on to the next task, but my faithful cleaner appeared and chased me into the shower. Not that I felt much like it but there was no possibility of argument. At least I’m nice and clean now … "well, clean anyway" – ed …

She had remembered to buy the tomato passata so after she had left, I could make the sauce for the baked beans. I have a feeling that it’s not going to be much of a success, because the recipe seems to need much less soy sauce than the instructions said. But you can’t win a coconut every time. At the moment, it’s all sitting simmering in the slow cooker where it will simmer away all through the night.

Finally, there were the hash browns to make. And after a very hit-and-miss start, I finally got to grips with it and understood what I was supposed to be doing. And these seem to have turned out to be a roaring success by the looks of things, much better than any attempt that I have made in the past. They even held together when I turned them over in the oven.

On top of all of this, the postie arrived with two packages. There still seems to be one missing, but now I have my new quilt cover, veggie knives and giant-sized sieves. My previous giant sieve is destined to go to that great kitchen in the sky because the paint has come off and when I drain my carrots for freezing, it’s leaving rust stains on some of them. These new ones are stainless steel.

All of that had completely worn me out and when I finally came back in here, I sat in the chair and crashed out for an hour. I was totally exhausted.

For tea, when I eventually made it into the kitchen, I made pasta and veg in tomato sauce with a vegan burger, followed by fruitcake and vegan sorbet.

Back in here, late as usual, I ended up having a good, long chat with Liz and so I’m running horribly late yet again. But I don’t mind. I’d rather talk to friends than do anything else so I’m not complaining. It’s nice that my friends still think about me.

But right now, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow , I have a radio programme that I want to do from start to finish if I can. there are also several other tasks too but I’ll worry about those in due course.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my dreams … "well, one of us has" – ed … something in that dream reminded me of something many years ago.
Back in Crewe in the olden days, we had a man who was one sandwich short of a packed lunch (Crewe is full of those) and who thought that he was a suicide bomber. He’d creep up unawares on people and shout " BOOM" down their ears quite loudly
When I went back to Crewe once, after I’d left to live in Brussels, I didn’t see him so I asked one of my friends "whatever happened to the man who thought that he was a suicide bomber?"
"Oh, him!" she replied. "He’s gone off on holiday."

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: n°6

Tuesday 6th January 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

Monday 5th January 2025 – WHAT A NIGHT …

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