Category Archives: n°6

Thursday 31st July 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone from last night.

But when you don’t go to bed until 23:45 and you awaken at 03:10, what do you expect?

It’s quite a surprise that I was awake so early because I really was ill last night. I was so feak and weeble that I could hardly move, and when I finally fell into bed, I expected to be there for a week without moving a muscle.

Moving a muscle I certainly didn’t do, but when I awoke, that was that.

03:10 is far too early to be up and about so I tried valiantly to find a way to go back to sleep. However, nothing that I could try seemed to work and by 04:45 I’d abandoned the struggle and was sitting on the edge of my bed trying to find the courage and the energy to stand up.

Once I was on my feet, I made my way over to the desk and by the time that the alarm went off at 06:29, I’d dictated the radio notes that I’d written yesterday, edited them and assembled the programme ready for broadcast some time deep in the future.

Next stop was the bathroom, followed by the kitchen for the medication, and then back in here I had plenty of other things to do that took quite a while.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and gave me my injection, followed by the treatment for my legs, and then I could crack on and make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

It’s surprising how many “modern” aspects of life that we take for granted were well-known in John Stow’s time. He tells us that in 1530, Bermondsey Abbey "was valued to dispend by the year four hundred and seventy-four pounds fourteen shillings and fourpence halfpenny" – proof if ever any were needed that they had accountants in those days.

Take holiday homes too. Many people think that they are a modern phenomenon but that’s far from the case. When our author is talking about the buildings extra muros, he says that "wherein are built many fair summer-houses and, as in other places of the suburbs, some of them like Midsummer pageants with towers, turrets and chimney pots, not so much for use of profit as for show and pleasure, betraying the vanity of men’s minds."

There’s a lengthy account of the plague pits on the edge of the city, and also a very whimsical account of St Giles’ Hospital where "the prisoners conveyed from the City of London to Teybourne, there to be executed … were presented with a great bowl of ale, thereof to drink at their pleasure, as to be their last refreshing in this life."

Back in here, I began to sort out the music for the next radio programme, and I was well under way when my cleaner came to fit my anaesthetic patches

When she’d finished, we went downstairs to the new apartment to tidy up and put away a few things, and I took a few more photos that I’ll publish one of these days when I’m feeling like it.

That’s not going to be today though because I’m feeling totally dreadful, the worst that I have felt for years. I crashed out completely earlier this morning while working on the radio programme and while I felt a little better when I awoke, it didn’t last long.

The drive down to Avranches was horrible and by the time I was on my bed, I was finished. I crashed out for an hour and a half and felt even worse when I awoke. In the end, they had to cut short the session because I was not responding.

If ever there was a time when I needed to talk to a doctor, it was today but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, whenever you want a doctor, they keep well away.

The drive home was painful too and I had to struggle to reach the building’s front door. My cleaner and I went into the new apartment to finish off a few things, and then we had to come back up here. I really couldn’t manage it at all and my poor cleaner had almost to carry me up.

Once I’d caught my breath I gad the rest of last night’s curry and now, even though it’s early, I’m off to bed. I’ve had enough. Here’s hoping that I feel better tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about prisoners … "well, one of us has" – ed … three prisoners at Wormwood Scrubs were talking to each other, discussing their sentences.
"I only have three years to serve" said the first.
"That’s nothing" replied the second. "I only have two and a half"
"I only have four days to serve" replied the third
"You lucky so-and-so!" exclaimed the others. "How did you manage that"
"Well," he replied "they are hanging me on Thursday."

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Monday 28th July 2025 – YET MORE TORTURE …

… at the dialysis centre today. The mattress on my bed has collapsed and there’s a big hollow right where my left hip fits. And so, after about ninety minutes, with two hours still to go, I was in total agony. And so it dragged on throughout the entire session.

It’s bad enough being poked, prodded, stabbed with needles, awoken when I’m trying to doze, but this is the final straw. I shall telephone them tomorrow and tell them that if it’s not fixed by Thursday, I shan’t be coming again. I reckon that i’ve had quite enough.

Especially after last night. Chatting with my kitchen fitter after he’d finished seemed to take hours and all that I wanted to do was to eat my pizza. It was stone-cold by the time that he went, I was royally fed up and in the end, it was some quite ridiculous time when I finally managed to haul myself off to bed. I really can’t take much more of this.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was totally flat out in bed. It was quite a battle to raise myself out before the second alarm and had there not been a second alarm to encourage me to leave the bed, I probably would still be in there now. I was totally shattered.

In the bathroom, I went for a wash and a shave and then into the kitchen to sort out the medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night but there was nothing thereupon. I must have had a really deep, intense sleep. And if so, why aren’t I feeling much better than I am right now?

There were a few things that I needed to but I was interrupted by the arrival of the nurse. He was in and out in a flash, seeing that he’s off on his holidays this evening. I could push on, make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re still on our perambulations of course, but today he tells us that "on the River Thames, of late years, was placed a corn mill, upon or betwixt two barges or lighters, and there ground corn, as water mills in other places, to the wonder of those who had not seen the like, but this lasted not long without decay, such as caused the same barges and mill to be removed.". I would have loved to have seen that in operation. It must have been a fantastic machine.

We’ve also had another rent payment made in flowers. This refers to one of the towers in Baynard’s Castle, which Edward III gave "to William, Duke of Hamelake, in the county of York, and his heirs, for one rose yearly.to be paid for all service."

There’s also a movement inspired by the Bishop of Rochester and several others to provide aid for the poor, and many men "moved liberally to grant what they would impart … and what they would contribute weekly for their maintenance for a time.". Where is the church today when it should be leading the same kind of campaign amongst the wealthy and privileged?

And yesterday, we had a fight amongst a couple of priests. To day, he tells us of a rather incendiary confrontation between the Archbishop of Canterbury and his retinue and the canons of the Priory of St Bartholomew. Tomorrow, we’ll probably find the Pope in there somewhere having a helping of violent disorder.

Back in here, I had a radio programme to review ready to broadcast. But once more, I didn’t like it so I re-edited it and remixed it. The programmer is off work on holiday in August so I’ll have to review the programmes for that month tomorrow and send them off.

There wasn’t much time to do much else before my cleaner arrived to fit my patches. When she had finished, we went downstairs with a few boxes to empty out. And I did take a photo of the bedroom but I’m so whacked that I really don’t have the energy to post it. I shall do it tomorrow.

The driver who took me to dialysis was the young, chatty guy and we had a very interesting chat all the way down there. We were early arriving too, but it did no good seeing that so were several other people and as usual, I was last to be plugged in.

They gave me a prescription for an x-ray on my chest, which is arranged for tomorrow. That is just crazy. I’m not having a moment to relax, with yet another climb back up the stairs when I should be resting. Why couldn’t they arrange it for a day when I have dialysis?

The disinterested doctor was on duty today and he didn’t seem too interested in what I had to say. He did, however, inspect (at my insistence) my catheter port and pronounced it healthy. But there’s a bruise that is causing the pain that I am feeling.

Apart from the mattress, which has totally annoyed me, nothing much else happened. Being late coupled up, I was late leaving. It was the young Asiatic girl who brought me home and we talked about Italian food all the way home.

Back here, we went into downstairs and began to make a list of the work that needs doing, but it ended up being something of a building meeting with a group of us outside my door chatting.

It was a real struggle to climb back up here. I feel that I’m going backwards with this chemotherapy and losing whatever mobility that I had. There was another barrage of messages from the kitchen fitter but I’ll reply to them when I’m in a better humour.

Instead, I made tea – a burger with pasta and veg. I couldn’t be bothered to do much else.

So right now, I’m off to bed, hoping that I’ll awaken in a better frame of mind tomorrow, although with this trip to the x-ray and the climb back up here, I doubt it very much.

But seeing as we have been talking about flowers … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of one of those “Mr and Mrs” quizzes in which Nerina and I competed.
The presenter asked me which was Nerina’s favourite flower. And Yours Truly, completely misunderstanding the question, replied "Homepride self-raising, I think."

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Saturday 26th July 2025 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… when the alarm went off at 06:29 this morning, I was still flat out, fast asleep in bed. And that’s something that hasn’t happened too often recently.

What I put it down to was the miserable night (if you can call it a night) that I’d had the night before when I’d had just about two and a half hours’ sleep, and odd cat-nap during the day. In fact, looking back on it, I’m surprised that I kept on going for as long as I did yesterday without too many signs of fatigue later in the day.

It wasn’t as if it had been a very late night either. I wasn’t sure what time it was when I finished my notes, the stats and the back-up, but it can’t have been many minutes after 23:00, if at all. And once again, I was asleep almost straight away, so tired was I.

But when I awoke this morning, once more I was drenched in sweat as all of this chemotherapy stuff that they pumped into me in Paris slowly fights its way out of my body. This is not a pleasant situation in which to be.

It was a struggle to leave the bed before the second alarm but I managed it, and then headed off to the bathroom for a good wash and shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at the dialysis centre.

Once more, it was quite a leisurely start to the day and it was about 07:40 by the time that I finally finished my medication and made it back into here.

Once I was settled down at my desk, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at a match between Ayr United and Morton last night. At first, Morton had no kitchen. They had positioned a couple of players in the kitchen area to defend the space but it wasn’t very easy without any furniture in there at all. They were conceding ground regularly. Then the furniture began to arrive and they began to assert themselves much more strongly as the trainers took more charge of the players, gave them more instructions and told the fans basically to no longer try to coach the team so that they would be able to manage and do a better job of it. The place where this was taking place was called “Canada Hall” – a huge one-storey building on top of a tunnel under which the railway ran. It belonged to the tunnel. There were all kinds of jokes going around talking about what would happen if it were to change its name to another railway company in another particular set of circumstances.

There was something else though about animals and pets in this dream but I can’t remember anything particular about that.

It’s no surprise that I can’t remember anything about the above because when I was transcribing these notes, I had no recollection of ever having dictated them. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I am in fact usually asleep when I dictate these notes. However, when I’m typing them out, a light usually switches on in the back of my mind with a tiny spark of recollection, but there was nothing whatever about any of the foregoing.

Later on, I was with Nerina last night and she was wearing the dark blue anorak that she had bought in Luxembourg when we were on our honeymoon. We’d been wandering around together as usual and ended up in some kind of military auction. We were going through some of the goods that were on sale there, having a laugh and a joke about things like “lots of half a ton of gentleman’s battle dress blouses” etc. We couldn’t really see what kind of use a large lot like that would be to everyone. But just as this dream was becoming exciting, the alarm went off and I awoke. But from what I remember, we’d been walking through the countryside on the edge of this town in order to reach this car boot sale and we’d seemed to be fairly happy, although I’m not quite sure why. I can remember us crossing a big, main road. One thing that I’d noticed though was that we’d been on the road for several weeks and I was wearing these jeans that were quite dirty and stained. I wasn’t looking very respectable at all

The only times that Nerina and I would ever be able to relax would be on holiday. We’d wait until September when all the brats would be back at school, and then take off across the Channel, drifting aimlessly around Western Europe from one cheap village hotel to another, eating local food, drinking local wine and generally chilling. Nerina had a map that indicated scenic routes (a green stripe along the side of the road, the thicker the more scenic) and she’d guide the car along as I drove. We neither knew nor cared where we were or where we were going.

They were good times and we had several good stories to tell. In one tiny village in Brittany we had the cheapest wine on the menu – a litre of house red – with our main course. For the dessert we had, as usual, the cheese board.
"Do you know what would go really nicely with this cheese" she said.
"Tell me" I replied
"Another bottle of that wine" she answered.

On the way back to the hotel I had to walk her around the village for two hours to stop her giggling.

The nurse was early once more this morning. He forgot the heat treatment on my knee, which isn’t really important, and didn’t take too long sorting out my legs He soon cleared off and left me in peace.

Once I’d made my breakfast, I sat down to eat it and to read MY BOOK.

We’re still roaming around the churches of London intra-muros and I’m thoroughly impressed by the number of bodies said to be interred in the old Grey friars Church and in the old St Paul’s. I’m surprised that they could fit them all in, what with so many recorded by John Stow.

He also quotes the Charter of St Paul’s, granted by William The Conqueror. "to all his well-beloved French and English people, greeting. Know ye that I do give unto God and the Church of St Paule of London and the rectors and scruitors of the same, in all their lands which the church hath, with borough and without, sack and sock, thole and theam, infangthefe and grithbriche, and all the rights that into them christendome byrath, on morth sprake and on unright hamed, and on unright work, of all that bishoprick on mine land and on each other man’s land. For I will that the church in all things be as free as I would my soul to be in the day of judgement".

He’s also talking about St Paul’s School again, and it’s a veritable tonic for today’s teachers who believe themselves overworked with twenty-five kids. He tells us that the school has been created "for one hundred and fifty-three poor men’s children … for which he appointed one master, one surmaster or usher and a chaplain."

After breakfast I packed a few more boxes with kitchen stuff ready to take downstairs. There are six now waiting to be emptied and we’ll do that this evening when I return from dialysis.

Back in here, I went a-searching for more music for another project and was still hard at it when my faithful cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches.

When she finished, she took down the boxes while I made my way slowly and gingerly downstairs to my new home. The aim was to begin to unpack but a neighbour came along for an inspection and chat, and then the boss of the taxi company turned up early so we accomplished nothing. However, I might have recruited a couple more volunteers into the moving plan – quite useful since we’ve already had one fall by the wayside.

We were early arriving at the dialysis centre but once more they took their time connecting me. I’m not sure what I’ve done to upset them but once more I was put into the little room at the end – the “naughty corner”.

They left me pretty much alone, except for when my machine gave out an error message. And I crashed out for twenty minutes too. I must have been really tired today.

When my time was up, it took them an age to see to me and as a result, I was no earlier that I might otherwise have been. But at some point, they had run a resistance current through me, recalculated my dry weight, reset the machine, and now I’m the lightest weight that I have been for probably 15 years.

Much as I enjoy the new svelte, slimline me, if I continue to lose weight like this, it’s going to start to become worrying

Late returning home, we had time to unpack the boxes nevertheless, although I’m going to have to sort everything out again when I’m down there permanently and put it away much more tidily.

It was another desperate struggle up the stairs. I could manage two steps before I needed help. This chemotherapy is sending me backwards instead of forwards. Throughout the day, I’d noticed an improvement in my health, but just these two steps were enough to knock me right back.

After my cleaner left, I had a disgusting drink break and then made tea. Baked potato, vegan salad and breaded quorn fillet and not very much of it. I’m not hungry and in any case, I couldn’t stomach it tonight.

So now I’m off to bed. The alarm is set, as usual on a Sunday these days, at 08:00 and wouldn’t it be nice to actually be asleep from now until then with no disturbances?

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about Nerina and her map … "well, one of us has" – ed … we were driving along one road and I asked her "is this supposed to be a pretty road?"
"Ohh yes" she replied confidently
"Where are we?" I asked
"Somewhere along here" she said, indicating a line on the map with her finger
"That line there" I said, "that’s a canal!"

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Thursday 24th July 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I’ve had today. If I’m leaving the table with food still left on my plate, then you know that I’m really ill. I can safely say that it’s been a long, long time since I’ve felt as bad as this and I’m beginning to understand when I was first at Leuven that I chose a place with breakfast provided, so that at least I’d have one meal each day.

But last night, after finishing writing my notes, I was back in bed at about 23:45 and I wasn’t long awake.

The alarm going off at 06:29 shattered my joyful sleep, and I was feeling so ill that I switched off the alarm, switched on the one for 07:59 and went back to sleep.

Not for long, though, because Brain of Britain had forgotten about the second alarm at 06:33. That put the tin hat on it and as I couldn’t go back to sleep, I arose from the Dead.

A desperate stagger into the bathroom was followed by another desperate stagger into the kitchen for the medication. All in all, it took me a whole hour to sort myself out this morning.

Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to see what there was that I’d recorded. There were a couple of little voyages that I’d had over the last couple of days that I added back into the various entries, and then turned my attention to last night’s. I’d gone to a rugby league match at somewhere. It was an important cup final. There were all kinds of confusion taking place. First of all, it was freezing cold and the ground was extremely hard. Secondly, one of the teams had changed its starting line-up and the referee had to intervene to make sure that the players who had not been in the original starting line-up were placed in positions in which they had registered themselves rather than in positions in which the team wanted them to play, which meant that there was an extremely strange field formation for one of the teams at the kick-off. The game started, and I began to wander around and came across an Indian market, one of these tiny little affairs inside a village hall where the local Indian community was having a kind-of car boot sale type of thing. I had a good wander around in there for a while but didn’t see anything that I particularly fancied but it was coming up to lunchtime so I went to find a food stall. There was a food stall there but it didn’t open until a little later. I thought that I wasn’t inclined to waste too much more time wandering around in here until the food stall opens or was I going to go to somewhere else to see what was happening there instead.

It beats me why I would go to a rugby league match. That’s a sport that has no interest for me. We did play it at school, but mainly to annoy our new games teacher who wanted us to play rugby union instead of football. We passionately refused to co-operate and in the end he gave up. He spent the games lessons in the staff room drinking coffee and we carried on playing football. However, I did find a hidden talent. I could kick quite accurately with either foot so our tactic was to pass the ball to me and I’d kick it over the bar, something that totally enraged the teacher.

It’s much more likely that I’d be at an Indian market, especially if there’s Indian food about.

The nurse came as usual today and expressed his sympathy at my plight, although I need more than sympathy right now. Anyway, he didn’t stay too long.

After he left, I could make breakfast, not that I wanted much, and I could read some more of MY BOOK.

Our author is still perambulating around the various wards of inner London and he’s come across another payment of rent by flowers. Ralph Le Feure and his heirs could hold a parcel of land from Thomas de Arderne "freely without all challenge yielding therefore yearly to the said Thomas and his heirs one clove or slip of gilliflowers at the feast of Easter."

Back in here I wrote out the notes for Tuesday that were outstanding, and they are now online, complete with some photos of my new kitchen as far as it has gone right now. It’s well-worth a look if you haven’t seen it before.

That took me up to the arrival of my faithful cleaner who sorted out my patches and left me to await the arrival of the taxi.

That was when I discovered that the electric door lock wasn’t working and I had to descend the stairs, in my state of health and carrying my bag, all alone. And that’s not something that I ever want to do again.

The bad news at the dialysis centre was that my weight was over the three and a half hour limit so they put me down to stay for four hours, something that I could well do without. And with all of the tests that they had to do, it took hours to connect me and I wasn’t let go until 18:45.

The doctor came to see me for a chat but didn’t have much to say really that was of any kind of solution. But he had the blood pressure sensor set for every fifteen minutes so I was constantly disturbed by nurses running in.

Not that I minded much because one of them was Alexi, the baby of the service and she’s quite cute. She can soothe my fevered brow any time she likes.

Eventually I could leave, and then we had to drop off someone else in Avranches so it was 19:30 when I returned home, quite fed up.

My cleaner had brought down a couple of boxes of stuff from upstairs so I sorted those out in the new apartment, and then I failed miserably once more to climb the stairs.

After my cleaner left, I tried to eat some food but that failed miserably too, and so I’m going to bed and I don’t care any more. I really am in a state right now.

But seeing as we have been talking about restaurants, food and the like … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a sign that I once saw in the window of an Italian restaurant in the Midlands somewhere.
"Don’t stand outside feeling miserable. Come inside and be fed up."

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Saturday 19th July 2025 – I HAVE BEGUN …

… to move my things downstairs.

Just a few things from the kitchen for the moment – nothing at all exciting, but nevertheless, it’s progress of some kind, having some of my possessions in some of the drawers downstairs.

What I have decided, with my faithful cleaner’s co-operation, is that every time she goes downstairs, she will take with her a box of things to put in the apartment. And then each time that I come back from dialysis, I will sort them out, put them somewhere and then bring the empty boxes back upstairs ready for the next load

But my kitchen really is magnificent. I am even more impressed with it than I was with my galvanised steel dustbin. I can’t wait to move in there for good … "the apartment, not the galvanised steel dustbin." – ed …

Mind you, the benefits of sleeping up here in my comfortable bed can’t be ignored either. I could certainly do with as much of that as I could have too.

Last night wasn’t early enough to enjoy it. As usual, I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied, lost my way and didn’t know where to roam as I tried to concentrate on writing up my notes, but with not much success. It was almost midnight when I finally crawled into my stinking pit.

However, once in bed, I fell asleep extremely quickly. I didn’t even have time to start, never mind finish my bedtime mantra before I was away with the fairies, although not in any fashion that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine.

For a change, I slept right through until all of 06:27, and then it was a mad scramble to put my feet on the floor before the alarm went off, and I wasn’t convinced that I actually managed it.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and scrub up, and then I filled the washing machine and switched it on. For a change, everything went into it without too much of a crush. There were no clothes left over at all.

After a slow start to the day with the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a group of us down on the Auvergne. One of the people was the old British guy who died in 2013. Someone was talking about him having taken all different kinds of medication. The side effects of one particular one that he had taken was that it made his hair grow which of course was something that he really liked because he had started to lose his hair several years ago and was trying many different things for it to come back. The quite accidental secondary effects of something incidental was really quite a surprise to him.

It was a shame about him. His fate was what made me decide to come to live in civilisation instead of in the mountains. In that really severe winter of 2012-2013 when we had snow from 25th October to 27th May, he had a bad fall and lay for several days on the floor of his house undiscovered for almost a week when he suffered from hypothermia and never really recovered.

Strangely enough, the first time that I took Cécile out on a date was to his funeral. The first time that she took me out on a date was to the court at Riom where she had been summoned to give evidence against a defendant (and it wasn’t me). No-one could ever accuse us of having boring dates.

There was also something happening too about football matches, about a footballer going back to the club from which he had been signed and how the crowds of people there appreciated his return and how much he was looking forward to playing for the team again after having left in January early this year.

That’s a true story too. In the January transfer window, one of the fastest centre-forwards in Wales was signed by a well-heeled opponent, simply, I suspect, to stop him competing against them and his teal threatening them. They hardly played him and signed several other centre-forwards, I’ve no idea why, and so the subject of our story has returned this last week to the club from whence he came

Finally, I was in my new kitchen again, trying to work out how to bake a cake or something like that. Of course I needed first of all to find everything, which was in a totally different place to how it had been. Secondly, it was a case of how long it would take now that I have a decent oven instead of my old hit-and-miss thing. But even after thinking about that for a couple of minutes, I was still wandering around looking for the clothing for the club’s striker

It’s nice to be in my kitchen at last, even if it is in a dream. But it will be quite a problem trying to find things when I’m finally settled, and it will be an even bigger problem to work out all of the revised cooking times now that there’s a decent oven that (hopefully) will work properly.

Isabelle the Nurse was running late today so she didn’t have much time to hang around. She applied my heat treatment, dealt with my legs and then cleared off. I could then press on and make breakfast, and then read some more of MY BOOK.

We are still wandering around the churches of London today. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we had a very strange transfer of property for the sum of "one rose at Midsummer, to him and to his heirs for all services, if the same were demanded.".

The strange property transactions are continuing today. He tells us of a property that changed hands for a fee "paying yearly one clove of Gereflowers at Easter, and to the prior and convent of St Mary Overy, six shillings.".

He also talks about someone called William Fitz Osbert, the leader of a large gang of rioters, who holed up in the steeple of St Mary Bow church until he was smoked out when someone lit a fire at the base of the steeple underneath him. He was stabbed in the ensuing melee and captured, subsequent to which he was drawn to a scaffold and hanged.

Stow clearly didn’t like him. He comments that "such was the end of this deceiver, a man of evil life, a secret murderer, a filthy fornicator, a polluter of concubines and (amongst his other detestable facts) a false accuser of his elder brother."

Now come on, Mr Stow, don’t mince your words. Tell us what you really think.

After breakfast, I came in here to assemble the “Sunday Woodstock” radio programme. And it’s now all complete at long last. However, it runs out at about one hour and ten minutes, so it looks as if two songs are going to be filed under CS. I have a good idea which ones they might be, and I can deal with them tomorrow.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m quite impressed by how the three programmes have turned out.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches and we discussed our (or, rather, my) plans for moving and she fell in with them so we made a brief start before the ambulance came.

It was driven today by the boss, and he had already picked up the woman who travels with me so we had a very interesting chat all the way down there.

At Avranches, the bad news was that they had to carry out a few tests on me before they could plug me in. Consequently, I wasn’t plugged in until 14:40 – which meant being unplugged and compressed ready to leave at 18:00.

None of the doctors came to bother me so I was left to my own devices, and one of the things that I did was to listen to my radio programme to see if there were any errors. I picked up one, and I can soon edit that.

Once I was released, it was a very weary me who made his way to the taxi, and it was 19:15 when I returned home. Having to sort out some things that my cleaner had taken downstairs meant that it was nearer 19:45 when I finally made it back here.

Vegan salad, baked potatoes and veggie balls were on the menu tonight but I wasn’t all that hungry. I was glad to be back in here.

Hopefully, I can have a good sleep tonight and feel more refreshed tomorrow. It’s really dragging these days, this health issue, and I wish that it was over.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about William Fitz Osbert … "well, one of us has" – ed … during his interrogation concerning his actions and subsequent arrest, he was asked "were you stabbed in the fracas?"
"Ohh no" he replied "it was actually in the right shoulder, nowhere near there."

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Thursday 17th July 2025 – MY KITCHEN DOWNSTAIRS …

… is looking wonderful, it really is.

It’s not finished yet – it probably needs another full day’s work – but even so, it’s quite impressive as it is. The oven and microwave are installed and the hob will be next, and then it will just be a case of the final touches. But it really is impressive.

It will be another five weeks or so before I’ll be moving in. It seems that the weekend round about 22nd, 23rd and 24th of August is when a few volunteers have offered to come along to help, although I’ll be hoping to move a pile of stuff before then, if I can. So if anyone is at a loss for a few things to do one week or one weekend in the near future…

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, it was another late night last night by the time everything was finished. Or, rather, it wasn’t finished because I had forgotten, would you believe, the backing up of the computer.

But anyway, once I was finally in bed, there I stayed until 06:27 precisely, two minutes before the alarm was due to go off, and I managed to struggle to my feet to beat the alarm. But if that’s not impeccable timing then I don’t know what is.

After a good wash and my medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was having some kind of injection because of all these foreigners who were coming to play football around here. Many people were disillusioned by the fact that they had signed a lot of the youth players from English clubs because they were thinking that the academies of these clubs were of absolutely no useful purpose at all – it was simply a paperwork exercise to show that the club has some kind of development certificate and there was no possibility of these young boys ever being included in some kind of first team round-up and some kind of Premier League involvement in due course. Most of these lads were destined to have the job when they reached the end of the age group.

This actually refers to a discussion that some of us were having on a football news forum yesterday, talking about how many under-17, under-18, under-19 etc football academy players, even youth internationals, are now playing part-time in non-league or minor league football, saying that these football academies are really nothing but window-dressing for the clubs concerned, simply to abide by certain rules and regulations with absolutely no intention at all of promoting local youth talent.

Isabelle the Nurse came in to see me and gave my knee some heat treatment, and then she attended to my legs.

After she left, the kitchen fitter put his sooty foot in the door. I organised him and he wandered off to start work. I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Our author is still giving us the conducted tour of various churches. He tells us that in the Church of St Mary Woolnoth there is a memorial to"Thomas Roch and Andrew Michael, vintners, and Joan, their wife." And I’m definitely eager to find out more information about that cosy set-up.

Interestingly too, he tells us that "in divers countries, dairy houses or cottages wherein they make butter and cheese, are usually called ‘wicks’.". A “wich” is quite often associated with a salt town and has other meanings in Norse and in Anglo-Saxon too, but Stow’s interpretation of the ending is certainly food … "groan" – ed … for thought.

After breakfast, I came back in here to sort out the radio notes that I dictated yesterday. In total, there is about twenty-five minutes’ worth and that’s going to take an age to edit. I shall be here for the next two months doing that, I reckon, and miss the actual programme dates if I’m not careful.

My faithful cleaner came along and sorted me out with my anaesthetic patches, and I came back in here to carry on working.

The driver who came to pick me up was the Belgian girl and I like her very much so we had a lovely chat all the way down to Avranches, except for the time when she was having an argument with one of her children on the telephone. I suppose that a pair of eleven-year-old twins would be a handful for anyone.

My luck was in at the dialysis centre. I was attended to by Julie the Cook who showed me some photos of her latest culinary creations. And wonderful they are too. But she had a lot of trouble coupling me up to the machine today and for quite a while, my machine kept on sounding the alarm.

One of the doctors came to see me today to ask me how I was. I told him that it’s pointless asking me because they don’t do anything about what I’ve told them already. So he departed with a flea in his ear.

The dietician was next to come along, with a prescription for forty-eight samples each of four different varieties of a new protein drink. I wonder what all of that will be like.

And then all Hell let loose. There’s a patient who has a four-hour dialysis session who is currently in hospital at Granville. His session is due to start at 14:00 but the ambulance didn’t bring him until after 15:30, meaning that the girls have to stay until about 20:00 this evening. It goes without saying that they were not too happy about it, and they expressed their displeasure quite forcibly to the ambulance crew.

There’s another person there who is … errr … well, he <DOESN’T HAVE BOTH PADDLES IN THE WATER. He was an endless source of trouble and stress to the nurses this afternoon and in the end, one of them had to sit with him for quite a while to keep an eye on what he was up to.

For once, I was unplugged quite quickly and the taxi was waiting for me too so we were soon on our way home. We came back via the town centre so that we could have a look at the chaos with the rebuilding paused for the summer, and then the driver dropped me off at home where my faithful cleaner was waiting.

First thing that I did was to go to inspect the kitchen and to chat with the kitchen-fitter and his wife who was helping. And my kitchen does look lovely. He’s done a really good job and I’m well-impressed. It will be even better when it’s finished.

Mind you, I had a very late tea tonight because I had to wait for an age while he finished off and packed up his tools.

He also presented me with a bill to date, and after I’d paid it, I had to go to lie down in a darkened room for a while.

Tea tonight was just like The Carmichaels, as SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN. It was too late to cook a proper meal.

So now I’m off to bed, later than I would like. And I need to be on form as there’s a lot to do tomorrow. There’s the Sunday Woodstock notes to continue to edit and also June and Catherine are coming round to see me before they head off back to South Germany.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the kitchen fitter … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked him if he would like to install a mirror for me in the kitchen.
He thought for a while and then replied "ohh yes, why not? That’s just the kind of job that I could see myself doing."

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Monday 14th July 2025 – I DON’T THINK …

… that Marion loves me any more.

The last time that she was on shift when I was at dialysis, she was nagging me to do my own preparation.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly why I am simply unable to do it and so it doesn’t do any good at all to insist. It’s simply impossible.

And so this afternoon, she tried a new tactic. When my machine pinged to say that my session was over, she half-uncoupled me and then wandered off to do other things, leaving me hanging around like Piffy on a rock for twenty-five minutes.

If she thinks that that is going to galvanise me into action, she’s mistaken. I simply can’t bring myself to touch this pulsing, throbbing vein that they installed in my arm a year ago and that’s the end of it.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, last night, for a change, I actually finished early. After taking the stats and performing the back-up, I went and sorted myself out and ended up in bed by 22:40 which made a very welcome change, and how I enjoyed it too.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s really pointless going to bed early because all that it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. So quickly to sleep once I was in bed, but wide awake this morning at 05:20.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … being awake is one thing, being up and about is something else completely and you have to wait until 05:40 when I finally crawled out of bed.

The ice pack had slipped from my knee during the night and was flapping about in the breeze this morning, so that hadn’t been of very much use, but nevertheless, I was moving about a little easier, which was a surprise.

First thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was dreaming that I was going into hospital so I was checking everything that I had and that I needed to take with me. I took my ‘phone. When I was finally in bed, I strapped an ice pack onto my knee and just lay there. At a certain point a little later I heard my ‘phone making noises as if there was an alarm or something going on. After several minutes I realised that it was one of the chat programs on my telephone that had received a whole series of messages with the usual message tone but I hadn’t realised it prior to that.

Packing ready for hospital is something to which I look forward very much (I don’t think), knowing that in the immediate future I have to go back to Paris for the next session of chemotherapy, when I shall be insisting upon knowing why they are giving me the same chemotherapy that my body rejected violently nine years ago.

As for the ‘phone “making noises”, this morning, when I looked at my ‘phone, I found that I had indeed received a whole series of messages and photos from the kitchen fitter who had clearly been burning the midnight oil.

Later on, I was with my cleaner and my former friend from Stoke-on-Trent. There was a big group of people and we were connected in some way to a chevreuil which of course is a small deer. There was some issue about this deer and it had escaped, so everyone was out looking for it. We had other things to do but we couldn’t stop to look. Instead, we were going somewhere in a Mini. We were driving through a field and we had to perform a “U-turn” somewhere at the side of the road. There was this little turn-round place into a small field there but the only way out was on a blind corner so I went across the field in the Mini. It turned out that there was a really steep drop in this field so I told everyone to hang on and I went down in this Mini. We came across some traces of where these people had looking for the deer. There was some old pet’s bed there that had probably belonged to it. We continued to drive until we came to a huge set of gates where a lot of people from this search party were congregated. One woman was incensed about seeing the three of us together. She was complaining about how there were only two of her – she and someone else – in their group, how there ought to be more of them and how we ought to help. We explained how we had much more complicated and difficult things to do but she carried on and on and on. At these gates, she was struggling to open them with a key, this complaining woman, so I took a key and managed to open it straight away. It was a car scrapyard like McGuinness’s in Stoke-on-Trent. Inside was a “K” registered Škoda parked round by the door which I recognised as belonging to this woman. Once I’d opened the door, my friend from Stoke-on-Trent with his car and caravan drove inside. I went for a walk inside but it was totally empty. There was hardly anything at all in there. That disappointed me intensely because I was expecting it to be full of old vehicles as it usually was. Instead, I had a little walk, just looking at the wasteland while my friend drove around in his car and caravan. He came back, parked it up next to the Škoda and stepped out, looking as if he was walking away and leaving it. He asked me if I had my camera so that I could take a photo and asked me if I knew what kind of year the car was. I said “It’s ‘R’ registration so that puts it at about 1976”. However he thought that it was something different but he didn’t say exactly what. I went to fetch my camera to take a photograph of his car, the caravan and the Škoda, which were about the only three things in this entire scrapyard.

Now, there are loads of mileage in this dream. For a start, is this the first dream in which my cleaner has appeared?

As for my former friend, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … he was the kind of person who would do absolutely anything for you, but after his accident 25 or so years ago, he became a totally different person and I couldn’t handle the stress. I had enough trouble dealing with my own problems at that time without having to deal with someone else’s, and when he left his car to go, on his crutches, to thump the person in the car behind who had just beeped at us, the writing went on the wall. There were several other incidents too that convinced me that things had run their course by that time.

Where this “U-turn” place was situated was at the corner of Warmingham Lane and Groby Road in Crewe, across the road from the depot of the coach company where I worked in winter when there was no tour work at Shearings.

The “Škoda” was actually a gold FSO “Polonez”, but much more slimline than the car would have been in real life. They were strange cars, a nice design but the quality was appalling. When they finally sorted out the quality issues in the early 1990s, they were wonderful cars but by then the damage had been done. They were powered by a clone of a FIAT engine, and when importation into the UK stopped because of emissions issues, the aforementioned friend and I were thinking of buying one and fitting a FIAT diesel engine in it.

The highlight of the dream would have been wandering around McGuinness’s scrapyard. I’ve had many a happy weekend in there and the stuff that I’ve had from there was unbelievable – even an old Jaguar 420 that I wanted for spares for my Daimler. I once saw a Rolls-Royce in there, only the second that I have ever seen in a scrapyard after the one that I saw IN A SCRAPYARD IN BRIDGEWATER, MAINE, IN 1973

But mountaineering over mountains of scrap cars in scrapyards looking for exciting bits and pieces. Those were the days. You can’t even go into them now, thanks to “Health and Safety”.

After a wash and my morning medication, I came back in here and dealt with the last of the outstanding correspondence and paid the bills that I didn’t pay yesterday. And then I had to sort out some money for the kitchen fitter who had bought some wood and so on for the kitchen that he’s installing.

The nurse was early again? He applied some more heat treatment to my knee and then after having dealt with my legs, he cleared off quite rapidly.

He was closely followed by the kitchen fitter who came to do another day’s work. I gave him the money for the purchases he had made and he and his son went downstairs to carry on.

After they had left, I could carry on with making breakfast and to read MY BOOK.

Our author start off today by talking about the Bedlam (or Bethlem, as he calls it) Hospital for "distracted people" as he quaintly puts it, and tells us that "in this place, people who are distraight in wits are, by the suit of their friends, received and keep as afore."

All that I can say is that if that kind of situation were to persist today, I would have nothing to fear because quite simply, I don’t have any friends.

He goes on to talk about some works being undertaken at Spitalfields, and we have a gorgeous eyewitness account of the discovery and unearthing of a Roman cemetery and an account of the contents of the graves. It’s one of the most fascinating accounts that I have read.

Something else that he mentions is a land dispute between the parish clerks and a local nobleman who had been gifted some monastic property after the Reformation that had been gifted previously to the parish, and "the parish clerks having commenced suit … and being like to have prevailed, the said Sir Robert Chester pulled down the hall, sold the timber, stone and lead, and so the suit was ended.".

After that, I came back in here to attend my Welsh Summer School but it wasn’t a real success because I couldn’t stay here for long, having to go after ninety minutes to prepare for dialysis.

When my cleaner had fitted my patches, I didn’t have long to wait for the taxi, and we whizzed down to Avranches.

It took them forty minutes to couple me up today, leaving me sitting around for quite a while as they dealt with other people. I really felt quite out of it today.

However, the good news is that my friend from Ulm and her daughter will be on their travels and they plan to pass by later in the week to say “hello”. As well as that, my friend from Macon with whom I was on a student exchange in 1970 will be in the area at the beginning of September. He and his wife are planning to come to see me, and that will be nice too. I seem to be in great demand these days.

It was the je m’en foutiste doctor on duty today and he passed by to see if I needed anything, but when I spoke to him, he didn’t seem to be interested.

At one point, I dozed off for five minutes but Marion awoke me. I really think that she has it in for me at the moment, what with waiting around at the start and at the end. She also “forgot” the cold spray when she coupled me up, so all of this cannot be coincidence.

However, as I said just now, it’s not going to change a thing.

The poor taxi driver had to wait around for an age while we had the shenanigans at the end of my session, and I didn’t return home until 19:00. I stuck my head in downstairs to look at the kitchen and it really is impressive. I shall enjoy working with that when it’s ready.

Tea tonight was something cobbled up out of a handful of mushrooms and a small tin of kidney beans with pasta and tomato sauce. But now I’m off to bed, ready for my Summer School tomorrow. I have a feeling that tackling this course is not my wisest move, but we shall see.

But before I go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about Bedlam Hospital … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s a little-known fact that I once served on the committee of the hospital.
One day we had to interview a patient who wasted to be liberated, so we had to go to see him to find out why.
"God told me that I was no longer crazy and that I could go home" he explained.
The man in the next bed shouted up "I said nothing of the kind!"

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Thursday 10th July 2025 – I AM FED UP …

… of the dialysis centre and the je m’en foutiste of the doctor who always seems to be at the centre of any dispute that I may have.

Once more, we’ve “had words” and it wasn’t a very ideal situation. I’ve made my point but it will have made absolutely no difference at all.

In fact, it’s been a bad day all round. It started off badly by me being asleep yet again when the alarm went off. How many days is this? A far cry from the heady days when I was up and working at 04:30, things like that.

It wasn’t as if it had been an early night though. It was quite close to midnight when I finally crawled into bed, but once in bed, there I stayed without moving.

It was actually difficult to move because my right knee was covered in this heat treatment and I had an ice pack strapped to it too. “Kill or cure” is my motto for right now.

When the alarm went off, it took a while for me to gather my wits, which is a surprise seeing how few I have these days, and then I had an undignified stagger into the bathroom for a wash and scrub up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

It was a very slow early morning in the kitchen sorting out my medication too. It seemed to take an age before I was back in here.

First task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with a football club that was preparing for a series of pre-season friendlies. The match that was coming up was against Manchester United and so everyone was quite nervous about how the score would unfold. However, when we took to the field we found that it was against another club and that the Manchester United game had already taken place. However, no-one could remember the result of that game. Then the whistle sounded for the kick-off but it wasn’t the whistle, it was the alarm sounding at 06:30.

There are so many pre-season friendlies going on right now that this could refer to just about anything, although it was interesting to see me having yet another bout of confusion.

The nurse turned up early again. I asked him if he could have a look at my knee so he gave it a cursory examination and reckons that it’s simply bruised rather than broken or chipped or anything. This heat treatment and ice pack is the way to go, he reckons.

After he left I made my breakfast and had to deal with a volcano in the microwave, because the surveillance of my porridge was interrupted by my faithful cleaner arriving to check on me, to see how I was.

After she left, I cleaned up the mess and sat down to eat breakfast while reading MY BOOK.

Today, we have been talking about the wealthy people whose donations to various charities enabled the poor of London to have a less mean existence. And when you see the amount of money donated by some people, you can see immediately, with the Margaret Thatcher "Who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.", that modern-day society has collapsed, with the rich squirrelling away as much as they can in their offshore accounts.

Our author gives us a lovely example of how things were in the Sixteenth Century. There "were some small cottages … for some bed-ridden people … devout people … were accustomed oftentimes, especially on Fridays, weekly to walk that way purposely to bestow their alms."

What price that now?

Back in here, I read through my notes for the “Saturday Woodstock” programme, making a few corrections and additions ready to dictate the next time that I’m up early, whenever that might be. But the way things are going, it will be a while yet.

My cleaner turned up and fitted my anaesthetic patches, and after she left I came back in here to work. However, unbelievable as it may be, I dozed off.

The taxi awoke me and I staggered out into the lovely warm afternoon to drive down to Avranches. It was the chatty young female driver who took me so we had an interesting chat along the way.

At the centre, I was met with the bad news. Having insisted that I was losing weight and they denying it and insisting that these 200 grammes here, 300 grams there was correct, they performed another scan on me to determine my dry weight.

As I suspected, I have lost about three kilos just recently and I’m now officially below my preferred “inactive weight”. This also means that I had about four kilos of water to lose that they hadn’t extracted over the period that my weight was decreasing, and that means a stay of four hours.

All of the messing around meant that the procedure didn’t start until late either.

My blood pressure was horribly low so every fifteen minutes when the machine checked it, it sounded the alarm and the girls came running.

The je m’en foutiste doctor was there on duty so I complained to him. As usual, he didn’t seem to care so I expressed myself in somewhat … errr … forthright tones, but it made no difference.

While he was there, I also told him about my dizzy spells and the fall, but he didn’t seem to be too bothered either. He didn’t even examine me. He’s definitely in the wrong job.

The dietician came to see me too. They are all concerned about my loss of weight and in particular, the loss of protein. She was trying to persuade me to adopt a carnivorous diet, even though my body can’t digest animal fats and that I had a recurrence of my pancreas issues back in April.

These people really have no idea.

In the end, she told me to take as many as four disgusting drinks per day, and gave me several recipes to make it more palatable, including a recipe for a banana and orange milk shake, which totally threw me, seeing as about six months ago, she banned me from eating bananas and oranges because of the potassium.

The nurses came back and gave me some kind of electrogram test, although I don’t know why and neither did they.

During all of this, I was fighting off wave after wave of sleep but in the end I succumbed and poor Alexi had to awaken me to disconnect me.

Horribly late again, there was another passenger in the taxi and we had to drive miles through the Normandy countryside to drop him off, meaning that it was long after 19:30 when I returned home.

On the way in, I stuck my head inside the new apartment to see the work that the kitchen fitter had done, and it was so impressive. I can’t wait for him to come back and crack on.

My faithful cleaner has been busy too. She had been through my apartment here, tidying up and cleaning and it looks wonderful. Tomorrow, she’s going to blitz my bedroom so it all looks good for this photography session.

Tea was bangers and mash with vegetables. I don’t know why, but I had had a craving for them all-day. However, as is usual, they tasted much better in my imagination than they did in real life.

So now it’s bedtime, ready for a good day’s work tomorrow. There’s a lot to do and I can’t hang around. It won’t be done on its own.

But seeing as we have been talking about the je m’en foutiste doctor … "well, one of us has" – ed … during our chat, he told me "if you are really becoming fed up with being here for four hours, you can ask to be unplugged and then go home".

"If I could go home whenever I became fed up with dialysis" I retorted "I would never arrive at all"

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Wednesday 9th July 2025 – CAN YOU IMAGINE …

… anything as embarrassing as being in the middle of a conversation with someone and suddenly dropping unconscious at their feet?

The kitchen-fitter and his son who came this morning to start work don’t need to imagine it because they saw it for themselves as a conversation that I was having with them came to a rather dramatic pause.

That’s now the fourth of these little wobbles that I’ve had. There were the two that I mentioned last night, a third as I was going to bed, and the fourth which was the daddy of them all this morning.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday, I was becoming concerned about all of this. The one that I had when I was almost ready for bed made me even more worried, and then collapsing unconscious for a couple of minutes at the feet of a couple of visitors is extremely perturbing.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … one of these days I’m going to have one of these attacks and I won’t awaken from it. And the way that things are going, it won’t be long a-coming.

It was a late night too last night – I didn’t go to bed until about 00:15, what with one thing and another … "and until you’ve started, you have no idea how many other things there are" – ed … but I was soon asleep. And there I stayed until about 06:00.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … being awake is one thing. Leaving the bed is something else completely. It was about 06:15 when I finally saw the light of day and fell out of the bed.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up and then went into the kitchen for my morning fruit juice and medication. It was yet another slow start to the day while I slowly unwound.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We shared a holiday home with some people, a home in France. Eventually we decided that we were going to settle down there and stay forever. The other people who were sharing the house were not particularly happy about the situation of Brexit and all of that. In the end, one night after a rather heated discussion, they simply packed their bags and left, leaving us in charge of the house. Nothing much happened about that after a while except that one evening, just as we were moving some furniture around, someone knocked at the door. We had to rearrange the furniture quickly and let them in. It was some people who had come to see the house. Obviously the house had been put up for sale, no-one had said anything to us, and now there were people arriving to have a look around it. They took a big liking to our collie who was six years old but the cats took absolutely no notice of them. We ended up having something of a chat about the situation. One of the things that came out in the discussion somewhere was the question of the rateable value of the land. Someone had a big plot of land in a forest but they were only paying a small amount of tax on it. After they had had this campaign to try to equalise the tax payments, someone explained to them that if the land is not capable of being exploited, for example, it’s too steep, it doesn’t attract council tax. Here in this forest in the middle of the mountains, a lot of the land was far too steep to do anything with it so it had no rateable value.

This sounds rather like what will be happening here over the next few weeks. The estate agents are coming to photograph the place on Friday and from then on, there will be streams of people coming to look at (and to sight-see) the apartment while I’ll be in the throes of trying to tidy up and move house.

If anyone has a free weekend some time, I shall be needing all the help that I can find.

The nurse turned up, much earlier than usual, and sorted out my legs. And while I was making my breakfast, the kitchen-fitter and his son turned up to start work.

They needed to know where my new apartment was and what needed to be done so I went downstairs with them. And it was while we were in the bathroom discussing the shower unit that I hit the floor quite dramatically.

Eventually, I recovered and it was a very sad, weary me who struggled in vain up the stairs. In the end I had to take the lift from the first half-landing up to the next and then struggle downwards to my door.

Breakfast was next, and I read MY BOOK but I was so out of everything that I couldn’t begin to tell you what I read.

Back in here, it took me a while to recover and then I started on my “Friday Woodstock” programme. And that is now, at long last, finished and is just how I want it to be. It took an age and several retries to bring it down to exactly one hour but there it is, all done and dusted, and the only artists excluded are Ravi Shankar and Swami Satchidananda, but there again their performances aren’t really the style that will fit into our rock music programmes.

Tomorrow, I’ll start on the “Saturday Woodstock” programme and see how I go. That is going to be much more complicated because there is so much that needs to be omitted if I want to keep it down to one hour.

There were the usual interruptions, such as a couple of disgusting drink breaks and the arrival of my faithful cleaner, who, as usual, helped me into and out of the bath while I had a shower.

And bless her, she spent much more than one hour going through the kitchen and bathroom making everything look respectable ready for the photograph sessions on Friday.

While all of this was going on, my right knee began to swell dramatically and it hurts like Hades. I can hardly move without being in some kind of agony and it looks as if there is a balloon on my knee. I must have fallen with quite a thump.

The kitchen fitter came to say goodbye and to show me some photos of what he had done. It certainly looks impressive and I can’t wait to see the finished product. That’s likely to be in a couple of weeks, he reckons.

The shower room isn’t going to be so easy, he thinks, and he’s probably right. I’m already beginning to redesign it in my head and I’ll probably do that three or four more times yet.

Tea tonight was a burger with pasta. I wasn’t feeling up to much. And my faithful cleaner came by to pick up some things for downstairs and to take a few more photos of the work

But that’s everything now. I’m going to rub some heat treatment into my leg and then strap an ice-pack on, and then go to sleep. I want to see if this swelling and the pain will go down overnight. If not, I’m going to have an enormous amount of difficulty going to dialysis.

But seeing as we have been talking about my bad leg … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’ll have to be careful about hos this works out.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a bad fall a few years ago while I was out and about and hurt my knee quite badly.
Some guy walking by stopped to help me and offered his advice.
"Are you a doctor?" I asked
"Not exactly" he replied, "but I do have some kind of medical experience"
"So what do you think?" I asked him
He examined me and replied "I’d better go to fetch my gun"
"Your gun?" I exclaimed. "Why a gun?"
"I’ve seen that injury before" he replied "and I had to use it on the horse."

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Monday 7th July 2025 – MISERABLE FAILURE …

… that I am yet again, I was once more asleep when the alarm went off this morning. How many times is this now?

It’s not as if I had a late night either. It wasn’t 23:00, that’s for sure, but it wasn’t as late as 23:30 either. That means that for once, during the night, I had seven hours of uninterrupted sleep, and it’s been a long time since that has happened.

And “uninterrupted” it certainly was. I remember nothing whatsoever about anything at all during the night.

When the alarm went off, I struggled to sit on the edge of the bed, and that’s where I stayed for a good few minutes while I waited for the bedroom to stop spinning around.

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 in search of my medication for the morning.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at the local technical college last night and there had been some kind of meeting in the great hall. Everyone had waded through there to fetch their meal, this meeting had taken place and slowly, everyone had left. We were some of the last to go. We were having a look around the place, looking to see where would be the best place to put some kind of permanent stage for holding meetings, but we noticed on the wall some small button-like things and realised that these were micro-camera lenses. The wall had been covered in micro-cameras to film what had happened at this meeting. As we walked out of the hall we walked down the front of some kind of supermarket where there were some military people investigating things with machines. We wondered whether they were using these unidirectional receiver things to pick up what people were saying on their mobile ‘phones from a distance. As we walked out, there was a commotion at one of the cash desks. It seemed that some soldier and some civilian were having an argument, the soldier had pulled his gun but the civilian was not backing down and was haranguing this soldier. Quite a crowd had gathered around to watch.

With no recollection whatever of this dream, I have no idea about what must have been going on in my mind … "neither have we" – ed … during the night and it certainly doesn’t seem to relate to anything that is currently or has recently been ongoing.

My only forays into the Technical College at Crewe were at nights where I learned paint spraying and welding, and where I did my first computer courses back in 1974 and 1975.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and returned my “War and Peace”, making a few comments as she did so. After she fixed my legs she disappeared off into the sunset for her week’s rest, but not before we’d talked about Alvin Tofler and SOME OF HIS MOST ASTONISHINGLY ACCURATE PREDICTIONS.

Once she’d left I could make breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Today, we covered an extraordinary amount of ground, discussing many different subjects such as medieval games, including primitive ice-skating where "some tie bones to their feet and under their heels". I could write pages and pages about the sports that he mentioned and their descriptions, and so could he, apparently, for he mentions how the maidens would "dance for garlands hung athwart the streets, which open pastimes in my youth being suppressed, worse practices within doors are to be feared."

He talks about alms for the poor and gives several examples, including "Ethelwald, Bishop of Winchester, … about the Year of Christ 963, he in great famine sold away all the sacred vessels of his Church for to relieve the almost-starved people, saying that there was no reason that the senseless temples of God should abound in riches.". Contrast that with the Church today with their works of art, silver candlesticks and the like.

Another thing that he mentions is the rise in traffic in London at the end of the Sixteenth Century, commenting that "the World runs on wheels with many whose parents were glad to go on foot.", a quote that I have added to my little library because I have rarely heard a truer word spoken.

We’ve also had the accounts of several large households, sums that would be extravagant even by today’s standards.

In fact, I can say without fear of contradiction that this has been the most interesting day’s reading that I have had for quite some considerable time.

After breakfast, I began the arduous task of sorting out the kitchen. I’ve gone through the boxes with the plastic containers in and binned about 90% of the contents. Well, not actually “binned”, but earmarked for disposal. My faithful cleaner can then distribute them amongst the needy. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m doing my best to go over to glass and have amassed quite a collection of the big olive jars which I am now pressing into service.

Back in here, I made a start on editing the radio notes and by the time my faithful cleaner arrived, I’d edited about a quarter of them. This is going to be a very long job, I reckon.

After she had fitted my anaesthetic patches, we went through the medication and anything that is not actually in use went into an old box ready to go downstairs. We need to crack on with this emptying and tidying up ready for the estate agents to photograph the place on Friday ready for re-letting

The taxi was late arriving, we had to go to pick up another passenger (making three as there was already a passenger in there when it arrived) and what with one thing and another … "and until you’ve started, you have no idea how many other things there are" – ed … we were really late arriving.

There were also three ambulances there in front of us, one of which was a new patient. And they all were destined for my ward. Consequently it was 14:40 when I was finally connected.

Once I was finally off and running, I dozed off, to find myself being shaken awake by a panic-stricken doctor. Not, unfortunately, Emilie the Cute Consultant. Anyway, we had a good chat about chemotherapy and Paris. His idea as to why they are starting to give me the medication that my body rejected in 2016 is that they have now run out of other solutions. That makes for some grim reading.

He agrees though, and so does everyone else, that I ought to persuade them to send me to Rennes, closer to home and more relaxed

When I was finished, the taxi home was already waiting, but it was still 19:30 when I returned. And I wasn’t sure if I’d come to the correct apartment. My faithful cleaner had shifted a couple more loads downstairs.

It took me a while to recover and then I made a stuffed pepper, even though I didn’t feel like it. I have to eat.

So now, much later that I would have liked, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’ll crack on with the radio notes and see if I can’t complete the first run of the programme, to give me an idea of what I’ll need to edit to cut it all down to an hour.

But seeing as we have been talking about medieval games … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the most popular medieval games was “hide and seek”.
John Stow asked me if we played “hide and seek” in modern times, so I assured him that we did.
"Is it still an enjoyable game?" he asked.
"Maybe so" I replied "but I never really enjoyed it."
"Why was that?" he asked.
"Because I would always be the one who would have to hide" I replied "but no-one ever bothered to come to look for me!"

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Saturday 5th July 2025 – MISERABLE FAILURE …

… that I am, I was asleep again this morning when the alarm went off at 06:30.

However, I had been awake earlier just as it was becoming light and I was lying there thinking about struggling to my feet but I must have gone to sleep at some point because the sound of the alarm in broad daylight was the next thing that I remember.

It wasn’t as if I’d had too much of a late night either. I was in bed for about 23:45, which is quite early these days, and I must have gone to sleep quite quickly too. I’ve no idea at what time I awoke but it wasn’t too early either, even though it was only just becoming light, and I wish that I’d summoned up the energy to look at the time.

Once I was up, I had a very leisurely start to the morning and it took me over an hour to be back in here after having had a wash and taken my medication.

First thing that I did back in here was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d signed up for a new team of something or other. The reason why I’d come there was because I knew some of the people there and they were really quite friendly. I soon had a change of opinion when I went in to start there. There was one particular incident where we were changing and someone came along and took the chair that I was using to put my clothes on so I simply went to fetch another one. The boss came roaring in, accusing me of pushing in front of other people to fetch a chair. I told him that that was nonsense. I told him what had happened and he pointed to someone else, saying that he says differently. I said that he was wrong so the boss asked if I was calling him a liar. I replied that I was saying what I did and not what anyone else says that I did. He replied “right, then we’ll ask him what this other person did” but the other person turned his head away. The boss wasn’t going to let this drop. He asked “where are your clothes anyway at the moment?”. I replied that they were on my body, so he asked “what do you need a chair for?”. I replied that they won’t be on my body for very long. He pointed to me and said “in any case, you have a broken back. What are you here for anyway?”. “I don’t have a broken back”. “Yes, you have” he retorted. I was about to say that I’d just had a medical and no medical had ever picked up anything about a broken back but he just went on and on and on. Then he turned to a girl who was there too and asked “what about your medication?”. She replied “I don’t take it while I’m at work”. He replied “you should take it while you are at work and it should be noted down”. She replied “if I were to do that, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be on sick leave”. He replied “it doesn’t matter. You note down all the medication that you take when you go on work”. I said to this girl “I can see exactly how this is going to turn out. Neither of us will be here by the end of the week”. She replied “yes, just after I’ve ordered a barrel of 400 litres of something to last me all through the year too”.

This is a combination of a couple of events. The first one was an interview with a new player at Stranraer, who said that what encouraged him to sign for the club rather than any other was the fact that he already knew several players who were already there and so it would be like being on familiar territory.

The second part is clearly a reference to that most disagreeable male nurse at Paris whom I bawled out in front of the doctor because of his arrogant, aggressive tone. And if he starts his nonsense next time I’m there, never mind the end of the week, I won’t be there at the end of the session. I am rapidly reaching the end of my tether with all of this nonsense.

There was also something about being at a hospital, but I have only the vaguest recollection and nothing was recorded about it.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in on the end of a hurricane. She couldn’t stop, and hadn’t read my “War and Peace” from Paris, but one thing for which she did ask was a copy of my photo from Paris, the one with the mouse on it. I’ve no idea what she intends to do with it, but it all sounds quite mysterious.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

Today, we’ve been discussing the Barons’ War of 1215, its effect on Baynard’s Castle and the grievances of the Fitzwalter family but there was nothing particular of any interest.

The allegations seemed to be that King John had set his eye on Matilda, the daughter of Robert Fitzwalter, but both father and daughter refused John’s advances and when some kind of undercurrent against the Kings reign swelled up, Fitzwalter attached himself to it vigour in revenge.

After breakfast, I had some housekeeping to do in here on the computer, only to be surprised by my cleaner who caught me unawares.

The taxi came early too and despite ending up with three passengers, we were early arriving at Avranches.

For a change, I was coupled up early. There wasn’t much at all to extract so I persuaded them to go for 1 kg and bring down my dry weight. And then left in peace to carry on with my work. Not even the doctor came to see me, which was unusual considering the events of Thursday.

One interruption though was from the house agents of my landlord here. They have had my notice of leaving and want to come round to photograph the place in order to advertise it. We arranged for them to come on Friday afternoon

Connected up early, I was disconnected early too and for another change, the taxi was already waiting. The drive home, behind all of the arriving tourists, stopping every half-mile to admire the seagulls, took longer than it should and we had a drama when the driver drove right past the turning where we need to go to drop off my fellow passenger. We had to do a quick lap round the block to go back.

Back here, my faithful cleaner was waiting. We went into the apartment to rescue the lettuce and had a discussion about how we would try to make my place look presentable for the photographer.

Back here, I collapsed into a chair for half an hour, and then made some tea. Chips, falafel and salad. Not very much of it at all, but I still struggled to eat it all. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, if I’m off my food, then I really am ill.

It’s still quite early but nevertheless, I’m going to bed. I’ve had enough for today. I’m still not feeling very well, even after all of this time, and I now have one of those heavy summer colds that I have occasionally.

Tomorrow I have a Welsh class all day, so I need to be on the best form that I possibly can. God help me.

But seeing as we have been talking about doctors and other people telling me how ill I am … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time when I went to see the school nurse after an accident on the football field.
"You’ve broken your arm in two places" she told me
"So tell me which two places they are" I replied "and I shan’t go there again."

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Thursday 3rd July 2025 – REGULAR READERS OF …

… this rubbish will recall that when they pass by during the night, those from the far-flung corners of the Globe (and a few from closer to home too), they usually find that the latest instalment has managed to crawl on-line at some point, and they can sit and peruse it at their leisure while those readers closer to home are still in the Land of Nod.

And so last night, or this morning, they are probably wondering what has happened that there was nothing on-line for them to read.

The truth was that I was in bed, and had been since 19:30 in fact, for at dialysis yesterday afternoon I had another malaise and went into a coma again.

Not that any of that is a surprise. It was well after midnight when I finally went to bed last night, and I was awake again at about 02:40. This time though, I didn’t manage to go back to sleep and lay there tossing and turning until about 05:30 when I finally gave up the struggle and arose from the Dead.

It’s dialysis day of course, so I went to have a good scrub up and shave just in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I went into the kitchen to take my medication so that I would be ready to Fight the Good Fight.

Back here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, but as I was expecting, there was nothing on it. That’s no surprise, seeing that I only had two and a half hours’ sleep. Instead, I found a few other things to do while I awaited the arrival of Isabelle the Nurse.

When she arrived, she gave me the next of this series of injections. If it is indeed to stimulate the red blood cells in their fight against the carcinogenic protein in my blood, it’s a mystery as to why they are only giving it to me for five days, without any other kind of control. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when this cancer was first diagnosed back in the winter of 2015-2016 when I was also taking this Retuximab, they were injecting me twice per day

After she left, the plumber turned up and we had a lengthy discussion about my plans. He seemed to be much more amenable to my ideas so I gave him the keys and let him loose downstairs to do his thing.

Now that he was downstairs, I went to make breakfast, but I found myself confronting a major problem. The fridge door was part-open, an enormous mound of ice had grown inside and the door wouldn’t close. Add to that the fact that the soya milk inside had “turned”.

Fearing all other kinds of problems, I turned off the fridge for the moment and made breakfast, and then sat down to eat it and read MY BOOK.

Our author tells us that "Henry I built his manor at Woodstock, with a park … He placed therein … divers strange beasts to be kept and nourished such as were brought to him from far countries, as lions, leopards, linces, porpentines and such other" – presumably, the UK’s first safari park.

He goes on to say that "King Edward II … commanded the sheriffs of London to pay to the keepers of the king’s leopard in the Tower of London sixpence the day for the sustenance of the leopard and three halfpence a day for the diet of the said keeper … More, in the 16th of Edward III, one lion, one lioness, one leopard and two cat lions in the said Tower were committed to the custody of Robert, son of John Bowre."

So London Zoo has a very long history indeed.

After breakfast, I had to empty the fridge and attack the ice mountain with an old hair-dryer, but I couldn’t do it for long because, with my head upside down, I was losing blood pressure and my head was spinning round.

There were several interruptions while I was trying to work. First, the plumber came up to give me a progress report, and then Rosemary ‘phoned about a problem that she was having with a tyre on her car.

After half an hour I had to give up the cleaning of the fridge until my head cleared, so I came back in here to do some work on the radio while I calmed down, but I could feel a wave of ill-health slowly sweep over me.

When my cleaner came to fit my anaesthetic patches, she noticed the mess in the kitchen so after having sorted me out, she waded into the kitchen, took all of the food off the worktop, and said that she’d be back later.

The taxi came early for me, and I was soon at Avranches with a very chatty driver entertaining us (we were two passengers) with conversation almost all of the way down to Avranches.

For a change, I was early at the dialysis centre, and for another change, I was connected up quite quickly. However, I didn’t even have time to switch on my laptop before I’d gone into a coma – blood pressure down at 8.8, apparently.

When Fleurette noticed, it brought her running and she quickly flattened my bed and raised my feet, and that was how I found myself ten minutes later, totally unaware of what had happened.

Everyone was, as usual, quite concerned about me and did their best to do something to help the situation, but I just wanted to go to sleep, which I did for about ninety minutes. But one of these days, I’m going to go into one of these comas and not wake up out of it.

The doctor came to see me and changed my prescription, telling me to cut out the blood pressure medication on the grounds that it’s working too well, and to see what happens over the next few days. I don’t know why they even gave it to me in the first place.

When it was time to unplug me, they were all worried once again and tried to make me use a wheelchair but I refused yet again. And for once that I was ready quite early, the taxi was quite late. I had to wait over half an hour before it turned up and that was just about the end.

It was the young, chatty guy who brought me home to where my faithful cleaner was waiting, and we went to have a look at the bathroom in the new place.

And what a shambles it is. Behind the bath, the plasterboard hasn’t even been skimmed – it’s just bare hydrofuge. The floor under the bath hasn’t been made good either, never mind tiled, and the pipework is all non-standard size, as if someone has wanted to use up a batch of ancient out-of-date pipe.

On the wall behind the bathroom cabinet, the plasterboard hasn’t even been skimmed and in places, not even painted.

All in all, I don’t think that my Barratt House of 1979 was as poorly-prepared as this.

Not that I’m complaining, of course. When I work out how much I paid for the place, I still have a bargain, and the work to put everything right is work that I would have had done anyway when the shower unit is built.

By now, I was feeling so ill that I could only struggle up the first flight of stairs, and I failed dismally on the second. I ended up having to go up from the half-landing in the lift and come back down the stairs from the half-landing above.

Once back in here, I had a brief look at the nice clean fridge that my faithful cleaner had cleaned while I’d been in dialysis, and then I went straight to bed. That was about that for the day.

Seeing as we have been talking about my bathroom … "well, one of us has" – ed … I shall have to bite the bullet and have it painted, I suppose.
And when I see the cabinet-maker who is going to paint everywhere, I shall have to tell him to put on two coats.
"Why two coats?" he asked.
"Well, it needs to be ready for winter."

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Friday 27th June 2025 – I AM ACHING …

… and breaking and I don’t kno … errr … in just about everywhere that it is possible to ache, and i’m feeling dreadful.

In LORD OF THE RINGS Frodo Baggins said that he felt "all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread."

And the way that I feel today, I know exactly what he meant and how he must have been feeling.

He went on to say "That can’t be right. I need a change, or something". And he was right – it can’t be right. I need a change, but how on earth do you manage to do that when you can’t walk or drive and every two or three days you need to go for a painful three-and-a-half hour session of dialysis.

There have been three things that have triggered off this current depression .

  1. The fact that I am aching all over, absolutely everywhere and it’s becoming a nightmare to move
  2. That the creatinine amount on my bloodstream has only reduced to 406 after nine months of dialysis (the critical limit is about 80).
  3. Speaking to the nice receptionist at the taxi company this afternoon, the doctor dealing with my chemotherapy has asked for authorisation for no fewer than FIFTEEN trips to Paris and back

One of these trips and one of these sessions is more than enough. I am simply not going to survive another fourteen of them. And if next time I have the same kind of interaction with certain members of staff that I had this time, it will be the last time for sure. As has been attributed without positive proof to many theatrical personalities, "I’m too old, I’m too tired and I’m too talented to care" any more.

There is at least a positive side to all of this in that with another fourteen trips to Paris in the pipeline, the taxi company will be doing its best to keep on my good side.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, I was in bed long before 20:00 last night, curled up under the covers and dead to the World.

At one point I do have some vague memory of the Hound of the Baskervilles yowling and barking some little yelps during the night, obviously having some sweet dreams himself, but that’s about it. I eventually awoke at 4:42, drenched in sweat yet again which was rather unfortunate as I still had on my day clothes, as I discovered.

By 4:52 I was already at the desk writing out the notes from yesterday and it took me quite a while to do so, firstly because there was so much to write and secondly because it was so hard to motivate myself, as usual.

Once the notes were finished, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Later on … "later on from when?" – ed … I was being ill and so I decided that I was going to go home. My cleaner decided to come with me. There were quite a few of us in the car. We arrived at Davenport Avenvue and we all piled out. I went straight upstairs and my cleaner followed. Where these other people were staying was in one of the bedrooms and I pointed it out to them. I noticed that someone had painted the bathroom door and it looked really nice. I went into my bedroom, which was right down at the end of some kind of kinked corridor as at the hospital in Paris just now where I prepared myself ready to go to bed. As I climbed into bed, my cleaner came in. She was in her night attire too. She handed my ‘phone to me, saying that she didn’t know how these people had found my number – or her number … fell asleep here … So anyway, as I was about to climb into bed she handed me the telephone and said “I don’t know how these people have my ‘phone number”. I took it and answered, and it was the dialysis centre saying that they needed to have a talk with me about this afternoon. I waited and waited and waited but they didn’t answer at all so in the end I hung up. My cleaner told me that it wasn’t a very intelligent thing to do, to hang up on the dialysis centre but I said that I didn’t want to hang around in my nightclothes for very long at all. I wanted to be in bed.

And that is exactly how I’m feeling right now. I couldn’t care less about the dialysis centre, I couldn’t care less about the chemotherapy, I couldn’t care less about anything any more. I just want to go to bed and sleep.

Did I dictate the dream about my brother coming up to stay with me … "no you didn’t" – ed … We were talking about doing something or going somewhere so I asked him if I needed a car. He said that he needed one for the Sunday and to drop off a few other things on the Saturday. I thought that I’d arrange to hire a sports car for the weekend and we’d have some fun with it. We began to make our plans about where we were going and what we were doing but we had to wait around for a while for some reason or other. The next thing that I knew was that I found myself in bed. My brother was asleep in a bed in the same room, and when he awoke, he told me that he’d been vomiting through the night so I had to go to fetch some kitchen towels or something to clean things up. I asked him how he was and he replied that he was feeling much better but nevertheless, our plans were going to be changing. Because of this, I had a feeling that if I didn’t begin to exercise myself and have things done today we’d end up without a car at the weekend and that would be complicated

This isn’t like our family at all. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we are well-known for not being willing to share so much as a bus shelter in the middle of a monsoon with each other.

There was another dream too about being in Montréal. I was there with Nerina and we were talking to someone who was telling us certain things but I can’t remember now, but I remember saying that this is the fault with non-urban people, that they have a different outlook and a different approach to life. They can’t see things in the same way as everyone else, to which they agreed. I told Nerina about the woman whom I’d met in Labrador back in 2010 and with whom I’d kept in contact for a while until she moved to Toronto and I can’t remember any more about this particular dream.

One place to which I never took Nerina was to Montreal. I talked to her once about going to North America but she wasn’t impressed so I never mentioned it again. Canada was actually my preferred destination as a bolt-hole when my past began to catch up with me but Diplomatic Immunity in Belgium was a pretty good choice when that job came up. I still preen myself with pride … "show-off!" – ed … when I think that there were seventy-eight of us who sat that first exam in London for just one vacancy.

A friend of mine had a job as a house painter, to paint someone’s house. The house was in Ightfield, near Whitchurch. He asked me if I’d run him for his second day of work. I’d had a really bad night of sleep but nevertheless, when he came round at something like 08:00 on a Sunday, I took him out there. We found the house, so we pulled up outside it. It was a very narrow road. he took about five minutes to try to exit the van, saying that it was all muddy where we had stopped so in the end I had to move into the middle of the road and let him out there to fetch all of his things. Of course, with the road being narrow and me being in the middle of the road, a big lorry appeared so I had to move off quite quickly and swing into a side street to look for a parking place. There was a pub, so I drove into the pub. There were loads of people in there. I backed up against the pub wall on the inside, and climbed out of the van on my crutches and went to fetch the key to lock the doors. I suddenly realised that i’d left the keys in the back door. I’d backed the van right up against the wall so I couldn’t reach the key and I couldn’t start the van to move it because of course the key was in the back door. I was scratching my head thinking “how am I going to find my way out of this one? I seem to have made a huge mess of parking this van up. What was I going to do now?”.

Astute readers will be asking themselves the same question that I did when I transcribed the notes for this particular dream. Namely “if you drove the van into the pub and backed it up against the wall, you must have used an ignition key that is not stuck in the back door of the van, so why don’t you use that?”.

By about 7:30 everyone else had arisen from the Dead so we all gathered in the kitchen and had coffee and a chat. And my friend showed me a lovely ‘photo of an invalid scooter with a Kawasaki 900cc 4-cylinder transverse engine. I was sorely tempted until I noticed in the comments that someone was trying to work on fitting a V8 engine in one. I’ll wait and see how that pans out.

The nurse came round as usual, and if ever proof were needed that he doesn’t listen to a word that anyone says, we had
"How are you today? Was it OK at dialysis?"
"Not at all. My fever reached 38°C, coagulated the blood in the needles and they had to stop the session."
"And did you sleep well?"

After he left, we had breakfast and then set to work. We emptied the big glass-fronted wardrobe by the door that blocks the draughts. We turned it round to face the room and took several photos.

There is no place for it in the new apartment so it’s being sold. My friend, who has known me and my habits for sixty years told me to “put it online right now or else it will never be sold” so I advertised that and the kitchen units that I never used after buying them a few years ago. You can see the adverts HERE.

After all of that, we sat and chatted for quite a while and then my faithful cleaner came along and chased us out of the apartment while she did her stuff. We went downstairs and changed over the doors on the new fridge-freezer.

And that was an engineering job too, not at all simple. The two of us figured it out in the end because in some places the destructions were not at all clear. It took an age to do it and, as usual, we ended up with a screw left over.

After that, we went for a walk outside but by now the Black Dog was beginning to make its appearance. I was tired, I was aching and I was beginning to feel dreadful again.

Climbing back up these stairs was a Herculean effort and once I’d sat down, I had a really hard time standing up again. Tea was baked potatoes with a mixture of leftovers from out of the fridge with a sachet of vegan mince thrown in. And you can tell that I’m not feeling well at all because I’m still off my food. I didn’t feel like very much at all.

Now it’s bedtime and I just want to go to sleep. I don’t care about anything else any more, but I do know that I won’t be able to manage another fourteen of these chemotherapy sessions at this rate. I was looking back at my blog entries from when the Mapthera began, and it didn’t look very positive. I was hospitalised on several occasions after a dosage. And I was younger and fitter then, too.

But seeing as we have been talking about painters … "well, one of us has" – ed … my painter friend was asked to go and put two coats of light green all-weather matt paint on the porch at some rich person’s house.
When the guy cane back, he asked my friend "have you finished that paint job?"
"Yes I have" He replied. "But it’s not a porch, it’s a Ferrari".

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Wednesday 25th June 2025 – I WAS NOT …

… alone!

And when they send me the bill for the €20:00 for the subsistence, I shall only pay half and the mouse that I saw at 05:25 eating the crumbs on the floor when I awoke can pay the rest.

What surprised me particularly was not so much the mouse but the nonchalant attitude of the staff when I told them, as if “we’ve heard it all and seen it all before”. One member of staff (the male nurse with whom I’d had that huge argument last night) even tried to chase it away into someone else’s room rather than try to eradicate it.

So now my mind is made up. When I move downstairs I am definitely going to have a cat – a female cat – and the problem with what to do with it when I’m in hospital is resolved because I shall bring it with me. It can have free board and lodging.

And if anyone tells me that animals aren’t allowed into hospitals …

So, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, the intravenous drip went on until about 03:00, with me trying to sleep and every half an hour or so a nurse coming to check and awakening me

When they finally disconnected me, I could at last have some proper sleep, which I did until all of 05:20, which was when I saw the mouse.

As I said earlier, it was the nonchalant attitude of the staff that surprised me the most. They seemed to think that it was quite a normal thing to have a mouse in their hospital. I wasn’t impressed, though.

After they left, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. While I was having a brief doze I saw a couple of heavy lorries go past with huge, heavy trailers on the back. From one of them, the trailer broke away and 100 yards further on the heavy metal container body on the lorry full of scrap metal or something also fell off. The trailer careered off down a side street and I remember thinking to myself “so that was the end of Mike’s Music Shop in Edleston Road”.

There used to be a music shop in Edleston Road – it moved there from Nantwich Road several years ago. I bought a lot of stuff, including my famous Gibson EB3 bass, from there. However, one of the owners died a couple of years ago so I don’t know if the shop is still there.

Later on; I ended up having a row with a nurse during a dream last night. He wanted to couple me up to a drip-feed thing in a very complicated way that I was sure wasn’t right. When he came to work on it, he found that he had to make the cables longer so he pulled on the cables and that nearly pulled the catheter out of my arm. When I shouted at him to stop he made something of a face and we had something of an argument … fell asleep here …

And fell asleep for two hours and eight minutes, so the dictaphone’s timestamp told me. And I’ve seen enough of these couplings-up to a Portable Patient these last ten or so years to know how it’s done and to know if it’s not done correctly. But clearly, that row last night must have been on my mind.

They had coupled the machine incorrectly, and ended up with pipes looking like a plate of spaghetti, all tangled up in each other rather than a nice flowing series of pipes; And the fact that they were all tangled together was the root of this argument, when he pulled on one and it pulled all the others

Breakfast (for me, anyway) came at 09:10 this morning and when I finished, and I wasn’t in the mood to eat all of it they coupled up the chemotherapy stuff.

And round about 10:00 the side effects began. I began to shiver and shake, I went deathly cold and a huge wave of fatigue swept over me. There’s only one cure for this – I went to bed, under the bedclothes to keep warm.

The nurses and the doctor were frantic with worry but I know about this kind of thing and I know the best cure is to sleep it off. They were having none of it though, and insisted on taking tests and measurements

There was also, as you might be expecting, the "would you like a doliprane?"

Round about 11:30 they finally got the message and cleared off, except for the cleaner and the nursing assistant who brought me my lunch, which I refused.

With the taxi coming at 14:30, I left the bed at 14:00, still feeling shaky, and packed my bags. And then went back to sleep.

The taxi arrived at 15:30 and as I was feeling a little better, I walked to the car, refusing the wheelchair, and settled myself down in a comfortable position.

The driver has taken me before, and he’s a nice, friendly guy so we had a little chat as we drove out of Paris. For once, the traffic circulation was fairly fluid so we would make good time

Once we were on the motorway I fell asleep and slept all the way to Caen, except for dealing with messages from my friend ond my faithful cleaner about my kitchen, which has arrived at last. I mentioned to the kitchen fitter that it had arrived, so he’s going to start work on his next free day, which might be some time at the end of next week.

He’s also been to another store and found what he needs from there and has negotiated a good price so he’ll be bringing all of that after I’ve paid for it.

When I awoke we were going round the north side of Caen. My driver reckons that it’s quicker at this time of afternoon and he was probably right too because we arrived back at home after just four hours of travel And we were greeted by a rainstorm of tropical proportions.

The boxes of kitchen stuff look impressive in the new apartment. I can’t wait for them to be opened and assembled. And then I climbed up here, feeling a little better than just recently, despite the pain in my foot that has now gone off to the back of the base of my little toe and in my heel since the Retuximab.

My friend had made some food to eat which was nice of him, and now I’ve come to write my notes before I go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about this pain in my foot… "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the nurses asked me "have you ever thought about acupuncture to solve the pain?"
"Yes I have as it happens" I replied "but I just didn’t get the point of it."

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Monday 23rd June 2025 – I HAD A …

… special visitor during the night last night – someone who hasn’t been to see me for quite some considerable time.

But more of that anon. This time tomorrow I shall be … well … not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting in a hospital bed in Paris where they will be starting this Rituximab cancer treatment.

Or, rather, restarting it, because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that was the product (or Mabthera, a generic thereof) that they gave me right at the beginning back in February 2016 after the chemotherapy failed.

And it worked at that moment too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was unable to walk and so ill that I had to live with friends because I was unable to cope by myself, yet six months later I was in Canada. I’m not expecting the same miracles this time, but any little help and relief that it might give me will be most welcome.

And in other news, it looks as if this apartment move will be taking place during the week of 18th-25th of August. That seems to be when the usual suspects are collecting themselves together, and I’m recruiting further volunteers if anyone else would like to join in. All are welcome and I do not practise any kind of discrimination at all. I hate everyone equally, regardless of race, creed, colour or sexual orientation.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, had I exerted myself last night I could have been in bed well before 23:00 but as usual, dillying and dallying about, it was about 23:30 when I finally crawled in underneath the covers.

When I awoke at 05:20 I was somewhere about in the dialysis centre but whatever it was that I was doing evaporated from my mind immediately … "not that there’s much in there to hold it in" – ed … which is just as well because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I don’t like to dwell on that place when I’m not there. It’s bad enough that I do when I am.

The first task that I undertook when I finally settled down at the desk (at … errr … 05:50) was to listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. And, as I said earlier, I had a special visitor come to see me. There was a group of us in a house somewhere and who should come in but our old friend (or mine, anyway), Zero. And what a long time it’s been since she last put in an appearance. I wanted to say “hello” to her but she walked right through the front of the house all the way to the stairs. I pretended to chase after, and she saw me, let out a squeal and ran upstairs. Her mother said something about going to frighten her away and that I had to look after her at that end of the room. My brother was upstairs in his room at the time and I could hear him and Zero talking to each other. I thought “how am I going to look after Zero at this end of the room if she has already gone upstairs?”. I thought in any case that he was supposed to be busy doing some things that he needed to do rather than sit around talking, but apparently not.

So here we go again. Zero having far more sense than to hang around chatting to me, and a member of my family turning up in my nocturnal rambles to spoil all my fun. I thought that we’d put all of that behind us, but apparently not. Presumably, some psychiatrist somewhere would come out with a few interesting remarks about this kind of situation, but it would all be news to me. There’s no other logical explanation for it, although whatever logic would have to do with what went on in my head during the night would also be news to me.

Round about 07:00 everyone else began to surface so I went for a good wash and scrub up ready for dialysis and Emilie the Cute Consultant, although I forgot to shave. And then we sat around waiting for Isabelle the Nurse to come to see me.

Almost as soon as she left, the taxi came round to take me to the Medical Centre to see the doctor about my heart.

At first, I saw his assistant who coupled me up to an echograph machine with a rapidity that took me quite by surprise.
"That’s not the first time that you’ve done this, is it?"
"Oh no" she replied. "Only a few thousand times.".

When she’d finished, she took me into the doctor’s room where he gave me a thorough examination.
"It’s not your heart that’s causing your problems" he said. "That’s working fine."

And that’s just as well because it’s only my heart that is keeping me going. With my low blood count and low blood pressure, my heart is having to beat about twice as fast as anyone else’s. Anyone’s heart can do that for a while, but mine’s been doing it for almost ten years. When it gives out, I’ll be gone in an instant.

But at least he found my heart and I still have one. I’ve not turned into a Conservative yet.

"Where’s all your paperwork?" he asked.
"No-one told me to bring any" I replied. "The dialysis centre arranged this appointment. I imagined that they would have sent you whatever you needed"
"You should always bring all of your medical paperwork with you when you come" he said
"I’ll remember that" I replied. "Do you know where I can hire a fork-lift truck?"

But as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock once said, "it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

Back here (in the rain) I was halfway through eating breakfast when the ‘phone rang.
"What are you doing tomorrow?" a voice asked
"Not a lot" I replied.
"Good. Come to Paris and we’ll start the Rituximab"

So there we are. Now a frantic ringing-round to book taxis and obtain permission from the Securité Sociale.

My cleaner turned up as usual to fit my anaesthetic patches and then we waited around for a while. As the weather was now back to sunshine, we went downstairs to wait outside.

The taxi was bang on time with our other passenger already in, and we shot off to Avranches at the Speed of Light, me with my eyes closed. It’s not very often I feel nervous as a passenger these days.

And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s no point being ten minutes early anywhere if you have to spend that ten minutes washing your underwear.

When we arrived there were three ambulances ahead of us unloading the horizontal patients so I knew how this would pan out. And when one of those ahead in the queue had a crisis and everyone had to rush to help, I knew that that was that.

Having a trainee didn’t improve my morale much, and my 13:30 arrival turned into a 14:30 coupling up.

The doctor came round to see me to ask me how I was.
"OK at the moment but it won’t be for much longer if you keep on prescribing me these" and I showed him one of the boxes of tablets that I’d been prescribed on Saturday, a product that contained lactose.
"And your doctor moaned at me a few weeks ago when I had that attack of pancreatitis"

He didn’t stay very long after that.

The dietician came to see me too, to ask how I was getting on with the disgusting drink that she prescribed for me.

When I told her that I was taking it as instructed, she replied "Good" and renewed the prescription for another three months. I should have said nothing.

Julie the Cook was back from her holidays and she had ten minutes to come to sit on my bed for a chat, which was nice. She’s a really nice, bubbly, cheerful girl and always has a smile on her face. She can also perch on my bed any time she likes.

When I was uncoupled, I went out to the taxi but we had to wait (and wait, and wait) for another passenger who needs a lot of assistance. And who is dropped off first so it was at 19:37 when we finally arrived home.

My adjustable stool had arrived this afternoon and so things are looking much more positive downstairs. The stool will certainly ease my cooking issues, as I can now sit down while I’m at the worktop cooking, and take the weight off my knees.

Tea tonight was baked potato, salad in balsamic vinegar and a mix of falafel and veggie balls. It was delicious as usual.

Tomorrow I have bags to pack, sandwiches to make and food to rustle up, seeing as I don’t know how long I’ll be staying. They say that I’ll be back on Wednesday, but we shall see. I’m really grateful that my friend is here to deal with the kitchen that will (hopefully) arrive.

But first, I’m off to bed in the hope that Zero will come back.

Seeing as we have been talking about the doctor’s surgery just now … "well, one of us has" – ed … the patient before me was complaining about having a very sore throat
"Right" said the doctor. "Go over to the window, stick your thumbs in your ears and stick out your tongue as far as you can."
"Will that make me feel better?" asked the patient
"Oh no" replied the doctor. "My wife’s standing on the pavement outside."

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