… tonight. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt as tired as this. I certainly won’t need much rocking tonight, that’s for sure.

Much of it is probably due to dialysis – it always takes it out of me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but some of it is probably also due to last night.

By the time that I’d finished doing what I needed to do, it was quite late. Once more, I was side-tracked considerably during the course of the evening writing my notes, and by the time that I went to bed, it was once more long after midnight.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly, but not for long. The Hound of the Baskervilles in the next room was dreaming and he spent about five minutes having a very tired and feeble barking session. Perhaps I should have lent him my dictaphone so we could have found out what it was that was going on.

After he’d finished, I did manage to go back to sleep but once more, not for long. At 05:10 I was awake again and at about 05:40 I hauled myself out of my stinking pit.

There was something that I needed to do as soon as I awoke but back in here afterwards, the first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was doing a coach trip to Canterbury. Somewhere round about Canterbury I was giving a talk to the passengers but I hadn’t managed to have the coach totally clear of the road. It was in a kind of dog-leg up against the kerb. A road-train of coaches, a machine pulling along a couple of carriages, coming past caught my mirror up, tangled it in its mirror arm and with the mirror arms tangled together, mine snapped and the other coach disappeared, taking it away … fell asleep here … although I could see the look of regret on the driver’s face. Later on, after my party was installed in their rooms, I went down the corridor to the room where this other coach party was lodged. I opened the door and was just about to step in when I realised that I should have knocked so I knocked and stepped in. There were people sleeping everywhere on the floor of this room. One or two people moaned and said something. At the very head of the table, at the top in the dark were all of the important people, and one of them must have been the coach driver. I asked if any of them had seen what had happened to the mirror arm that had become entangled up in the arm of their coach. A voice replied that as far as he knew, according to what had happened in the past, the mirror is still on the bus wrapped up in the other one’s mirror arm. It’s still there on the bus and tomorrow they will go down to pick it up and bring it back to me. I was hoping that at least it was still going to be there because anything could happen in a couple of hours overnight in a strange country.

At one time I was spending quite a few nights driving coaches in my sleep, but the incident of losing a mirror and arm on the road actually did happen to me once when I was taking a coach party to Llangollen. It’s also true that anything can happen in a couple of hours overnight in a strange country, as I explained to a group of Austrian policemen once when I had to take the European Union’s lorry to Vienna once in 1998 and they wanted me to park it at the side of the road a mere cock-stride from the Slovakian border.

There was also something about a pair of shoes last night. Someone had bought a pair of shoes from me when I was running a shop. They were one of the last pairs that I had and they wanted a guarantee that I’d reimburse them if they were to bring them back unused, which I gave them. But they needed a lot of convincing that it would work. Sure enough, a few days later, she was back and spoke to me in pidgin French like “theeeese ….. shooooes ….. noooooo ….. gooooood”, pointing that she wanted to bring them back. I don’t know what was the matter with her but I gave her back her money. Then she saw another pair of shoes and asked if she could take those instead. Those shoes were €153 so she could take them if she paid me €153. It ended up with quite a lot of discussion and argument but eventually she gave in and took the new shoes at the appropriate price.

This also reminds me of an incident that took place years ago in real life, but the World isn’t ready yet to hear it.

When everyone was awake in the other room I went to sort myself out and then join them for a coffee and a chat, interrupted by the arrival of the nurse who once more failed to take into account the Hound of the Baskervilles. Consequently, he was in and out in a matter of a couple of seconds and we could make breakfast.

After breakfast, the Hound of the Baskervilles took his master for a walk and I listened to the radio programme that I’ll be sending off this week for broadcasting at the weekend.

When everyone came back we sat around making plans until the cleaner came to fit my anaesthetic patches. She hung around, chatting for a while, and after she left we went downstairs to wait outside in the glorious sunshine for the taxi. And wait. And wait.

13:45 was when it turned up, 45 minutes late, with another passenger in it. It was a quick drive down there, but even so, it wasn’t until 14:45 that I was coupled up, with the usual second pin being much more painful than the first.

Once more, I was left pretty much alone except for when they thought that I’d gone into another diabetic coma and they all came a-rushing over. It seems that I’m not even allowed to have a little … errr … relax these days.

However, Emilie the Cute Consultant came over to chat with me for a while which was nice, and Anaïs sitting on the foot of my bed chatting for five minutes was nice too. I think that they did it just to make sure that I stayed awake.

While I was there, I replied to the edition of WAR AND PEACE that my kitchen fitter sent me, and I hope that we can sort it all out now so that I can push on with the ordering while I have someone here to accept delivery. I’m in a rush to be started.

When i’d been uncoupled, I had to wait for the taxi to arrive. There was another passenger in there too who required dropping off at Kairon so we weren’t back here until after 19:30. I’m certainly seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed, thanks to these new Social Security rules.

There was quite a reception committee waiting for me, and they all helped me upstairs. And I needed it too.

Tea tonight was broccoli stalk soup with fresh bread – another delicious meal. We really are eating well here.

Right now though, I’m off to bed. I can’t keep my eyes open. I’m really exhausted tonight.

But seeing as we have been talking about buying shoes … "well, one of us has" – ed … a woman from Crewe went into the shoe shop one Saturday to buy a pair of shoes, and chose a nice pair.
As he was cashing her up, the assistant said "you’ll find these a little tight at first. You might have a pain in your foot for the next couple of days."
"Well, that’s no problem" said the woman from Crewe. "I won’t start wearing them until Wednesday."