Category Archives: champeaux

Thursday 5th February 2026 – FOR THE FIRST …

… time since I don’t know when, I was actually feeling hungry this afternoon. So much so that I had a decent meal for tea tonight and still felt as if I could eat some more.

One swallow doesn’t make a summer, of course, but I’ll be interested to see if this return of my appetite keeps on going. We’ll probably find out at teatime tomorrow evening when sausage, chips and baked beans with cheese will be on the menu.

There wasn’t a hint of this last night. I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but last night’s tea was just a handful of crackers with cheese spread followed by a few biscuits. I wasn’t in the mood at all.

Nevertheless, I was still hours late going to bed. It was round about 23:30 when I finally crawled underneath the covers. And there I lay without moving until about … errr … 02:05. After that, it was a very fitful night, lying awake, dozing off, dropping off to sleep, waking up again. At one point, I was convinced that the alarm had gone off and made ready to leave the bed, but it was only 04:20.

When the alarm finally did go off, I was actually awake, although you wouldn’t have thought so. It was another long, desperate struggle to rise to my feet and head off into the bathroom. A good wash and a shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I went off into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, the first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the previous day. And now, they are online and raring to go. I didn’t have much time to do those from last night because Isabelle the Nurse appeared. She sorted out my legs and feet and then headed off on her rounds.

Mind you, she did confirm a piece of news that I’d heard at the cardiologist’s yesterday, and that is that my cardiologist will be heading off to pastures new fairly shortly. That will mean that there’s no cardiologist between Caen and Rennes unless someone takes over his office.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE . And at page seventy-nine, we finally reach the end of this meandering, rambling preamble. He’s now starting to examine the different layers in the ditches and the pits on the site to try to identify the times of the different periods of occupation.

Back in here, I finished off transcribing last night’s dictaphone notes.

During a dream last night, my aunt had been murdered by her husband. He’d been taken away and his children practically left on their own. There was some issue about the food that the children were eating. They had been eating practically anything without any organisation and were having all kinds of illnesses because of the diet and not eating the necessary products, minerals, vitamins etc. My eldest sister said something that she couldn’t understand why the kids didn’t eat more healthy food etc. I told her that she’s a girl, she’s done cookery and home economics, things like that, and the chances are that my aunt’s children haven’t done anything like that at all. From there, the discussion turned round to some kind of film where there had been some young girls who had been responsible for providing meals etc. There was a girl starring in this film, but they did a flashback to some time in the past where the girl playing that rôle was her sister. This ended up with the kids cooking some chips, adding a little salt to one portion, and in the next room, they added rather a lot more salt to the portion that they made in there. The funny thing is that I awoke at that moment and thought that the chips were real because I could smell them. I was going to look for them as soon as I awoke and probably eat them.

My aunt (my father’s sister) committed suicide thirty-odd years ago and her husband, from whom she was divorced, died of cancer, leaving the whole tribe of cousins orphaned, some of them still quite young. And it’s true that, coming from a rural agricultural background, they didn’t have the same opportunities that we had. Although I never did see eye-to-eye with my parents and was glad to leave home and never go back, I won’t ever deny that my mother fought for us to have a decent education, and we could all read and write long before we started school.

But those chips – I can still smell them now even though it was in a dream, and they did smell delicious.

We were in Colditz prison and two prisoners had made an attempt to escape, but they had been intercepted. One of them had been captured but the other two had put up a fight and were both injured. Somehow, the one who had been captured managed to break free and he ran. He managed to pick up this other prisoner and they both jumped down, holding on, shot down this chute and disappeared. There was a huge hue and cry about all of this. Several other prisoners took the opportunity to go to ground, that is, hiding within the prison so that the prison officers would think that they’d escaped. From there, they could work on tunnels and things without being missed during roll calls. They managed to barricade themselves into an old assembly hall. From there, they were living and organising things to do that needed doing that the others couldn’t do. It came fairly close to the time for them to escape, but they had been discovered by one of the prison officers. He’d taken two of the prisoners to his commandant who told him to take them to the General overseeing the region, so he took them on the train. The General overseeing the region was extremely unhappy with this prison officer because of the fact that these prisoners had been missing for ages. He prepared a document ordering him to be transferred from the prison service to the Eastern Front, which broke the heart of this officer when he was talking to the prisoners of everything that he’d planned to do. The prisoners quite simply took the order which the General hadn’t stamped – he’d signed it but not stamped – and said that only the prisoners knew about this document now, and there’s no reason why the General should want to know anything further about it. The prisoners would basically keep quiet about the document if the officer would. They went back to the prison, and the officers went to hide in this ice rink again – this hall place again – and the officer went back to his work. Now, the prisoners had a hold over this officer with this document. It became time, almost time to leave. One of the prisoners said that he wasn’t going to bother watering his plants because he wouldn’t be back. I decided that I’d water all mine, so I took the bucket. But one of my friends from Canada was there, and he insisted on having the bucket first to water some of his. After a big argument, I let him take it. Then he brought it back and I had a race against time then to fill the bucket with water, run to my plants and water them, come back and keep on going. The tap wasn’t very fast, but someone showed me a faster one. I was running back and to, watering my plants.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WE WENT TO COLDITZ CASTLE back in May 2015 and had a good wander around.

It is actually true that in several prison camps in World War II, some prisoners would “go to ground” within the prison, and for a variety of reasons too. Firstly, the Germans would spend thousands of fruitless man-hours searching the surrounding countryside and that would keep soldiers away from the battle zones.

Secondly, they could spend their time digging tunnels and forging documents without the risk of being interrupted for a snap roll-call or barracks search.

The usual procedure was to look for two prisoners who looked alike. One would “go to ground”, and then they would swap over occasionally to allow the grounded one to have some fresh air and sunlight.

There were also many, many cases of the prison officers and the prisoners collaborating with each other against the Army High Command and the Gestapo.

The part about plants is interesting. It reminds me of the late 1970s when everyone had a house that, inside, looked like a Vietnamese rainforest with all the tropical plants. And where did my Canadian friend come from?

We were in London last night. It wasn’t the London modern but the London of two thousand years ago AD. The Romans had captured the leader of the British Army and he was crying on the British Army to restrain, but they were determined to go ahead to rescue him. They built about four platforms about a mile inland from the river to which they could shoot over the walls. They had their batter away through the stand-up album period but at the end they were still trying to persuade this guy to come down from his turret. In the end they launched a whole barrage of sweet presents at the prisoner and forced him to come down, where he was captured … fell asleep here …

This, of course, is pretty meaningless and it’s no surprise that I fell asleep in the middle of it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m actually asleep when I’m dictating. So when I say that “I fell asleep”, what I mean is that there’s a silence and then you can hear my deep breathing.

The rest of the morning was spent writing the radio notes that I should have done yesterday, and they are now almost finished.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic and then we had a good chat for a while.

The taxi was early today and the driver was Speedy Gonzales. It was a wild ride down to Champeaux to pick up my fellow passenger and we arrived at the dialysis centre half an hour early.

And this is where it all went wrong.

Today, I was in a room with eight beds, manned … "PERSONned" – ed … by just one trained nurse and two new starters. Consequently, everything went at a snail’s pace. The new starter who eventually dealt with me missed her aim with the second and they had to fetch the electrograph to check and to identify the correct location. So she had to take the needle out and reinsert a fresh one elsewhere in my forearm.

Not that I’m complaining, though. I ended up being surrounded by a bunch of my favourite nurses and one of them couldn’t resist a stroke of my shoulder. If that’s the reward for the new starter missing her aim, she can miss her aim every session and I won’t say a word.

After that, they left me pretty much alone to fill out my shopping list. But the doctor on duty clearly doesn’t love me any more. She came into the room, saw most of the people, but didn’t come to see me. And when she wanted something, she sent a nurse on an errand to ask me instead of coming herself

When they finally unplugged me and threw me out, the taxi driver was waiting. And although he didn’t say a single word to me and the other passenger all the way home, he drove just like the one who had brought me and we were home in no time.

My faithful cleaner helped me indoors through the rainstorm and we continued our chat from lunchtime. In the end, we had quite a laugh as she told me a story that I couldn’t possibly repeat on these pages without causing offence

After she left, I made tea. My friend in Munich told me the other day about a vegetable curry with mashed potatoes that he had made for tea, and so I decided to make one. Sprouts, cauliflower, carrots, peas, broccoli out of the freezer in a home-made curry sauce with soya yoghurt, and plenty of bulghour and quinoa for protein, all with potatoes mashed in vegan butter and soya milk. It was delicious, and I could eat it again.

It was followed by the last of those apricots with mango sorbet, and I could eat that again too.

So having finished my notes, I’ll be off to bed as soon as THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T HOE CORN finishes.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about causing offence … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of someone in Crewe who was in Court charged with causing criminal damage to someone’s garden.
"First offence?" asked the judge.
"Oh no" replied the prosecuting counsel. "First he did a gate and then a greenhouse. A fence was third."

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Thursday 29th January 2026 – I SHAN’T BE …

… sorry to crawl into bed tonight. I’ve no idea what’s going on but yet again, I’m thoroughly exhausted and it’s still quite early.

It might be something to do with the late night that I had last night. Having fallen asleep in the chair while I was typing out my notes, I ended up in bed round about 23:45 and that’s much later than I would have liked.

As well as that, it took a while to go off to sleep too and although I was fast asleep when the alarm went off this morning, it wasn’t actually much of a sleep.

It took an age to haul myself out of bed this morning and stagger off into the bathroom where, as well as the usual good scrub up, I had a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant comes to see me this afternoon.

After the medication and the hot drink, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was at the top of a really, really steep hill. There had been a gale warning of winds and I decided that I’d head down in my car into the valley. But I thought that I’d roll it down and see how quickly I would arrive at the bottom. While I was doing that, there was a gale warning from the UK coming through on the radio. It was calling all owners of light boats to head in to shore and to keep out of certain rivers. It was even listing the registration numbers of some. But halfway down, I saw a speedboat coming up the hill at an incredible rate of knots. I stopped to watch it, and it looked to me as if it was completely out of control. It came to a halt, and there was a guy slumped to the side of it in overalls. It looked as if his head had split open and there was blood everywhere. He was moaning. My cleaner, she asked him what was the matter and he mentioned the name of some waterfall, pointed to it in the distance and muttered something. She said to me that it sounds as if he’s had a collission with another motor boat at the waterfalls and that he’d come down. I asked her to repeat the name of the waterfall but I didn’t understand it. Anyway, I dialled 15 for the emergency ambulance. When they asked me where the incident had taken place, I asked my cleaner again to give me the name, but I still didn’t really understand it. But somewhere along the line in this dream, I’d been going through a box. There were all piles of old car radios and speakers and things in it. I managed to make two of the radios work again and when I went to pull out another one, it was actually playing all by itself. I showed it to whoever I was with – it might have been Percy Penguin – but she didn’t seem to be in the least bit interested. There was some kind of design on it as if it was the front end of a car with two pop-up headlights that were popped up, and a kind of pop-up clock on the top of the bonnet by the windscreen, but instead of facing into the windscreen, it was facing out. I was trying to identify which car this was when it drove off and disappeared round the bend.

That dream sounds as if it might have been extremely interesting. However, I’m not convinced about all of the blood that there must have been, given how I feel when someone begins to talk about blood and gore.

However, I have been on the top of this hill before during a dream, and on more than one occasion too.

As well as that, there are quite a few old car radios and speakers around in the barn on the farm. Whoever inherits or cleans out the farm after I’ve gone can make quite a few bob selling them on the retro market to owners of old, classic cars. And that’s one thing that worries me – that someone with no idea of what there is down there on the farm will just tip it all into a skip and send it down to the déchetterie, throwing away a fortune.

The nurse turned up as usual and moaned at me for wearing the same face mask for a couple of days. He thinks that I ought to wear a different one every time someone new comes to the building. That’s all very well, but just how am I supposed to be able to go out and buy a supply?

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

The book is drawing to a close now. There are just the appendices to read, the reports of the objects that he sent away for specialist examination.

His conclusion, though, is fascinating. Apart from the five or so different stages of rebuilding, he’s identified three separate phases of occupation. The first came to an end round about 90 AD or so, when there seems to have been a dramatic withdrawal to the south. The second period was round about 138-140 AD when Lollius Urbicus passed by on his way north to what became the Antonine Wall until, according to builders’ marks on some of the stones, round about 158 AD. The third period was a rather hurried reoccupation sometime later and which ended in a cataclysm round about 180 AD.

As James Curle puts it, "a tale of buildings thrown down; of altars concealed, thrown into ditches or into pits, above the bodies of unburied men ; of confusion, defeat, abandonment ; of a day in which the long column of the garrison wound slowly southward across the spurs of the Eildons, leaving their hearths deserted and their fires extinct."

But who says that archaeologists have no sense of humour? Towards the end of the book, he can’t resist a sly dig at one of his contemporaries by quoting a speech that the latter had made when discussing jewellery, clearly without thinking. "That these chains were in use among the Celtic peoples during the first two centuries before and after our era."

Back in here, there were things to do and then I attacked the radio programme on which I’d been working. It didn’t take long to finish either, and I spent the rest of the morning in the unlikely pursuit of tidying my bedroom.

My cleaner was late arriving to apply my anaesthetic, but she didn’t hang around for very long. That left me some time to make a start on tidying up the kitchen, but the early arrival of the taxi caught me in flagrante delicto, and I had to clear off.

On the way to Avranches we had to stop at Champeau to pick up someone else and even so, we arrived at dialysis earlier than usual. It goes without saying that there was an issue with one of the patients and what with a new starter nurse learning the ropes, I was no earlier being plugged in.

Once the machine was off on its travels, I was left pretty much alone. The new nurse asked me a few times if I was OK but apart from that, no-one came to see me.

And with a new starter, it took me quite a while to be disconnected while she ran through her procedures. And with havin gto drop someone off at Genets on the way back, I was late returning too.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment and after she left, I made tea. A taco roll with kidney beans accompanied by pasta and veg. And it goes without saying that a lot of it ended up in the bin. I couldn’t face it all.

Now I’m off to bed, hoping for a good sleep. I really do deserve one at some point. But having just fallen asleep for fifteen minutes, I’m really at my wits’ end about this.

But seeing as we have been talking about the new nurse at dialysis … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I arrived, she was busy chasing a patient down the corridor, brandishing a pair of scissors.
"No, no!" cried the supervisor. "I said ‘remove his spectacles’".

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Saturday 11th October 2025 – MY LUCK WAS …

… in today, for once – or, rather, for twice. I had my favourite taxi driver today, not just for the outward bound trip to Avranches but the return journey home too.

Yes, it’s about time that I had some good luck because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

My good luck certainly wasn’t there last night. As usual, it was another horribly late night where I couldn’t seem to push on with any kind of urgency.

It was long after 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed, without realising that I’d forgotten to switch on the water again last night. And regardless of whatever time it was when I went to bed, I was wide-awake again at 04:10.

The pattern of the last few mornings repeated itself yet again though. After tossing and turning in bed for what seemed like a week trying to go back to sleep and miserably failing, the next thing that I knew was the alarm going off at 06:29. So once again, I’d managed to go back to sleep at some point.

It took an age to leave the bed, and in the bathroom I found out that I’d forgotten to switch the water back on. That was rather a shock, and it certainly served to awaken me properly, although not in a fashion that I appreciated all that much.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was with TOTGA last night. She was telling me that she was leaving school and was going to college in Wrexham. I told her to let me know where she was going to be in Wrexham because I go to Wrexham quite often. We had quite a chat and we set off back to my house. As we turned into Davenport Avenue and slowed down in front of my house, I suddenly shouted “stop!”. I asked the driver to reverse again and go forward again, but I couldn’t see my Minerva. It wasn’t in the drive. There was another vehicle at the entrance to the drive so we piled out and went down past this first vehicle. The second vehicle was a Vanden Plas 4-litre R. There were a few bits missing off it and it was quite rough. We were having a look at it and we noticed that the front wing was rotten. One of my friends said that he would obtain another wing for me if I wanted one, but I said that I knew where I could find hundreds of these wings. I also noticed that the floor was rotten as well and needed replacing. But I found my Minerva. It had been put on one side at the end of the driveway before the garage, heaped over with things like old bits of wiring harness and I didn’t recognise it for a while. But while we had been reversing up and down the street in front of the garage, someone was looking out of the front window to see what we were doing. Anyway, we knocked on the back door of the house and went in.

So hello, TOTGA! Long time no see!

That dream though is one that is full of interest. TOTGA leaving school and going to college (she didn’t go to Wrexham, by the way) must have been a very young TOTGA. However, seeing as I was naught but a pup myself when I lived in Davenport Avenue for about three years in the very early seventies, it’s not too bad I suppose.

But what is the fixation these days with Davenport Avenue? I’ve lived in a lot of places for a lot longer than three years but I don’t dream about them half as much as I do about the aforementioned. It’s not as if the house meant anything significant to me either.

And there was a Vanden Plas 4 litre R at our house for a long while. They were based on the big Austin Westminster A105 but the difference was that they had a slimline all-alloy Rolls-Royce engine and, their Achilles heel, hydraulic tappets in an “over-under” valve configuration.

The tappets were absolute swines to adjust and my father sweated for weeks trying to set them correctly. Helping my father in the garage, I learned a lot of words that I never knew before.

My car in the drive last night wasn’t actually the Minerva. It was in fact the Lomax kit car that I owned for several months after I moved to Belgium. There’s a long story about this car, but here and now is not the time and place to discuss it.

Later on, I was going on holiday with a group of people from work. We’d stayed overnight at someone’s house in the area of Manchester Airport and the next morning, we were all preparing to leave. I asked if I had time to wash myself, but they said that we were leaving immediately. So I went and had a quick wash but the others were just about leaving the house when I came out, so I had to run after them. Then we reached the airport, and this big group of us were standing in the middle of the reception area having checked in. I needed to use the bathroom so I went. When I came out, they had all disappeared except for one person who was looking at the departures. I went over there but he headed off into a corner where I imagined that everyone would be waiting. I had a wander over there and when I arrived, I found that it was the exit door. They had all left. There were the shuttle buses outside waiting to run the people to the ‘planes. I had to find out which bus was going to my ‘plane but none of the drivers seemed to know which was which. Suddenly, they all drove off and left me standing on the apron. My immediate thought was to go to find a taxi to take me there but there were no taxis about so I began to walk to where the ‘plane might be. I ended up walking through the top end of Crewe. There were several girls there chatting away but no-one paid any attention. A couple of taxis drove past with their “for hire” signs lit but none of them stopped for me. I was beginning to think that I could see me going back to work on Monday instead of being on holiday with everyone else.

Whyever a dream like this has appeared, I really have no idea because nothing as far as I am concerned could be worse than going on holiday with my colleagues from work. Mind you, their opinion of me was probably the same as my opinion of them, so being abandoned in an airport terminal while they made good their escape would not come as any surprise to anyone.

The nurse was early yet again, and his good humour seems to be continuing. He didn’t take long to sort me out and then he cleared off. Whether his good humour will continue tomorrow after he’s helped me fit these foot supports that the Centre de Ré-education wants me to wear remains to be seen.

While I ate my breakfast, I finished the final part of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Although the surrender of New York was not actually as a result of a battle, I’m still surprised that he doesn’t mention it except very, very briefly in passing.

The next book on the list, which I shall start to read tomorrow, is AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE. When Colonel Carrington set out to Indian Territory to build the forts to protect the Bozeman Trail, his commanding officer, General Sheridan, asked Mrs Carrington to keep "a daily record of the events of a peculiarly eventful journey, " and this is the story of the book.

It will doubtless (I hope) contain much more colourful information than the terse military reports of her husband, and provide me with much more information for when I (finally) make a start on writing the full notes of the area that I visited in 2019.

Back in here, I carried on with the radio programme, sorting out all of the music, and that took me up to the time that my faithful cleaner arrived to sort out my anaesthetic.

My taxi driver came round bang on time to pick me up and we had a lovely, long chat all the way to Avranches. And it was a long chat too because we had to go via Champeaux to pick up another passenger.

Even though I arrived on time, I was still the last to be coupled up today. but once the machine was working, they left me pretty much alone. I wasn’t in the mood to do any work today, which is no surprise seeing as the blood pressure was dropping rapidly. At one point it dropped as low as 6.8, which is way below the critical level.

For a change, I wasn’t last to be uncoupled, although there wasn’t all that much in it. My favourite taxi driver and I had another nice long chat on the way back to where my cleaner was awaiting me.

After a rest of half an hour, I managed to find the strength to make some baked potato, vegan salad and one of these breaded quorn burgers that I like. However, I wasn’t (yet again!) in much of a mood to eat very much.

But now, I’m off to bed. there’s a footfest (I hope) tomorrow and then a Day of Rest while I summon up the energy for chemotherapy on Tuesday and Wednesday. In fact, I have six consecutive days of medical appointments, and that’s too much for anyone.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about being abandoned and unwanted … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not a new feeling for me at all.
One day, when we were kids, we had alphabetti spaghetti for tea. My mother carefully dished out the meal to each of us, and I noticed that the letters that I had been given were "C F F F K O U"

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Saturday 20th September 2025 – I HAVE NO …

… idea about what is going on at the dialysis centre right now. After Thursday’s controversies, I seem to have been left in limbo. It’s not true to say that there was no doctor on duty today because I definitely caught a glimpse of Emilie the Cute Consultant at some point, but nevertheless, no-one seems to be interested in following up the examination that took place on Thursday.

It’s a shame, because it all seemed to be going so very well today. It actually started last night, even though I was feeling so ill. I’d dashed through my notes yet again and was, for once, actually in bed by 22:30, something that has not happened for quite some considerable time.

Even more rare than that, I slept right the way through until the alarm went off at 06:29, and I can’t even begin to think when was the last time that that happened. Mind you, I was totally exhausted after the previous night when I don’t think that I slept at all.

It took, as usual these days, an age to raise myself from the Dead and head off to the bathroom. I had a good wash and scrub up, and even washed my undies in the sink. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that, from my days of living out of a suitcase, it’s very important that I keep on top of the washing.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was in South Africa last night, in a column with the British Army that was attacking the Boers in World War I. The Boers had decided for self-administration, they were armed and had risen up. The British had sent several armies to confront them, but at first things went horribly for the British and they were pushed back after three major battles. Everyone in this dream wanted to rise up and go again on the attack but the Prince of Vietnam wanted to hold on until new weapons were available because they were on the verge of coming up with something that worked over a distance and the cannons were not as successful as they had hoped that they would be. They were effectively living with the girl’s mother.

The first part of that is easy to explain. Yesterday, I was reading about the opening battles of the Boer War in South Africa, the three major opening battles that left the British with a very bloody nose and the four “Creusot” Long Tom artillery pieces that the Boers acquired. Where the dream goes after that, with the Prince of Vietnam and the girl’s mother, I have absolutely no idea where this fits in with anything. But then again, that’s nothing new.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in, and once more, I’m in her bad books. I obtained the prescription for the injections that I am supposed to have after chemotherapy, but apparently I forgot to ask for the prescription for the visiting nurse to inject me with them. But what do I know about all of this?

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Our author, Colonel Carrington, is discussing the Battle of Bunker Hill that was in effect the first major battle of the American Revolution. The British in Boston attacked the Americans who were entrenched on Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill, and although they won a major victory, albeit at terrific cost, the complete and utter lack of a strategic master plan left the British at a loss as to what to do next.

It was this type of indecision that in later battles eventually ended up with the British being expelled from what became the USA.

Back in here, I had plenty of things to do and in the hour that remained, I attacked my Welsh homework. It’s almost finished now, so I’ll do the rest tomorrow and send it off so that I’ll have it back by Tuesday. Then I can crack on with the next one which will be due in a week or so’s time.

My faithful cleaner came down to sort out the anaesthetic on my arm, and then I had a rather long wait for the taxi to take me to dialysis.

We also had to pass by Champeaux to pick up another passenger, so the driver took me on a series of very interesting rural roads. Just outside Champeaux we drove past the ruins of the Léproserie Saint-Blaise– the old leper hospital from the Middle Ages.

We were late arriving at the dialysis centre and once more, I had to wait a while to be plugged in.

And herein lies the disappointment. They told me on Thursday that my dry weight had been over-estimated by 2kg, so I’ve been on a very thin diet and have drunk almost nothing at all to prepare myself for a massive drainage session today. Based on the previous dry weight, I had just 1.7kg to eliminate instead of the usual 2.8 or 2.9 so I was well-prepared.

However, to my astonishment, the doctor who attended to the session on Thursday hadn’t altered my dry weight to the new revised figure so instead of the machine running at the maximum 950g/hour as I was expecting, it was a very sedate stroll along at 480g/hour. It seems that I had been depriving myself for no good purpose, and that’s really annoying.

Just you wait until Monday when they tell me that I have to stay for four hours at the max!

That wasn’t all either. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday I mentioned these dizzy spells and hallucinations that I’d been having. Towards the end of the session, they started up again and the dizzy spell was by far the worst that I have had.

Mind you, I didn’t say anything to anyone. There isn’t much point. They would probably just offer me a Doliprane and cut the session short, and then I’d be in an even worse position than I am now.

When the session ended, I had an interminable wait until they came to unplug and compress me, and then I could leave, about an hour later than planned.

In contrast to the driver who took me to dialysis who hardly said a word throughout the entire journey, it was another one of the interesting, chatty drivers who brought me home. We talked a lot about, would you believe, women’s rugby but also about travelling.

There was a howling gale blowing here when I returned, so in view of that and my dizzy spells, my cleaner and my driver had to help me into the apartment. I was glad to sit down.

She had been to the chemist’s this afternoon and fetched the latest supply of medication, and there is more to come, especially the injections that I need.

Tea was a baked potato with vegan nuggets and a small salad, because I’m still not hungry at all. The good news though is that having sent an e-mail to the doctor in Paris about the injections, he had sent me the missing part of the prescription, so Isabelle the Nurse should be happy, I hope.

Me too, because I’m off to bed now, and I really do need my sleep. All of this is just so tiring. I don’t understand what is happening to me right now in this respect. Gone are the days when I could work for thirty-six hours and more, non-stop, with no problem at all.

But seeing as we have been talking about dizzy spells … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned to someone at the dialysis centre a while back that I’d been having the odd dizzy spell now and again.
"That’s terrible" she said. "Do you have vertigo?"
"Ohh yes" I replied. "It’s a forty-five-minute drive to Granville."

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