… sitting in here watching the football for the last two hours, freezing my nether regions off.
And at the final whistle, I checked the temperature in here. It was 16°C. No wonder I was sitting here in a pullover and a fleece and still freezing. Consequently, and with regret, I’ve put the heating on tonight, a whole week earlier than I would usually like to.
Still, it can’t be helped. I shall console myself with the fact that last year, it was the 13th October. The previous year was the 27th October. And so it’s not unusual to have it switched on before the end of October.
The reason why it’s suddenly gone cold after the wonderful early October that we had was that the weather has been so darned miserable these last couple of days. Last night, I could feel a chill in the air inside the apartment and I was glad to be in bed, notwithstanding the fact that it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out.
Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly, and I lay there without moving for a good couple of hours. However, I soon awoke, thanks to the wind again, and after that I couldn’t go back to sleep again. I couldn’t persuade my lazy self to leave the bed for an early start, and it was only when the second alarm was due to start that I managed to sit up and put my feet on the floor.
But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … having my feet on the floor is one thing. Being up and about is something else completely. It took me a good few minutes before I found the courage and motivation to stand up and go into the living room to unlock the door ready for Isabelle the Nurse when she arrives later.
From there, I went into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day, and I even had a good scrub up and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later this afternoon at dialysis.
Back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone, I had a few things to do while I was waiting, and I noticed that during the night, once more, a ChatGPT chatbot had visited my site to look up some information to use as a source for a reply to a question. How many is this now, I wonder?
When Isabelle the Nurse arrived, we talked about the storm that was still blowing, the miserable weather, the damage all through the town and the fact that there are still several thousand houses in the suburbs still without electricity. You would think that someone would have done something about that by now.
After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
Our expert his finished his waxing lyrical discussion about primroses, and now one of the experts from the Naturalists Club is debating the matter with him, stating that he can’t agree. Although I can’t quite follow the argument, not knowing sufficiently about the subject, it’s good fun to watch the experts falling out amongst themselves.
When breakfast was over, I came back in here, but I wasn’t in here for long as Leclerc’s delivery driver came by with my shopping. She dumped it all on the kitchen table and left me to sort it out, which is normal practice.
The frozen food went away first, and then the fresh food that needs freezing. The juice, milk, veg and fruit, etc., went into the fridge or the vegetable drawer under the worktop, then the dry stuff, and finally the tins. There was quite a lot of stuff today – but then again, it’s been just over four weeks since my last order, so it’s no surprise. At least, I have everything that I need to make my aubergine and kidney bean whatsit on Sunday afternoon.
There was time to do a little more work before the alarm went off, and then I began to prepare myself for dialysis.
There was the disgusting drink and the midday medication, and my faithful cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic.
Once she had left, there was no time for me to adopt my usual semi-recumbent position over the table while I waited for the taxi because a couple of people wanted to chat to me over the internet, and that was how I was occupied when the taxi arrived, bang on time at 13:00.
When I opened the front door to leave, the hurricane blowing off the sea was far too much for me, so I persuaded the driver to drive around the back of the building to the fire escape, where I only had a couple of paces to walk.
There was just me today in the taxi with the driver, and taking the shortcut to avoid the gilets jaunes, we were at dialysis at 13:35. However, expecting me to be coupled up quickly is a rather optimistic expectation, and it was 14:35 when I was finally connected up.
Today, there was no question of excess weight or excess time, so things proceeded as normal. However, I had one of the two nurses who do just about the minimum work required, cutting corners here and there, and there were continual interruptions and alarms as the machine complained all through the session about the quality of the connection until one of the other nurses came and did what was necessary to satisfy it.
Once everyone had settled down, I watched the live football match, Connah’s Quay Nomads v Llandudno. Llandudno’s early-season form has melted away and their dismal run of form continues. The Nomads, on the other hand, are on an excellent run, and it continued today as they beat Llandudno 2-0.
Like most clubs in the Novira Cymru Premier League, Llandudno’s problem is the lack of a front-line goalscorer. Earlier in the season, their forwards were making hay against the weaker clubs, but now, their fixture list has become serious, and they are playing against serious, established clubs who can exploit the weaknesses of the other teams.
When that had finished, I watched some of Friday night’s game between two newly promoted clubs, Cambrian United v Airbus UK Broughton. I hadn’t finished watching the match when it was time to go home, so I’ll tell you more about it on Monday evening when I’ve finished watching it.
In between everything, the doctor (not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately) came to see me. She told me that she had been looking at the details of my sessions for the last few weeks and had noticed that the black line (which represents the amount of fluid being extracted at that moment) had fallen below the yellow block (which represents the excess weight over my dry weight) on almost every occasion.
She had come to the conclusion that my dry weight was wrong and that she should increase my dry weight by 500 grammes. That’s a shame because I had come to like the new, trim me. And in any case, the new dry weight may well make a difference to the first extraction, but once I’m at the new weight, it won’t make a bit of difference to any subsequent extraction. Still, she’s in charge and may well know what she’s talking about, even if she does have to use a calculator to divide 3800 by 4.
When the time was up, my nurse concentrated on cleaning the machine rather than disconnecting me. And when she finally came round to disconnecting me, she compressed the wounds for just five minutes instead of the ten that are usually required, and then returned to cleaning the machine again. That’s not really satisfactory, but it’s what you come to expect when she’s working.
This early evening, I was really lucky. I saw my favourite taxi driver, whom I haven’t seen since the beginning of May in the garden centre in Granville. We had a chat for a couple of minutes, and then the driver who was to take me home emerged from the ladies’ … errr … rest room. She was another one of my favourite drivers, and we had a really good chat on the way home.
Back here at the apartment, the gale had started up again, and in spades too, so my driver dropped me off at the rear of the building again. Only a couple of paces then into the building and out of the wind.
My cleaner helped me back into the apartment, and once I was sitting down, she pressed a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt and then cleared off. I didn’t drink my disgusting drink then, but I put it on my little trolley along with a packet of crackers, some vegan cheese spread and an orange. There was no time to make a meal because there was more live football on the internet and it had already kicked off (thank heavens for the “start from the beginning” option on the live stream).
This was Y Barri playing against Hwlffordd in the driving rain and hurricane winds that made this match a total lottery. Y Barri, whose usual tactics are to play with the ball in the air, were bound to be second best to a Hwlffordd side who like to play with the ball on the ground.
And having watched the game, I was convinced that the referee and the two linesmen were refereeing a totally different game to the one that I, the Y Barri staff and most of the crowd were watching. There were several incidents in the Hwlffordd penalty area which, if I had been refereeing, I would have given a stonewall penalty, and the refusal of the referee to consult the VAR cameras made a mockery of having VAR in the first place.
The result was Y Barri lost 1-3, and their early-season form, when they were leading the league for a while, seems to have deserted them, just like it has at Llandudno.
After the end of the game, I began to write up the notes of the day but I almost fell asleep on several occasions, so in the end, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that I wasn’t doing justice to today, so I called it a day, published on line what I had done so far, added a “to be continued” stamp, and made myself ready for bed. I can always finish off the notes tomorrow.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about gaining weight … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends told me that it’s only natural for married men to gain weight.
"Why is that?" I asked.
"Simple" replied my friend. "When they are single, they come home, look at what’s in the fridge and then go to bed. When they are married, they come home, look at what’s in the bed and then go to the fridge."
