Category Archives: cleaner

Saturday 22nd March 2025 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

… freezing cold night last night when I had to leave the comfort of my stinking pit to put on my dressing gown and go back to bed. I’ve no idea what’s happening here but as I said yesterday, it’s completely the opposite of how things were even a week ago.

At least it wasn’t quite such a late night as it was the previous night. After midnight, I was still letting it all hang out, but not for long and I was glad to see the inside of my bed, where I fell asleep quite quickly.

Not for long though, because I froze again. And after awakening a couple of times I gave up and put in the dressing gown, and then went back to sleep.

When the alarm went off I sat bolt upright and was out of bed in an instant. I’m not sure why because I certainly didn’t feel like it. It was another uncomfortable stagger into the bathroom to sort myself out ready for dialysis – a wash and a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there, not that it makes any difference because she doesn’t love me any more.

There was also some washing to do, including the bedding from last week that my cleaner changed. And as you might already have guessed, there’s still some washing left to do that I couldn’t fit into the machine

In the kitchen I had some things to do. There were six oranges that were definitely looking the worse for wear so I whizzed them up in my whizzer and filtered out the juice.

There’s a load of whizzed-up pulp now so what I plan to do is to make an orange, ginger and coconut oilcake and put all of the orange pulp in it. It might not work but if it does, it will certainly be different

The nurse came round and told me a few of the details about the funeral yesterday. He also asked for my medical card, that I don’t have, so he searched through the apartment too and couldn’t find it. I did tell him….

For breakfast I had some diluted fresh orange juice and some of my home-made apple and kiwi purée with my porridge and toast made of home-made bread. And it was all beautiful too. That’s what I call a good breakfast.

I also read some more of MY NEW BOOK. Our astronomy lessons are continuing and we’re still discussing different New Years, but we’re now coming round to the more practical aspects of what we have learned so far.

He’s come up with some surprising facts, including the fact that there are many similarities of religious and cultural practices between the Ancient Egyptians and some of the contemporary races of Central America. I wonder if this book is where Thor Heyerdahl found his ideas that led him on his adventures in papyrus and balsawood rafts

Going back to the story about various New Years, of which there are more than just a few scattered around the globe, the English New Year was the 25th March until 1752, and it still is for Income Tax purposes, although with the change of calendar, also in 1752 when England lost 11 days to bring it into alignment with everywhere else, The Income Tax New Year is 6th April these days.

Back in here I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe from last night. There was something going on about one of the earliest airports and airfields in Wales, created in the early 20th Century by someone who was wandering around there looking for something special. He came across a very flat piece of land that people were using from which to fly some kind of primitive machines. He was immediately captivated by this and went back to London to create the idea of having the first airport in Wales based on this particular site in the hills.

And if someone could find a flat place in the Welsh hills big enough to build an airport they will be doing well.

There was also an article that I saw in something that I’d written about Granville being the site of one of the very first ports for armed reconnaissance in the New World. But as I looked at it I saw that it was a considerable jumble of words rather than being anything coherent. I wondered whether it had been a dream that I’d written down some time or other in the past without thinking about it and had come across it again. It certainly made no sense, but on the other hand it was a lot of truth in what I’d written.

As it happens, unlikely though it might seem, there was a famous corsair authorised by the French Government who sailed out of Granville, Georges-René Pléville Le Pelley, whose statue is just down the road from here. But “a considerable jumble of words rather than being anything coherent” – my dreams “certainly made no sense”. Perish the thought, hey?

And later still, I went out around Brussels with Zero’s father. We’d come past one of the supermarkets so I suggested that we go there and do some shopping for me while we are out. Eventually we found a car park after several wrong turnings but I didn’t have my disabled car badge and there was nowhere to park really close to the supermarket door so I had to stagger all the way over to the supermarket. We found a parking place right outside but for some reason he didn’t go to fetch the car. We went to go in but I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my crutches. I was finding it extremely difficult to move. I could see that this is going to be extremely difficult if I didn’t have my crutches with me to be able to move about in the supermarket, or anywhere for that matter.

Zero’s father? But no Zero. That’s a disappointment. And how I would like to be able to stagger somewhere without my crutches, difficult or not. However, I recognise this supermarket. It’s one that I’ve been to in Canada in the pouring rain, but I can’t remember where it is now, apart from the fact that it’s in Québec.

Back in here I had a few things to do and I was in the middle thereof when I was interrupted by my cleaner who had come to fit my patches. And while she was here I went to answer my telephone and there in the pouch inside the case was my medical card. However it managed to find its way there I really don’t know.

The taxi at lunchtime was driven by a very garrulous driver and we had an interesting chat all the way to Avranches.

At Avrenches they put an ice-pack on my arm for ten minutes and then went to connect me up. And while it did hurt, it didn’t hurt as badly as some have in the recent past.

No-one bothered me at all today so I watched the highlights of last night’s football, carried out a few tasks that have been meaning to do, and then cut up a few sound-bytes. But the travelling laptop is not the quickest machine in the World and it takes forever.

After they unplugged me it was the same taxi driver who brought me home and we had another interesting chat coming home. My cleaner was waiting for me and we went through the medication and made a list of what I need, seeing as we now have a medical card to take to the Pharmacy.

Tea tonight was a baked potato, salad and one of the breadcrumbed quorn fillets that I like, seeing as I have now run out of baps for my vegan burgers. Maybe I ought to experiment and make some myself

So now I have radio notes to dictate and then I’ll go to bed. Tomorrow there will be the notes to edit and my orange, ginger and coconut cake to make. I’ve some pizza dough left for tomorrow night and I’m using up the bread that is in the freezer right now to make some space.

But seeing as we have been talking about Georges-René Pléville Le Pelley … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not very well-known that he and his corsairs sailed occasionally with a group of pirates.
One day, in company with the pirates, his corsairs came across a British ship that, after a spirited fight, they managed to seize.
They rounded up all the British crew and upon doing a headcount, found that there were two missing, so the pirates and corsairs searched the ship for them and eventually dragged them out of hiding.
Later on, back in London the two men were interviewed by the Admiralty about their capture.
"How was it that you were captured?" said the First Sea Lord to the first one.
"I was dragged out of my hiding place by the pirates"
"And you?" he asked the other one
"I was dragged out of my hiding place by the … errr … other ruffians"

0

Friday 21st March 2025 – I’M HAVING ANOTHER …

… late night tonight. Mind you – this time it’s for a very good reason. Hwlffordd, third in the table, are playing Penybont, second, and need a win quite badly if they are to take second place. Normally, these days, I wouldn’t watch it until tomorrow afternoon at dialysis but this is a crucial match that I can’t really miss.

It’ll probably end up being later than last night’s, anyway. For a change, I was in bed not long after midnight once I’d finished everything that I had to do. And although I was asleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long.

It was another freezing cold night and I was chilled to the marrow. In fact I grabbed hold of my dressing gown and put it on in bed and went back to sleep, feeling a little warmer.

And that’s surprising me. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the very recent past I’ve been sweating buckets and feeling so hot in bed that it’s unbelievable. Right now though, for the last couple of days it’s been exactly the opposite. So what’s happening here then?

Once I was asleep, there I stayed until the alarm went off and then a very weary me staggered to his feet and wandered off into the bathroom.

After a good wash and tidy up I went for the medication, and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see what had happened during the night. Some woman was talking to someone from the northern part of the USA about things that had been going on in a chat group. The person replied that it wasn’t actually things in general but a few specific occasions where people had been adopting some kind of strange attitude and coming out with some unusual comments. He couldn’t explain anything about them but he did mention that he was very friendly on line with a girl from Oregon. She was possibly the latest person to take part in this strange way of talking and using strange words and so on. He gave a couple of examples of things that she had said but they weren’t particularly complimentary.

That reminds me of a group of people with whom I used to hang around back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when we all talked in clichés. You would never ever hear someone say "it’s over there" without someone else replying "what? Behind the rabbit?"

Or when someone needed to find out how heavy something is the answer would always be "we shall use my largest scales"

There were thousands of quotes like that that filtered all the way through everyday conversation back in those days, and many of them still hang around today but for the most part, it’s a form of communication that has become very exclusive because there are fewer and fewer people who remember it.

These days, in general, a sense of humour is non-existent. I remember a fellow student, in despair after an “exchange” with an American, created a spoof web site with the University logo on it for a course entitled, “Understanding Irony” and pushed it into the USA. Not only did he have several applicants, his point was proven rather more dramatically than he intended because the University, which also didn’t have a sense of humour and would have benefited from his course, threatened him with all kinds of sanctions if he didn’t take down the site.

Later on in the night I had Crewe Alexandra v Barrow. Barrow, who were bottom of the league, put up a really stubborn existence but Crewe ended up overwhelming them and scoring in a late goal. As a result, Crewe won the championship, probably the first actual championship that they have won, and Barrow were relegated to the National League. Even so, many of the commentators were in admiration of Barrow’s determined style of play and their determination to hold on to win a point at all costs

Earlier in the season Crewe Alexandra were pushing for the leadership of the table and Barrow were down in the depths. But a look in the table just now shows that the Alex have slid down somewhat and Barrow have found some form and climbed up. So this is one dream that won’t be coming true – just like all the rest, I suppose.

The nurse is off to a funeral this morning so I told him to pass on my condolences to the family of the deceased. It’s for one of the guys with whom I used to travel to dialysis. He passed away last Saturday.

After he left I made breakfast and read some more of MY NEW BOOK. We’re still in the introductory basic astronomy lesson, discussing the various calculations of different New Years and, would you believe, mistletoe

Nevertheless I sat rather bolt-upright when I read his remark "It was absolutely essential for early man, including the inhabitants of Britain as it was then—townless, uncivilised — that the people should know something about the proper time for performing their agricultural operations".

Surely, if man had stopped being a hunter-gatherer and had settled down to a sedentary life to pursue agriculture, that must mean that they have stopped competing with each other and are learning to co-operate. And is it not the embracing of co-operation between human beings a sign that humans have become civilised?

Back in here I made a start on the Woodstock programmes and by the time I’d finished I had all of the music for Friday and Saturday, all edited, remixed and ready to go. Mind you, I’m not quite sure how I’m going to manage to fit one hour and twenty-two minutes of music plus all of the accompanying speech into a one-hour time slot on the Saturday

Tomorrow, if I have a moment spare, I shall have to do the music for the Sunday and see how much I have for that.

Some of the notes have already been written and I can work my way through the rest as I go along.

My cleaner turned up today and between us we have still not managed to find my medical card. This is going to become a problem if I’m not careful. I can’t think where it might be. I’ve put it somewhere safe and so that will be that.

That reminds me of life down on the farm. I’d see something on special offer and think that i’ll need that for a renovation in six months time, but it’s such a good price that it’s well worth buying it now. So I’d buy it, put it somewhere to keep it safe and when I came round to need it, I could never ever find it again.

Tea tonight was a very quick salad, veggie nuggets and chips, and then back here for the football.

Hwlffordd took off at a very rapid rates of knots and scored an early goal, but then Penybont roared back upfield and scored an equaliser almost immediately.

Having played at 100 mph for the first 20 minutes or so, Hwlffordd seemed to run out of steam and they became less concerned with attacking and more concerned with retaining possession, to such an extent that it became embarrassing at times. It goes without saying that Penybont scored a second late in the game and even so, Hwlffordd still didn’t show any sign of urgency

You don’t score goals if you don’t attack and Hwlffordd are one of the lowest-scoring teams in the league. Their defence is (usually) excellent but their lack of effort to move the ball quickly upfield and to find a striker who can score goals is going to cost them in the long run.

So now I’ll do the washing up and then go to bed. Washing clothes, making orange juice, and dialysis are on the agenda tomorrow.

But yesterday, we were having a discussion about light bulbs … "well, one of us was" – ed …
This morning a friend of mine in Germany asked me "how many Germans does it take to change a light bulb?"
"I don’t know" I replied. "How many does it take?"
"None" she replied. "German light bulbs are engineered correctly and so never ever need changing. And anyway, Germans don’t have a sense of humour."

0

Thursday 20th March 2025 – A GREAT BIG …

… thanks to Julie the Cook who reunited me with the power cable for the travelling laptop this afternoon. Consequently, it’s all systems go again and I can go back to reading MY NEW BOOK. It’s been a very long few days without any reading matter at mealtime.

However, despite the absence of anything to read and consequently finishing my meals early, it was still a frightfully late night last night, even later than usual. In fact it was after 01:30 when I finally crawled into bed. What started off as listening to thirty-one and a half minutes or so of NANTUCKET SLEIGHRIDE – arguably the greatest jamband music track ever recorded, Felix Pappalardi (Cream’s producer and later murdered by his wife) on bass, and things just snowballed from there.

It was freezing during the night too. I forget how many times I awoke shivering in bed. And that’s a shame because having a nice clean bed in which to sleep, thanks to my faithful cleaner, I was hoping to spend many comfortable hours in it, but it wasn’t to be.

When the alarm went off I was nevertheless fast asleep and it was a very weary, bedraggled me who staggered to his feet and off into the bathroom for a wash and shave.

After the medication I came back in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes. And what a lovely surprise! Zero was there last night. I was round at her home. We all decided that we were going to go somewhere so it was a question of piling into the car. I imagined that i’d be sitting in the back seat with her so I was quite looking forward to the trip but when I reached the car she was sitting on the front passenger seat next to her father and I was obviously intended to go to sit on the seat at the back. But her mother and someone else there, they were teasing Zero terribly and I was really disappointed and annoyed to see it. In fact, I said something and finished by saying “at the end of the day, if you are fed up, you can come and sit on the back seat next to me” but I awoke before the dream became interesting.

Castor and even TOTGA may well have fallen off the edge of the nocturnal World but it’s lovely to see Zero again. I wish that she would make more appearances these days in whatever I’m up to during the night. However I shall refrain from mentioning fairies and the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine in case my remarks are misconstrued. However, my subconscious is keeping me out of any suggestion of mischief again by keeping us apart. In fact, I’ve been wondering whether all of these nights where my family has intervened just as I am about to Get The Girl isn’t actually my subconscious sending out warning signals to me. It’s usually pretty good like that in real life so it wouldn’t be a surprise if it were to do that in the nocturnal World.

At 08:15 I went to prepare myself for the taxi to arrive, in the absence of the nurse, and he appeared out of the woodwork just as I had finished putting on my second sock. So he went home with a flea in his ear.

Now that I’ve been to the opticians, I realise why it is that I didn’t understand where it was. It’s been so long since I’ve been out and about that where the optical clinic is, it was a shop the last time I saw it.

They gave me all kinds of tests, including squirting air into my eyes, and the result is that while my eyesight is not exactly what it should be and glasses could be prescribed if I wanted, they aren’t going to make too much of a difference. That’s good news in a way because I had laser surgery on my eyes in 1997 and whatever they did is still holding up

That was a very interesting situation, that. I was driving my boss back from Luxembourg when a small stone thrown up by a lorry on the other carriageway came through my open window and hit me in the eye. Without thinking, I rubbed it of course.

The cornea was damaged and needed surgery, and because it was an industrial accident the surgery was covered 100%. So just repair the damage, or go the whole hog in both eyes?

After my eyes had healed and I went back to work, the first job was to take the lorry down to Vienna. I really used to get out and about in those days.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr .. apartment I had a late breakfast with still no book as yet, and then came back in here. There wasn’t much time for anything because it was already late and my cleaner came along to fit my patches.

The taxi was early again but there was someone else to pick up and drop off on the way so I wasn’t all that early.

After Julie the Cook found my cable for me, she plugged me in to my machine, and it was back to the old painful moments again.

The dietician came to see me today and asked me about the food that i’m eating. She seems to be surprised at how little I am eating – I thought that I was eating quite a lot. She recommends that as of now I take two disgusting drinks every day because my protein level is falling rapidly.

But having talked at great length about my vegan diet, she asked me "which snack do you take from the trolley in mid-afternoon with your coffee?"
My reply was "which one of them is vegan?"
"Ohh yes"

And I really despair of modern humanity. Who needs a calculator to be able to work out that if you drink about 2 litres of milk a week, roughly how much do you drink per day? And if you eat 600 grammes of bread per week, what’s your daily intake?

After she left I had plenty of things to do, like update the travelling laptop and begin to hack a few very long sound-bytes into some more manageable sizes ready to edit one of these days. I’m trying to cope with all of the work outstanding while I’m at dialysis but it just seems to be making more

Another thing that I did was to have a look through Amazon and see what I would like to have in the kitchen of my new apartment – fittings and the like. I didn’t treat myself to a Christmas or birthday present because I want to spend the money to make my kitchen nice and easy in which to work.

The taxi was waiting to take me (and my travelling laptop power lead) back home and I was here for about 18:45. And then we had a panic because my medical card is not in my wallet where it ought to be. And that’s the trouble. Everything has to have its place and if it’s not there, then I’m completely lost. I shall have to turn the place upside-down tomorrow.

Tea tonight was the last of my vegan pies with steamed veg. Last week’s veg was something of a disappointment so instead of the microwave steamer I used the electric steamer and that worked so much better.

It’s only a low wattage thing but I used that down on the farm when there was an excess charge in the batteries and it worked really well. I used to have an enamel one that sits on the stove and I made good use of that in winter, but I gave that to Ingrid as a present for helping me pack the van when I moved to Leuven in 2016.

I had my book to read tonight at long last, and we have been discussing Anaximander. He was one of the earliest founders of modern geometry and geography and was one of the earliest people to realise that because of the rotation of the sun, the planets and the stars around the sky, the earth is actually in the centre of the universe with sky all around it rather than being a flat disk with the sky only above it.

However, his theory that the earth was a cylinder with humanity on the flat bit at the top was rather wide of the mark. It was apparent even in those days that the earth was round.

Right now though I’m off to bed. I’m Woodstocking tomorrow and hoping to find my medical card, wherever that may be.

Seeing as we have been talking about Anaximander and his theories … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked one of my friends "how many Londoners does it take to change a lightbulb"
"I don’t know" she replied. "How many does it take?"
"Only one" I replied. "They just hold the lightbulb up and wait for the World to turn around them"

0

Wednesday 19th March 2025 – MONDAY THE FIFTH …

… of May is when I’m being summoned to Paris to hear the news about the results of the tests that I had a while back.

Obviously it can’t be all that serious if they are letting me wait six weeks to hear the news. France is not like the UK where they give you fictitious appointments two years hence and hope that you die before you have to attend and find out that the appointment didn’t really exist in the first place.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me mentioning how horrified and disappointed the professor at Leuven was when she told me at my cancer consultation nine years ago that she couldn’t find me a hospital bed for four … days.

And so May the Fourth be with STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I’ll hit the road the next day, presumably after having the dialysis in the morning instead of the afternoon.

But if they are talking about me having dialysis while I’m there, it means that I’ll be there for the Thursday at least.

One thing that will be certain, and that is that I’ll be in bed early when I’m there. I might not even leave it for the whole day. That has to be an improvement on how things are around here just now. It was another 00:30 retirement last night. I’m not sure how many of those there have been just recently but it looks as if 00:30 has become the new 23:00 these days

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly again and although I have a vague memory of something happening in the middle of the night, I didn’t move until I awoke at about 06:00.

Lying there festering for a while I thought "I may as well raise myself from the Dead rather than loiter around here" but the next thing that I knew, the alarm was ringing. I’d apparently gone back to sleep.

After I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom I went into the kitchen for the medication and found water all over the floor again. But there will be more news about this later.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I started out with Laurence and Roxanne. We’d gone to some kind of informal concert where everyone would be sitting around the entertainers rather than sitting formally in a theatre or something. We turned up and Roxanne went to sit down at the front with all the other children. I found a seat and Laurence came to sit down next to me. I put my arm around her but as soon as I did that she stood up and went to sort something out for Roxanne. She then came back and I went to put my arm around her again but then she stood up to do something else. It went on like this for half an hour until finally she came to sit down. She explained to me that she wasn’t very happy about me putting my arm around her. I couldn’t understand why because that was what I normally did but she was quite adamant that she wasn’t happy about it. I was beginning to think that for all the good that i’m doing here I may as well go outside and go for a walk on my own to settle down a little and calm down before something that went on that I might well regret in the future.

Amongst her other accomplishments, Roxanne was learning to play the harp during her Wednesday afternoon school music session. When we were out in Pionsat at the chateau once we saw an advert for a harp concert. We wandered off to find some tickets but it was completely sold out, much to Roxanne’s dismay. However, we saw a woman struggling to take a giant harp out of her car. “Clearly the harpist” I thought, and so did Roxanne. She told me how disappointed she was about not seeing her play so I told her not to tell me, but to go and tell the woman. So off she went, eight years old, and was chatting away to this woman for about ten minutes. When she came back, she was clutching three complimentary tickets in her sweaty little mitt.

Laurence used to say things like “I ought to change my name to ‘pense-à-tout‘” – ‘think of everything’ – “because no-one else ever remembers anything”. My answer to that was “and Roxanne ought to change her name to ‘reponse-à-tout‘” – “an answer for everything”.

Later on I was at a rock festival last night with Paul Rodgers of Free and some and some singer, I can’t remember. We’d formed a group for the occasion and had rehearsed fifteen songs. When it came to the night it was our turn to go on stage and make everyone listen. I had a little problem with my drum kit at the time so the guitarist simply began to play something to quieten down the audience. After I’d fetched my bass guitar and plugged it in I worked out what key we were in and played in accordance with that and It went much better. But there were only three railway stations, those on the Wirral that need to be changes in any question at all …fell asleep here …

Leaving aside the obvious point that Paul Rodgers was the singer of Free – it was David Kossof who was the guitarist – and what I would be doing with a drum kit, that’s another mystery. However that dream petered out into Heaven alone knows what before it became interesting.

Today’s issue with the nurse was that he objects to having to be here before the taxi comes at 08:30 to take me for the eye examination. I ought to book his friend for a precise time to take me in time for the appointment. But leaving aside the fact that it wasn’t me who booked this taxi but the dialysis centre, regular readers of this rubbish will recall his friend’s attitude to problems – “lie through your teeth”. That’s not the service that I want.

Breakfast was next – no book again today due to the lack of a power lead for the computer – so I was back in here quite quickly. I took advantage of the extra time by looking for a computer power transformer and cable (which I don’t have) and then beginning what is going to be a long process of tidying up the place, checking what I have, checking what I need etc for when I finally move downstairs, whenever that might be.

Today has been spent working on a radio programme. I’ve had to skip two programmes because they relate to concerts and I can fit those in whenever I have some free time … "when is that?" – ed … Consequently I’ve been working on 23rd January 2026, if that’s not too far ahead.

By the time I knocked off today I’d hunted down some tracks that I needed that I didn’t have, converted, reformatted and remixed them, paired them and segued them and written all of the text ready to dictate on Saturday night.

That was despite the disgusting drink break, the midday medication, my cleaner being here and not forgetting my wonderful shower. But how I’m looking forward to being downstairs when I can have a shower whenever I like – once the bathroom is converted.

But I mentioned the water all over the floor earlier. My cleaner noticed that the handle on my water jug is broken and there’s a crack down the back of the jug. So that’s something else to replace. I’d better spend Thursday afternoon going through Amazon seeing what I need for the new apartment and send off an order for bits and pieces like that.

Something else that happened today concerns the project in the UK about which I spoke towards the end of last year. It’s well under way and my friend who is in charge of things sent me the first photo of what has been going on and how it is going to look when it’s complete. And I’m impressed with this, that’s for sure.

If it carries on like this, I shall be well-pleased, even if it has cost me an arm and a leg to have it done.

Tea tonight was of course a left-over curry with naan and as usual, it really was delicious. The naan wasn’t as good as last eek’s though – that really was exceptional

Tomorrow I have the optician. With dialysis apparently, it’s important to have the eyes checked every six months or so with all the changes that are going on.

But while we’re on the subject of harps … "well, one of us is" – ed … Roxanne once dressed herself up for a fancy-dress party, so I asked her what her costume was supposed to be
"I’m dressing myself up to be a harp" she replied
"That can’t be a harp costume. It’s far too small" I replied.
She looked at me sternly. "Are you calling me a lyre?"

0

Tuesday 18th March 2025 – THEY HAVE HAD …

… the results of all of the tests and examinations that I underwent at hospital in Paris several weeks ago, at long last.

"And Mr Hall, we need you to come to see us as soon as possible." said the secretary. "And bring your jammies."

"You’ll be seeing Professor Roos-Weil" (my haematology specialist) "and Professor Maisonobe" (my neurologist). " They both want to see you. I’ll talk to the dialysis people tomorrow and arrange for some of your sessions to be undertaken here."

All of that sounds quite ominous to me. Heaven alone knows what’s going on and why I need to be away from home for so long that they are arranging dialysis sessions in Paris. But never mind. I have so much going on right now to worry about that it will be at least another three weeks before I’ll be able to spare the time to worry about this latest development.

One thing that can be said for all of this though is that they are actively doing something and that can only be good news as far as I’m concerned. They aren’t leaving me to stew in my own juice.

So having pushed that out of the way I can go back to doing what I ought to be doing, and that is to write up the notes of today before I forget.

As usual, we’ll start (or maybe finish) with yesterday. After writing up my notes and backing up, I stayed up for a while, wandering around in cyberspace having a good look round before I went to bed. And it was 00:30 before I knew it. That was the cue to sling my hook and I crawled into bed.

Once more, it was another good night’s sleep where I hardly moved a muscle as far as I’m aware. However when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about, and had been for a good half an hour. It’s the morning following a Dialysis Day so no surprise there.

There was the good scrub up of course, and then into the kitchen for the medication. Back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

To my surprise there were some items on it. It had obviously been a busy night. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson were driving a taxi. They had to go to pick up someone at 25 Vincent Street Crewe. That was a house that I had bought and was waiting for the tenant to leave so I thought that it might be interesting for me to go along to see and have a look at the tenant. I turned up and it was a younger woman and an older woman. The younger one helped the older one down towards the car and helped her climb in. She told them that she had to go to the pharmacy rather than mess around with the British Government’s telephone health service. The only place where there was likely to be a pharmacy was the airport. I said “I think that its 24 hours at the airport, the pharmacy” but they weren’t so sure but we took the lady and set off. Holmes and Watson had noticed that she looked like a typical alcoholic and they’d been whispering amongst themselves about it. It turned out that she had been out last night and someone had put some pills in her drink, I’m not quite sure why. They set off in the car and reached the airport. She told them to wait in the waiting room while she went to the pharmacy. Watson told her to be careful not to go back on the stage again. Holmes and Watson were waiting there, waiting for quite a while but the woman never reappeared. They slowly began to realise that it was they who had been taken for a ride. They began to discuss the woman and noted a few of her identifying characteristics which were almost certainly false. When they began to talk about her voice, which was disguised, they suddenly realised that they had taken Professor Moriarty to the airport. He’d enticed them there by the story that they were at this house that I had bought and it would give us an opportunity to see the tenants. Holmes and Watson were then wondering what would now happen that Moriarty had planned for them while they were at the airport.

It’s interesting that Holmes, Watson and Professor Moriarty should appear during the night. They aren’t my usual night-time companions by any means and I wonder what has happened to drag them out of the woodwork. As for Vincent Street, it’s certainly not the type of house that came into my mind when I transcribed the notes (distant recollections like this are triggered off when I write them out) but the parallel with “waiting for the tenant to move out” is quite clear. However, why Vincent Street?

A little later I’d been out with some guy from University, a student who was a disabled campaigner. We’d been seeing people and he’d been driving the car and had come back home. Then there was something else that needed to be done so I said that we’d go in my car. He replied “we could always carry on in mine”. I answered “it must be my turn to drive”. He opened the door to climb out of his car. At that moment a big old Ford came past. I expected him to climb back into the car to let it go but he just climbed out in front of it and made the car swerve round him. But the car didn’t. It drove very close to him and brushed him as it went past. He walked after the car to have a word with it which I found amazing because he’s usually in a wheelchair. They began to have an argument in the street. I went to the house and picked up some slices of apples that I’d been preparing and put them in a plastic container and swirled them around with a little water to keep them fresh while I was waiting for him to come back. However, in all the time that I was waiting he never returned.

Knowing the guy concerned, it really would be just like him to go waging war on innocent motorists and other people who have unwittingly trod on his rather principled toes. He was a lovely guy and I liked him a lot, but he had become disabled following a “serious incident” involving a representative of a group of people of whom one would expect much better behaviour, and he was rather bitter about it, which is no surprise. He had my deepest sympathy, but I wish that he would have restrained himself once or twice instead of taking far too personally everything that happened subsequently that had no connection whatever with anything that had happened previously.

Not so much though as another former friend of mine, also disabled and on crutches, who once left his car and was on the point of hobbling over, on his crutches, to a motorist who had blown his horn at him in order to give that motorist something rather more than a piece of his mind. At that point I decided that this was an association that ought to be wound down. I suffer enough from my own issues as it is, without suffering them by proxy on behalf of someone else.

This morning I also had a lovely chat with a friend, at it looks as if the Hound of the Baskervilles might be paying me another visit, dragging its master behind it all the way from Memph … errr … Munich. That will be nice.

The “other” nurse started his round today. He picked on my choice of a variety of food, complaining that it was industrial not good for the health, and he had a friend … etc … I explained to him that I didn’t like it either, but when you are housebound as I am, all that you can do for shopping is to buy whatever is in the catalogue of the supermarket’s deliver service. If it’s not in there, you can’t buy it and that’s an end to the matter.

It was a rather disappointing breakfast today – no book to read. As a result I was finished much more quickly and came back in here to revise my Welsh.

The lesson passed quite well today, presumably due to the extra time spent in revision. We had a quiz today and I even finished on the podium. It’s very rare that that happens. One of the things that we had to do was to summarise a newspaper report on infectious diseases. I found it really difficult to translate it word for word but it was quite easy to pick up the sense and I was surprised to find that my summary was quite accurate.

My cleaner put her sooty foot in the door later on. She’d been to LeClerc and bought my coconut oil and Brazil nuts. So the baking will continue for the next few weeks. But as for that flapjack that I made two weeks ago, I’ve still not eaten any of it.

And while we’re on the subject of food … "well, one of us is" – ed … I asked my Artificial Intelligence search engine about suitable vegan foods to take to hospital that will be nutritious, filling, and keep at room temperature for a week. It came up with a list of about a dozen. So it’s clearly doing its stuff. I’ve already taxed it with several complicated questions and I’ve only managed to confound it a couple of times.

But while we’re on the subject of Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us is" – ed … there’s quite a thing going on in cyberspace about it. I’ve been hunting things down and I’ve come across an Artificial Intelligence web browser that accesses an enormous suite of Artificial Intelligence programs that is absolutely frightening in what the programs are capable of doing. I’ve been manipulating … "PERSONipulating" – ed … photos and voices and produced some really good results.

For some light-hearted relief this afternoon I found an Artificial Intelligence chatbot, invented for myself a fictional scenario, and had a very lengthy and in-depth conversation with it. What I intend to do when I’m at dialysis next is to use the travelling laptop, create another account and, using the internet connection there (which of course has a different IP address) to have a similar conversation, but with the completely opposite viewpoint to that of today. I’ll compare the comments from the bot, to see if it criticises the opposite of what it praised today. If it does, then we know that we are on to something. But if it keeps on agreeing with me, then we know that it’s really not up to all that much.

As for the voice manipulator … "PERSONipulator" – ed … whilst it has a very good front-end, I’ve found that I can produce very similar results with the audio editor that I use. So the AI program, good though it might be, is not everything that it’s cracked up to be.

I’ve also been working on the radio programmes and I shall carry on there tomorrow and complete another programme ready for dictating on Saturday night.

Tea was, as usual, a taco roll with rice and veg, followed by date bread and soya dessert. And now I’m off to bed, ready for work and a shower tomorrow. We’ll have clean bedding too (I hope).

But seeing as we were talking about Holmes and Watson just now … "well, one of us was" – ed … Watson came back to 221B Baker Street to find Holmes sitting by the fire.
"Now, let me see" said Holmes. "You went to the Capital and Counties Bank in the Strand. You stood in the queue for ten minutes, then you went to window number three. You wrote out a cheque for £10:00. The cashier gave you two x £5:00 notes, the large white variety. You folded them in four and put them in the left ticket pocket of your waistcoat. You chatted to the cashier for two minutes and then left. You forgot your umbrella at the window and had to come back for it. "
"That’s amazing" Said Watson. "It’s all incredibly true too. How on earth did you deduce that?"
"Elementary, my dear Watson" said Holmes. "I was standing in the queue behind you."

0

Monday 17TH March 2025 – SOMEONE I KNOW ..

… IS GOING THE RIGHT WAY FOR A SMACKED BOTTOM AND I DON’T CARE WHO KNOWS IT.

She’ll know all about it though when I see her next. When I took the travelling laptop out of my bag when I arrived home from dialysis, "where’s the power lead?". One of the nurses had packed my bag for me while I was being weighed, hadn’t she?

It goes without saying that it’s my own fault for not checking but even so, I have every right to be annoyed by it. If I have another power lead for it around here, then all well and good but I’m not convinced that I have. I shall have to turn out a cupboard or two tomorrow morning.

It’s strange really that all these little things that come along seem to have such a dramatic effect. It’s like that old kiddies’ poem FOR WANT OF A NAIL.

The dramatic effect that relates to going to bed early is that it has been abandoned. It was another 00:30 night last night when I suppose, had I exerted myself, I could have been in bed much earlier. But after I’d finished writing my notes and backing up the computer I loitered around for a while, not really doing all that much.

Once in bed though, I was asleep quite quickly. And there I lay without moving until the alarm went off. I was away on my travels at that point but everything immediately evaporated.

Anyway, I was out of bed quite quickly for a change and then headed off to the bathroom for a wash and scrub up, a shave and a wash of the undies so that I’m all clean for dialysis this afternoon

In the kitchen I remembered to take my medicine this morning, seeing as I had apparently forgotten yesterday – both lots – and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what went on during the night. I fell asleep as soon as I went to bed and was dreaming about doing some 3D modelling with people and objects but when I awoke a little later it had all disappeared.

Not that I remember awakening, as I mentioned earlier. I hope that whatever it was, it didn’t involve Castor, TOTGA, Zero or Moonchild.

And then I was somewhere in some village and had to put a huge flower pot outside on the street corner. Having manoeuvred it outside, the only way that I could manoeuvre it down the street was by going underneath it, raising up part of the roof with the back of my head and walking with the flower pot pivoting on the ground on just one part of the circle of the base. And so I set off like that. There were a few other people in the street. There was one woman putting the rubbish out, another one putting something else out, some kind of street furniture that she put out in front of the house opposite across the road. I carried on walking with this flower pot thing in a peculiar hunched-up position. I came to the restaurant on the corner and a little girl disappeared inside. I had a look in the window but couldn’t see her. After I dropped off the trousers to this …fell asleep here… I took a piece of cloth that was similar, I suppose, to what she was wearing and I forget what I did with it. I went into the restaurant. There was a girl whom I knew there who was sitting talking to another girl whom I also knew. I wondered what they were talking about

There aren’t half some strange goings-on when I’m asleep, that’s for sure. That particular dream seems to relate to nothing at all. But there’s too much of this falling asleep and dreams evaporating. I really do hope that I’m not missing anything exciting.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up earlier than usual today. Seeing as it’s her final day before her rest I had half-expected her to be snowed under with blood tests and injections before her oppo takes over tomorrow.

She brought me some very bad news about another patient of hers with whom I have travelled to dialysis. He won’t be going there again, unfortunately. That’s two of my fellow passengers who have disappeared and I’ve only been going six months. It’s the fate that awaits every single one of us, I suppose.

After she left I made breakfast and BEGAN TO read MY NEW BOOK.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a year or so ago we read THE DAWN OF ASTRONOMY by Sir Norman Lockyer, in which he discusses the alignment of Egyptian temples and pyramids with the stars, the moon and the sun.

His follow-up book applies the same principles to Stonehenge and other early British monuments and it sounds as if it’s going to be totally fascinating.

So far though, we’re having a basic lesson in the principles of astronomy, to set the scene, and that’s interesting too. So much so that I checked the book list and noticed that he had written a book called ELEMENTARY LESSONS IN ASTRONOMY. It goes without saying that I’ve tracked down a copy and downloaded it to my reading list for later perusal.

Back in here I did half of my homework for my Welsh lesson. I’ll do the other half next week. It couldn’t be finished off today because it involves something that we are going to be doing in class tomorrow.

My cleaner turned up on time to fit my anaesthetic patches and we chatted for a while before she wandered off again. I waited for the taxi which was late today.

It was a chatty female driver who had taken me before and we had an entertaining drive down to Avranches. Several of us arrived at the same time and so I had to wait.

Coupling up was relatively painless today and then I was left alone for quite a while. I could revise my Welsh, update the computer from the back-up and I can’t remember what I did after that. It can’t have been important.

What interrupted my train of thought was a whole list of items. My cleaner contacted me to say that they won’t serve me with any more patches. The clinic has changed it to cream only. And so I had a dispute with the doctor about that and he rewrote my prescription.

The nurse brought me some papers for the optician’s on Thursday morning and then my machine began to play up

Other news is that they have reset my target weight and I’m now going to be (hopefully) 1kg lighter, and that suits me fine. It seems that the water retention is still there but my underlying weight is reducing. In fact I’m only 1.5kg above my “non-athletic weight” these days if I could lose the water.

After I’d been uncoupled I had to wait a few minutes for the taxi and a very taciturn driver brought me home. This was when I discovered the problem with the travelling laptop cable.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg followed by date bread and soya dessert. And now it’s bedtime ready for my Welsh lesson tomorrow.

But seeing as we are talking about packing … "well, one of us is" – ed … it reminds me about the visit of the auditors to the parachute-packing company.
He was going through the books and asked "in which account do you note the parachutes that have been returned due to incorrect packing?"
"We don’t" said the cashier. "I’ve worked here for forty years and in all that time no-one has ever brought one back to say that it didn’t work correctly."

0

Saturday 15th March 2025 – THERE WAS NOTHING …

… whatever of any interest happening today. I can’t think when it last was that I had such an uneventful day.

There was even a decent sleep for once. It may well have been late by the time that I went to bed, quite a while after midnight in fact, but I was soon asleep, which is no surprise after the difficult night the previous day … "??" – ed ….

Once in bed and asleep, I stayed asleep right the way through the night with no recollection whatever of awakening and it’s been a while since that’s happened too.

When the alarm did go off, I was away with the fairies – but not in any manner that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. I was doing something with a pair of lady’s shoes but I’ve no idea what because immediately that the alarm sounded I awoke and the whole lot evaporated completely.

Into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, some deodorant and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later on at Avranches.

There was also some washing to do, and amazing as it might seem, having taken care to wash my clothes before another large pile builds up, there was still too much for the washing machine. This is becoming ridiculous – either my clothes are growing or the washing machine is shrinking . There certainly aren’t more clothes than before.

With nothing on the dictaphone this morning, I could crack on and do some more unzipping. There’s not all that many left to do now but I keep on finding more and more that I hadn’t found earlier.

Isabelle the Nurse was late as usual, no thanks to the roadworks in the town centre where they are rebuilding the square outside the Mairie. As well as that, they’ve suddenly and spontaneously decided to carry out more roadworks elsewhere in the town centre that’s blocking part of the one-way system and it’s a nightmare.

After she left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK.

We’ve begun to discuss the influence of Christianity on folklore. He is of the opinion that "Christianity was both antagonistic to and tolerant of pagan custom and belief. In principle and purpose it was antagonistic. In practice it was tolerant where it could tolerate safely. At the centre it aimed at purity of Christian doctrine, locally it permitted pagan practices to be continued under Christian auspices. In the earliest days it set itself against all forms of idolatry and non-Christian practices"

He goes on to quote from Gibbon’s DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE saying that "in later days, after the fifth century it accepted both pagan practice and pagan ritual."

It’s interesting that he picks the fifth century. Rome was sacked by Alaric in 410AD and by the Vandals in 455AD and in 476AD the “barbarian” Odoacer seized the throne of Rome. This influx of foreigners into the city of Rome doubtless weakened the grip of the Church .

Pope Gregory wrote in 601AD to Abbott Mellitus who was on the point of going as a missionary to England "because they have been used to slaughter many oxen in the sacrifices to devils some solemnity must be exchanged for them on this account, so that on the day of the dedication, or the nativities of. the holy martyrs whose relics are there deposited, they may build themselves huts of the boughs of trees, about those churches which have been turned to that use from temples and celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting and no more offer beasts to the devil [diabolo], but kill praise of God in their eating, and return thanks to all things for their sustenance"

Our author adds "This toleration took the shape either of allowing the continuation of pagan custom and belief as a matter not affecting Christian doctrine or of actual absorption into Church practice and ritual."

In fact, judging by the deterioration of the pure Christian faith in the way that it is practised these days by many so-called Christians, there’s a very strong argument that suggests that rather than the Christian faith having absorbed some facets of paganism, it’s more as if paganism has absorbed some (and only some) facets of Christianity. The more uncomfortable aspects of pure Christian belief have been abandoned a long time ago, if ever they were there at all.

Back in here I attacked the Woodstock radio project and I now have all of the music that I need – at least one track from every artist (even the ones that I didn’t believe that I could find) except one. And that’s because Sly and the Family Stone don’t really fit into my programmes and I’ll have to omit one or two groups anyway.

My cleaner turned up later to fit my patches and then the taxi, driven by the boss, turned up to run me to Avranches.

Once more, I was one of the first there and had to wait until they had cleaned up from the morning. Once I made it to my bed I was the fourth to receive attention (I don’t move as quickly as the others) and then I could settle down to watch the football.

Welsh Cup semi-final today between Connah’s Quay Nomads of the Premier League and Llanelli of the second tier. The Nomads are having a wretched season by their standards and Llanelli are leading their division so it was always going to be a tight affair.

The gulf in class and quality was evident however but even though the Nomads had most of the possession they went in at the break 1-0 down because of a penalty. Both sides had hit the bar however.

Two inspired substitutions at half-time turned the game around for the Nomads. They were 2-1 up in a couple of minutes before Llanelli had had time to re-adjust but once they had adapted to the new situation they held on to the end, having had a couple of chances of their own.

It was another one of those really exciting games however, with plenty of entertainment for the neutral fans.

After that I began to sort through the music for the Woodstock project until it was time to be unplugged.

The same driver brought me home – early once again. I could relax and unwind for an hour or so with my disgusting drink.

Tea tonight was a chiliburger on a bap with salad and baked potato followed by date bread and soya dessert. The same as last week’s, and the week before etc, but still just as delicious.

So right now I’ll dictate my radio notes and then go to bed. I have a busy day tomorrow, bread making and so on

While we’re on the subject of pagan ritual and belief … "well, one of us iss" – ed … to tell a little secret, I had my suspicions that Nerina might have been in touch with things that we know not what. Not long after we had come together, we were out driving when she touched my leg. I immediately turned into a lay-by
It made me suspicious, especially when we were in the local supermarket once and she wanted to buy a new broom to sweep the yard.
At the check-out I told the cashier "don’t bother to wrap it – she’ll fly it home"

0

Friday 14th March 2025 – A TAXI CAME …

… to pick me up at 15:30 for a medical appointment at the hospital in Granville at 16:00.

That was the first that I had heard of it. No-one had ever said anything to me. The taxi driver therefore telephoned the hospital, who confirmed that they had nothing down for me today and so the taxi driver left.

The burning question of the hour now is not O’Rafferty’s motorcar but who is turning round and round in circles waiting for a taxi that is not going to arrive to take him to a hospital appointment that he is likely to miss.

Something else that was confirmed today was the snow at Caen last night. Isabelle the Nurse’s husband had to go to Caen yesterday morning and he encountered it. It wasn’t just half a dozen flakes either but a proper snowfall. Several photos of the coverage have circulated around the internet as a result.

If it had snowed early this morning I would have seen it, because when the alarm went off at 07:00 I’d actually been up and about for an hour and a half, and awake for a lot longer than that.

That was after another late night too. Not feeling in the least tired after dialysis I wandered around through cyberspace and came across a match between Wales under-21s and Iceland under-21s that I’d missed. Even though Wales played for a good proportion of the match with just 10 men, they were never seriously under pressure and while a 1-0 score doesn’t look very convincing, Iceland never looked like scoring. The one chance they had, they needed a hand (observed by the linesman) to push the ball over the line.

So in bed at 00:30 and I took an age to go to sleep. But by 04:30 I was awake again, wide awake too, something that seems to be quite common after a dialysis session. By about 05:30 I’d given up any hope of going back to sleep and with plenty of things to do, I arose from the Dead and went about my business.

Plenty of business too. First of course there was the bathroom, and then the medication. And back here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And despite the short amount of sleep, I had actually been out and about. I was back in work last night. Before that, I’d been to Shavington and was taking a load of rubbish to the tip. Someone whom I met on the way who worked there asked me if I could take hers and her grandmother’s. I fitted everything into the car and went off. For the next day at work I didn’t see this particular girl for a while so in the end before I went home I thought that I would go into her room and mention it to her. I knocked on the door, opened it and went in. The room was in total darkness. You couldn’t see anything. I asked “is anyone there?”. A voice from behind the desk said “yes” but it wasn’t the voice of the person whom I was expecting to hear. Anyway she put on a light so that I could see her. I said “I think that I have the wrong room. I was looking for …” and then I couldn’t think of the name of the person. I had to try to think of someone else’s name. I came out with a name and she replied “there’s no-one of that name working here”. Then I realised that the name that I’d mentioned was that of someone who used to work there but had left. I thought that this meeting isn’t going very well at all. Then she began to put on a white dressing gown type of robe or something. It looked to me like one of these Japanese martial arts suits. I asked her if she was going to be doing some martial arts, and she smiled but didn’t say anything

It beats me why I spend so much of my sleeping hours in Shavington. We moved there in 1956 and my earliest memory is sitting on my mother’s knee in the cab of the lorry that took us there, going past the entrance to Mount Drive in Nantwich, and we left there in 1970 to go to live in The Land That Time Forg … errr … Crewe. But seeing as we are talking about Mount Drive … "well, one of us is" – ed … I didn’t know where it was of course when I was only two but I do remember my surprise and shock a few years later when we went past it on my way to see my grandparents in Wardle. I was astonished that I had remembered it so clearly and recognised it.

As for dreaming about work, why would I still be doing that?

Isabelle the Nurse was late again but it didn’t worry me because I’d been unzipping files out of storage. There are still plenty to go at but if I do a batch every day I’ll catch up with it.

One thing though, and that is that regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I first had this mega-computer in the office I went through all of the old disks that were lying around, copied all of the contents onto the back-up drive and slowly cleaned them out and linked everything up. There must have been one that I missed because I found a huge batch of files that had never been merged. I ran a batch-processing duplicate file detector through it and disposed immediately of 1.2GB of duplicated files.

Isabelle the Nurse didn’t have much to say for herself apart from the bit about the snow, and she was soon on her way, leaving me to make breakfast and read MY NEW BOOK.

A lot of ground was covered today. We started off talking about “cohabiting customs” and I admired his quaint way of expressing himself when it came to delicate subjects. When talking about the Arunta people, he tells us that "The father, de facto, is not father according to the ideas of the Arunta people. He is at best only one of a group of possible fathers according to the practices of the Arunta people."

Of the Semang people, he quotes a book that says that "Semang women are common to all men" but also quotes a Victorian-era observer of the tribe who rather delicately says that "I have not had an opportunity of personally judging"

While we’re on the subject of the Semang people … "well, one of us is" – ed … he tells us that "it often happens that a little [clan] or even a single family uses a form of speech which is differentiated from other dialects to be practically unintelligible to all except the members of the little community itself".

That’s not just true of the most primitive tribes in the Borneo and Malaysian jungle. A conversation between someone from Cornwall and a Geordie, or a Jock and a Scouser will have the same characteristics – but maybe it simply underlines his point and is not a very flattering tribute to the inhabitants of those UK regions.

After this, we moved on to discuss the migration of tribes, something that we mentioned yesterday. He is at a loss, as I am, to explain how it is that a society such as the Romano-British and all of their technical achievements, that we discussed several months ago, was wiped off the face of the country to an extent that, for example, it took 1,000 years for metal-smelting to even approach Romano-British standards, if it wasn’t wiped out by extermination, and how it is that the Nordic settlers of Greenland could be wiped so completely from the island that there has never been one single trace of Nordic DNA found in contemporary Inuit skeletons if the Inuit had not summarily dispatched the Nordic Greenlanders wherever and whenever they encountered them.

In explanation he quotes Max Duncker who, in his book,”History of Antiquity”, asks "How could the conquerors mix with the conquered ? How could their pride stoop to any union with the despised servants?". The answer to that question may be found on the plantations in the Southern United States in the 18th and 19th Century. According to an Artificial Intelligence search engine to which I have access, "By 1860, approximately 10% of the enslaved population in the United States was of mixed race. This significant percentage reflects the scale of sexual exploitation and resulting mixed-race births."

Back in here I attacked the notes that I’d recorded last Saturday night for the radio programme and that took a lot longer than intended because the new edition of sound-editing program that I use that I had downloaded was doing all kinds of weird things. I wasn’t the only one complaining about it either and a new improved version was distributed in a hurry and that seems to be so much better.

But I tried an experiment. In my best “radio voice”, cutting out the slips, errors and breaths, I’m speaking at something like 17 seconds per 300 characters. I quickly ran up a character-counting utility and a spreadsheet function and worked out that what I had dictated should have run, in its cleaned-up form, to eight minutes and thirty-four seconds. When I looked at the end of the edited sound-file, it was exactly eight minutes and thirty-five seconds.

The next time or two I’ll do this again and see if it remains constant. If so, this will speed up the process by being able to do the whole lot at one go rather than having to do an extra track to fill the gap later.

So by lunchtime the programme (apart from the extra track) was finished. I didn’t stop for lunch but carried on and made a start on my Woodstock programmes. By the time that I knocked off, I’d not only chosen all of the music, I’d even found, downloaded, converted and remixed most of it, even one or two tracks that I thought that I’d never ever find

That included a stop for my cleaner, the disgusting drink break and to talk to the taxi driver. I do have a lively, busy life (I don’t think).

Tea tonight was air-fried chips, salad and veggie nuggets followed by date bread and soya dessert, delicious as usual.

Very shortly I’ll be off to bed and hope for a good sleep. It’s hard to believe that after so little sleep I’m not really all that tired. But with dialysis in the afternoon and Connah’s Quay v Llanelli in the Welsh Cup, anything can happen.

But while we’re on the subject of paternity … "well, one of us is" – ed … little Johnny goes to his father and says "daddy, last night I had a dream and it was that you are going to die today".
Obviously, the father is really upset all throughout the day and is a very relieved man when he finally goes to bed.
Next morning on his way to work, he meets his neighbour. "I had a really bad day yesterday" he said. "My son had a dream and luckily it didn’t come true, but I was worried all day."
"You should worry" said his neighbour. "The guy who lives in the house next door to yours had a heart attack and died yesterday morning."

0

Thursday 13th March 2025 – THERE HAS BEEN SNOW …

… up the road in Caen earlier today, so someone said. I don’t imagine that there was very much at all, but even so, it’s a sign that winter is still with us, despite the glorious week that we had at Carnaval.

It was certainly freezing last night. My cleaner mentioned that there was ice everywhere quite early on and when Isabelle the Nurse came round, it was a mere 2°c, despite the sunshine.

Not that I felt any of it, because I was tucked up in bed and fast asleep. I finally managed to drop off into the Land of Nod, even though it was another late night last night. I managed to catch Colwyn Bay come from behind to beat Caersws and to watch Gresford Athletics really good run of form over the last few weeks come to a shuddering halt against Cegidfa.

But at least it wasn’t as late as the previous one though. I was in bed by 00:30 which was about an hour earlier. And I remember almost nothing of what happened during the night – just a vague memory of changing the batteries in the dictaphone, so there must be something on there from the night.

Despite actually managing to sleep, it was a very weary Yours Truly who struggled out from underneath the sheets and into the light, beating the second alarm by not very much at all.

And after a good scrub up it’s Dialysis Day) and a stop in the kitchen for the medication I came back here to listen to the dictaphone. I was doing something with a 3D character when the bed collapsed underneath me. I had a panic attack at that point because I couldn’t pick myself up off the floor and couldn’t stand up again. When I was dictating that the batteries in the dictaphone went flat so it’s not been my night at all

And apart from that moment about changing the batteries in the dictaphone I remember nothing at all.

Isabelle the Nurse was late yet again, flying in and flying out again. She apologised for being late today because one of her clients had mislaid his medication. And for that reason,when I finally move downstairs, all of my medication will be in one box on one shelf and nowhere else.

While we’re on the subject of moving downstairs … "well, one of us is" – ed … I forgot, to my shame, to mention yesterday that I’d had a chat with Alison. How could I forget to mention that? Anyway, it looks as if our intrepid band of travellers will be descending on me some time in August. That will be lovely.

Breakfast was next, and then MY NEW BOOK. Today, our talk on “cohabiting customs” has taken us into the realm of migration.

He makes some very interesting points too. He reckons that as in most mammal groups, there may well have been a dominant male who kept the females to himself and when teen boys reached sexual maturity they were expelled from the group.

If one man had five women, then it means of course that four men had none. And the only way that they would obtain a mate was either by overpowering the senior male and seizing some of his, or else roaming afield to raid a neighbouring group. If a strong group of wandering males encountered a weaker group, they would seize the females and the men of that group would either be killed or would flee.

That’s not as far-fetched as it sounds either. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Samuel Hearne’s first-nation Canadians, on their way back from their trip, came across a weaker band, seized all of the women and girls and … well … Samuel Hearne didn’t leave much to the imagination.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … book, the fleeing men would start off the next cycle, roaming afield until they in turn found a weaker band und so weiter

He draws a parallel between this scenario and the fact that it seems to be always the weaker, more impoverished and less-technologically-advanced groups who seem to exist in the worst and poorest environments.

There are pages and pages of this – in my opinion far more than there needs to be, and I can’t help thinking that our author must have been a bundle of fun to have around at parties.

After breakfast I began to edit the radio notes that I’d dictated on Saturday night but I didn’t manage to go very far because I was distracted. And in any case my cleaner appeared, earlier than usual.

It’s a good job that she did too because my 12:30 taxi to dialysis turned out to be a 12:05 ambulance on its way back to Avranches, and so we had the pantomime of me trying to climb into the back. With no power in my legs, I have to sit on the floor and heave myself up with my arms. God alone only knows what will happen when this paralysis spreads into my arms.

First in again though at dialysis, so early that I had to wait around. But when they did let me in I was first in and first to be coupled up. With the anaesthetic not having had long enough to act, I spent five minutes with an icepack wrapped around my arm but it didn’t seem to do very much good and I certainly felt it.

Apart from the coffee coming round, no-one at all interrupted me and I managed to accomplish a pile of work today. I wish that it would be like that all the time.

The guy who seems to run the show came to pick me up tonight and with another passenger on board, we came to Granville. My cleaner was there waiting for me and it really was nice to be back here by 18:30. I wish that it would be like that every trip. And who knows? When they set up the centre at Granville, whenever that may be, I may well be home before then.

Tea tonight was one of my pies with steamed veg and gravy. Potatoes, broccoli, sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower, a little of each. And my pie was delicious. But I really have gone too far overboard with all this cabbage. It’ll still be here long after I’ve gone.

But I’ll be gone in a moment- off to bed ready to Fight The Good Fight tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about dialysis … "well, one of us has" – ed … we had some fun in the centre this afternoon.
One of the nurses was going to couple up a female patient, and she was saying "now just relax, Julie. It’s only a little job this with the two needles. It’s not difficult and it won’t hurt, Julie, and it’ll be all over in a matter of seconds and you’ll breathe a sigh of relief"
"But my name’s not Julie" said the patient
"I know" said the nurse "but mine is"

0

Wednesday 12th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning when I checked it.

Not that is any surprise because you don’t dream if you don’t go to sleep, and last night I didn’t go to sleep at all. In fact I didn’t go to bed until 01:25, mainly because I wasn’t feeling tired and I have plenty to do right now so I thought that I may as well take advantage and i might tire me out, but for all the good that it did, I may as well have stayed up and worked throughout the night

So in bed I tossed and turned all the way through to when the alarm went off at 07:00 and then I arose from the Dead with, surprisingly, not much difficulty.

Today is shower day so I just had a cursory wash and then went into the kitchen for the medication, then back in here to begin to watch the highlights of last night’s football matches in the JD Cymru League. I felt really sorry for Y Fflint who were beaten 4-0 by Connah’s Quay Nomads despite playing the best football that I have seen them play for quite some considerable time.

Isabelle the Nurse was late yet again and once more she was in too much of a rush to stop for long. One day I might be able to see the photos of Carnaval but I doubt whether she will ever have the time to show them to me.

Breakfast was next, and then some more of MY NEW BOOK. Today, we are discussing religion and, in an unlikely combination, marriage customs.

Well, not exactly marriage customs because back in the past there was no such thing as marriage. Perhaps I should say “cohabiting customs” but even so, that would be inaccurate because he’s found some tribes where the two partners don’t actually live together but simply meet up on occasion, and "he seems merely entertained to continue the family to which his wife belongs".

We talked a few days ago about Caesar’s report of Britons holding wives in common and as I suspected, he has found tribes of natives contemporary to when he was writing his book who did just that

And that got me thinking. It would be interesting to delve deeper into his theory of simultaneous legends and fables in different parts of the World, and with today’s facilities and science, run a series of DNA tests to see whether there might be any truth in his theory

After breakfast I made a start on the next radio programme and by the time I knocked off this evening I’d finished everything that needs to be done for the ten tracks that I chose, ready for dictation on Saturday night.

That’s despite the usual interruptions, such as midday medication, my cleaner arriving and the disgusting drink break. Not to forget my shower either. That was really nice again, although it takes quite an effort to force myself to climb over the side of the bath. Roll on when I can have a shower in my new apartment downstairs.

Last week I’d used the last of the naan bread dough and so later on I made another batch. And I remembered to put the garlic in it too, which was good news. Chopping the garlic on these new tempered glass chopping boards is so much better than on the old plastic ones too, and they also make nice flat boards for kneading dough too. Ask me how I know.

Tea tonight was of course a leftover curry and naan bread and I do have to say that it was the best garlic naan that I have ever made. My bread-making seems to have improved just recently, and I’ve no idea why. I suspect that it’s that my small water measurer is inaccurate. Things have improved since I’ve been adding more water (according to my measurer) than the recipes recommend.

So now I’m going to go to bed and try to sleep. “Try” being the appropriate word because despite the lack of sleep last night I’m not tired at all. I can’t understand this. Tomorrow is Dialysis Day so i’ll probably sleep during the afternoon, but I have better things to do.

But while we’re on the subject of concubinage customs … "well, one of us is" – ed … this system where the two partners do not live together was recorded among "the Syntengs and the people of Maoshai,"
The author of that particular report asked our author, Laurence Gomme, if he knew the difference between a giant panda and a male member of that tribe
"A comma, I suppose" said Laurence Gomme
"What do you mean?" asked the author of the report
"Well" replied Gomme "A giant panda eats shoots and leaves. A member of that tribe who only visits his partner simply eats, shoots and leaves"

0

Monday 10th March 2025 – I HAVE RECEIVED …

… a rather disturbing communication today from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

At first I thought that it might have been Castor who had finally caught up with me but it’s much more disturbing than concerning anything that might (or might not) have occurred on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my place in Canada is actually on the frontier with the USA – quite literally, because my southern boundary is actually the international border between Canada and the USA. This letter tells me that if I "see or hear any suspicious activity at or near the border, to telephone …" and gives me a freephone number to use.

Obviously the Canadian authorities are taking Trump’s sabre-rattling quite seriously and who can blame them? It’s bad enough having a bunch of paranoiacs living next door to you but when the head of the family is someone who is in my opinion clearly insane, it must be extremely worrying.

Seeing Trump’s rants about Canadians, Mexicans and all kinds of other people, I am reminded of the outpourings from Nazi Germany reviling the Jews and the Poles in the 1930s and I have begun to wonder, a long time before this, whether Putin and Trump have done a deal to divide the World between them – Putin in Europe and Trump in America. If so, the Americans are going to learn the hard way that if you lie down with dogs, you’ll inevitably end up with fleas. Putin is much more clever than Trump.

But anyway, at a certain moment I decided that I would leave the politics out of my writings, but sometimes it really is unavoidable.

Going to bed late seems to be unavoidable too these days. After 01:00 when I finally crawled into bed after a long day’s work. I was asleep quite quickly too and only awoke once or twice during the night.

When the alarm went off it took me a minute or two to gather my wits, which is surprising seeing how few I have these days, and then I staggered of into the bathroom. I had a wash and shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant, and then I had some washing to do. I must make myself and my clothes look pretty.

After the medication I came back in here and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back at the family home in Vine Tree Avenue having a wrestling match with another kid. all of a sudden I felt another person join in. Of course, both my hands were occupied with the first kid so I couldn’t do anything about the second one starting. After a minute or two I felt “this other person means this!”. The first person disengaged and cleared off but the second person continued to grab me around the neck etc. After a while it spoke and I recognised it as someone from OUSA. I thought “what have I done to you to merit this?”. She came up with some kind of nebulous response that didn’t mean a thing and pressed home her attack. In the end I refused to retaliate and tried to wriggle myself free. After a couple of minutes she said “well I suppose you have other things to do, have you?”. I thought to myself “not really but I can find something”. She disengaged and in a minute or two she left. I thought “what on earth was that all about?”. I went into the living room or other room. My grandfather was there but I didn’t see him but it was his dog and our collie was there. I began to stroke them both. Our collie was old and blind so I talked to her to let her know that it was me but the two dogs were there in our living room and I just continued to stroke them for a while before I went to look for my shoes to go outside.

It’s not difficult to understand why anyone from OUSA would want to strangle me. I was definitely not “flavour of the month” back in those days but then again far too many people took far too many things far too seriously. But what on earth is my grandfather (or, at least, his dog) doing in my dreams? He (the grandfather, and probably the dog too) has been dead for almost 50 years.

The nurse actually had something interesting to discuss today. We were talking about one of the local football clubs that I used to go to see in the days when I could get out and about. Apparently he used to play for them years ago and will even turn out today when they are short of players.

Then it was breakfast and MY NEW BOOK time. Today we are starting to come to the meat of the matter.

He tells us that "analysis of each custom, rite, or belief will show it to consist of three distinct parts, which I would distinguish by the following names :-
1. The formula.
2. The purpose.
3. The penalty or result."
And that there are usually several ancillary elements too.

What he intends to do is to make a table, say, from 1 to 10 and then from, say, A-Z. Then to select folk tales from all over the World and fit each one horizontally into the table, with common principal parts in the same numbered column and common ancillary elements in the lettered column.

He’ll then to read down the columns to identify common themes in various different folk tales and see if he can identify common folk tales that have changed over the centuries.

It’s going to be an absolutely fascinating thing to try to do and I’m looking forward to seeing him do it and what might be his results.

As a matter of fact, it has a special appeal to me. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when this project about dreams started, it was the aim of the student undertaking this project to see whether or not dreams had common threads running through them and whether or not several over a long period could actually be tied together like episodes of a soap opera. We’ve seen enough over the years to identify many common threads but I’m wondering if I ought to go back and set up a table like Laurence Gomme has.

Back in here I was unzipping files until my cleaner arrived, and I witnessed her have meltdown when she realised that they had given her the wrong medication at the pharmacy.

The taxi was late arriving and then we still had to go to pick up someone along the way. Consequently I was last in the queue and had to wait for ages for them to deal with me.

They checked my heart today and I still have it, which is good news. It means that I’ve not turned into a Tory yet. They also gave my feet an examination and I noticed that the nurse put on rubber gloves before she touched my socks.

Last in means last out and we had to bring someone else home too. And then we had an accident. The car in front overshot his turning, stopped and then reversed backwards without looking, straight into the front of our car. Luckily, the damage was minimal and after what can be best described as “a frank exchange of views” the drivers exchanged details and we drove on.

All the time, I was thinking that it was a shame that it wasn’t my favourite taxi driver taking me home. I would have loved to have seen the fireworks.

It was 19:35 when I staggered in here. I didn’t feel much like making tea but I had a stuffed pepper all the same. And now I’ll be off to bed in a moment.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was talking the other week about studying while I am in dialysis. While I was uploading stuff to the computer I came across a programming language called “Python”.

It’s a useful little program for writing little scripts for batch processing so I uploaded it back at the farm when I was doing some work in 3D. Today at dialysis I downloaded the most recent version as well as the clip libraries and I reckon that I might see what I can do with it. It’ll keep me out of mischief.

But while we’re on the subject of snakes … "well, one of us is" – ed … someone once caught a snake and asked me what type it was
"How long is it?" I asked
"It’s just about 3.14159 feet long" he replied
"Oh yes" I replied. "What you have there is a pi-thon"

0

Saturday 8th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

But then that’s hardly a surprise when you don’t go to bed until 02:20 and you are up and about by 05:35. And that’s something of a tragedy because if I’m going to have a bad night’s sleep at least I want to be going out and about enjoying it, even if it is only a notional travel.

As you might expect I was hunting down files and data last night and then ended up being carried away by something or other, and once you make a start you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are. It was still a very weary me who crawled into bed at about 02:20.

Not that it did me all that much good because although I did go to sleep at one point it wasn’t for very long and in the end I became fed up of doing nothing whatever and arose from the Dead.

In the bathroom I scrubbed up and washed my clothes, and then went into the kitchen to take my medication. Next task was to finish off the unpacking of the food from yesterday and organise the collection of glass jars so that there was room to add some more

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m trying to do away with plastic in here. Over the last few months I’ve been buying my olives in these big glass jars and I now have quite a collection. My range of glass-bottled loose product is expanding quite rapidly because of the extra stuff that I have bought over the last few months as my recipe ideas have expanded and as I try to move everything out of plastic and paper bags into glass jars.

Before I came back in here I tidied away all of the shopping bags so that they weren’t all over the floor. But in any case it doesn’t work. My place is now just as untidy as it was yesterday before my cleaner came.

Once back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone to transcribe I made a start on unzipping data but was halted in my tracks by the nurse who came to sort me out. He asked me the same questions as usual and so he had the same responses as usual, not that I’m too bothered.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK. We reached page 123 today and that marks the end of the introductory preamble as he sets the scene for what is to come.

He’s convinced that these strange stories that Julius Caesar reported about the British people being cannibals, holding wives in common and other "odious practices" as he puts it were not actually the practices of the Celts who Caesar met but those of the people who were here and were displaced by the Celts when they arrived.

Furthermore he thinks that he can prove it too and I shall be interested to see how he manages to do it, bearing in mind that if there are no written records of the Celts there are likely to be even less for the people who were here before.

In here I carried on with the extraction of files until my cleaner arrived to fit my anaesthetic patches. She had only just finished too when the taxi arrived. 12:15, 15 minutes early. Not that i’m bothered though because the sooner we start the sooner we finish (in principle).

It was the young chatty driver who came for me today but he didn’t have much to say for himself which is a shame because the time passes more quickly when you are having an interesting discussion.

First in at the dialysis centre I was, and first to be coupled up. Julie the Cook had left a message for her colleagues and they applied the ice pack too before they plugged me in and although it did hurt, it didn’t hurt as much as it has done in the past.

There was football this afternoon, TNS v Hwlffordd. Hwlffordd are pushing Penybont for second place following Penybont’s dramatic collapse of form but TNS demolished them with some ease and the 5-1 scoreline was not flattering TNS at all.

Hwlffordd played some pretty football at times but it was all to no real purpose and they didn’t look threatening at all. For all the distance between Aberystwyth and Hwlffordd in the table and in the style of play, Aberystwyth’s showed much more dogged resistance last week that Hwlffordd did today.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today and she said “hello” to me, but that was about the extent of her interaction today. No-one else spoke to me until it was time to be unplugged.

The driver who brought me home was the young girl who brought me home several weeks ago. We were talking about food and I found, to my surprise and to hers too, that we are both vegan. She immediately asked if she could come round for a meal and who am I to refuse such a request?

Mind you, I’ll believe it when I actually see it.

My cleaner watched as I ascended the stairs and once I’d sat down and recovered my strength I had my disgusting protein drink.

Tea tonight was one of those weird chili burgers on a bap with salad and baked potato followed by date bread and soya dessert. It was the first time for a fortnight that I’ve actually felt like eating a proper meal.

So there’s some dictating to do and then I’m off to bed ready for tomorrow. I have a busy day of baking and there’s some fruit that needs transforming into juice and purée.

But while we’re on the subject of glass bottles … "well, one of us is" – ed … I used to collect them if they were any good and reuse them for other things. One day I found a really nice one.
It was rather dirty so I went to rub it clean and suddenly a genie appeared out of the neck.
"You have released me from the bottle and now I am yours to command" he said. "Give me 100 gold pieces and I will answer any two questions"
"Blimey!" I said. "That’s a lot of money for two questions, don’t you think?"
"Yes" replied the genie. "Now what’s your second question?"

0

Friday 7th March 2025 – DOES ANYONE WANT …

… some cabbage?

This week LeClerc has had its vegetables on special offer and as I have plenty of broccoli already, I thought that I’d go with the cabbage and cauliflower at €0:99 per head.

The difficulty with not going to the shops yourself is that you can’t see what it is that you are buying, and I had I seen beforehand, I might have changed my mind somewhat. Freezing is not possible because already I’m rather short of room in there, so it looks as if I shall be eating cabbage for the rest of my life. I have never in my life seen a cabbage as big as the one that rolled in through my front door this afternoon.

That was really the highlight of the day. Today should have been a Woodstock day today but as I said yesterday, I had other fish to fry, like dealing with the recalcitrant computer.

It was well after 02:00 when I finally crawled into bed this morning, feeling very much the worse for wear, but at least I had a working computer with all of the internal drives connected and the basic suite of programs installed so that I can carry on working in the morning. And, as expected, I didn’t need much rocking at all.

In fact, I slept right the way through until the alarm went off and don’t recall awakening at all, but then again I suppose that five hours sleep isn’t all that much to write home about. And it was certainly another perspiration-laden night as I discovered when the alarm went off.

Into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here, now that the computer is up and running with the new system disk installed, I began the on-line hunt for all of the little files and utilities on which I rely. I have most of them stored in one of the back-up disks but an opportunity like this to see whether there have been any upgrades in the meantime is too good to resist

To my regret one of the most important ones seems to have been withdrawn. All that I have in the back-up are the extractor files, not the program itself so I’m rather stuck. Searching on the internet with the writer’s name just comes up with links to some other people’s efforts which are nothing like as good.

The nurse’s arrival interrupted my flow somewhat. he didn’t have too much to say for himself but he did ask me in view of my computer problems "I have a friend who is an informatician who can help you. Would you like me to contact him for you?"
"Thank you" I replied "but I can manage quite fine, thank you" and I can too. And in any case, if his friend is anything like his taxi driver friend, I’m keeping well clear.

He asked me how come I can sort myself out and so I told him.
"You should have opened your own business!" he said. "You could have been rich!"
However, he has in the past berated me for doing my washing in the morning instead of awakening in the middle of the night and doing it then to save 50 centimes on the electricity bill (and awakening all the neighbours). I know that I’m careful with my money but even I can recognise the difference between “being careful” and “having an unhealthy obsession”.

After he left, it was breakfast and MY NEW BOOK time.

Today we have been identifying the violence in the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm that "we are entitled to call savage, because they are so far removed from the European culture amidst which the folk-tales have lived, and because these elements belong not to the accidentals of the stories but to the essentials.".

He goes on to say "An occasional savage incident might have been considered a freak of the original narrator, or a borrowing by one of the countless late narrators of these stories brought home from savage countries ; but statistics disprove both of these suppositions. It is not accidental but persistent savagery we meet with in the folk-tale. It is also the savagery to be found amongst modern peoples still in the savage stage of culture"

And then "The modern savage is better off in this respect. He has an outside historian in the traveller and the anthropologist of modern days. The savage who was ancestor to our own people had no such means of becoming known to history, or had but very limited means, and it is only in the deathless tradition that we can trace him out ….. History is indebted to tradition for preserving some of the most remote facts of racial or national life, which but for tradition would have been lost"

What I have to admit is that when I saw a reference to this work when I was reading something else, I hesitated to download the book because I wasn’t sure that it would be interesting. But rather like the Ancient Egyptian Astronomy book that we read, this is turning out to be absolutely fascinating and I’m keen to find out where we’ll go next.

Back in here afterwards I began to write the notes for yesterday and they are on-line now if you missed them

The LeClerc order was next. That needed to be reviewed and sent off For a change they had almost everything. Only the garlic that I like was missing but they had a substitute and that will keep me going until the next time that I order.

Having done all of that, all that I had to do was to upload the data that I need. Some of it is of course available because I’m still using the old data disk but some of it isn’t and I had to trawl through the back-up drives to find what I need. But there is still some stuff that I can’t find and I’ve no idea where it might be.

My hunt for data ended up with me having a closer look at the failed hard drive and after a lot of manipulation I’ve managed to make it fire up which is a surprise. So all is not lost quite yet. I’ve left it running all day and it seems to be fairly stable to date But the hunt for data and sorting it out instead of leaving it in a mess will go on for several days, I should imagine.

There were the usual breaks of course. No lunch because I still haven’t recovered my appetite as yet and I’m not going to force it. Then we had the cleaner coming round to do her stuff. After that we had the disgusting drink break and finally, the LeClerc order arrived. I’d asked or it “any time after 17:00” and at 17:01 it was coming up the stairs.

There wasn’t very much in the order today but there’s nevertheless not much place to put things. I’m not going through the food as quickly as I used to now that the appetite has diminished.

The cabbage and cauliflower took an age to cut up and now they are blanched and draining on the draining board. I’ll have to find a way to fit it all in the freezer before I go to bed.

Believe it or not, I’d forgotten to transcribe the dictaphone notes. I’d been out with a group of friends from school. We’d been through the city centre of Antwerp. There ended up being a bunch of about seven or eight of us. They asked me if I could take their photograph. I didn’t have a camera so they gave me someone’s telephone. They set out to walk around a corner and I had to capture them coming round it. They had to do it seven or eight times before I finally took the photo. First of all I couldn’t make the camera work, then I had someone in the way, and then there was something else that happened. I had to do it ever so many times before I’d even taken one.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that camera issues used to be another theme that ran regularly around my nocturnal perambulations. It’s a surprise that it’s suddenly reared its ugly head yet again after all this time.

Later on I was talking to a girl. We were discussing some ballerinas. One ballerina was an older girl who was talking about her biography and talking about the University that she went to in the Netherlands at Leiden. This carried on and I could see one of my friends being more and more disgusted with this conversation. I asked “what’s the matter with this?”. She replied “my father works as a lecturer at Leiden and he could tell you that she’s never set one foot there in her life. They were then talking about a much younger girl who had been very very talented but had given it up to go to work in the coffee bar of the local police force in London and what a waste of talent it was. Then they announced that she had actually given up the coffee bar and had gone back to be a ballerina.

Several friends of mine have daughters who are ballerinas, and not just the average Saturday afternoon ballerina either. One of them is currently at sixth form in the National Ballet or somewhere and the other one, a few years younger, danced for the UK at the European Championships in Prague a few months ago.

Tea tonight was more vegan nuggets (seeing as they were on special offer) with chips and salad. I have to do my best to keep the food going.

But I’l worry about that tomorrow. Tonight I’m off to bed.

But as we have been talking about computer problems … "well, one of us has" – ed … I am reminded of an old Andy Capp cartoon from many years ago. Andy Capp and Chalky White were watching some guys struggle to try to fit a 1950s computer through the door of a building.
They stood there watching for about fifteen minutes as the men tried first one way and then another and then another.
In the end Andy Capp went over to them and said "why not plug it in and let it work it out for itself?"

0

Thursday 6th March 2025 (cont) – NOW THAT THINGS … .

… are back to normal (well, as normal as things ever could be around here) I can carry on and do what I ought to have been doing, and update everything.

And had I known how things were going to have worked out, still being on my feet (well, OK, on my chair) at 02:00 I would have had an early night instead of being up to all hours watching Stranraer, after several weeks of impressive football, go back to their old, miserable ways and be easily beaten by the bottom club in the league who spent most of the night playing with just ten men.

That was as embarrassing as the defeat aginst Clyde a couple of weeks ago and was really depressing after the last three or four performances.

So anyway I went to bed eventually and had another perspiration-laden night where I was only really half-asleep for most of it.

When the alarm did go off I hauled myself to my feet and headed off to the bathroom for a scrub and even a shave. After all, you never know if Emilie the Cute Consultant is going to be there today.

No medication right now because you also never know if the nurse might actually want to come along and do this blood test this morning and it has to be done à jeun so I listened to the dictaphone instead to find out what had gone on during the night. There I was, lying here asleep and a girl was trying to load some ink or something into my mobile ‘phone so that it could print a document. I tried to pur some fat into it but the fat was in a chip basket thing. Of course, every time you tilted it to pour it the liquid would seep out through the holes so I wasn’t having any success with my cooking last night.

Can you imagine trying to lift molten fat out of a chip pan with the chip basket? I’ve no idea what goes on inside my head at night, but there again, I don’t have all that much more idea about what goes on inside my head when I’m awake.

Later on I was out in North Wales looking for an address. I ended up somewhere beyond Conwy in an area that I didn’t know very well but I couldn’t find it. I ended up on an extremely steep hairpin bend. Trying to walk or cycle up there was extremely complicated. When I reached the top there was a waterfall. The waterfall was where some kind of primitive dam had been that had been broken and the water was cascading over it down into the valley where it joined the main river. There was a main road off there to the right and there was a lot of traffic coming that way so it was complicated to cross the road. I did cross the road but still couldn’t find this address. In the end I saw a map with the shape of where it was and I identified that I should have been four miles beyond Abergele so I had to retrace my steps and try to return across the road on a pushbike was even more complicated with all of the traffic that was coming straight on down the main road. Once or twice someone paused and that was the signal for someone to nip over but I had to wait for a while and found myself in the end with about a dozen vehicles on the central reservation waiting for a gap in the downhill traffic again. Once we set off there were all these vehicles passing so closely and I was then freewheeling down the hill listening to the news about a bicycle race. There were two people in the middle of the road, a man and a woman with bikes and they didn’t seem to be paying any attention to me as I came hurtling down and I missed the woman by a matter of millimetres.

As it happens, I recognise this road too. It’s out of Llangollen heading down into mid-Wales and I was there 20-odd years ago with Nicole when we came to pick up the old LDV. The dam is very much how I would have imagined one of the “Dambusters” dams to have been after it had been blown up. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we WENT FOR A LOOK AROUND the dams few years ago on our way to Colditz and STRAWBERRY MOOSE‘s famous escape attempt.

Incidentally, four miles beyong Abergele up a steep mountainside is one of the Iron Age hillforts to which Arthur Allcroft took us a couple of weeks ago, but there was nothing about any hillforts anywhere last night.

When the nurse did finally turn up he did actually take the blood sample and I knew all about it because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … he just doesn’t have “the touch”.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK. We’re discussing exciting subjects today, such as men marrying their daughters and the young killing off the old folks once they stop being productive and become useless mouths to feed.

He’s actually done some research into this and has found plenty of examples back in history and in more remote parts of the World where those customs were still current when he was researching his book. All I can say is that for someone whose day job was a clerk in London County Council, he had some strange pastimes and hobbies.

However, he has proved a point over which I have been puzzling. If people back in ancient history were so concerned about having useless mouths hanging around eating the produce, the produce must have been so scarce that not even family ties could hold the people together and stop them killing each other. So I remain totally unconvinced by the modern way of thinking that these hillforts were nothing but symbolic. The huge amount of effort that went into the construction of these immense defensive works and the amount of time they had to spend away from the fields or from the hunt, they really must have been scared almost to death by what might have happened had they not spent all that time and effort in their construction.

Back in here later I had a few things to organise and sort out but was interrupted by the telephone. "Is it OK if I come a little earlier, like 12:00?". It was my taxi driver.

What has happened was that last week these new Social Security regulations came into legally-binding force and so this is how it’s going to be from now on – taxis turning up at any time they like if they are obliged to combine trips. Not that I’m complaining because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …, it’s a free service and in any case the sooner we arrive, the sooner I can leave and so I sent a message to my cleaner to inform her.

Poor thing, she had to scramble here to fit my anaesthetic patches and was still here when the taxi arrived – at 11:47. The Sécu has instructed that a timespan of 45-minute either side of the booked time is acceptable under these new regulations and by my reckoning the car was actually 43 minutes early. That’s cutting it fine.

We had to pick up someone else on the way of course, someone who had a hospital appointment for an operation. "As we’re so early we may as well drop madame off at the hospital first."
"She’s going to hospital in Rennes"

When I arrived at the dialysis centre I was so early that they hadn’t even finished dealing with the morning’s patients but Julie the Cook saw me and she quickly finished off setting up my machine (patients have their own individual settings) and I was installed and up and running by 13:15.

She tried a new trick this afternoon. While she was setting up the machine she slapped an ice bag on my arm. And that actually might have helped a little – at least until the effect wore off.

Apart from the coffee, no-one bothered me at all until it was time to unplug me. Julie the Cook had gone home a long time before and one of the others came to sort me out. For some reason I was rather unsteady on my feet at first. It can’t have been low blood pressure because that was OK.

So it was 17:30 when I staggered out of the centre and the taxi was already waiting for me. We had someone else with us to drop off along the way but even so I was back at home by 18:15, much to the surprise of my cleaner

That was when I discovered the catastrophe in here, with the big desktop computer spinning around in BIOS mode complaining “I can’t find any disk with an operating system on it”.

Luckily I had a spare 1TB SSD that I’d dismantled from another machine so I formatted that in a disk caddy with the help of the travelling laptop and set about dismantling the big computer. It’s always good to perform a clean installation every couple of years because you’ll be surprised (or maybe you con’t) at the amount of rubbish that accumulates over the passage of time.

While I was doing that, I actually found what I suspect is the fault. There’s an internal power lead with three connectors for disk drives. The one that was connected to the SSD system drive has a crack in it and what seems to have happened is that the crack has allowed the internals to flex and they have shorted out.

No problem. I just disconnected the internal back-up drive and plugged the new SSD System drive into that connector. I’ll have to order a new power lead from somewhere in due course to connect everything back up on a more permanent basis.

While it was sorting itself out I made a quick tea – just like THE CARMICHAELS and "supper waits on the table inside a tin".

Back in here afterwards, I settled down and steeled myself ready for what is going to be a very long night

But while we’re on the subject of Colditz Castle … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’m reminded of that legendary “Two Ronnies” sketch from years ago.
"We’re making a film about prisoners escaping from a camp in Germany"
"What’s it called?"
"The Colditz Story"
"What are you making next?"
"A film about life in a South Wales mining village"
"What’s it called?"
"The Coal Tips Story"
"And after that?"
"We’re doing a film starring Raquel Welch who will be playing the role of an Inuit"
"What’s that called?"
"We haven’t decided yet"

0

Wednesday 5th March 2025 – MY CLEANER IS …

… a heroine – an absolute marvel, and I’m really pleased and grateful that she’s here.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that now that I’m properly settled here on the coast with no prospect of returning home to the farm, I’ve been changing a few things around.

One of the things that I’ve been doing is slowly disposing of all of the plastic that I have and replacing it with glass as much as possible. My plastic chopping boards are looking very much the worse for wear and I have been planning to let them go the Way of the West whenever the next opportunity presents itself.

A couple of weeks ago, LeClerc sent me a preview of the next instore sale that started on Tuesday. They had some lovely tempered glass chopping boards – huge ones too – at just €2:85 each and had I been able to do so, I would have been queueing at the door on Tuesday morning.

When she was here last week I mentioned it to her in passing and talking about how I would have liked to replace my two plastic boards (I have one for smelly foods and one for other stuff).

So today when she came in to sort me out, she produced two tempered glass chopping boards, one black and one white.

It’s quite strange really that it’s the slightest thing that makes such an impression and makes such a difference. I couldn’t believe that I’ve been so impressed by this – even more impressed than I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

Not so impressed though with last night. A late night again and then pretty much more of the same old same old …, difficult to sleep, waking up drenched in perspiration again. The difficulty in sleeping I can cope with, but it’s everything else. However, at least, despite what I said yesterday, if I had another perspiration-laden night when it wasn’t a Dialysis Day, it can hardly be the dialysis that’s causing it.

Nevertheless I was asleep this morning when the alarm went off, doing something with someone else, talking about food, saying that the food, which should be a natural substance and not a processed kind of meal or processed kind of product. Then we were watching something on the television, a quiz game where people produced some kind of extraordinary object and the second team had to try to decide exactly what the purpose of that object was. They had invented some kind of quiz game out of this.

Something else that I can do in my sleep that I can’t, or never had the opportunity to do during my waking hours. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … if only I had found someone capable of making some use of all of these marvellous ideas that I only ever seem to have when I’m asleep. I’d be typing this from the deck of my yacht in the Bahamas with floozies peeling grapes and tossing them into my mouth.

It was another struggle to extricate myself from my bed before the second alarm and to struggle into the bathroom. Back in here straight away afterwards because I can’t ingest anything until after the blood test.

Instead, I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. Apparently at one point I’d just been for a walk through part of Crewe. I went down Mill Street and up Brook Street and up and over the railway bridge in Edleston Road. In fact was walking over the bridge in Edleston Road when I awoke. I don’t know what I was doing and there was no-one else with me. I was just strolling around.

That’s a disappointing evening, walking around Crewe like that during my sleep. I’m old enough to remember when the east side of Mill Street was a maze of cheap, crumbling terraced houses until in the early 60s the whole lot was swept away practically overnight. And as is typical for Crewe, it remained a derelict bombsite for thirty years afterwards until some kind of new development began. I can see the demolished town centre being like that for the next ever so many years.

Later on I was talking to some American woman about some people who had left the USA to go to live over the border in Mexico. I was explaining to her that to actually come to live in the USA and work was quite a straightforward matter but complicated as long as you had the right kind of education, background and qualifications but once you were in the USA changing jobs is extremely complicated and difficult. For many people it’s no longer an option to do so and they begin to look around for other ways of earning their income. At first she didn’t believe what I was saying and pooh-poohed it but gradually she began to understand the point that I was trying to make. She ended up by agreeing with everything that I was saying.

That’s a rare achievement, isn’t it? Having people agree with me like that. But conditions for employment in the USA are quite strict. Even though my niece’s second daughter is married to an American and lives in Michigan, she couldn’t even think about changing her job and leaving her Canadian employer until she’d applied for and been granted a work permit to do so. It took her fifteen months to obtain it.

The nurse came round and told me that he’ll take the blood sample tomorrow. So I’d gone without my morning drink for nothing. There’s no point remonstrating with him about it because it will only give me ulcers. I know what I would like to give him.

Breakfast and medication was next while I read MY NEW BOOK. Today, we’ve been talking about the myths of buried treasure, the myths of open-air meetings and also the ancient Graeco-Egyptian LEGEND OF RHODOPIA. Have a read of that legend and see if you recognise anything in it from your own childhood.

There is going to be a considerable amount of mileage in this book, I can see that. It’s going to destroy a great many of my childhood illusions.

Buried treasure, usually guarded by a mythical monster, is another story with a lot of mileage in it. It was usually buried in time of war and disturbance and his answer to the mythical monster is the threat that the person who buried it made to whoever was watching him bury it. People believed in mythical monsters in those days.

That’s not so far-fetched either. Nerina and I were driving around Brittany once many years ago and came across a garage proprietor who had discovered several ancient French cars from someone’s collection walled up behind a false wall to hide them from the Germans. The person who had walled them didn’t live to reclaim them and there they stayed until the garage proprietor found them.

“Buried treasure” is regularly turning up, buried in haste in the path of invading armies centuries ago, and presumably the owner didn’t live to dig it back up again.

After breakfast I made a start on the next radio programme. I’ve decided after much thought that I’m still going to keep on well in advance with one programme per week to keep up the rhythm, and use the spare time in the week to work on the Woodstock set. That way, I shan’t become bogged down.

Anyway, by the time I knocked off tonight, I’d done everything for the programme except dictating it and choosing the final track. That’s going to be another Saturday night/Sunday effort.

There were the usual interruptions – not a lunchtime one though because my appetite is still very much diminished. There was the visit of my cleaner, the shower and the disgusting drink break, as well as probably one or two other things that I can’t remember right now.

Tea was a leftover curry, except that there aren’t any leftovers. Instead I found a helping of pie filling in the freezer and used that instead. Not one of my more memorable meals, but you can’t win a coconut every time. The naan was delicious though. This batch of dough (of which this naan was the final helping) was an exceptionally good batch.

Tomorrow is Dialysis Day but I’m past caring about it and how it’s going to turn out. I’ll just wander off to bed (late as usual these days) and tomorrow will be another day.

But while we’re on the subject of treasure … "well, one of us is" – ed … one of my friends once told me "my wife is a little treasure"
"Is that so?" I asked
"It certainly is" he replied "and furthermore, I’m not going to tell anyone where I’ve buried her"

0