Category Archives: cleaner

Wednesday 28th May 2025 – GUESS WHO …

… has been a busy boy today?

It’s been a long time since I’ve had quite such a burst of energy, and I wish that I would have similar bursts much more often. I would be able to accomplish so much more.

It didn’t look as if it was going to be like that last night. As seems to be the case just recently, from a position where I was on course to have an early finish, I managed once more to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and ended up going to bed rather later than I anticipated.

Once in bed, I managed to go off to sleep quite quickly yet again and managed to sleep all the way through until … errr … 05:50 this morning. And with no prospect of going back to sleep afterwards, I was up and about, washed and cleaned up, and in the kitchen taking my medication when the alarm went off at 07:00.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were going somewhere on a trip. There was a coach and I noticed on the dashboard that there was a “Bedford” emblem so I asked the driver if it was a Bedford. He said “yes” so I asked about the engine that was in it. He replied that it was the O-600. I thought that that was an interesting combination. I pulled out a workshop manual and began to read a little about it. I was with a friend of mine, a young lady who may well have been Moonchild. I was trying to interest her in something but I noticed that she was asleep. One of the guys there said “why don’t you awaken her?”. I replied “I wouldn’t be very popular if I did but it’s nice to think that she can sleep and feel so comfortable like this so we may as well leave her to it”.

So hello again, Moonchild. It’s nice to know that at least one of my favourite young ladies hasn’t deserted me completely as the other three seem to have done. And it’s hardly surprising that I’d be interested in the bus having an O-600 engine. While a few Bedfords had the smaller O-400 engine, they were lightweight coaches usually with a Bedford lightweight lorry engine, rather than a big heavyweight Leyland O-600. We had a few Leyland coaches at Shearings and quite often when I was running up to Scotland I’d “rev out” at 70 mph in 5th gear, never mind sixth. When I worked for Salopia back in 1979 it was embarrassing struggling up Frankley Bank on the M5 in a modern Ford R1114 lightweight coach when an ancient Yelloway AEC Reliance O-600 would roar past me as if I were standing still.

But going back to Moonchild and being asleep, there’s a story behind that too but it’s another one that the World is not yet ready to here.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual, sorted out my legs and so on, and then breezed out again. She didn’t hang around long. I could then press on and make breakfast and sit down to read some more of MY BOOK.

Today, we’ve left Rochester Castle and its rude doorways and bold architraves, and have now arrived at Rockingham Castle. Our discussion on Medieval Military Architecture has turned to the interesting and very relevant subject of the trees and deer in the Royal Forest there, and the expropriation of the King’s land by various local people, including some people of a religious persuasion who clearly consider themselves exempt from the provisions of the Ten Commandments.

Back in here, I had a few tasks to finish off, and then I decided to have a look at the next radio programme, 260612. And by the time that I’d finished this afternoon, not only had I planned the programme, I’d chosen the music, remixed, edited, paired and segued it and written all of the notes.

As well as that, I’d edited the notes that I’d dictated the other morning for the two extra tracks for the two programmes that I’d prepared on Sunday and even assembled one of them too. I would have finished the other one too, except that Bane of Britain seems to have misread his timing run and chosen a track 2:32 long instead of 3:23 long.

So that’s now gone back onto the drawing board. I’ve chosen a new track, written the notes for it and I’ll dictate them at the next opportunity.

All of that was despite two disgusting drinks breaks and the appearance of my cleaner who came in to do her stuff this afternoon.

After she left I sorted out some naan dough from the freezer and left it to defrost ready for tea.

Tonight’s leftover curry was the best that I have ever made. I’m not sure what I did and I wish that I could remember because it really was excellent, just like a shop-bought one.

So that’s enough for tonight. I’m off to bed ready for tomorrow morning to attack my Woodstock programme and then prepare for dialysis, to which I am not looking forward at all.

But while we are continuing our discussions about medieval castles … "well, one of us is" – ed … the mystery of the rude doorway at Rochester is resolved.
When one of my friends came online earlier today I mentioned it to her.
"I know what’s the matter there" she said
"And what’s that?" I asked, bitterly regretting it ten seconds later
"Seeing as it’s a medieval castle" she said "it’s probably suffering from Turrets Syndrome"

Tuesday 27th May 2025 – MY CLEANER IS …

… a heroine.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’ve been moaning … "surely not!" – ed … about the yeast available for bread-making – how I can no longer find any of the neutral yeast that I like and how all that seems to be available is the smelly stuff.

So there she was in Leclerc this morning browsing around, like you do … "like SOME people do" – ed … and she suddenly came across some packs of six of the small sachets of neutral yeast, put on the shelves totally out of order, miles away from where they were supposed to be.

There were six of the packs altogether, and it goes without saying that there are now none left on the shelves. So what with the coconut oil that she found for me and liberated, and the tahini that she found ditto, she is certainly keeping me going with all kinds of stuff, and that’s something that’s extremely useful. She’s a handy person to have around.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, last night I tried my best to go to bed early but somehow, once again, despite being in a comfortable position at one time, I managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and it was another night rather later than I liked before I finally crawled into bed.

Despite the pain in my foot, I was asleep quite rapidly, which was no surprise considering how tired I was, and I didn’t move at all until … errr … 05:50 when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings.

There was no possibility of going back to sleep after that and so I seized the opportunity and, in the peace and quiet of the moment, dictated the notes for the two additional tracks for the two programmes for which I had edited the rest of the notes on Sunday. I may as well take advantage of some of these early starts if I can.

When the alarm went off, I was already sitting in the dining area taking my medicine, following which I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Nerina and I had been apart for a while now. When I met her, she was with someone else. She hadn’t known him long but they were planning to marry. She asked me if I would like to come to the wedding. I thought “why not?” but then I had to find someone else to come with me, and I didn’t think that that was going to be particularly easy. I could think of maybe one or two people who would but I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about inviting anyone

And that’s half the problem these days. I’m not really enthusiastic about anything any more. My idea of a good night is a comfy chair, a good film on the computer and a mug of really hot chocolate. And these days, I can manage the chair but I no longer have the time to watch a film and instead of the hot chocolate that I used to enjoy so much, I now have a disgusting drink break.

Then I had to go outside to fuel up the van. The fuel was in jerry-cans so I began to pour them out. One of them didn’t seem to be open. It seemed to be sealed so I thought “how did I manage to fuel this up?”. I cut a hole in the top and smelled it. It didn’t smell like anything particular so I poured it into the van anyway and it started, so I set out on a drive. I had someone with me but I can’t remember who it was. I was in the North of England and I was going down this narrow, narrow track between all these rocks. Then I came to where there was a dam that was being restored. That was what I had come to see. I stopped the van and took the camera to take a few photos, but the wind was getting up. The water was behind some kind of small retaining wall to my left. Every now and again a gust of wind would bring some water over the top. As I was standing there, the water was coming over the top of this retaining wall quicker and quicker. It was being very difficult to stand there and take photographs because I was being soaked in this water. The dam was a kind-of stepladder arrangement made of old stone and was being covered in earth presumably to reinforce it but the water behind this retaining wall was only – I dunno – twelve feet high and I thought that this doesn’t look right at all

Even now, I can still see the dam. It’s made of large sandstone blocks in the form of a series of steps, and there is a covering of red powdered sandstone being laid over the slope. For some reason though that is not obvious, the drive to the dam and its surroundings reminded me of when STRAWBERRY MOOSE, Strider and I went for a wander around THE OLD IRON MINE IN THE ABANDONED TOWN OF GAGNON in the peri-Arctic tundra of Upper Québec.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and didn’t stay for long, just long enough to change my dressing on my leg, deal with the usual treatment and fit the compression socks. She’s told me that she’ll try to be here by about 07:00 next Tuesday when I have to go to Paris.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’re still exploring the (civilian) architecture of Rochester Castle, but we have yet to find any more rude doorways, although there are bold mouldings and architraves a-plenty. It must have been an exciting place in the Thirteenth Century.

Back in here I made a start on the Welsh homework that I had missed while I was in hospital and I’d managed to do most of it by the time that I knocked off for a disgusting drink break.

My cleaner breezed in shortly afterwards with my soya yoghurt and with six packs of neutral baking yeast. Now I’m set up for the next couple of months, which is good news. I’m not a big fan of this other yeast that I’ve been having to use.

This afternoon I’ve attacked my Woodstock programme. There are just two groups for whom I need to write notes, and then there’s the summary so it’s not going to take too long.

However, that’s the easy bit. The difficult bit is going to be to decide what to leave in and what to cut out. That will be a decision and a half, and no mistake. And whatever I include or leave out, it will always be the wrong choice. You can’t satisfy everyone all of the time.

There were a couple of ‘phone calls. Firstly, the hospital in Paris rang to see how I was doing. Secondly, a plumber called. He was interested in my project but his idea of a rapid start is in November, which is not much use to me.

Tea tonight was a taco roll followed by my ginger cake. And the cake is wonderful, really spicy just as it ought to be. But I shall be intrigued to see how all of this turns out when I have a real, decent oven to use. I can’t wait for that.

So I’m off to bed at last, tired and weary, and hoping for a better sleep that will last through until the alarm goes off

But seeing as we have been talking about castles … "well, one of us has" – ed … 20-odd years ago I took Roxanne with me to visit an old castle in Belgium
As we climbed the stairs, I said to her "just think. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago there would have been Kings and Queens and Lords and ladies climbing up these very stairs just like we are doing right now."
"Of course there would have been" she replied, shaking her head in bewilderment.
"Aren’t you surprised?" I asked her
"Of course not" she replied. "There would have to have been. They didn’t have lifts in those days."

Monday 26th May 2025 – YET MORE CHAOS …

… at the dialysis centre today.

Well, not exactly. Whatever they did there seemed to be okay, but it was almost everything else that was associated with it that all seemed to go pear-shaped. The fates really do seem to be conspiring against me right now.

And not only that, but the stabbing pain in my foot that died down earlier this morning is now back, and with a vengeance too and it’s really stressing me out that I can’t seem this time to shake it off.

It seemed to begin to quieten down late last night which was just as well because I managed to find my way into bed at something like a reasonable time. Not before 23:00, it has to be said, but not all that far off. I was asleep quite quickly too and I remember nothing at all about the night until all of … errr … 05:40.

Even worse, I couldn’t go back to sleep at all and when the electric water heater switched off I was already in the bathroom having a wash, a shave and a wash of the undies.

After the medication I came back in here for a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was down in the town during the night, having a wander around in the evening. It was a cool, dry night and there was a guy down there busking, playing the guitar and he had a friend with him. The guitarist was quite simple but quite good. I had the idea that maybe why didn’t I bring my guitar and I could do one morning on one street corner and another morning on another street corner and move around as much as I possibly could to play at different places. I walked down past where the new War Memorial is and came eventually to a restaurant. This was a well-known restaurant for being very close to its hours and not serving very close to closing time. I looked in and it wasn’t as crowded as it might have been so I walked through and walked out of the back door onto the car park. But the back door didn’t lead onto the car park. It led into another type of café that was facing the sea. It was pitch-black in there but there were still people. I heard the voice of the woman who owned it asking “did someone call me?”. Another voice from the far corner replied “yes, we were trying to order a pizza”. The woman answered “yes, but give me five minutes and I’ll organise it for you”. I thought that that was quite strange because normally, if you went in there shortly before closing time, they would refuse to serve you. In any case, I didn’t recall this room at the rear at all. I used to walk through there and out of the door at the back and find myself on the car park.

Believe it or not, I know where this restaurant is but I just can’t place it. And the back door does lead out into a little square or car park where there’s a quayside across the way. But there’s a story about a restaurant where Nerina and I went once (only once) where they refused to serve even though we were there ten minutes before “last meals”. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I had similar problems once IN NORTH CAROLINA.

Another thing that I did was to fill in the forms from that electrician and pack it in an envelope with a cheque on part-account for my cleaner to post. I may as well sign him up and set him to work so that at least something will be done fairly soon.

Isabelle the Nurse was in chat mode today but she didn’t stay long all the same. And I still didn’t manage to see her photos of Copenhagen.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We didn’t stay long at Richard’s Castle and we’ve now moved on to Rochester. There would usually be a lot to say about Rochester Castle, but it remains to be seen if our author is going to say very much about it.

So far, he’s admiring the civilian architecture of the place, having noted that "the architrave has a bold chevron moulding." and that "the north loop, which opened into the bridge-pit of the main entrance, has been converted into a rude doorway,". How I would have loved to have seen that and to find out what it was doing.

Back in here I made a start on my Welsh homework and by the time that my cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches I’d done about two-thirds of it. It’s not due for another couple of weeks but I want to push on ahead if I can.

After my cleaner left, I cut up my ginger cake and put it away. And if the crumbs taste anything like as good as the cake does, it will be wonderful.

However, even though I had the cake as low down in the oven as I possibly could, I ended up with a hard crust on the top and the base is slightly undercooked. I can’t wait to have a decent oven and try some proper baking with proper facilities instead of trying to make do with a very unsatisfactory tabletop oven.

The taxi was late again – except that it wasn’t. It should have been here at 12:30 but it turned up at 13:05 with another passenger, well within the 45-minute Social Security guideline for combining passengers.

It was my favourite driver too and so we arrived at 13:28 which is some good going. I didn’t have to wait long to be connected up either.

No-one bothered me this afternoon but with the pan returning to my foot I didn’t feel like working too much. It’s difficult to concentrate at these moments.

After I was unplugged and weighed I found my taxi already waiting, with another passenger on board. He wasn’t going far and when we arrived at his residence, one of the assistants asked "where’s his wheelchair?"

How could it be possible for someone to forget his wheelchair? It beats me, especially as we had to go all the way back for it and drop it off on our way past again. Therefore it was once more late when I returned home, in agony with my foot and totally exhausted.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper with the last of the chocolate cake, so ginger cake tomorrow for tea if I feel like it which, right now is debatable. I’m going to try to go to bed but this pain in my foot is driving me berserk.

And seeing as we are talking about pains driving us berserk … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of that famous incident when Brian Close, fielding in close to the wicket was hit by a vicious drive from an Australian batsman
The other players dashed around him. "Does it hurt, Brian?" asked one of them
"Of course it hurts" he replied. "It always hurts when you tell a bowler to ‘pitch it up’ and he totally ignores you."

Saturday 24th May 2025 – I AM ABSOLUTELY …

… and totally whacked right now and I shan’t be up for very long. It’s been another difficult day at dialysis.

It was a difficult night last night too. Despite all of my best efforts, it was after midnight when I finally made my way into bed, having let it all hang out for far too long. And whether I went straight to sleep or not afterwards, I really can’t remember.

One thing is certain though, and that is that I awoke at about 06:05 this morning. And interestingly, my cleaner said that something awoke her round about that time too so I’m wondering if there really is a disturbance in this building at that time of morning.

And for a change, I went back to sleep again straight away. That’s not something that happens very often.

It was round about 06:45 when I awoke next, and when the alarm went off I was in the bathroom having a good wash and scrub up. And a shave too, after all, you never know if I’m going to meet Emilie the Cute Consultant.

With a pile of bedding and other clothes that needed a wash, I filled the washing machine, once more running out of space and with clothes left over, and set the machine off on its way while I went to take my medicine.

Back in here afterwards I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Did I dictate that dream about handing out receipts to people who were using taxis? … "No you didn’t" – ed … How it became compulsory? It was bound to cause a few complications because there were some of these jobs that were account work so what do you do now? The story moved on and I was in South London again. There were all these buses going past which had as their route numbers things like “A-B-C-D” and “E-F-G-H”. I began to wonder how they could actually run these buses on four different routes simultaneously. It turned out that when i enquired they just had these buses running the common parts of the route and we had feeder minibuses I suppose that would run the individual pieces which were like on housing estates etc.

This compulsory issue of receipts reminds me of a situation in Belgium that existed – and maybe it still does today, I don’t know – of restaurants being compelled to give receipts and tax certificates to diners as they leave.

The idea of feeder buses onto a major route is not new. It was one of the idea that I had for the trams of Greater Manchester, where the trams would feed up and down a main-line system and minibuses would be used for driving around the housing estates feeding passengers into the tram stops. However, in the UK at that time there was a chaotic free-for-all in public transport so there would have been little point.

Isabelle the Nurse was in a good mood today and chatted for a few minutes. She’s promised that tomorrow she’ll show me her photos of Copenhagen and I can’t wait (I don’t think)! It’s years since I’ve been to Copenhagen – with a coach in 1981 if I remember correctly.

After she left I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’ve left Pontefract Castle and we’re now having a very interesting chat about the work that was done on building Portchester Castle by those well-known Medieval English builders, the … errr … Romans.

After breakfast I came back in here and began my laborious process of unpicking my printer’s installation files, deleting them one by one until I come across the one that is corrupted. As if I don’t already have enough to do.

My cleaner turned up bang on time right in the middle of everything and she sorted out my anaesthetic patches. The bruise has diminished and the swelling has gone down but it still hurts.

The taxi was early today, which was nice, but by the time that we’d picked up the other two passengers it really made no difference.

Coupling up was not quite as painful as Thursday – not quite – and once I was connected no-one really bothered me. However, I wasn’t in much of a mood to do a great deal, what with all of the pain. I spent most of my time mainly vegetating.

Uncoupling was quite painful too but I was glad that it was all over quickly. I can’t do with much more of this. The French are bringing in a law of Euthanasia to bring the country in line with Belgium and I shan’t be sorry. I would give all that I had … "and more besides" – ed … just to have a really good sleep.

The climb up here was pretty awful tonight. I’ve not been feeling well all day and it’s slowly becoming worse. I had a struggle to make tea and now that I’ve finished my notes, I’ll dictate what needs to be dictated and then I’m off to bed.

It was nice, though, that the taxi was early. Usually they are late and sometimes quite late too.
Not so long ago I remember berating a taxi driver about being late. "You should have been here half an hour ago" I said
"Why?" he asked. "What happened?"

Friday 23rd May 2025 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… one of those days when I just couldn’t seem to get going. It was a day of interruption after interruption as I lurched from one important task to another, and I don’t think that any of them are really completed either.

But last night was another one of those nights where, even though I finished work fairly early, couldn’t summon up the energy to go to bed, and just sat in the chair vegetating for a while. It’s really doing me no good at all, this. I know exactly what the problem is, though, and it’s that it takes so much effort to stand up from wherever I might be sitting. To rise to my feet is a major operation involving quite a few logistical issues.

Eventually though I forced myself and headed off into the bathroom to tidy myself up, and then I headed for my comfortable repos underneath the quilt, much later than I anticipated.

Once in bed, it took quite a while yet again to go off to sleep but once I’d gone, then I was gone, and gone for good too, all the way to … errr … 06:10. I remember nothing whatsoever of the night.

When I heard the electric water-heater switch off, I decided that I may as well leave the bed and go to sort myself out in the bathroom. And when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was in the kitchen sorting out the medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. It was in the clinic of the hospital, something like just before dialysis. The nurses had to fit the antiseptic patches for all of the people who were in there, mostly elderly with delicate skin. Very few of them were people with this tough kind of skin that you would expect to be resilient so it became something of a painful session and there were a lot of recriminations being traded around while people were waiting for their chairs to dry and for them to be called into their anaesthetic machines.

And that’s something else that’s getting o my nerves. As if I don’t already spend more than enough time in the hospital as it is? That’s the last place that I would want to be in my spare time when I should be out there on my travels in search of pulchritude.

That reminds me of course – that I’m going for another dialysis session tomorrow with my arm just as painful as it was on Thursday. I am not looking forward to this at all.

Isabelle the nurse came along as usual. Today she changed the plasters on my leg before sorting out my legs and feet and fitting my compression socks. She’s here for ten days, so she tells me, and that’s good news.

After she left I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’re still at Pontefract Castle but I’ve been wandering around the Wars of the Roses in cyberspace for much of the time, following one lead after another, being side-tracked as usual.

After breakfast, the first job was to measure the bathroom, and that involved moving stuff around in the bedroom so that I could make my way into the wardrobe here to find the toolbox.

Having measured the bathroom, I waited around until 10:00 for this bathroom company to ‘phone me. Bang on time, they were there and a very helpful and polite woman told me that their company wouldn’t be able to do the bathroom as I required.

She did however say that she “knew a couple of people” who might help and if I were to forward to her some photos and a brief description of what I needed, she would pass the message on.

So the next task was to take some photos of the bathroom, and that involved moving stuff around, cleaning up and washing the tiles etc Then I had to edit the photos and send them off with a report. Now we have to wait for things to happen.

In the middle of all of that, my cleaner reminded me about my LeClerc order so I had to review that and send it off. And I bet that there is plenty of stuff that I’ve forgotten.

After a disgusting drink break I went to print out the invoice from the electrician to sign it and send it off with a deposit, but the print program crashed. After several hours of trying to repair the program I decided to uninstall it and start again. But with a document stuck in the corrupted print queue, the program won’t uninstall. So that’s another job for tomorrow.

If all else fails, I’ll set up a print program on the travelling laptop and print from there.

There was an interruption in the middle of all of that too when my faithful cleaner arrived to do her stuff. We went through all of the medication and sorted that lot out, and then she changed the bedding for me so that I have nice clean bedding for tonight. A shame that there’s not a nice, clean me to go in it but I can’t shower until this leg is healed.

After she left, LeClerc turned up so I had a pile of shopping to put away and 2 kg of carrots to clean, dice and blanch. While what was going on, I made a bread roll for tea because I fancied a burger in a bap.

As it happened, I used the wrong “burger” and ended up with a batch of frozen soya mince instead, which didn’t taste as nice as I was expecting, to say the least

So at some point today I managed to do a small amount of my Woodstock concert, but nothing like as much as I was hoping. I really need a couple of days when I can sit down and crack on with it, but I’ve no idea when that might be. There’s far too much going on right now and it’s not going to become any easier.

Anyway, before I go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about the lack of progress today … "well, one of us has" – ed … I happened to mention it to a friend with whom I was chatting on the internet a little earlier
"Whatever happened to all of the famous ‘get up and go’ that you used to have?" he asked
"Ohhh that!" I sighed. "That has all got up and gone a long time ago"

Thursday 22nd May 2025 – LAST NIGHT …

… was a somewhat different night from the last God-knows how many. Although I wasn’t feeling particularly tired, I’ve been a lot less tired than that just recently too and somehow managed to fall asleep quite quickly.

However, not last night. I don’t know what was happening but I had some kind of skin irritation that kept me awake for hours and round about 03:00 I left the bed in search of some kind of cold cream because I reckoned that that was the only way that I was going to have any kind of sleep at all.

And it worked too. Not as quickly as I would have liked, but I did manage to go off to sleep eventually.

Nothing of the foregoing, however, prevented me from awakening round about 06:15, and that was a surprise. I must have had less than three hours sleep. Strangely enough, I wasn’t all that tired either … "relatively speaking, that is" – ed …

So when the alarm went off this morning I was on my way out of the bathroom, having had a good wash, a shave and a wash of my clothes in the sink.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see if I’d been anywhere during the night. And no-one was more surprised than me to find that even though the night was so short, there was something on there too. I was still working in an office and nothing at all was going right there. I was hardly accomplishing anything but then again it was only a week or two before I was due to retire so I was just going through the motions anyway. I could tell that the bosses and everyone like that were unhappy about my efforts but I couldn’t really care less. I thought that I’d had a very raw deal at that place and I didn’t think that I owed it anything. I was just waiting to leave and if anyone said anything to me that would have provoked any kind of argument I would have quite simply walked out. Things reached some kind of head on Monday and I was due to go back in on Tuesday but I ended up going to see a friend on Monday night who had a collection of strange vehicles. He told me that he was planning on cutting one of them down to salvage the cab to put on another one. I thought that that was rather a shame and something of a waste but he was quite adamant about doing it and he invited me to go round to have a look because he felt that it wasn’t going to fit without any kind of severe modification so I agreed that I would go to have a look with him and see what I thought but I really wasn’t very happy with this idea of his of cutting up one of his strange vehicles.

That sounds like a couple of jobs that I’ve had in the past, after which I decided that office work is not really for me. But regular readers of this rubbish will recall that not pulling my weight at work, being close to retirement and planning to walk away was a regular theme during the night at one time.

The story about the guy with the vehicles also rings a bell – to such an extent that a couple of his bizarre vehicles have come his way via me. He features fairly regularly (or did for quite a while) in these pages too, but merely as a supporting actor to a main character. This world is far too small for my liking, or Byd Bach! as they say on the other side of the Severn-Dee valley.

Isabelle the Nurse came round to do her stuff, and she brought some good news with her. It seems that she had been round to the old High School that is being converted into offices (and which is where our radio studio is) and she had a quick peek into the building that is going to be the Granville Dialysis Centre.

She reckons that the transformation work in there is well advanced and wouldn’t be surprised to find it open ahead of schedule. That will save me at least one hour every day, not having to trudge my weary way three times per week down to Avranches.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’ve breezed through Pickering Castle in North Yorkshire and have now arrived at Pontefract.

Pontefract is a major castle with a very long history, so I wonder how much of the book has been devoted to a discussion about it. After all, we’re about half-way through the book and if we aren’t careful, we’ll be running out castles before we reach the end.

After breakfast, I came back in here and had a few things to organise, a few letters and forms to scan, a few e-mails to send and when I’d done all of that, I made a start on my Woodstock magnum opus.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I don’t pay much attention to what happens to my body when I’m in hospital or at dialysis. I was hospitalised as a small baby and I reckon that it must have traumatised me because I can’t bear to talk about, think about, listen to or watch anything medical.

So I don’t know what is going on at all, but when my faithful cleaner rolled up my sleeve to fit my anaesthetic patches, she gasped. My upper arm is swollen like a balloon and it’s just one huge dark-blue bruise where one of the punctures from the dialysis had bled under the skin. No wonder it was so painful.

She fitted my patches nevertheless and for a change, the taxi was early for me. We were three passengers in total plus the driver, and we had a lovely drive in the sunshine down to the dialysis centre in Avranches.

Today, being early, I was third in and third to be coupled up. And the nurses gasped too when they saw the mess that was my upper arm. You cannot imagine how painful the coupling-up was either. I had to wear an ice blanket to numb the arm and deaden the pain. Even so, I had to endure it for three and a half hours, during which I made out my LeClerc shopping list, but it was far too painful to concentrate on anything else.

One of the first in, one of the first to be coupled up meant that I was one of the first to be uncoupled. But it took much longer than it ought – firstly because of the pain and secondly, because they had a young student stagière there and I offered to be the guinea pig on which she could try out her skills. After all, how else am I going to have some nice young female holding my hand for ten minutes?

Even so, I was back here by 18:25 which makes a really nice change. And there was more good news. That electrician who came the other day has sent me a quote which is not unadjacent to what I was expecting. Even better, the work qualifies at the lover rate of TVA by virtue of the age of the building and the age of the installation.

It’s nice to have some good news for a change. After all, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

Tea tonight was a helping of lasagna out of the freezer. I need to start to think about making some space in there. I’m hoping that fairly soon, Rosemary will come back with her recommendation for a fridge-freezer and then I can organise myself (if ever that’s possible) and move some of the frozen food downstairs whenever the apartment is free. It’s strangely quiet down there.

But seeing as we’ve been talking about people holding hands … "well, one of us has" – ed … many years ago, I saw one of my friends wandering around Hanley hand-in-hand with his wife.
When I met him a few days later, I told him "you two looked so sweet wandering around Hanley like that, holding hands as if you were still teenagers"
"Ohh, it wasn’t like that at all" he said
"Why was that?" I asked.
"Didn’t you notice the sales?" he replied. "I was trying to stop her hand going after my wallet."

Wednesday 21st May 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… someone visiting today who is obviously the brother of the electrician who came the other day, and presumably the brother too of that woman who came from that building agency previously.

And there’s no doubt about it – there aren’t half some unscrupulous people in the building trade who seem to make it a rule to prey upon the elderly and infirm. It’s enough to make anyone lose their faith in humanity, and I would certainly have lost mine by now, had it not been already lost a long, long time ago.

But anyway, more of that anon.

Last night was not as early as I would have liked it to have been. Tuesday is usually quite a good bet for an early night but for some reason it didn’t quite work out like that and I’m not sure why. It was after 23:30 when I finally crawled underneath the covers.

Once more, I was asleep quite quickly and I remember nothing whatsoever until … errr … 06:15 when I had one of these dramatic awakenings. That’s not as early as some mornings have been just recently, but it’s early enough.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I was sorting out the medication in the kitchen, having already had a good scrub in the bathroom on the way past.

Back in here afterwards, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. When I awoke, I dreamed that I went to pick up the dictaphone. It was on the left-hand side of the bed rather than on the right in this dream. There was a large metal saucepan there and a few other things, and as I reached out for the dictaphone, I knocked off the saucepan and a couple of other things. I expected an enormous noise from this saucepan falling to the floor but I didn’t hear a thing. It all happened in perfect peace and quiet and there was no noise at all.

What I can say about that is that I certainly didn’t awaken. It’s true that the dictaphone should usually be on the top of the chest of drawers on the right-hand side of the bed and if it’s not there, then I’m completely lost. But it won’t ever be on the left-hand side of the bed because apart from an empty half of a bed, there’s a wall, with no room to put a table at all.

And then I was walking down Edleston Road when a white long-wheelbase Transit, S-registered but much older than that, came up the hill quite quickly. It suddenly shuddered to a halt right alongside me. A guy whom I knew, a guitarist from a rock group, leapt out. He asked me if the van had been going to him. I thought that it sounded OK. He replied “have a look underneath”. I had a look underneath and could see streams of gearbox oil pouring out of there. As he asked me “is there some kind of seal in the gearbox” I said “you’ve blown one of the seals in the gearbox”. I climbed into the van and it had a Borg Warner automatic gearbox but it was a completely different style to whatever I had seen before. It was hot and you could smell the oil, but it was quite obvious that he was going to go nowhere in that van. I didn’t have a spare gearbox for him. I spoke to my father and he didn’t know of any either. I thought that for these people, this is going to cost them an awful lot of money and make them late for a pile of concerts and they’d have to cancel a pile of concerts. It’s happening at a really inconvenient time for them.

The Transit was one of the very first Series One vans like the 1970 diesel Transit that I had when I was a rock star … "!" – ed … and ran for a while until a washer fell down the air intake, bent a valve and pushed the valve head through the crown of a piston. But an automatic van? That must be a nightmare to try to move when it’s fully-loaded

“Mettez-vous devant la fenêtre” someone shouted, so I had a look around to see if I could see anyone and began to think about moving my chair towards the window when I awoke. So I wonder who it was who shouted to me in French. There were quite a few people around the first of the month whom I knew and quite a few events that were happening where there could have been other people whom I knew who could have been involved I suppose, but I’ve no idea who shouted that out in the way.

So here I am, dreaming in French again. But I’ve no idea what was happening here, why someone should be shouting at me in French. And I can’t move my chair any closer to the window anyway because the aforementioned chest of drawers is in the way.

Finally, I was on my crutches at school organising the school wall transport and the car parking. Most of the students had turned up but there were still a couple who hadn’t come. I wondered when I might begin to expect them. Sure enough, a couple of minutes before 09:00 they appeared. One was a girl who was already on crutches and the other one was a girl who clearly having some kind of health issues herself. I made some kind of laugh and joke about it to them and they joined in. Their car was parked in a corner and it was really tough to access. They made a few remarks about that, mainly light-headed but you can never tell. I replied again. They asked for the keys. She said that she’d give them to me later. I replied “make sure that you do by tomorrow and no mistake” so she laughed. The two of them squeezed into this tiny car and reversed out of the car park, nearly hitting another car that was about to pull out. He just saw her at the last minute and stopped. Then they set off to drive out. I had a look round, and I was certain that every item of letters or parcels that needed to be delivered had been loaded into the correct vehicles and were all off and about on their way to deliver them.

Not that they would ever have let me organise the parking at school. Organisation is not my strong point, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And of all the people with whom I went to school, I can’t think of more than half a dozen or so whom I would be happy to see again, and I think that I’m seeing (or, at least, in contact with) all of those. I did not have a happy time at school. In fact, I did not have a happy childhood at all and a great deal of what happens in my dreams is not just about how my childhood was but occasionally how I would have liked it to have been. I ran away from home when I was 18 and, if the truth is known, I’m still running even now 50-odd years later.

Isabelle the Nurse was still in a rush this morning and didn’t have much time to hang around. She changed my plasters, dealt with my legs, fitted my compression socks and then cleared off to take more blood samples.

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

This morning we arrived at Pevensey Castle in Sussex. And here we go again. At the top of page 362 he tells us that "the history of the building, though aided by passages in the public records, is mainly to be established by the study of the material remains. Those of the Roman period have fallen under the searching and very accurate notice of Mr. Roach Smith ; the present paper deals mainly with the mediaeval additions both in earthworks and masonry."

Two lines further down, he tells us that "The Roman fortress is in plan a rounded oblong, 220 yards northeast and south-west by 115 yards, and contains from 8| acres to 9 acres. It is included within a wall strengthened by towers, and here, as at Lyme, the outline of the plan was evidently governed by that of the ground on which the castle stands, and which rises 8 feet to 10 feet above the sea level and that of the surrounding marsh or meadow…." and then proceeds to devote several pages to tell us about the Roman remains that have "fallen under the searching and very accurate notice of Mr. Roach Smith" and so should be excluded from "the present paper"

My breakfast this morning remained unfinished because I had an interruption. An electrician, complete with apprentice, turned up to talk about electricity. His discussion was much more straightforward and his pricing much more closely aligned with what I consider to be appropriate, and he didn’t want to change the fusebox which was what I suspected. We’ll see what he puts in writing.

Back in here I had a radio programme to prepare and by the time that I’d knocked off, I’d done everything except choose the final track, although I do have in mind what it is going to be. I’ll know more when the notes that I’ve written so far have been dictated and edited.

There were plenty of interruptions to my schedule today. Firstly, there were a couple of disgusting drinks breaks. Then the taxi came to pick me up for my dialysis that I don’t have today.

My cleaner came to do her stuff too, and then Rosemary telephoned me for another one of our marathon chats.

However, we also had the plumber. His first comment was "we’ll have to move the sink"
"Why’s that?" I asked
"there’s only 74cms between the wall and the sink. You can’t have a shower base less than 80 cms"
"Oh really?" I asked, knowing full well that the one that I fitted in the farm was 70cms AND IS STILL AVAILABLE. In any case, I don’t want a shower base – I want a flat, tiled surface, so it should be made to measure.

Apart from that, he told me that to fit a 80cm shower base (which I don’t want) we have to move the sink.
"Won’t that mean moving the pipework?"
"I can do that" he said
"But if you move it more than 5 cms you’ll cover up the electric plug" I replied
"I’ll move that too"

We than moved into the WC to talk about the cistern where I want a cistern with a small sink on top like you see in Japan.
"You’ll be better off with a new WC bowl too, to give you some more height"

So that was another workman firmly but politely shown the door. I think that I’ve about given up on finding a workman who wants to carry out my project. Instead, they all seem to want to do their own at my expense.

Tea tonight was a lovely leftover curry with enough left to go into the freezer for another meal. and no pudding tonight – I wasn’t all that hungry really.

Instead I’m going to go to bed and dream about workmen and renovation disasters. It’s becoming exhausting, all of this organisation, when in theory it should be so simple.

But seeing as we have been talking about kids driving cars to school … "well, one of us has" – ed … there was very, very little of that in our day. Our generation was lucky to have had pushbikes. Some peope didn’t even know what a pushbike was.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the famous baseball player and coach Lawrence “Yogi” Berra is quoted quite often here. He came from a poor family of Italian immigrants but his wife, Carmen, came from a more comfortable background.
They had three sones and Carmen told Lawrence one day that the eldest, Dale Berra, needed an encyclopedia for school.
"Rubbish!" retorted “Yogi”. "He can walk there like I did".

Tuesday 20th May 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a lovely afternoon out this afternoon. A nice drive out in the sun with a chatty, pleasant driver, all the way down to Avranches for a scan.

And then a nice drive home ditto, having been told that the scan had been cancelled by the doctor. What a shame that the doctor never thought to let the ambulance company and me know before we upset everyone.

It seems that my run of bad luck that I mentioned yesterday is continuing into today.

Last night I was thoroughly and completely exhausted after another gruelling dialysis session. It was a real struggle to finish my notes and to do everything else that I needed to do before going to bed, and I was out on my feet.

It was late when I ended up in bed too, not too far short of midnight despite all of my best efforts. And I don’t even remember going to sleep. I must have crashed out immediately.

And during the night, I remember nothing at all. It must have been one of the deepest, heaviest sleeps that I have had for quite some considerable time. Having said that though, nothing in the foregoing prevented me from being awake at … errr … 06:15, just to keep up the tradition of an early start.

When the alarm went off at 07:00, I was in the kitchen sorting out the medication, having already dealt with the bathroom situation. And it’s certainly true, what they say about these new calcium tablets. I have proof.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone, and found that there was nothing on it at all. That left me with somewhat mixed feelings. Part of me was grateful for having had a really deep, undisturbed sleep for once, but the other part of me was disappointed. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the only excitement that I seem to have these days is what happens during the night – and that doesn’t sound quite right, does it?

Instead, I found a few things to do although my heart wasn’t really in it. I wasn’t feeling too well this morning for some reason.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in to start her week on duty. And breezed out again just as promptly. "I can’t stop" she said. "There are people waiting for me down at the office".

Yes, it’s her first day back, so all of the people who have postponed their injections and blood tests over the last week are now clamouring to be caught up.

After she left, I made breakfast, not that I was feeling much like it, and read some more of MY BOOK.

Our whistle-stop tour is continuing and, after passing by a couple of somewhat minor piles, we’ve arrived at Penrith Castle. But there doesn’t seem to be much to see there either, so I suppose that we shan’t be there for long.

The history of many of these places is interesting, but that’s not why I’m reading the book. I’m here for the military architecture and in that I’m disappointed. It’s just becoming an endless, repetitive litany of mullions, corbels, pilasters and architraves.

After breakfast I checked over my Welsh homework and sent it off to be marked. It came back with a "excellent as usual" which took me quite by surprise. I often think that I wouldn’t mind a sip of whatever our tutor has in her water bottle.

The preparation for the lesson passed well enough and I was surprised by how much I – well, didn’t know, but could make a reasonably-accurate guess. Mind you, the subject this week is the story of Saint David and seeing as I have been spending an awful lot of time just recently reading about the Sixth Century, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I could probably have written the article myself.

As for the lesson itself, it passed really well and I was quite pleased with it. However, I learned something new today that had nothing to do with my lesson, and that is for all my talk about rubbing shoulders with rock stars when I used to drive my sound engineer around, one of my classmates is related to DJ “Spot On” John Morris and was chatting at his funeral to PJ Proby and also Uli John Roth of The Scorpions.

After the lesson was over I went and had a disgusting drink break and then prepared myself for my scan.

It’s a good job that I did too because the taxi was early. And we had a lovely, chatty drive down to Avranches and the hospital.

It was there that I was told that my appointment had been cancelled. And cancelled on the 8th of April too, the day after I walked out of the hospital after having discharged myself. So if this is someone’s idea of a joke or an act of petty revenge, then I am not impressed at all.

It’s not that I mind them cancelling my appointments, but more the fact that they don’t tell me and, even worse, don’t tell the taxi company. I can’t afford to be in their bad books. Still, it was a lovely drive out and a lovely drive back with pleasant company.

My cleaner was waiting for me and watched as I made my weary way upstairs. Not too long to go now before I plan on moving. I’ve decided that even if I can’t find a plumber and an electrician, then as long as I have the basic kitchen installed, I shall go with that and like it for now.

Tea tonight was a delicious taco roll, with loads of stuffing remaining for a leftover curry tomorrow. But I need to think about emptying the freezer at some point, although it won’t be long before that’s a thing of the past when I eventually have my new fridge-freezer. There will be tons of room in the new set-up, but I bet that it won’t take me too long to fill it.

But I can worry about that again because right now I’m going to have an early night, even though this is the least tired that I have felt at this time of night for quite a while. That good sleep last night really did do me some good.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pointless journeys … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the guy who went into the ticket office of Crewe Railway Station.
"I’d like a return ticket, please" he asked
"Certainly, sir" replied the clerk. "Where to?"
"Why, back here, of course."

Monday 19th May 2025 – IT’S NOT OFTEN …

… that I have a sense of humour meltdown, but today has been one of those days, right enough. Nothing that I have done seems to have gone as it should.

Last night’s activities set the scene somewhat for today’s disasters. What with the football and everything, I ended up being really late going to bed when I could really have done with going to bed early.

Once in bed though, I can’t remember all that much. I have the vaguest memory of waking up, noticing that it was still dark and so going beck to sleep pretty much straight away.

Be that as it may, I awoke at 06:40, 20 minutes before the alarm and when the alarm finally did ring, I was already in the bathroom having a good wash. Not as early as some, but an early start all the same.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was in a public ward in a hospital after an operation on my leg. I found it really difficult if not impossible to walk around at the moment but being in this ward with all these other people made me realise just how healthy I was. It was probably the best reason that I could think of for actually leaving the bed but it was so painful trying to move. There were examples being shown on the television of other people who had had this kind of operation to their leg, mostly foreigners, people from abroad. It was interesting to spot their places where they were actually going to fit into this hospital regime as far as needing help and lack of autonomy went. They would be cruising so many hours of their own private life for so many hours per day on dialysis and was it worth it?

If you want to know my opinion about this, read on. But once more, I was dismayed that I’m spending so much of my time dreaming about medical issues.

Later on, my brother was talking to a girl from his class whom I recognised and to whom I used to chat occasionally. When they finished I asked her what she was doing. She replied that she was at Manchester University. I took hold of her and pulled her so that she sat down on the edge of my bed and asked her what she was studying. She said, with a strange look on her face, “geography”. I asked how she meant. She replied “different parts of Europe and Dalmatia – I moved my bath the other day and there they were, all of them on the floor. I was horrified”. I said “had I known, I would have let you come and share my bed”. We had something of a laugh, a joke and a flirt around. I thought to myself “this is yet another good chance of actually trying to build on something, some kind of relationship for the immediate future”.

Even now, I can still see this girl. I’ve no idea who she is but in the dream I knew that I knew her. She was wearing a red and white gingham school dress too, so what she was doing at University I really don’t know. However, there is some kind of undercurrent to this story but the World isn’t ready to hear it. And what a shame that the dream finished when it did.

There was something going on with a Native American tribe in North America of which I was a member. I was there, I suppose, because I respected the people, liked them, liked their culture. A group of Native Americans from outside my group were not content with everything and were trying to incite my group of Native Americans into rising up and rebelling whereas our opinion was that rising up and rebelling is OK in books and folk songs but it’s much more complicated than that. In the end the situation became so severe that those from outside our group were expelled from the tribe. There was talk that I would be expelled too because my position was seen as being something of an anomaly and I was being seen as a position of suspicion by some people from within the group.

What immediately came into my mind when I was typing out these notes was my visit in 2019 to Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, the site where the US Army massacred what was left of the Lakota Sioux people, where I went for a walk around the site of the slaughter and visited the mass grave of the victims.

This is what the author of “The Wizard of Oz” had to say at the time about Wounded Knee "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untameable creatures from the face of the earth".

Nothing has changed in the USA.

The nurse had very little to say for himself, which suited me fine. He was soon in and gone and I could carry on with making breakfast and read MY BOOK.

We’re pushing on with our visits, dashing from one site to another in some kind of indecent haste. We’ve been to the castle at Oswestry, such as it is, and then back across the dyke into Wales for a couple more places. We’re pushing on at quite a rate and there can’t be all that many places left to visit.

Back in here, I reviewed the radio programme that will be broadcast this coming weekend and then I had an electrician to see.

Not that I know an awful lot about electricity – I do it all by trial and error – but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such a disgraceful estimate. To supply and fit a new power board (that isn’t necessary) that costs €199:00 at Brico Depot, he’s quoted €2,000. For changing eight double sockets for multiples and wiring up the oven, microwave and hob, he wants another €2,000.

What beat me though was that he had the quote back here in less than the time that it would have taken to go back home to type it, and he rang me up thirty seconds after the quote arrived, to tell me to sign it and return it quickly. I’m not sure from which tree he thinks that I fell, but I feel really sorry for any elderly person who comes across him.

Next task was to finish my Welsh homework, which is now ready for a final check tomorrow morning before I send it off for marking.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches, and then I had to wait for the taxi. And wait, and wait, and wait. Round about 13:00 I ‘phoned them up to enquire and was told that "he’s running a little late."

These new Sécurité Social regulations allow a 45-minute window in order for the vehicles to carry multiple passengers, and when my vehicle did turn up, 44 minutes late, it already had one passenger in it.

The driver and the other passenger chatted like long-lost buddies so I relaxed and enjoyed the view, knowing full well that by the time I arrive, my anaesthetic will have worn off.

As I was leaving the car, my telephone fell out into the footwell, as I found out later when the driver brought it back. And an envelope in my pocket with a prescription for a blood test became dislodged and I won’t tell you where it fell, because you are probably eating your tea right now.

There was a new patient today and all of the nurses were congregating around him, sorting him out. It was 14:20, 50 minutes late, when I was finally plugged in. painful yet again

There were plenty of things for me to do, right up to the moment when the needle ceased to work and my arm began to swell up. By that time though, the new patient was having a crisis and the entire medical staff, doctors and nurses, were congregating around him so I had to wait.

When the crisis began, my nurse was standing by me bed, dealing with an infusion. When the alarm sounded, she dropped the infusion pouch – right onto my leg where the wound is.

Later on, moving the table with my computer, she banged the wound yet again.

Everyone finished at the same time today but while most of the staff were dealing with this emergency, there was just one nurse unplugging everyone. So guess who was last?

By the time that I made it back home it was 19:20 and I was thoroughly fed up with everything. So in answer to the question that was asked during one of my dreams, it’s certainly not worth it

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta followed by vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert, and now I’m off to bed. I’m thoroughly fed up with today. Gotthold Lessing once famously said "Better counsel comes overnight " and that is for what I am hoping.

But seeing as we have been talking about transport issues … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not by any means the first that I have had.
Several years ago I was waiting for a train in Canada – the 11:55 from Calgary to Regina – when at 11:42 exactly it pulled into the station.
It’s never happened like that before so I went to express my admiration to the driver.
"It’s not like that at all" he replied
"Why not?" I asked
"Because, if the truth be known, this is the 11:55 train from a week last Tuesday"

Saturday 17th May 2025 – I AM CONVINCED …

… that they tried everything that they could at the dialysis centre this afternoon to make me run as late as possible. It’s been one of those days today.

In fact, it’s been one of those days all day today and it started last night, as a matter of fact. Although I wasn’t feeling particularly tired, I still managed to complete my notes by 22:30 and by the time that I’d done everything that needed doing, it was just about 23:05 when I finally fell into bed, hoping for a really good night’s sleep.

And believe it or not, I managed to stay asleep until all of … errr … 03:40 this morning.

Once I’d awoken, I tried as usual to go back to sleep seeing as it was such an early start, and eventually I did manage to drop back off, although it took quite a considerable while. I thought that it would never happen.

Having gone back to sleep, I awoke again at 06:15, and after trying for about 20 minutes to go back to sleep, I gave up and headed for the bathroom.

After a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cure Consultant, I rounded up all of the winter coats and the like and put them in the washing machine so that the machine can do its stuff. It looked like a lovely day outside.

After I’d had my medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And once more, I was surprised that there was so much stuff on it, bearing in mind how short a night it was.

There was some kind of confusion about Lee Dorsey and music. I think that Lee Dorsey used to write songs that were sung by females and Gerry Dorsey who used to write songs that were sung by males but I’m not sure why I thought of that and I’m not sure why it came into my mind.

In actual fact, not that it’s particularly important, Lee Dorsey is the old American pop singer who actually owned a car repair business and Gerry Dorsey is better-known as Engelbert Dumper truck

Later on I was being held prisoner in a house by some kind of weird kind of obscene bully. I was friendly with his daughter and he had a handicapped wife. The relationship between his daughter and me developed into something rather more than friendship. He was extremely unhappy about this and so were the rest of his children. They remembered her being with a parson and had spent eighteen months together. It was supposed to be the next big romance but it ended dramatically just before I came along. I was extremely resented by this man and his other children. The woman and I became quite friendly. I had a suspicion that this was going to be rather more than friends and I was trying desperately not to have any kind of involvement in anything that might be misconstrued in this respect because I was simply interested in the daughter despite all of the issues with her father. This woman and her husband began to have fierce arguments and I felt the situation becoming more and more uncomfortable until in the end the woman must have told her husband that she was going to leave him and run off with me. Of course that was the final trigger to an extremely unpleasant moment where I was quite literally forced into a room with all the family. The family first of all, that is, the other children of the man began to interrogate the daughter about the time that she’d spent with this priest guy. She was saying that what turned her off him was the idea that he was going to rescue all of these animals and keep them at home. They pointed out that she had a hamster or a gerbil or something. She replied “that’s hardly the same thing as that which this priest guy was trying to bring in to any kind of home where he would be living”. I could see that this situation was not going to turn out very well at all and I began to wish that I was somewhere else indeed. I didn’t really have much choice at that particular moment.

This next one was a return to the dream of that domineering, bully father where I was mentioning that I was being interviewed in the hope of tripping me up or of persuading the daughter of the house that I was not the man for her future. Either way, as the time passed, it was becoming less and less comfortable and I began to feel more and more anxious about the situation.

It’s been a while since I’ve had some kind of menacing dream like this one, and I certainly didn’t appreciate dropping back into it a second time. However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I can in real life easily find myself stepping into situations just like that, quite by accident and with no real effort at all

And then I was in hospital again after the biopsie musculaire having the wound checked over again. On the way I’d noticed a huge advert on a roadside advertising tablet, advertising the National Folk Dancing Championships taking place in the town. I’d checked my agenda and found that I was actually doing something on that particular day which would have been a shame because I would have loved to have gone and maybe to have competed but it’s rather late in the day now … fell asleep here … anyway so I would really have liked to have taken part but being in hospital, it was not possible.

This is another one of those dreams about which I remember absolutely nothing at all. However, I can say that these hospital issues are really getting to me these days, that’s for sure.

Finally, I was back living at home. Looking through the newspaper I saw a room to let with shower. I rang up about it and a very polite young Afro-Caribbean voice answered and gave me some information. I asked where it was and he replied that it was in Tiananmen Square in Crewe. I’d heard vaguely of that at one time and thought that it was near Bedford Street but he told me that it wasn’t so I set out to go to look at it. My car wasn’t outside the house. I suddenly realised that I’d left it in Bedford Street in a car park there. I had to walk to Bedford Street and walked into the car park where there was my old white Luton Transit that was parked in the car park. I climbed into that and to my surprise it started so I set off to go to look at this flat.

Wherever Tiananmen Square might be in Crewe, I really have no idea. It’s certainly not near Bedford Street. And there’s no car park there either

The nurse turned up, early as usual. He didn’t have anything to say for himself which was just as well because for some reason or other I was spoiling for a fight. I’ve no idea why, because nothing had happened to trigger off anything.

So after he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’re still at Norham, discussing the civilian architecture of the castle and mentioning the odd tower and curtain wall here and there in terms that I find difficult to understand.

But one thing is certain, and that is that we aren’t explaining anything about the whys and wherefores of the military features of the castle.

After breakfast I hung out the washing in the living room and opened the window seeing as it was such a lovely day, in the hope that it would soon dry.

Back in here I drafted a few advertisements about the work that I need doing, having split it up into individual tasks, and then posted it on this Chamber of Commerce website. And within no time at all I was swamped … "well, sort of" – ed … with replies and before I left for dialysis I’d already spoken to a few and arranged appointments.

When my cleaner turned up, she fitted my anaesthetic patches and sorted out a few things ready for my taxi to turn up. It was one of my favourite drivers, the Belgian girl with twins in the first year of High School across the car park. We picked up our usual Saturday afternoon passenger and we had a lovely chat all the way to Avranches.

We were early arriving at the centre but so was everyone else and I was last to be seen, as usual. There was a problem with someone’s connection so for quite a while all of the nurses were congregated around his bed.

There’s one of the nurses there who is not quite so attentive as the others, so guess who I had. At first she tried to run my machine for four hours, and I had to explain to her, and not once either, that she’s not deducted the 700 grammes for my shoes. It took a while for her to grasp the issue, recalculate the figures and switch the machine to three and a half hours.

And then she had three painful goes at coupling me up to the machine. so once again, all in all, it took one hour from my arrival to the start of the process.

My machine was misbehaving all the way through the session, and then once more, right at the end I had to wait an age to be uncoupled from the machine. I was thoroughly fed up by all of this.

It was the same taxi driver who brought me home which was nice. We had another interesting chat. And then my cleaner was waiting for me to watch me up the stairs.

Tea was a breaded quorn fillet, and I notice that I’m running low of those. I shall have to think of a Plan B.

But not right now because I’m going to dictate my radio notes and then go to bed, in hope of a decent sleep.

But seeing as we have been talking about dancing … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once went to one of these Country Dances in the local village hall, and I was so impressed. Everyone was leaping up and down and around quite energetically like some kind of Jitterbug Competition from the 1920s or like something out of HELLZAPOPPIN’
Finding a local standing around idly watching the show, I expressed my amazement.
"Don’t worry" said the local – a very vocal local yokel. "It won’t last long"
"Really?" I asked. "Why’s that?"
"They’ve sent for the caretaker" he replied. "He’ll soon turn off the underfloor heating."

Friday 16th May 2025 – AS YOU MIGHT …

… have guessed already, it was rather more of the same again this morning. Yet another early start.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s pointless going to bed early because all it seems to mean these days is that it’s a correspondingly early start the following morning.

The benefit is probably something to do with the fact that I’m usually so tired in the evening that going to sleep at that point is a good idea, but would I be so tired in the evening were I not to awaken so early in the morning? It’s one of those conundrums that ca go on forever.

So last night after tea, I put my back into everything and had finished all of my notes as early as 22:30. There was then the statistics and the backing-up to do and after the bathroom to prepare myself for bed, I was under the bedclothes by 22:50.

And that reminds me – seeing as we are talking about the statistics … "well, one of us is" – ed … the ones that I take here are a far cry from what I used to take down on the farm. I counted once and there were at that point no fewer than 22 readings to take, and quite a few of those involved a lengthy trip down the field to take readings of rainfall and of the temperature in the greenhouse, etc.

Those were the days, of course. I had a huge pile of notes that I was slowly entering into a spreadsheet ready to publish a report, but alas! I was overtaken by events, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

So once under the covers I wasn’t awake long. Not at all. And I can’t remember anything until I awoke.

It was vaguely becoming sort-of light outside so I looked at the ‘phone to find out the time. It was just about 05:29, far too early to leave the bed. I tried to go back to sleep again but I gave that up as a bad job and at 06:10 I was up and about.

After a good wash, I went into the kitchen for the medication and then came back in here to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. It was a friend’s birthday and he was going to have a big party round at his house. Unfortunately, for some reason, I couldn’t go so I was spending the weekend doing something else. I lent him my vehicle, a Triumph Herald estate, for a short while while he organised himself. While I was in my little apartment in Manchester on the edge of the city somewhere, I happened to look up and there on the flyover going past in the distance was my Triumph Herald Estate with this guy driving it and someone whom he’d picked up from the railway station. I thought “how surprising. That’s really a coincidence”. As it happened, seeing as this birthday party didn’t work out too well and I spoke to my friend later on, I asked him how it went. He said that the guy whom he’d picked up from Manchester was OK for a while but once we came round to the subject of birthdays and wrapping presents he had a meltdown. It didn’t go down very well at all. I told him that that was a shame. I asked him if he had been in Manchester on the Friday evening. He replied that he had. I told him what I had seen of this Triumph Herald estate and two people who looked like him and his colleague etc. He agreed that it could well have been his … fell asleep here … so that was the situation. He told me that it was in fact him – that it may well have been him who was coming back from Manchester on that Friday with that guy in that vehicle

This actually does remind me of a real event, except that it was a different friend whose party it was, I was the one who went to pick up the other friend, it wasn’t the railway station in Manchester either and it wasn’t my Triumph Herald. I did have a Triumph Herald estate once, in the days when I was going through about one car every week, recycling cars that were on their last legs before they eventually made their final trip to the scrapyard

He also explained that things didn’t go very well in general, that he had ended up with all of his possessions out all over the floor while he was trying to sort things out. His friend tried to help him a little with some architecture and some property renovation but to no success. He was perfectly glad that today was on the point of drawing to an end.

This is presumably related to the first dream, but the people are actually the wrong way round in it

That dream went on and I could also use my own plate and the car as something from under my netball work tournament that in the 258 cars and the 278 cars that could be pieced together and never go very much but he got away with this but was extending by whose place he was going to use for camouflage but he wanted to hand the car back to the previous owner to mark him right again

As for whatever this is about, I have absolutely no idea.

In the end I had my light blue Opel Ascona as a taxi. The area where I operated was round the South of Wales. The plate had gone back to its owner and I was making do with a fitted kitchen and the escort who looked very much like Marie Rhiwabon was looking at her charms saying that she wasn’t ready to come home for at least another hour which disappointed me because I was in a hurry to be home

This story has a great deal of actual significance, even down to the car, but it didn’t take place in South Wales.

The third and fourth dream are quite interesting. For the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, although I’m asleep when I’m dictating these notes (and “falling asleep” means that I go silent and after a minute or so you can hear the heavy breathing as if I’m talking to some strange woman on the telephone) when I come to transcribe them, I usually have a slight recollection of the events coming back from the depths of my subconscious. However, for these latter two, there was absolutely nothing whatsoever.

The nurse turned up as usual and I told him about the quote that I received from his friend. "But you don’t understand how prices have rocketed since Covid and the war in Ukraine" he said. He really does talk the most extraordinary bulls … errr … nonsense.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’ve now left Montgomery Castle and having passed by Morlais Castle (which is in that part of England known as “Glamorgan”) we’re now at Norham Castle in Northumberland.

Norham is an important castle situated on the English side of the River Tweed. It played an important rôle during the conflicts between the English and the Scots. The town itself is the site of a well-known Saxon Church in which are said to be the remains of the Saxon Bishop Saint Ceolwolf, translated there at some date in the first half of the Ninth Century,

A curious fact about the town of Norham. It was a personal possession of the Bishops of Durham so even though it is right at the far north of Northumberland, it was considered to be an enclave of the County of Durham until the passage of the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844.

So when will we begin to talk about the military architecture of the castle?

Back in here I sorted out a few things that needed my attention, and then for the rest of the day I’ve been Woodstocking. I’ve now finished all of Saturday and I’m well on the way to dealing with Sunday – the final day.

Saturday’s programme should be interesting though. For a one-hour programme, I’ve one hour, twenty-five minutes and six seconds so far and by the time that I will have finished reading it though again, it’s likely to expand even more. The big question is not “what to include” but “what to leave out?”. That was the story of my life when at University – word-counts were the bane of my life.

There were the usual interruptions too. My cleaner put her sooty foot in the apartment, there was lunch, there was a disgusting drink break or two too. But for a change, no-one bothered me on the ‘phone.

Tea tonight was falafel with chips and a vegan salad followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. The chocolate cake is running low and I reckon that next weekend I shall have to make another cake. If I remember, next week I’ll ask my faithful cleaner to find some fresh ginger and I’ll make a fiery ginger cake.

But right now, I’m off to bed, to see if I can actually manage a nice, long sleep. It’s dialysis tomorrow so I’m likely to be pretty wasted afterwards.

But seeing as we have been talking about word counts … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of something that I heard a long time ago while I was at school.
"There was a young man from Japan
Who couldn’t make limericks scan
He said “my old bean
I know just what you mean
But I always do my best to fit as many words into the last line as I possibly can."

Thursday 15th May 2025 – I HAD THE …

… quote this afternoon from that girl who came to see me on Tuesday.

Just a mere €27,000 “or thereabouts”. I haven’t sent off my reply as yet, because had I sent it the moment that I read the e-mail, it would have been … errr … “far from polite”. I have a feeling that this work that I want doing is not going to be as easy to arrange as I have been thinking.

Something else that I had today was yet another early start. And it could have been another quite ridiculous one for I was wide-awake at just after 04:00 this morning. However, I did manage … "for once" – ed … to go back to sleep for a while and it was a much more reasonable 06:15 when I left the bed.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … It’s pointless going to bed early because all it seems to mean is that I awaken correspondingly early next morning. So breaking my neck to finish before 23:00 as I did last night is hardly worth the effort, although I really was tired last night and it did me some kind of good to go to bed early.

Once in bed, I remember nothing whatsoever – it was as if I really did go to sleep the moment my head touched the pillow. And there I stayed until I awoke, at just after 04:00. At that time, I rolled around in bed for a while trying to make myself comfortable and at some point I rolled off to sleep again.

It was another one of those dramatic awakenings that I have every now and again, and after a few minutes to collect my thoughts from where they had strayed, I climbed out of bed.

It’s dialysis day today so I had a good wash and even a shave, and then went into the kitchen for my medication. Back in here, I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night, such as they were. I’d moved jobs to some other department. I was no longer working in the same place. I was still in touch with some of my former workmates. One day we were talking about skiing. They sent me some kind of handwritten article about someone but I couldn’t read it so I wondered what it was. I asked them and they said that it was a report of someone and “you’ll see how important it is that everyone wears helmets when they are skiing because he had his adjusted only the previous day by a friend of yours and went out on the ski slope the following day. He’d only removed his helmet for a couple of seconds to have a breather when he was involved in a collision and was killed”. I couldn’t read the name on this piece of writing to see who it might be but suddenly I saw the name. I knew exactly who it was. A friend of mine had been his secretary, and considerably more than his secretary too for a while. They were still in contact so I wondered if she knew about her friend who had died because it’s going to be a dreadful shock to her when she finds out and I would really like to be there to console her but I doubted if that was going to be possible.

This rings a rather large and noisy bell with me and I suspect that someone might recognise the scenario. If I were to mention the name of the deceased, they most certainly would. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the World is far too small for my liking,

The nurse came around to sort out my legs and to change the plaster on my wound. And he immediately began to discuss it, no matter how many times I told him that I wasn’t interested in hearing. He really is getting on my nerves these days.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. Today, we’ve arrived at Montgomery Castle which, for the geographically-challenged author of a book entitled “MEDIEVAL MILITARY ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND”, is actually in Wales. We’ve spent a great deal discussing the confrontations between the Welsh Princes and the Marcher Lords, but nothing whatsoever about the military architecture.

Back in here, we had an interesting time discussing the next few radio programmes. 260424 is the birthday of Tony Visconti. As well as being a record producer, he is also a bass guitarist and played bass on several albums. People like him, Tony Stratton Smith and Giorgio Gomelsky deserve programmes on their own.

Programme 260501 will be broadcast on the fête du travail – “Labour Day”, when people celebrate work by, with a marvellous sense of irony, not doing any and 260508 is the anniversary of peace breaking out, or, as Ambrose Bierce once famously put it – "peace – a period of cheating between two wars"

So as well as dealing with Tony Visconti, I’ve been looking for songs talking about work and also songs talking about peace. I shall have some themed programmes, I reckon.

My cleaner was late at lunchtime and I’d already sorted out the anaesthetic patches etc for when she came. But she wasn’t as late as the taxi. And thereby hangs a tale.

The driver had come from Coutances and was horribly late. He already had someone in the car who was hours late for an appointment and moaned about it all the way to Avranches. The driver didn’t know the way out of here so I had to guide him. And then there was a third person to pick up and he didn’t have a clue so I had to guide him there too.

And the first woman had moaned so much about being late that he felt obliged to go right past the dialysis centre to the clinic on the far side of town to drop her off first and then come all the way back to drop us off.

It was 14:30, one hour late, when I was coupled up and the time seemed to drag. Emilie the Cute Consultant was there but she clearly doesn’t love me any more. Her oppo, on whom I walked out the other week, was there too so doubtless she had been spreading the news.

Paris finally rang me back. My appointment is now arranged for 3rd June. Still not ideal but I can’t change it too often, I suppose. It will have to do.

They were late uncoupling me this evening and it was a miserable, depressing 19:10 when I made it home. I made a stir-fry, which I didn’t really feel like eating, and now I’m off to bed for another early night and presumably, another early start tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about skiing … "well, one of us has" – ed … many years ago Percy Penguin and I went skiing in Bulgaria. I left her for a while on the nursery slopes and went up the mountain.
While we were up there, the fog fell dramatically and we had to pick our way down the mountain in terrible conditions.
One of the guys asked me "what’s the first thing that you are going to do when you reach the bottom of the valley?"
"I reckon that I’m going to give Percy Penguin a really good seeing-to"
"What’s the second thing that you’ll do?" he asked
"I’ve no idea" I replied. "Take my skis off, I suppose"

Wednesday 14th May 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s totally pointless going to bed early because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

And so it was last night and this morning. After breaking my neck to be in bed by 22:45, I awoke at … errr … 04:05 or so this morning. So how miserable and depressing is that?

It’s perfectly true that I did do everything that I could so that I could finish early. I rushed through my notes, rushed through the back-ups, rushed through the stats and staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out. After all, despite the ninety minutes in bed in late afternoon, I was feeling quite exhausted and I’ve no idea why.

Nevertheless, it took a while to go off to sleep. There was too much rubbish churning around in my head. In the old days when I was taxi-driving or when I moved to Brussels, I used to go running before going to bed. It was a great way of dealing with the stress. It’s rather out of the question right now though, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Eventually though, I dozed off, hoping for a really good sleep. However it didn’t happen quite like that. I awoke quite suddenly yet again. It took a few minutes for me to come to my senses (which is a real surprise seeing how few senses I have these days) and when I looked at the ‘phone to see the time, it was 04:10.

Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I drifted in and out of a kind-of semi-consciousness where I was neither here nor there (a usual state of affairs these days even when I’m awake) but I was wide awake by about 06:00 when I made the decision to leave the bed. And that wasn’t easy either.

After the bathroom I went into the kitchen for the medication and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out if I’d been anywhere during the night. There was something about having some kind of lime-green football kit last night. I’m not sure why and I’m not sure where it came from. This led on to another situation where there was a woman who was in the hospital who was a client of the two nurses who visit me. They had heard that she had been allowed to leave her bed. One of the nurses said that she had better go to the hospital to help her fit her compression socks for when she stands up. I thought that that was rather strange because I was sure that the nurses in the hospital could do that but the visiting nurse was insistent that she was going to go to the hospital to do it.

For the lime green football kit, this does in fact relate to something that happened to FC Pionsat St Hilaire when I used to hang out there. Three of us decided to do something for the club so one of us bought a full set of shirts, the second bought a full set of shorts and I bought a couple of full goalkeepers’ kits. The footballing shirts that were bought were a kind-of fluorescent lime green.

As for the visiting nurses going to visit a patient in hospital, that is most unlikely. I couldn’t imagine that ever happening.

First task was to send off my anti-cancer medication prescription to the pharmacy. My faithful cleaner asked them for their e-mail address so that I could forward it to them rather than printing it out and physically delivering it.

Second task was to review and then print out some documentation that I’d been sent. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that, due to my state of health, I’m being supported by an organisation that strives to do all in its power to keep people in their homes. Apparently, even with some kind of financial assistance, it’s cheaper than having them put into some kind of residential care.

With my proposed bathroom conversion, there might be a grant because that is the kind of thing that is covered. They had sent me some information and an application form, so I needed to read it and fill in the form.

This also involves scanning and sending a photocopy of my last income tax statement to them. That took some organising too, mainly because I couldn’t find it at first. I must sort out my filing system.

The nurse told me once more about his friend who is a handyman. I told him to tell his friend to contact me. After all, you never know. And maybe he will. Stranger things have happened.

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

We’ve left Middleham Castle and have arrived at Mitford Castle in the North-East, near Morpeth. That was the ancient pile of the previous generations of the family that later produced the disgraced Mitford children of the 1920s and 30s, although all of that was after the time of our book.

There’s not much to see of the castle these days, and I bet that we won’t be having much in the way of discussion about Medieval military architecture.

Back in here, I had a few things to sort out. It turns out that a well-known internet reseller had made a total mess of a repricing issue and instead of reducing its sale articles by 60%, it was offering them all for sale at $0:60. If something is too good to be true, it usually is and that was the case here, which was a shame. What surprised me was that it took them so long to notice. Needless to say, they voided all of the transactions.

Later on, I finished off the selection of music for programme 260417, remixed it, paired it and segued it ready so that I can write the notes for it.

After lunch, my cleaner turned up and we went through the medication that seems to be all over the place in this apartment. The stuff we found too, including the medical kit that I’d brought from England in 1992 with stuff so old that it didn’t have a “best by” date i.e. it was prior to the European Union Labelling Directive of 1979.

Rosemary rang me up for a chat too. She thinks that she’s found the oven that would go nicely in my new kitchen, if ever I have one installed. It costs about €20 over my budget but she thinks that it’s worth it. And who am I to argue? What do I know about ovens anyway?

It was quite a short conversation too, only about fifty minutes this afternoon. However our conversation carried on in a desultory fashion via an internet chat as she sent me photos of the produce growing rapidly in her garden. It made me quite nostalgic for the Auvergne and my potager down on the farm.

There was naan bread dough to make too, seeing as I have run out. And it was probably the best batch that I have ever made too. I made it with more flour than usual and the consistency was just right. I remembered the garlic too.

In between everything I sent off a few more enquiries to builders and electricians, tried to speak to the hospital in Paris (without success) to find out why they have arranged an appointment for me on a dialysis day, and, in a mad fit of enthusiasm that I still can’t understand, wrote all of the notes for the radio programme 260417 ready for dictation on Saturday night (or at some unearthly time in the morning if I have another early start).

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry with garlic naan followed my vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert, delicious as usual.

So right now I’m off to bed, hoping for a good night’s sleep at long last. I’m certainly tired enough.

But seeing as we have been talking about that organisation that deals with personal autonomy … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was told by my faithful cleaner that each member of that organisation wears …. well … special underwear.
"Why is that?" I asked. "What’s it like?"
"They’ve gone back into the Middle East and North Africa, rounded up all of the abacuses and transformed them into brassieres for the ladies" she replied.
"Yes, but why?" I asked
"It’s so that all of their clients can count on their support."

Monday 12th May 2025 – IT HAS BEEN …

… one of those days that has been a disaster from start to finish, a day when nothing has gone right at all.

At least, that’s how it seems The truth is that most of the disasters relate to this afternoon and concern the dialysis centre. The rest, well, ça va as they say around here.

The morning actually started quite brightly, but before we arrive at that point, let’s just mention last night, which was another late-night calamity when I couldn’t summon up the energy to go to bed early.

Not that it would have been early either. It would have been about 23:30 by the time that I finished my notes and that’s not early by any means. And even then, it took me over half an hour to stagger off into the bathroom and then into bed.

Nevertheless, I was asleep quite quickly though, but not for long. And I tossed and turned throughout the night until round about 06:30 when I finally gave up trying to go back to sleep and headed off back into the bathroom.

After a good wash and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. We had some silver pie base container things. For some reason we were going to have our evening meal in them. The girl who was nominated to do it had first of all to fetch our knitting files from Sam Apple Pie or wherever into the mix and merged properly. That took her a while. The supper came and it was leek soup … fell asleep here … I’m sure that one of the players playing alongside me was Adam Davies but anyway, going back to the story, these pie cases were flattened by some kind of road roller and we had to have them so that the sides came up again. We were managing a block of three hundred houses and apartments so imagine the cheer when one of them was rectified. Then it would go dark again and it, it would join one of the others that had yet been seen with floodlights and this carried on all the time. It was very, very rare that the product … fell asleep here … but we had these silver dishes and looking for one that we’d thrown out and trying to find one that was this Adam Davies, trying to make the sides stand up for some usage.

Adam Davies is of course centre-forward for Caernarfon, whom we watched yesterday, and “Sam Apple Pie” is the group in which my friend Dave Charles, the recording engineer for Rockfield Studios, played before joining “Help Yourself”. As for the rest of the dream, I’ll let you lot work it out and if you come up with an answer, don’t forget to let me know, because I don’t have a clue … "nothing new there" – ed ….

By the way, seeing as we are talking about Caernarfon … "well, one of us is" – ed … HERE ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS OF YESTERDAY’S GAME

And next, we were offered a pile of dressed stone for two shillings apiece so we arranged for them to have these stones delivered to the Haurace (?). They brought it in through the ice and deposited it just by his front door so he couldn’t move it and couldn’t open his door. He had to start to put it away quickly and do it well so that we could press on but that wasn’t his speedy work at all, wasn’t his thing. He’d seen the things that take the ghost when he played with the cards from Metz and he wanted to go to … fell asleep here … and we were peddling works after six series of taking it, I suppose you’d call it, where each club has been on it for over a month. It doesn’t work beforehand like that.

It seems that I have ashlar … "and rubble" – ed … on the brain right now with all of this medieval architecture that I am reading. As for the rest of it, this is something else that seemed to degenerate into the usual load of … errr … nonsense.

Finally, I went for a walk with a couple of friends of mine. One of them might have been Cécile. We’d been strolling over this agricultural area where she said that she had bought some land. The further we walked, the closer we came to something that looked like an old mill with a big, tall chimney. It was an abandoned place in this field. I went to look at it, but as I did, my attention was distracted by something in a quarry that was covered in rocks. I climbed up this ladder into this quarry. There were these two boys playing at the foot of the ladder. In the quarry it turned out to be an old American 6×4 lorry, camouflaged by being covered over in rocks. I took a couple of photos of it and had a good look around it, then climbed back down. I nearly put my foot on the hand of one of these boys. I told him that it was dangerous, playing around like that. I walked off to rejoin my friends. They had come to some kind of ruined house of the kind that you find in North America. Cécile, if it was Cécile, was extremely depressed because she’d bought it thinking that it was a place to live but it was in fact a ruin. We had a really good look around inside it. There was abandoned furniture and everything and the floors were unsafe. It was in a terrible condition. The two girls decided that they would go upstairs so I said that I’d stay down here to take some photos because there was a really good view of the mill from up here on the top of this hill where we were at this house. I walked out onto the verandah ready to take some more photos of the mill while they were upstairs looking around.

Cécile of course, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, featured in my life quite significantly for a six-month period. And the American army lorry presumably relates to the one in the Grès de Lapeize … "we’re talking “ashlar” again" – ed … quarry at … errr … Lapeize where Clotilde lives, the quarry that we visited BACK IN 2010 and found the lorry. However, climbing up on a ladder to the quarry is a new departure.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up early. "I can’t stop long" she said. "There are plenty of blood tests to carry out back at the office". Of course, it’s her final day today before her week off, and her colleague’s “reluctance” in this respect is well-known.

After she left I made breakfast and then read some more of MY BOOK. We’ve had the guided tour of Ludlow Castle and we’re now having the potted history of the place. What this has to do with the “Medieval Military Architecture” I really have no idea.

Back in here I attacked my Welsh homework and I actually managed to complete three-quarters of it. It was quite difficult too, especially seeing as I had missed the one-and-a-half lessons that covered this section.

When my faithful cleaner turned up, I was still bashing away at it, so I gave up and went to have my patches fitted.

And just as well that I did, because the taxi came early – 12:20. And it was my favourite driver too. After she installed me, she told me "we have to go to the Centre Normandy to pick up another passenger". So much for my hopes of an early arrival.

Even less chance too. The other passenger was in a wheelchair and he took some rounding up. It was 12:45 when we drove away from the “Normandy”.

And when we arrived, they weren’t ready for us. They had been explaining to a new stagière how to clean and then calibrate the machines.

There were some additional tests to perform on me too today, which meant that I wasn’t finally coupled up until 14:15, fifteen minutes after the effectiveness of the anaesthetic patches has worn off, so you can imagine how the coupling up went.

At least they left me alone pretty much once the machine began to work, although there were still some tests to carry out. But everyone finished at roughly the same time, so guess who was left until last.

Once I was finally sorted out, I went outside to find that the vehicle sent for me was the minibus. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have an extraordinary amount of difficulty climbing into it. In the centre, I’d banged my wounded leg putting on my shoes, and now I banged it again trying to enter the vehicle. And it was so complicated and difficult to climb in.

The torrential rainstorm didn’t help. I was soaked to the skin trying to climb in.

To cap it all, the guy in the wheelchair from the “Normandy” was in there already, and the driver wanted to drop him off first. Not much that I can do about it.

It was 19:30 when I arrived home, soaked, uncomfortable, in pain and completely fed up.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with plenty of stuffing left for the rest of the week, followed by vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert.

So now, thoroughly fed up and thoroughly exhausted, I’m off to bed where I shall sleep for a hundred years.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about “Sam Apple Pie” and “Help Yourself” … "well, one of us has" – ed … It reminds me of when I was arranging my CDs on shelves down on the farm.
Half-way through the exercise I burst out laughing.
"What’s so funny?" asked Cécile
"Have a look!" I replied.
I’d been labelling the shelves with the musician at the start and the musician at the end, and one of my shelves was labelled "Help Yourself to Kate Bush."

Saturday 10th May 2025 – GUESS WHO …

… forgot to switch the alarms back on this morning? That’s right. Bane of Britain has triumphed again.

Consequently I had a nice, long sleep until all of 07:31 when I suddenly awoke with one of these dramatic awakenings that I have every now and again. It was nice, bright sunlight outside so I immediately guessed that there was something wrong, so I glanced at the time.

And after another late night last night a really good sleep probably did me some good too. I was exhausted after the journey back and by the time that I’d finished my meal and was back in here I wasn’t fit for very much.

Nevertheless I wrote the notes and performed some of the backing- up and then crawled off to bed at about 23:40 or something. I was asleep quite quickly and, for a change, I was dead to the World throughout the entire night. I remember nothing whatever until I awoke at 07:31.

Once I’d realised exactly what time it was I dashed … "errr … quite" – ed … into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, and sorted out the washing. Far too much to put in one machine so I just put the important things into the washing machine and set it off on its routine.

In the kitchen I had my medication, forgetting the vitamin D and the vitamin B12 that the hospital wants me to take and then back in here I was just about to check the dictaphone when Isabelle the Nurse turned up.

She admired the huge plaster on my leg and read the prescription attentively. She made a list of what she needed and ticked off what we had, indicated on the hospital’s prescription what she needed, and then issued instructions as to what else she needed, promising to write a prescription for tomorrow.

After that, it was breakfast. And then I read more of MY BOOK. Except that I didn’t. I was side-tracked yet again, firstly reading about the curious antics of Ranulf Flambard, the treasurer of William Rufus and imprisoned by Henry I, only to become the first-ever prisoner known to have escaped from the Tower of London, and then of the downfall and subsequent resurgence of William de Forz and the siege and subsequent capture of Castle Bytham by Henry III.

You can probably understand why I was no good at being a University Student. I was always wandering off down alleyways that led me far away from my course syllabus.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was something last night about a ferry – a small one like one of the ones that they have here in Granville that go out to the Ile de Chausey. In some kind of tempest or hurricane it had been badly damaged. The ferry company had one of their previous ferries – it was sitting on a plinth outside their office. What they did was to take the boat off the plinth and put it in the water and began to use that. The damaged one, they hauled it out of the water and put it on the plinth. The owners of the company decided that they would give it a thorough overhaul and repair it. Then they would check it every three years for any kind of deterioration and keep on repairing it if it needed it so that if something similar happened again they could take the one off the plinth and drop that in the water and it would be ready to go without any problems whatsoever

There was a similar story about the “Gate Guardians”, the Spitfires and Hurricanes that stood on plinths outside former World War II airfields. When we were kids, on our way to North Wales, we always noticed the one at Hawarden Airfield. However, when the film BATTLE OF BRITAIN was proposed, all of the Gate Guardians were rounded up and where it was possible to do so, were put back into the air.

There was also something about being in hospital and a nurse doing something to me which impressed me so I said something. She replied that she was only a student nurse, which surprised me. I wonder who she was. I’ve had several student nurses attending to me in the past

After that? I had some e-mails to write. There is a mountain of correspondence here going back weeks that I really must answer. However, I must have let the time slip away with me because my cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches when I was nowhere near ready.

She turned up, but the taxi didn’t. After waiting half an hour, I ‘phoned them up. "Ohh merde!" said the dispatcher in a voice loud enough that even my cleaner heard it. "I’ll find another vehicle for you".

We decided to go outside and wait, and we had a lovely forty minutes under the sun until an ambulance turned up. I hate them – it’s quite a fight for me to put myself inside – but if it’s the only vehicle available I can’t complain.

It was driven by the driver who took me to Paris. She told me that they had been on the autoroute not far from St-Lô when the call had come through. No wonder that it had taken so long to arrive. I told her that I didn’t understand any of this – after all, the taxi company had brought me back from Paris yesterday so they knew that I was at home.

Hours late at the dialysis centre, and what made it even worse was that it was a three-and-a-half hour session today. Had the taxi been on time, I could have had a very pleasant late afternoon back at my place.

The consolation was that I had Lexi and Océane dealing with me today. All of the nurses there are wonderful but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Lexi really does have the most delicate touch.

Who cares whether or not the coupling-up was painful? After Tuesday afternoon and the muscular biopsy, nothing else is painful. I had plenty of work to do, apart from sitting there watching the blood pressure slowly sink through the floor to a rather dangerous 88.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there too, but she remained stoically in her little glass cage. If she wanted something, she sent one of the girls for it. It’s a shame that she’s no longer speaking to me after my revolt the other week.

This evening, I was the last one there so they were both dealing with me. While Lexi was compressing me, Océane was inspecting my feet. I told them that I had delayed my arrival on purpose so as to have the undivided attention of both of them.

The taxi was waiting for me to bring me home and we had a very silent drive back. My cleaner was waiting and she watched and helped a little while I struggled up the stairs. She’d been to the chemist’s to buy what was needed and had bought a lettuce and some potatoes for me.

After she left, I made tea. Baked potato, salad and breaded quorn fillet followed by chocolate cake and almond soya dessert.

Now that I’ve finished my notes, I have some dictating to do and then I’m off to bed. I have plenty of work to do tomorrow, and there’s footy too – Caernarfon v Cardiff Metro, the winner going on to meet Hwlffordd to compete for the vital third European spot, accompanying TNS and Penybont.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about student nurses … "well, one of us has" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m not made correctly and taking a blood sample from me is not easy.
Nevertheless, I always encourage the student nurses to have a go. After all, they have to learn somewhere.
One of them was having so much difficulty that I told her "cheer up! If I leave this hospital alive, you won’t need to sit your exams. You will have earned your diploma by default."

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality