Category Archives: cleaner

Wednesday 6th March 2024 – GUESS WHERE …

… I’ll be this time tomorrow night.

That’s right. I had the blood sample taken this morning, it’s been analysed, the reports are in and so I have a taxi coming to pick me up at 11:00. “And bring your things”. So there!

It’s no surprise that I’m not a happy bunny. Not at all. I can’t keep on doing this. I have things to do, places to go, people to see and all that lark. There’s no room in my timetable for trips to Paris, whether by taxi, train, bus, bicycle or gaslight

So tonight I’ll have to go to bed early, in contrast to last night where it was quite a late night. But at least, once in bed I didn’t move around much

When the alarm went off next morning I crawled out of bed and checked the blood pressure. 14.5/8.5 this morning so clearly I had a quiet night. Before retiring last night it was 15.0/8.1 so there’s not a great deal of difference

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Well, at this stage of this World Cup match tickets were £97:00 per ticket. There were huge complaints from people first of all about why it was only rich people who were attending the matches, not the average supporter, and secondly, why protesting hasn’t been allowed against the football matches. In the meantime some agreement has been made that everyone who bought a ticket for the opening match will have to give their next ticket away to another customer but whether that’s a good idea or not remains to be seen. The coaches brought the two teams down. There was plenty of late team news – one team had managed with just two injuries and would play a couple of replacements and the other team had wholesale replacements because of various problems, even signing someone on the last minute but who should be able to take part in the match. They looked as if they would have difficulties to coalesce for a while. It was up to the other side to take the play to them and try their best to go ahead while they would be outgunned but not coalescing together to get them to play like a team

I should have added that the only thing that I really had to worry about was to make sure that no-one pinched my van because we’d transformed it into a mobile home and office for me during the period of the World Cup. I’d to totally lost if someone stole that.

It looks as if I have an obsession right now with being a football coach. Not of course in the same vein as in the good old days of Malcolm Allison who, upon being told that he had been appointed team coach of Kuwait, he’d be having his teeth out and seats fitted next morning.

But my football coaching experience runs, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, to the Pionsat FC’s 3rd XI who played in the lowest league of Puy-de-Dome football all those years ago and were always at or near the bottom. It’s nothing to write home about.

My favourite position in those days was either left back in the dressing toom or right back behind the touchline

Being an all-inclusive football club we had a couple of gay footballers there. They would always be happy to change ends at half-time

While we’re on the subject of the Auvergne … "well, one of us is" – ed …Rosemary rang me up for a chat. Just a short one today – 1 hour and 22 minutes during which, as usual, we put the World to rights.

If only politicians would listen to Rosemary and me the World wouldn’t be in a mess like this. We would solve all of the problems immediately without all of this nonsense

And then the cleaner sailed in. "The hospital’s been trying to contact you" she said, so I had to phone them back.

It was quite complicated too. I had to check that there was a taxi available, find out what time, book the vehicle, ring the hospital back and they would then send me a bon de transport which I’d print off and give to the driver when he or she came to pick me up.

It’s a good job that the doctor at the hospital demanded 10 authorisations otherwise I’d be struggling with this kind of thing. It’s quite a complicated system but as I’m classed as a maladie grave it’s covered in principle by the Social Security.

Quite frankly, having a few taxi-ambulances that are conventionné by the Social Security is a little goldmine

This afternoon the cleaner came round to clean so I stayed in my room, chose my music for another radio show, paired it off, joined the tracks together and wrote out half of the notes.

One thing that I’ve learned following the debacle last weekend is that once it’s completed, I’ll read through it to make sure that it makes sense and that I don’t have to re-write it or anything.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry with rice, veg and a naan bread and I do have to say that everything – the naan bread included – was cooked to perfection and it was the best leftover curry meal that I have ever made

And it’s just as well because I shudder to think of what I’ll be eating for the next few days.

Tomorrow morning first thing I’ll be baking some bread. If I’m going to hospital for a few days I’ll need some supplies to sustain me so cheese and hummus salad sandwiches are on the agenda. I might look into making flapjacks too or something like that as a pleasant dessert.

If anyone else has any suggestions, then provided that they are physically possible they’ll be welcome

The food in these places really is bad, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And, as you’ve probably noticed, I love my food. It’s the only luxury that I have left these days. And in the hospital it’s not even possible to go to a café or order a pizza.

Add to that the fact that my neighbour, who usually smuggles supplies in to me, won’t be in Paris while I’m there – I checked of course.

So all in all it’s going to be a depressing stay there, something that will become even worse I suppose when I discover what they intend to do with me.

And if it’s something nasty, these days I can’t run fast to escape at all – not like the time after one of my car accidents when I was going hell for leather down the corridor until the doctor saved the day by shouting to the nurse who was pursuing me "I said remove his SPECTACLES".

Tuesday 5th March 2024 – I’M NOT GOING …

… to have a mechanical aid fitted, so I’m told. I imagine that the mention of such a device in the letter that I’d received was just something to tempt me to turn up.

It certainly had me puzzled though as to what it might have been and I bet that it had a few of you scratching your heads too.

First things first though.

There were a few things that needed doing last night and as a result I was once more rather late for bed. Very late in fact, so I didn’t have as much sleep as I would have liked.

Rather less, in fact, than it might seem because it was another night like the previous one where I was tossing and turning around for quite a while

But when the alarm went off I rolled out of bed and had a search for the blood pressure tester. 14.9/8.5 this morning, compared to 17.1/10.6 from the previous evening. What had made me so worked up yesterday evening then?

On that note I went off and organised the medication for today, checked all of my papers, had a wash and waited for the car to come for me.

It eventually turned up and I was able to have a lift down into town and the Centre de Re-education.

After quite a wait she eventually saw me. We discussed my medical case, she inspected my legs and prescribed an ecograoh and 30 sessions of physiotherapy; transport included. I can see that I’m going to be a busy boy.

Back here I managed the stairs fine, so I’ll give them a couple more goes before deciding whether or not to resume shopping on Friday. I’m longing to get out and about and go for a bus trip and my morning coffee, but it’s no good if I have difficulty coming back home again

By the time that I’d made my coffee and warmed my fruit bun my Welsh lesson had started so I joined in. And it wasn’t as successful as the previous couple, mainly no doubt due to the fact that I hadn’t prepared for it

That’s something that I really should have done last night, knowing that I wouldn’t be here this morning. But even if I had, I wouldn’t have remembered any of it.

And then I had to listen to the dictaphone. I know that there’s some stuff on there from the night because I remember having to search for the batteries while I was asleep. Yes – I can do that too.

So anyway something must have happened to have made the King of France, whoever it was … "if she was Aliénor d’Aquitaine, it was Louis VII" – ed … dispose of his wife Aliénor as quickly and dramatically as possible because when I fell asleep all I could see was the flash of an explosion – a metaphorical explosion and him waving his arms around driving her away out of hid palace. It must have been a famous eruption for him to have disposed of Aliénor like that.

And if it was indeed Louis VII and Aliénor of Aquitaine, there really must have something of an explosion when their marriage was over because she went off and married the prince who was to become Henry II of England. She took with her the province of Aquitaine and thus the seeds of the Hundred Years War were sown

With Louis, Henry and Aliénor all having met in France very shortly before the separation, there must have been something going on of which Louis suddenly became aware. Their marriage was described as “shaky” anyway, but that would be nothing unusual in those days and no cause for alarm.

Mind you, you can’t blame Henry. Even though he was 9 years or so younger than Aliénor. The Carmina Burana, a contemporary manuscript discovered several centuries later writes
" Si tout l’univers était mien
Depuis l’Océan jusqu’au Rhin
J’y renoncerais avec joie
Pour pouvoir tenir dans mes bras
La reine d’Angleterre"
“If all the Universe was mine , from the ocean to the Rhine, I’d give it up with pleasure to be able to hold the Queen of England in my arms”. Sounds rather like me with either Castor, Zero or TOTGA.

And then one of the teams in the feeder leagues had been promoted to the Premier League so there was a big discussion about the kind of players that they needed to sign. One or two suggestions were made but I wasn’t very happy with either of them although I liked the full-back whose name had been bandied around by the club. In the Premier League games themselves I found that they were defending too far back towards their own goal and the back line could be pushed forward another 20 yards to make an effective stopping zone for everything to happen but it took a while to convince the managers concerned

And that reminds me of that dreadful game in the summer between TNS and that Swedish team whose name I forget … "it was BK Hacken" – ed … when they camped out on the edge of their own penalty area and waited for the opposition to attack them – with the inevitable results.

Later on I was up on the Scottish Borders again … "again" – ed … Someone – it might have been Claude – had given me the surround for an electric fire and it had an image of all these coal-fired electric fires that lit up when you plugged it into the mains. I’d given it to the people up there to put next to heir coal fire. It meant a complete redesign of their living room which was a work in itself, disturbing the children and everything. In the end we managed to make it fit on the wall right next to their coal fire. I have to say that it did look impressive even though we’d had to shorten it somewhat. It made that area look so much nicer. But as usual there were all kinds of debates, discussions and complications that went on up there about all kinds of various things, very little of which had to do with anything. There was also a meeting of the folk festival committee so we had to go down to the village hall as well for a discussion. I remember that the trip between the house and the village hall was nothing like the real trip with the house being situated several miles outside the village. It was much closer than that in the dream.

And I’ve no idea why this area should suddenly have come into my subconscious. None at all. Apart from the fact that ONE OF MY THESES FOR MY DEGREE was based on that area, the only person who ever meant anything to me out of that crowd has been pushing up the daisies for a considerable period of time now.

I wonder – did I dictate that load of nonsense about a song and a guitar that I dreamed that I was dictating stuff for the radio programme and it was all coming out absolute nonsense and I couldn’t remember half the names of the groups … "no you didn’t" – ed …. I had Adrian Gurvitz and the Adrian Gurvitz Army doing something at one point but I’m sure he’s never appeared on any of my programmes… "he hasn’t" – ed … I remember thinking as I was dictating that this is a total load of nonsense and it’s never going to work – me dictating a radio programme in my sleep.

Yes, another dream in which I was dreaming that I was dreaming. It’s al good stuff, isn’t it? Mind you, as for dictating nonsense, it’s par for the course, isn’t it? Even I don’t understand it, and I’m the one talking about it all.

And as it happens, I agree that my radio stuff is nonsense. What I’ve been doing this afternoon is going through the notes for the two programmes that I dictated on Saturday night and rewriting them. They were absolutely dismal, with all kinds of errors. There really are times when this medication is totally screwing up my mind.

However, I’ve been typing – and talking – nonsense for all these years. Why blame it on the medication now?

The cleaner came by and brought some more soya yoghurt as I’m almost out.

And I let her photograph the jar of tahini that I finished yesterday, so that she knows what she’ll be looking for at the shops. Two jars of that in stock will keep me going with hummus for quite a while and we’ll keep the vampires and werewolves away for quite a while.

But there’s been quite a storm about the decline in standards of English grammar with the remake of that old film "I Were A Teenage Waswolf"

Tea tonight was a delicious taco roll with rice and veg, with the last of the rice pudding for a while seeing as I now have sufficient stocks of soya desserts. But the rice pudding was really nice and made a pleasant change.

So tomorrow I have the injection, the blood test and I wonder what will happen next. It’s been a couple of weeks since they last changed my medication and we can’t go on like this. The cleaner hasn’t been there for a fortnight and I’m sure that she’s missing the journey.

It’s a good job that she goes and not me. I went there once and asked for a packet of condoms
"What would you like?" she asked. "Normal, ribbed, extra-sensory or multi-coloured?"
"I’ll have a pack of the multi-coloured, I reckon"
Nine months later I went back in and asked the pharmacist
"I’d like to buy a maternity dress for a friend, please?"
"Certainly, sir" she said. "What bust?"
"The red one" I replied.

Friday 1st March 2024 – DYDD GWYL DEWI HAPUS …

… to everyone who can understand that.

And a happy St David’s Day to those of you who can’t.

It didn’t occur to me until this morning that I ought to be making a leek and potato soup, or maybe some bara brith or lava bread. It completely slipped my mind until it was far too late to do anything about it.

However, I did remember to prepare a “St David’s Day Special” for the radio featuring nothing but Welsh rock musicians. People like Man and Deke Leonard pumping out the stuff, but also stuff like Kim Simmonds from his heyday with Savoy Brown.

And also The Neutrons, desperate for a female voice for one of their songs on TALES FROM THE BLUES COCOONS, and someone drags in this young dancer who they found in ballet school down the road, Caromay Dixon, who was only 15 at the time but whose voice hypnotised all of us there.

They even WROTE A SONG for her to sing on the album.

But anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

Last night was another late night and I didn’t have much sleep yet again. No football match to keep me awake – I was busy doing other things.

However for a change, it was good night’s sleep and I felt much better for it when the alarm went off. I still didn’t want to drag myself out of bed when the alarm went off, but it couldn’t be helped.

First stop was the blood pressure, and after all this time it seems that this part of the medication is working. Last night’s was 16.3/13.5 but this morning’s was 13.5/7.8, well within the parameters that they sent me at the start.

In the living room I had to track down some medication and then I could fuel myself up.

This morning’s task was to make bread for the weekend – three bread rolls. And even though I did exactly the same as I did last week, the dough didn’t rise today like it had done then.

The only difference was the yeast. Is this cheap yeast no good then? And ought I to be using the more expensive yeast that seemed to work last week? That’s an interesting idea.

My cheese on toast was still nice though so I’m not complaining too much.

While I was at it, I made a large rice pudding again to last me for the next couple of days. I’m becoming quite a fan of those too.

Having had my breakfast I came in here to listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, who had come with me. There was a group of us at some kind of athletics meeting last night. We were the ones putting out all of the hurdles etc for the athletes to jump etc. This went on for quite a while and then they announced the winner. I wasn’t paying that much attention but they also said that he’d won the student games and the National Indoor games in the summer. I was very keen to find out who he was so I decided to use the internet so I could look it up. We drifted on from there and were on our way home. Liz – the “other Liz” was with us and I was with Percy Penguin. We came out of High Street in Crewe and walked up Market Street in the pedestrian area. Percy Penguin and I had a very happy air about us as if something important had happened.

we were actually turning into Victoria Street at that moment from Market Street.

Next weekend it will be 15 years since the “other Liz” shuffled off this mortal coil. We served on the same University committees so we often found ourselves travelling together from one end of the country to the other – from Milton Keynes up to Newcastle upon Tyne and then down to Bristol for meetings of the Disabled Students group.

On one occasion, stopping off at Shrewsbury for a meal on our way from Bristol to Newcastle upon Tyne we encountered an old girlfriend of mine from school. On another occasion we came across a Wishbone Ash concert so we hung around for a while until it started.

She came to Brussels as a guest of the Belgian Association and attended a couple of meetings of the North European Students in Cologne with Jackie and me.

After she died I took her daughter to Canada to install her at University there and, leaving STRAWBERRY MOOSE to take care of her, I went off on my EPIC JOURNEY ON THE TRANS LABRADOR HIGHWAY

But anyway, all that was a long time ago.

After breakfast I made a start on finishing off the radio notes but I had another one of those cataleptic-like trances again – sitting for a couple of hours totally unable to function. It was just as if I had switched off. It was really strange.

But at some point I must have gone off to sleep because at some point in the proceedings I was changing the clutch cable in a Ford Sierra – and what a messy job that was having to route it through the bodywork. We ended up with most of the front panelling out of the car to fit it.

Being miles away like this, it took an age to come back into the present world but when I did I hauled myself off into the kitchen to make it look a little more respectable for the cleaner

While she was here I finished off the notes and then began to convert a pile of the music in the queue into an appropriate format to use on the radio. There’s tons of that in the waiting list and it will take an age to convert.

But at least I’ve managed to salvage a couple of albums that had become lost in the technological piles of spaghetti and I’m sure that there will be others hidden in there too.

Tea tonight was salad and chips with some of these nuggets. The air fryer came to the rescue again. I’m nevertheless going to have to look to see if I can make better use of it.

There must be dozens of things that I can be doing with it that I’ve not even explored yet. Cake-making, for example. I have a small cake tin that will fit.

And what else?

But as long as I can remain awake long enough to make them. I’m completely fed up of falling asleep at the drop of a hat. It’s really getting on my nerves.

Our old friend Gotthold Lessing said about some other subject "A man who does not lose his reason over certain things has none to lose" and I’m certainly going to lose my reason over this.

If I had a spleen I would vent it, that’s for sure.

And that reminds me of the doctor in that hospital in Verdun in 2017 who said that he wanted to check my spleen and began to undo my shirt
"I hope that you have good eyesight" I said
"Why’s That?" he asked
"Because my spleen’s in a glass jar on a shelf in a hospital in Montlucon 300 miles away from here"

Thursday 29th February 2024 – I’M NOT SURE …

… what the hell is happening to me right now.

Most of the afternoon I’ve spent fighting off wave after wave of sleep. In fact, it’s reached such a stage that I probably would have been better off and accomplished more had I succumbed and had a comfortable half-hour on the chair in the office.

The trouble is that it never turns out to be half an hour though. I could be crashed out on the chair for several weeks and it all would be the same.

Despite everything else it turned into another quite late night. I was browsing away on the internet before going to bed and came across a match between Stenhousemuir and someone who I’ve forgotten in the Scottish League Second Division.

It was such an exciting match that not only did I not remember the opposition but I can’t even remember the score. All I know is that in some kind of vague ethereal kind of way I know Stenhousemuir’s goalkeeper

So I watched the game until the final whistle (at least, according to the Internet broadcast which was running way in arrears) and then went off to bed.

When the alarm went, I fell out of bed as usual and the first thing that I did was to check my blood pressure. And to my surprise, it’s 12.9/8.0, which is well within the limits that they’ve set me. Last night it was 15.5/9.3 so that’s quite a significant drop.

So with the blood pressure medication apparently working, I went into the kitchen for some more, and a pile of the rest of the stuff too.

Back in here I sat down and began to deal with the dictaphone notes from the night. We started off with a group of us working on songs last night, a group of us. We were singing some of Help Yourself’s songs. The person who recorded it made something of a mess of it so we had to start again. In the meantime he went to fetch the albums and put the albums on for us to listen to. One of the tracks of course was MONA and the other one was WHO DO YOU LOVE (which is not by Help Yourself but by Quicksilver Messenger Service, but let’s not go letting facts get in the way of a good dream). I was getting everything ready when a woman came over to chat. She introduced herself and said that she was talking on behalf of her two children. They really loved these songs even though the timing was rather weird. We asked what about the timing that was weird. In the end she identified the gaps in between the songs. We said that if the gaps between the songs was the problem we could record the whole thing for her but have a gentle lead-in to each one where the album started. She seemed quite pleased with that. She asked me if I was going on a holiday this year I laughed and said “when I can get the timing right I’ll be going” to which she laughed too.

And later on one of our group was summoned to hospital. Although he currently couldn’t walk he was sent a taxi voucher and could apply for a taxi to go there. We went to reception to make this appointment. He left the paper with the agent and told her to book a taxi for him. After he’d gone she began and reached the letter C before she found a firm willing to take him. She wrote down all the details carefully but it turned out that that one was owned by her husband …fell asleep here …The people booked the taxi for him and sent him the details. But when it turned up the driver was actually his wife’s ex-husband so it was a very gloomy, depressing ride to Paris, and even worse because on the way back they had to stop to pick up something else. The conversation proved to be extremely difficult with this guy because of the issues that he was having with his wife’s ex-husband etc. Eventually he made it back home. When everyone learned about his trip to Paris we all tried our best to have the trip covered by another company but we couldn’t find another company that wanted to go to Paris so we could see that this was going to be an extremely difficult proposition getting this guy to Paris without the insurance company or his wife knowing about it

And that reminds me of the story of the woman who ordered a taxi to driver her and her new husband to the airport to go on their honeymoon the day after their marriage, only to find that the taxi was driven by her ex-husband. I could well imagine the conversation that took place during that 40-mile trip.

My taxi passengers were much different than that though, like the one whose claim to fame was to have beaten her partner to death with a frozen chicken. Crewe is a very strange place.

Having dealt with that, the next task was to hunt down some music. There are two tracks that I need for a radio programme that I’m preparing right now. and finding them is complicated. But it was worth it because I came across some more stuff that will come in handy too at a later date.

Then I had to download it all, convert it into a format that I could use and then edit it so that it’s suitable to broadcast. All of that takes time.

But it’s probably going to be worth it because while I was delving deep into some very lost archives I came across not just a copy of an album that was considered by Columbia Records to be their worst-selling album ever and abandoned quite quickly, but some songs that were actually recorded during the sessions but omitted from the pressing

So having assembled all of my music, I could pair it off and then join the music together in each pair, and then begin to write the notes. And I’m about a third of a way through them. I can hopefully finish off the rest tomorrow.

Things might have been much more advanced today had I not had to keep on fighting off these waves of sleep.

And then there was the nurse bringing back my medical card, then breakfast, followed by the cleaner bringing me to post, followed by the lunchtime fruit, and then the mid-afternoon hot chocolate.

That’s probably not all the interruptions either. It’s quite likely that there were others in amongst all of that but I can’t remember them now.

Tea tonight was a burger cooked in the air fryer and that was a success but the onions weren’t they don’t need 10 minutes in there with the burger – 5 minutes is plenty for them and I’ll have to remember that. They were somewhat … errr … overcooked.

Still, never mind. This air fryer is all one big learning curve. We’ll get there in the end.

But right now the only end that I seem to be getting to is the one at the end of my tether. I’m going through another one of those phases where I just can’t seem to actually accomplish anything.

There’s so much work around here, yet I start something and never seem to finish it, with all of these distractions going on and I don’t know how or am not able to stop them.

At times I feel rather like Fridtjof Nansen, the Polar explorer and humanitarian when he said "the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I perceived – riddle after riddle led to new riddles and this drew me on"

But as Louis XIV said, "at our age, we must no longer expect good fortune". I shall just have to work harder.

Either that or put my bed in the microwave. That way I’ll have my 8 hours sleep in just 10 minutes.

Wednesday 28th February 2024 – TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY …

… Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play. But it was also when I retired from full-time employment.

For the first time, that is.

At 50 years of age we were pulled out of the front line at work. They considered that we no longer had the speed, the fitness and the reflexes to cope with the conditions.

That, of course, is nonsense. There’s nothing wrong with my reflexes even today and, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I was still running every night up until two years ago

But anyway, there we were.

For the following 15 years life would be driving around Brussels in one of the fleet of Berlingos delivering parcels between the various buildings or, in my case seeing as I had a PSV licence, driving the shuttle bus.

But badger that for a game of cowboys. If you ask me which is more stressful – driving 4.5 tonnes of armoured Open Omega down a German autobahn at 260 kph at 04:00 or driving a shuttle bus around Brussels during the rush hour – I know which one I’d say.

With redeployment looming, my boss having retired and with “early retirement” being bandied about with all these hordes of Bulgarians and Romanians queueing up to join at half the salary we were receiving, I made sure that my pancreas flared up again.

A spell of sick leave, and then that was that

What followed was a lovely year of rest and then, after going to South Carolina for Rhys’s wedding, I picked up the threads.

A spell on a CDI working for General Electric’s training school to cover for maternity leave followed by 11 months at that bizarre American company where I met Alison, and then I set out for the Auvergne to seek my fortune, and the rest is history.

It wasn’t an early retirement last night though. In fact, what with one thing and another – and once you make a start you’ll be surprised how many other things there are – it was later than usual, and that’s saying something considering how late things have been just recently.

And when the alarm went off, I was totally wasted. I never felt less like leaving the bed but I had to make an effort.

First thing was to check the blood pressure – 13.8/8.7. That’s low. Below the target figure in fact. And much better than last night’s 17.2/10.5. I wonder what happened during the night to bring down my blood pressure.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see what had gone on during the night. With the fall in blood pressure I didn’t expect that one of my favourite young ladies had been to visit me, but you never know. I was back in school at the start of last night with a group of people. We noticed that there was a girl standing not too far away from us looking at what was going on. I knew the girl – she lived in Shavington. I was just on the point of shouting to her to be friendly when I awoke.

Awoke – yet again, just as I’m about to speak to a girl. There’s something strange going on these days about this.

Then there was a football tournament taking place with all of the big clubs taking part. Almost everyone was having a go at refereeing matches. When it was my turn I drew Tottenham Hotspurs against someone else, I can’t remember. I took the ball and walked down to the pitch. On the touchline was an old friend of mine so I said “hello” to him and talked about another adventure. I tossed a coin and called to Spurs to ask what colour they wanted. They guessed correctly “yellow” so I set the board out because the pitch was something like a chessboard. They complained that the board had been set out incorrectly. It should have been set out the other way round. I didn’t think that it made very much difference so I told them to shut up and get on with it. In the end they went to complain to the FA. Someone from the FA came down. He agreed that the pitch had been incorrectly laid out and as kick-off hadn’t taken place we could reset the board the correct way round and start the match. This was a decision that completely disappointed me. I thought that the FA would have at least tried to uphold my authority as referee instead of behaving like this.

And did I dictate the story about the little girl who was born? … "no you didn’t" – ed … It was Alison Something. She had a very sad life and died as barely a teenager. The Doors wrote a song about her which became famous.

If they did, I can’t think of the song. Plenty of “Alison” songs, but none by the Doors as far as I can tell.

So anyway I stepped back into this football match. As I went in Tottenham Hotspurs were playing and they won the toss for kick-off so set the board out for them to start to play but they thought that I’d set it out incorrectly – that the point should be on the row that started on the second row. I measured it al and it would be the same distance so there’s no problem so … fell asleep here …

When the alarm went off, I wondered why the dictaphone wasn’t in its usual place on the corner of the chest of drawers. It was down the bed still ticking over showing 2 hours and 15 minutes. That’ll teach me to fall asleep again with it in my hand.

One thing that I can tell you is that it’s not very interesting listening to myself sleeping. And I remember a couple of times when Percy Penguin elbowed me in the ribs and said “stop snoring!”.

“I never snore” I would reply. “You must be dreaming it”. And now having heard myself sleeping, I’m sorry for doubting you.

The nurse came round, gave me my injection and took a blood sample.

The results are back now. My haemoglobin is slowly rising, which is good news, but so is my carcinogenic protein, which is bad news. It should be between 59 and 106 units, and it’s gone up from 270.3 to 276.4 in a week. The active enzymes, which should be between 6.7 and 11.8 are actually 31.2

In other words, things are slowly deteriorating, which is what I expect so there’s no big issue there. However, it is the first time that I’ve seen the word “terminal” written on the results of my blood test.

With the cleaner coming round I tidied up somewhat as best as I could in order to give her the impression that I cared, and then wrote out some cheques to pay a few bills here and there. She’ll post the letters for me while she’s on her travels

And then regrettably I crashed out for a while, which is no surprise after my late night.

But it wasn’t the usual kind of “crashed-out” – it was more like a cataleptic fit of some description where I’m perfectly aware of my surroundings, such as the radio playing on the computer, but I’m totally unable to move or to react to anything

It’s not the first time that I’ve had one of these either, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

This afternoon I finished my radio notes ready for dictation and then after the cleaner had left I made the dough for my next lot of naan bread and left it to fester.

Back in here I had more things to do but crashed out yet again, properly and really deeply too. I remember absolutely nothing at all of anything. I was so deeply in that I almost missed my tea.

But my leftover curry and fresh naan bread were delicious yet again, especially after I remembered to put the garlic in the naan dough. It was all cooked to absolute perfection too.

But now I think that I’ll go and have an early night. Right now, Tom Petty is telling me "I await the day
Good fortune comes our way
And we’ll ride down the King’s Highway"

But I’m going to have a pretty long wait. Having driven down the King’s Highway, along the Carolina coast, once or twice, I can’t see me ever having the possibility of doing it again.

He also says a little later " don’t want to end up
In a room all alone"

But it looks as if that’s exactly how I’m going to end up, the way these blood test results are going.

But never mind. He goes on to sing "Sometimes I get discouraged
Sometimes I feel so down
Sometimes I get so worried
And I don’t know what about
But it works out in the long run
It always goes away
I’ve come now to accept it
As a reoccurring phase"

That’s certainly true too. if something else crops up now, it’ll have to wait for a couple of weeks until I can find the time to worry about it.

Monday 26th February 2024 – IT LOOKS AS …

… if I’ll be back in hospital sooner than I imagined.

In fact, if the hospital had its way I’d be there now.

The nurse who telephones me every few days to find out how I am and so I told her, and that was that. She told the doctor and he issued the instructions, and left it to the nurse to find a date seeing as I turned down “today”.

Yes, it’s “all go” here in the apartment. I wasn’t in bed very early because I had things to do, even though I was tired. And so I didn’t have much sleep.

What sleep I had was quite good though and I wish that I had had more of it. There’s no doubt that I seem to be sleeping better these days than I have done but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. As I have said before … "" – ed … my nocturnal travels are very important to me.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and went to take the blood pressure. A very low 14.8/8.9 this morning, compared to 17.1/11.8 last night.

After the medication I came back in here and had a few things to do before I could transcribe the dictaphone notes. We were at school last night. There was an issue about climate change etc. Our headmaster gave a speech to a certain organisation about something or other on this subject. It turned out to be a huge self-justification about all kinds of things. I somehow managed to access the meeting so I stood up and made a speech simultaneously criticising him for all kinds of different things that had gone on in the past in the school for which I considered him to be responsible but no-one took any notice of me at all. I thought “fair enough”. My life carried on as usual, I had a nice girlfriend (and I wish that I knew who she was). Then I noticed that there wee jobs for school leavers. A couple of them were really interesting. One was to go to Kenya for a couple of years as some kind of exchange of teacher or something like that. I must admit that that appealed to me. Anyway I wanted to go to sort out the headmaster. He had a meeting of people my year at school at the start of the afternoon so I went five minutes early and said “I want to talk to you”. He looked at me and said “and what position are you after?”. I had to be honest and explain that although I was after the one in Kenya I’d come to see him on another matter. He took the greatest amount of umbrage with me criticising him for his speech. He was really quite aggressive with his defence of what he said which I thought was way, way over the top and out of place.

It’s one thing that I’ve noticed about Climate Change deniers and the others of their ilk. When you challenge their “beliefs” the become quite aggressive and try to shout you out of their argument. Yet the facts are indisputable.

"Climate change is a natural phenomenon" – indeed it is, but that’s no reason for us to do nothing about it. It’s like saying that the Titanic was going to sink anyway so why bother pumping? The answer is that by pumping it gave them an extra couple of hours for Carpathia to come to the rescue. And that’s why we have to keep on trying to save the planet – to give us more time to find a solution.

"The Earth is simply rotating on its axis like it normally does". Indeed it does, but at a rate of 1° per 7,000 years according to calculations made by Sir Norman Lockyer, so we’re talking of arcoseconds in real terms. But if that’s what is going on according to the naysayers, why aren’t other parts of the World freezing as quickly as the High Arctic is melting?

But seriously, anyone who has been to the High Arctic can see the evidence for themselves. I was talking to an Inuit on Bylot Island who told me that he used to come to the spot where I was standing to fetch a block of ice for his old grandfather to make tea. And then he took me to the head of the glacier where it was in 2018 – a walk of 1.5 miles
"So how old were you when you did this?"
"Twelve or thirteen"
"How old are you now?"
"Twenty-four"

The glacier has receded 1.5 miles in 12 years.

In the memoirs of James Rae he writes about battling through the snow and ice around Pelly’s Bay in August 1854 when he met a group of Inuit who gave him information and relics about Franklin’s lost expedition. We landed at Pelly’s Bay to refuel on our way out to Mittimatalik in September 2018 and there wasn’t a fleck of snow anywhere.

The presentation that I did on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR was afrer we’d sailed several miles up a Fjord on Ellesmere Island and I showed a slide of an Admiralty chart of 1857 which showed no fjord there – the whole island was covered by an ice cap all the way down to the sea according to the chart.

Bylot Island, where I talked to that Inuit, wasn’t even an island. If you look at the map you’ll see that the strait that separates it from the mainland of Baffin Island is called “Pond Inlet” because that’s what it was when Europeans first visited it. It wasn’t until the ice melted that they discovered that Bylot Island was actually an island.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed, following on from the previous dream, the girl to whom the headmaster refused to talk … "which girl?" – ed … ended up teaching part-time at a college which was part of the story and in fact taught German to the guy who took over from her boss as whatever official position it was for which the girl was secretary, but she was still chasing her boss and trying to persuade him to either justify his speech or to withdraw it and the implications that it had against us, this particular girl.

It seems that there’s a chunk missing from these dreams somewhere, and that seems to be a regular thing. It makes me wonder what else I’ve missed, and I know that ON ONE OCCASION I missed a visit from Castor. Imagine that!

Having done that and pushed it out of the way I went to finish the radio programme that I was organising yesterday. It meant dictating the notes that I’d written last night for the final track that I’d chosen, and then editing it and adding it all in with the actual song.

And to my surprise it was exactly one second SHORT.

When they are too long, I can cope quite easily. I always include in my notes some things that can be edited out if necessary to bring them down to the correct time; but when they are too short it requires more inventiveness.

But one second isn’t too bad. That’s 20×0.050 second “silence generated” pauses in salient places and that’s the job done.

After that I chose all of the music for the next radio programme, paired it off and began to write the notes for it. I could have done much more too except that I … errr … had a rest

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper, with plenty of stuffing left over, thanks to having forgotten my mushrooms on Friday and a suspect tomato in the fridge. That will keep me going for a few more meals.

Tomorrow I have a Welsh lesson, and then there’s an order to send off to LeClerc as I’m running low on frozen vegetables. So tomorrow late afternoon will see me blanching carrots and sprouts ready to freeze. Still, there’s some chocolate cake left to see me through

Then I’ll have to think about this hospital appointment. Will it be for a stay or just a day visit? I know that it’s for a lumbar puncture which I dread, but I can’t believe that they’ll send me home on the same day.

But as Macbeth said, "If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly". And he was right. No point in waiting around because it will still be the same. It’s as Terry Venables once eloquently put it – "if history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again"

Or as Vivian Green sang, "Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain"

Friday 23rd February 2024 – MY DAY OF …

… baking was quite a success.

And it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say that

Yes, everything that I did today seemed to work and I’ve ended up with some pretty nice stuff. I’m quite pleased.

Ad for a change I actually had a good night too. In bed nice and early and I didn’t have much that kept me awake . And once I’d gone to sleep, I stayed asleep until the alarm went off.

Billy Cotton made me leave the bed and the first thing that I did was to take my blood pressure. 15.1/8.6. That’s low compared to how it has been. You can tell that I didn’t have a visit from Castor, Zero or TOTGA last night.

Before I went to bed it was 17.5/10.4 so the sleep did me some good by the looks of things.

After the morning medication the first thing that I did was to make the dough for the bread. And kneading it gently, as if I was massaging Zero’s clavicles, I was careful not to overwork it by resorting to violence.

When I was quite satisfied that it was ready, I rolled it out into a long sausage, cut it into three equal sections and then flattened it all down.

A handy small baking tray with a piece of baking paper was called into service upon which they could repose and hopefully rise.

Next step was to make the vegan cream filling. Whizz ip some milk until it’s quite frothy, add sugar, a little butter, vanilla extract, cornflour, and whizz it all up while slowly heating it in a saucepan.

That was complicated. I had the hand-whisk whisking it all over the kitchen until I managed to rig up a saucepan lid as a shield.

Meanwhile, melt some chocolate in the microwave and when it’s melted, whisk it well into the mixture

When It’s all whisked and nice and thick, leave it to cool. And there’s my chocolate cream filling.

Then the chocolate cake. A mixture of flour, sugar, oil, water and cocoa powder with a few extras. All mixed up into a kind-of batter-like goo, poured into a cake tray and then baked for 40 minutes.

By now the vegan cream was cold so it went in the fridge and I put the bread in the oven to bake.

They had risen quite nicely and were baked to perfection too so I had some lovely cheese on toast.

Rosemary rang me in the middle of everything so I phoned her back. Just a short chat today – a mere 58 minutes during which we put the World to rights but I also ended up going for a virtual drive around Montlucon.

Once everything was finished and the chaos was over I had a listen to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d started work but there was still a girl at school who I happened to like. For the last few mornings I’d been taking her into school. One particular morning we were running really late. It meant that I was going to be late for work if I dropped her off at school but nevertheless I was going to drop her off. We were preparing everything and panicking a little – I wasn’t dressed even. One of my friends came along and asked me what was happening. The girl briefly explained. He immediately said “I can run you into school to save Eric some bother”. I said that it’s no bother because I was quite interested in spending as much time as possible with her but he absolutely insisted and insisted until in the end she went off with him. I was furious. I sent him a text message “after all you promised me last time …” (because we’d had a similar situation a while ago where he’d done exactly the same thing and spiked my guns with a certain young lady. So I was set to go to work but there was a whole crowd of schoolkids around. I was in my Ford Cortina estate. I had to make the kids move so I could leave the car park but for some unknown reason they didn’t want to go. At that moment the car turned into a kind of cross between a bus and a taxi. All the kids were pleased because that was what they were waiting for. They said that they’d been waiting for a bus but the school had produced something else so there were some issues. I had to watch them safely aboard. I wasn’t sure which school they attended or where they went so in order to prevent a stampede I said “Primary School children first”. A few came on. Then I had to think of another way of dividing up these schoolkids so that I wouldn’t have all of them on board at once. But I was absolutely furious with my friend for spiking my guns with that other girl. It’s exactly what has happened before with him and it’s exactly what has happened in loads of dreams before this. Any time I’m anywhere close to getting the girl someone comes along to spoil it

Looking back at what I dictated, I was surprised that I’d been able to express myself like that during a dream. They must have been things that I felt quite deeply.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s usually my family who appear during the night and forestall all of my plans, sticking the baton dans la rue of whatever project I’m undertaking. They are always appearing at the crucial moment just as I’m about to Get The Girl and blow my chances out of the water.

But in the past, there have been a couple of friends who had the habit of doing that. One of them pretended to be looking after my best interests, as if I was senile or something, but in actual fact he had another agenda completely.

The second one, the one in the dream, he couldn’t stand to see anyone Get The Girl, whether he had already got a girl or not. He was of the opinion that only he should ever Get The Girl, no matter how many other girls he already had and that’s not an exaggeration either.

Anyway, this is all water under the bridge. There’s no point really in raking up stuff like this. Ambrose Bierce said "A year is a period of 365 disappointments" and we should all simply be resigned to it

It’s as I said though, there are some things that drag you down. Instead of trying to rise up, people simply want you to be down at their level. And in the end you either sink in with them or cast them all aside.

In Matthew 10:14 the Bible tells you "if anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet"

So abandoning another good rant for the moment, the cleaner was here again so I finished off the radio notes and hacked a few sound-tracks about to extract and convert a few tracks that I need for the next programme.

While I was at it, I hacked around a few sound-tracks of Louis de Funès films to collect a few more sound-bytes. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that although he’s been dead for several years, he and I have some interesting chats on my radio programmes.

Of course, having served on the Students’ Executive Committee and on other committees dealing with the various University bodies, I’m quite used to communicating with the deceased.

But Louis de Funès is my favourite French actor. Who will ever forget the MUSKATNOOS, HERR MULLER? or the NUDISTS sketches?

His sound-bytes really fit in well with my programmes and I keep on looking out for more in order to enlarge our conversations.

When the cleaner had gone I went into the kitchen, took the cake and cut it into 3 equal sizes. The took the cream from the fridge, whisked it again and used it as a filler in order to layer the slices. It was then wrapped in baking paper, clingfilm and put in the fridge.

And from what I tasted from the crumbs that were scattered around, it will be a world-beating cake. Nice and rich and chocolaty. I hope that it will last a while too. I’m fed up of things going off so quickly

Tea was chips from the air fryer with some of those vegan nuggets. There was a salad too which was delicious, and it would have been even more so had I remembered the mushrooms. I really don’t know what’s happening to me right now.

The vegan mayonnaise that I made though is holding up really well and was delicious.

So no alarm in the morning, a nice lie-in with a cooked breakfast and chocolate cake for my afternoon snack. It doesn’t get much better than this. A nice lazy day is planned with a football match in the late afternoon and a cooked tea with vegan wellington and roast potatoes.

That should give me something to celebrate, right enough. And i deserve it. I never thought that I’d ever arrive here. But as Mae West said, "If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."

However, it’s too late to do anything about that now. I’ve managed to live to a ripe old age, and there’s no doubt that as I’ve grown older, I’ve certainly grown riper.

Anyone nearby will tell you that.

Wednesday 21st February 2024 – I DON’T KNOW …

… why but I seem to have lost all of my motivation today.

It’s been rather flaky for several months, even years, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but today, there it was – gone. And never called me “mother” either.

It’s not as if I didn’t have a good night either. I was in bed early, wasn’t interrupted too much, all of that kind of thing. Anyone would have thought that I’d have been ready for anything.

But at some point during the night, and I wish that I knew where it was, all of my “get up and go” must have got up and gone, leaving me behind. And so that was that.

It was an early night too. It didn’t take too long to finish everything off after I’d done my notes. And then I hauled myself off to bed, pushing STRAWBERRY MOOSE out of the way. He’s worse than a cat, monopolising everything around here.

And for once, I had a good night’s sleep and I hardly remember being awoken at all during the night. I had my musculation band around my thighs, but it’s no good if it isn’t doing the exercises. I have been hoping for dramatic results from it but if things carry on like this, it’ll be unlikely.

And who was it a couple of months ago complaining about his awful sleep?

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and went to fetch the blood pressure tester to see where we are. Last night was 17.7/10.2 and this morning it was 16.3/9.6, and still no-one has told me what to do to try to reduce it to this mythical figure of 14.0/9.0

Following this, I dragged myself off into the kitchen for the medication, all 10 items of it (11 or even 12 if I need them). There are 5 (and maybe 6 or even 7) to be taken at night before going to bed, and that’s not including the painkillers that I’ve been prescribed but don’t take, so when I walk around, I rattle.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m not a fan of painkillers. They’ll kill the pain for sure, and make it easier for you to move around, but how much damage are you doing to yourself by continuing to put weight on whatever is damaged and that you can’t feel it?

At least, with a pain, you know that you have to take it easy, walk rather gingerly, or find a work-around.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone to find out what’s upon it. And there wasn’t much. Iceland was playing Scotland in a World Cup elimination match, the finals of the heats or whatever. The score had been 4-2 for Scotland in the first heat at Hampden and in the second heat the Icelanders were leading 2-0 so would qualify for the final stages on “away goals”. Then an incident occurred in the penalty area and a penalty was awarded to Scotland which they scored. Everyone looking at it later from slow motion replays couldn’t see any contact that might have led to a foul. It was up to the adjudicators to say that he’d awarded it because of contact – even though it was only slight, it was still contact. An Icelandic football player went over and punched him three times in the face. There was an inquiry and a really lengthy suspension for the Icelandic player. Even the newspapers said “you can’t do that as a football player”.

And this is all very reminiscent of the 1977 incident involving Joe Jordan and Welsh defender David Jones where Jordan clearly handled the ball in the Welsh penalty area during a World Cup qualifying match.

The referee however gave Scotland a penalty from which Scotland scored and which effectively ended Wales’s chance of qualifying for Argentina 1978 to which Scotland went.

Scotland also went to the 1990 World Cup in Rome and a few days before the start, as I was driving down the A500 towards the M6 overbridge, a double-decker bus went past overhead on its way southwards, painted dramatically overall as a blue-and-white saltire for Scotland.

Scotland’s performance at that World Cup was quite dismal and they were eliminated early. And as I was driving down the A500 towards the M6 overbridge a few days after their final match, a double-decker bus went past overhead on its way northwards, painted dramatically overall as a blue-and-white saltire for Scotland

Things had obviously not gone well.

Things didn’t go well for me today either, as I mentioned. The nurse came on time to give me my injection and to take a blood sample, and then I was left on my own for a while. I should have done plenty of work but somehow I just couldn’t make a start and I don’t know why.

We all have days like those, that’s for sure, but I seem to be having more of them than most

It was only when the cleaner arrived to clean the apartment and I had to stay in my room here that I actually pushed on and now the notes for the radio programme that I started yesterday are complete.

The aim once that was finished was to start on choosing the music for the next programme but I actually fell asleep, and not once either but twice and once in an … errr … very embarrassing place.

It reminds me of one particular time in Montreal.

Originally, I used to stay outside the city at Dorval, catch the 202 bus to the DuCollege Metro Station and then the underground into the city. It wasn’t until i became ill that I took up lodgings in the city centre.

Anyway, the problem with being in a hotel outside the city is that if I was feeling tired, I couldn’t go back to my room for a lie-down and a coffee.

However I did have certain places where I could go for a rest, but was always on the lookout for others.

One day while I was exploring the Complexe Desjardins shopping centre in the rue St Catherine, I came across the public conveniences. Now they looked clean, comfortable and tidy, and with my jacket rolled up tightly to make a good pillow, I was really comfortable riding the porcelain horse and leaning against the cubicle wall asleep.

What I hadn’t taken into account was that to deter the homeless and the layabouts like me from loitering, they arranged for an automatic flush of the toilets every 5 minutes, which was about 30 seconds after I’d gone to sleep.

That was quite embarrassing.

So being rather late for tea I was quite starving too. But it was another delicious leftover curry with vegetables, rice and a naan bread cooked to perfection and as I said last week, I’ll eat that again.

Something else that I’ve repeated about my tea … "and on many occasions too" – ed … is that the idea of using couscous as part of the filler for the stuffing has made a real difference – and a positive one at that.

So what will tomorrow bring? Gotthold Lessing tells us that "better counsel comes overnight" and I do feel better after a good, relaxing night’s sleep. But I don’t seem to be having too many of those right now. The last time that I had eight hours sleep, it took me three days to have them

In the meantime, I shall have to be just like Ernest Hemingway who said "I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake".

And doesn’t that sound just like me?

Friday 16th February 2024 – THIS WEEKEND’S BREAD …

… was not as good as last weekend’s, but much better than the weekend’s before.

And that’s a shame really. I massaged it gently as if I were massaging Zero’s clavicles (per Sean), used a little more water and folded it rather than fought it (per Liz) and adopted the tips that other people sent me and I’m sorry that I forgot who sent what, but that was that.

It seems that the difference is in the flour. When I used plain, industrial bleached flour it went up like a lift but with cereal flour or wholemeal flour it doesn’t go up anything like as well. But I’m not sure what to do about that. I don’t know enough about baking.

However, it seems that I know plenty about sleeping because despite going once more late to bed I actually had a good sleep yet again.

Not that you would have thought so because it was yet another night when I didn’t really feel like going to bed and could have sat up all night here in my chair. But I can’t make a habit of that so after a while I hauled myself off.

Billy Cotton awoke me from a deep, satisfying sleep. When it went off there was a musician, a guitarist rather like Carlos Santana or John McLaughlin who had a bassist and a drummer. he was playing under one name. For some reason or other the sound that he was creating wasn’t really what he wanted to do so he upped and went to San Francisco. Being there for a short while he recruited the two members of his group from before and brought them with him to San Francisco where they created a new group under the name of “The Family”. They began to play together again but the sound that they were creating was much more like the sound that he was trying to create. People were wondering what exactly was the difference between what he’s doing here and what he’s done when he was elsewhere but which didn’t really sound the same as what he’s producing now. What’s the difference? What’s he doing that’s making the sound better?

That’s not as bizarre as it might sound. I owned a van, an old J4, that would never start on the starter in Manchester. Anywhere else, yes, but not Manchester. It was as if the battery was flat so I had to use the starting handle

Once I changed the lead that went from the solenoid to the starter it would start anywhere, anytime. I came to the conclusion that one of the soldered joints was too susceptible to damp in the air in Manchester. So atmosphere plays a big part in things like that and really can influence the sound. I’ve even heard of records being recorded in toilets because of the differences in atmosphere.

But power trios of guitar, bass and drums. That’s the way forward, rather like Savoy Brown, The Groundhogs, Robin Trower, Budgie and so on. That was how I loved to play and if possible, sing as well but I always seemed to end up with guitarists who loved to sing too.

Yes, it seems that I’m dying to go back on the road. Rather like Bilbo Baggins and "I want to see mountains again, Gandalf". I want to see a stage and an audience again. Last time that I saw a stage was in Winnipeg in 2019 when I walked across the stage where my grandmother had topped the bill over acts like Jackie Coogan and Lon Chaney 100 years ago.

But all of that is for another day. First thing was to check my blood pressure. A mere 15.1/8.0 this morning, and 16.0/8.5 last night. This medication might be beginning to work after all. It’ll be interesting to see what it will be tonight.

After heaping down the medication and doing the usual things that you need to do after 8 hours sleep, I washed my hands and then went to make the bread

It kneaded up quite nicely and when I reckoned that it was done I rolled it out into a long tube, cut it into three equal lengths and then flattened them down onto the baking tray.

There was a rice pudding to make too, seeing as I’m running short on desserts. And after all of the trouble last week, Brain of Britain remembered this week that he had a selection of bread moulds that would fit into the oven with the baking tray and one of those would be good enough to use as a rice pudding dish.

When the bread had finished baking I let it cool while I made coffee and then made some cheese on toast with one of the bread rolls. And it was lovely – warm fresh bread just out of the oven with cheese and toast all over it, washed down with strong black coffee.

After breakfast I came back in here to listen to the rest of the dictaphone notes. We were a brigade of soldiers last night being interviewed to go abroad to fight. Of course we had our families to consider so they asked us where we would like to go. Our response was that we’d like to go somewhere as close to base as possible but on the other hand if an interesting war was being fought somewhere 100 miles away we’d quite happily go there if there was good rail connections to come back to London where all out families were living. As most of us came from South London, the Wimbledon area, we reckoned that we were probably going to end up in South Africa anyway and given a chance to make a name for ourselves there rather than some mundane, dispirited and disorganised clash of arms closer to home in the UK maybe

We were back in the military again later on. The girl who lived next door to us in the family there was my eldest sister’s age but she was dealing in drugs and distributing them about the army base. It seemed at first that no-one was after her. She also had a little side-line going stealing sidecars from army motorbikes and sidecars and selling them on into civilian life. She’d borrow a motorcycle – fill in a form to say that she’d taken a motorcycle but in fact taken a motor cycle combination and undone the couplings so the combination of the sidecar and taken back the machine as it was just written on the form that it was a machine so she was covered in case anyone ever noticed that the sidecar was gone. She had sold several like that and was continuing onwards

But if that’s ever likely to happen – me in the military. If a war ever were to break out again I’d be in the Merchant Marine, unarmed, not fighting, but nevertheless in the front line confronting the odd submarine or ten.

And that reminds me of the time that I started my chauffeuring in Brussels.
"Are you armed, Mr Hall?"
"No I’m not" I replied
"But what would you do if we were confronted by an armed villain?"
"I’d rely on the force of my personality, Sir Brian" I replied.

We didn’t even have a police escort either. Just an ordinary, large family saloon with ordinary, not diplomatic, number places and we used to just pass by quietly and un-noticed. And he survived to live to a ripe old age of 82 and die peacefully in his bed despite my best efforts, which just goes to show …

After the dictaphone notes I had a few matters to attend to and then I began the next radio programme.

First task was to track down a film. And then to extract the sound-track, followed by cutting out a certain song which I needed for a forthcoming radio programme. And you’ve no idea how long that takes to do all of that.

But once it was done I had to track down another song and download that, and then convert both songs into a usable format.

Having collected them, I could then go on and collect another 8 to make the basis of a programme, pair them off and join them together.

By the time that I was ready to call it a day I’d written the notes for three of them too. I’ll try to have the other seven done tomorrow ready to dictate Saturday night, but that’s unlikely as there’s a lot happening, including Y Bala v Mynydd y Fflint in the Cwpan Cymraeg, live on Youtube.

The cleaner came round today and had a lap around the apartment. Now it looks as if someone lives here, and that’s always nice. It won’t last long, though.

Tea was some of those nuggets (first thing that I could grab from the freezer) with a vegan salad and chips. And it really is a nice meal. My air fryer really is good for the chips.

The salad is really good as well, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, mushroom and olives with a liberal helping of vegan mayonnaise.

But while we’re on the subject of mayonnaise … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’ve found a recipe for making it without eggs and using a food processor. And seeing as I actually have a food processor I feel that I ought to try it out. In fact that might make a nice Sunday afternoon activity seeing as there’s no baking this weekend

As Keats said in a letter to Benjamin Bailey, "he will have the pleasure of trying the resources of his spirit", or as Aragorn said,"there are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark"

And "the end may be dark" will probably be a pretty good description of my home-made mayonnaise.

Thursday 15th February 2024 – I REALLY DON’T …

… know what’s happening to me right now.

Once again, I was absolutely flat-out this afternoon, sleeping quietly on my chair for a good 90 minutes. And nothing whatever disturbed me, not even a message on the ‘phone from Rosemary, and regular readers of this rubbish will recall the racket that this ‘phone makes whenever I receive a message or ‘phone call.

It was just like yesterday in fact, where I was well away with the fairies on the way home from Paris.

One thing that I can’t blame is tiredness. Just for a change I was in bed early and actually had a comfortable night’s sleep without waking too much.

Mind you, I could have done with another couple of hours when the alarm went off. It took me several minutes to work out what was going on (and that’s not unusual, is it?). What I mean by that is that I had the impression that there were several beds in here with several people, and a whole series of alarms was going off to awaken different people. I had a hard time believing that my alarm call was real.

But anyway I slid eventually to my feet and went for the blood pressure machine. 17.2/10.6 this morning. But as for last night’s, where did I record the figures? They aren’t written on my little booklet thing where I record them so I don’t have a clue.

They’ll turn up one day so I left them to it and went for my medication. Tons of it as usual and it’s really becoming quite ridiculous, but never mind. 10 tablets or powders in the morning and 5 at night before I go to bed is where we’re at right now.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was having a dream last night about the words dim ond da – that’s “not but good”, messing around with them, trying to fit them into different sentences that I’d written. Then we came across some of the radio notes that I’d written and just dictated. I decided that they were horrible and needed amending. I added in some bits but they were even worse, but then I couldn’t remember how to return to the original. That confused me for quite some time. When I did, I found that I’d still missed some out. Nevertheless the programme sounded better but there were so much more that I could do with this particular programme that I thought that I was going to start to rewrite it and dictate it again but that would have to be something that would have to be done later and not now.

And there have been more than just one or two occasions where this kind of thing has happened in real life when I’ve been writing a radio programme or editing a website, ending up forgetting all kinds of important things that I had included and somehow seemed to have managed to wipe out some important stuff that I really wanted to include.

This was another night where I was with my former friend. We were chatting to two other people whom we knew who we’d met some time previously. We’d arranged for this meeting so they came round . We showed them how to climb into my attic up the electric cable but the guy’s girlfriend was afraid to do it so my former friend’s wife stayed down with her and the other four of us climbed into the attic which was full of rubbish as usual. We spread ourselves out to make ourselves comfortable to talk. This started in the attic but ended up standing in Nantwich Road by the old police station. We were as usual discussing cars. My ex-friend was talking to him about several cars including one with a particular registration that would suit his wife but not while they were living in Porthcawl because it was a dangerous place to be apparently, according to him. I was talking to the other guy, telling him that I was having to dispose of some of my cars because I’d sold my house and had nowhere to keep them. I was renting a warehouse at the moment but that was precarious. However there was also a car that I wanted to buy, a yellow Ford Zephyr 6. While this was all going on there was a road rally taking place and all these old historic cars were going past. While I was talking to him about that particular one, I could hear something going past running on 5 cylinders instead of 6. It was this Zephyr so I pointed it out to him. I told him the story about how the driver had taken it out for a run 2 weeks ago but the insurance wasn’t correct at the time and he’d had a collision with a police car. As the policeman was looking round his car and preparing to nab him for no insurance, there was another bigger accident immediately right by them. The policeman went over to that and waved this guy away which was probably about the luckiest break that he’d ever had in his life

These days I seem to have a thing about Ford Zephyr 6s. There was one in my dreams a couple of nights ago and I’m sure that there have been others. They are MkIII Zephyrs, the kind that my father had in the late 60s and early 70s. Lovely, comfortable roomy cars with plenty of woomph.

A couple of nights ago I mentioned the one that I had – a MkIV model – that caught fire after a Jethro Tull concert in Manchester.

However, the story about “no insurance” rang a bell with me. When I was living in Winsford I bought a Rover 2000 at the auctions at Prees Heath and took a chance on driving it home. It goes without saying that I was pulled over by the police and asked for the documents for the car, like the MoT and the … errr … insurance.

Not having any of course, I pleaded ignorance and so was given the dreaded white slip “to produce your documents at your nearest Police Station within 5 days – or else …” – “or else” being anything from a slap on the wrist to three months at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, and in my case, it would be nearer the latter than the former. The Cheshire Constabulary and I didn’t get on very well.

Two days later I had a phone call – “this is PC Grindlay here. I stopped you the other day in that Rover. I forgot to write the date on the copy of the white slip. You will write it on for me, won’t you?”.
“Of course I will” I said, lying through my teeth. I could just picture the scene in the Nantwich Magistrates’ Court. “Five days from WHAT date, Your Honour?”.

But to be on the safe side I promptly put the Rover through the auctions at Queensferry so that someone else, presumably in North Wales, would have more headaches than I would.

Queensferry Auctions was quite fun though in the old days. Having little money we once bought a Citroen Dyane from a scrapyard for £25, drove it to Queensferry and put it through the auctions where it fetched £35. A few of those used to keep us going when we were hard-up

Another thing that we used to do when we were broke was to wander round the scrapyards and take the back seats out of cars. You’d be surprised at the amount of money that had slipped unnoticed out of people’s pockets.

It wasn’t just money either – all kinds of things were “salvaged” including, on one occasion, a really complicated food tester with temperature probe.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

Once I’d returned to the Land of the Living I started on the notes for the radio programme. There were several that I hadn’t written so I worked my way through them and now they are all ready for dictation on Saturday night. Hopefully all of the Carnivalers will have gone home by then and we’ll go back to being quiet again.

THis afternoon I was doing paperwork. It was the middle of October when I last filed away my papers so there were piles here in all kinds of heaps all over the place.

Anyway, they are now all sorted away, bills paid, actions taken and quite a few filed under CS. The place is looking much more like home now in my bedroom/office.

My cleaner came round too. Yesterday I’d given her the prescription that I’d had from Paris and she’d been this morning to the chemist’s. Now you can’t move around here for medication.

Then there was another task that needed doing now that it was after 09:00 in North America.

My Canadian bank card expired in March last year and of course I hadn’t been to North America this autumn and so didn’t have the new one.

After six months I had the dreaded “your account is now placed in suspense” notice so that was that. And then I had a letter from Service New Brunswick about paying my property taxes on my place there, which, with a suspended bank account, will be extremely difficult.

Consequently I had sent my niece along to ransack my mailbox and she found it under a pile of rubbish, and she posted it to me – the card, not the rubbish.

Now I needed to unfreeze the account and that was not the work of five minutes either. I shudder to think how much the ‘phone call will cost me at the end of the month but it needed to be done. So now my Canadian bank account is working, my bank card works, and the letter from Service New Brunswick wasn’t even the demand for payment in any case.

But buying that place in Canada was an ace of a move. No-one asks for Visas, your right of residence in Canada, that sort of thing in Canada. You can buy cars, take out insurance, open bank accounts, have mobile phones, absolutely everything as long as you can produce a property tax certificate.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve blagged my way through all kinds of situations that would have forestalled many other people, thanks to my little piece of Canada. I might have the noisiest, most mentally-unstable neighbours in the World on my southern border, but so what?

After that I went for my hot chocolate and then came back in here ready to work but as I mentioned earlier, I went off with the fairies instead. And I can tell you where I ended up too. I’d been running some kind of football training sessions for boys and girls. I’d heard a complaint that two boys had been overheard saying that they couldn’t wait to see a certain girl use the toilet again so I went to check and was confident that no-one using the toilet could be seen from outside. The rumours continued so I arranged for a piece of white canvas to be fitted to block the window arranged in such a way that it would shield the toilet but still allow light in. I was sure that there could be no possibility of anyone being seen from outside but the rumour gained ground again, I checked the toilet and was confident, so I didn’t really know what I could do now apart from bricking up the window. And I wasn’t convinced that that would stop the rumours either.

Tea tonight was that vegan sausage-meat patty with baked potato and a tin of mixed peppers that I’d found on the shelf. I felt rather like Mr Carmichael and SUPPER WAITS ON THE TABLE INSIDE A TIN.

The patty wasn’t a success. Not that it didn’t taste nice, but that in the fridge it hadn’t really kept its shape and consistency. But never mind – it was a rather ad-hoc thing using up some left-over stuffing. I’ll just have to work on it and improve my technique.

So right now I’m going to work on my sleep and improve my technique there. Having felt like Tommy Cooper this afternoon and "I knew a man who dreamed that he was awake, and when he awoke, he was!", I want to dream of nicer things.

However, rather like Barbara Follet, "my dreams are going through their death flurries. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money" and that will be the end of the World if that does happen. It’s only my dreams that keep me going these days

And as Dietrich Bonhoffer said "the only fight that is lost is that which we give up" so I’ll go and fight the good fight in bed right now.

See you all tomorrow.

Wednesday 14th February 2024 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

… I’ll be back in Paris at the end of April, despite what I said yesterday.

There’s a heart test already arranged for 24th April, so the doctor said “we’ll make it a stay for a few days and run a pile of tests on you”. Ahh well, can’t be helped, I suppose

All that way there and back and I was only with him for about 15 minutes, and even then he spent much of the time being interrupted on the phone by other people.

At least, it’s good practice, I suppose. Especially for me having to organise myself ready to travel.

Having had a good wash yesterday I still had plenty of things to do before I could go to bed so it was rather late when I finally crawled under my covers.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed to switch it off and then to take my blood pressure. A mere 16.6/9.5 this morning – quite a change from the 18:8/10.9 of the night before.

Once I was up I dressed and then went to make my sandwiches for lunch – nice thick slices of home-made bread that had been stored in the freezer and left to defrost overnight, and filled with cheese, hummus, lettuce and tomato with garlic mayonnaise.

The taxi driver was someone who had run me round to the Centre de Re-education once so I knew her. We had a very interesting chat during which I learnt that she is on good terms with one of the guys off the radio. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" … – ed, the World is becoming far too small for my liking.

She’s not been taxi-driving long so she didn’t know the way very well, but I helped as well as I could and we arrived at the reception desk bang on time. And then I was called for the interview.

When I’d been there last time his office was right at the far end of the corridor and round the corner so I went to sit there. Today, his office was right next to the reception desk so he had to come to find me.
"Walk this way" he said, beckoning me in his direction
"If I could walk that way" I thought to myself "I wouldn’t be in this flaming hospital having this blasted treatment in the first place"

He went through all of my results with me, and everything seems to be an improvement (that’s not how it looks to me, but never mind) so he’s pleased with the progress of his cocktail of medication.

He thinks that an in-depth examination will be called for after a few weeks, and so he reckons transforming this day visit into a hospitalisation for several days.

One of the things that he suggested was another lumbar puncture – and I went cold at the thought.

As for all of my detailed and comprehensive notes about my blood pressure, he scarcely gave them a glance. So much for those then, I suppose.

Finding a nice quiet corner I ate my butties, went for a visit down the corridor and then found my taxi driver, and we set off for home.

Shame as it is to say it, I slept almost all of the way back and I’ve no idea why. But both the outward and the return journey were the most trouble-free that I have ever had. The traffic was slow-moving on the Prif but we weren’t ever held up, either on the outward or the return journey.

My cleaner was waiting for me when we arrived. She’d volunteered to help me up the stairs but strangely, I didn’t need it today. I could climb up all 25 steps without any help. So maybe there really IS progress after all. I must admit that last night, for the first time since my bad fall, I’d felt well enough to restart my musculation process with my elastic strap around my legs.

Back in the apartment I made myself a nice mug of boiling hot chocolate and then came in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes. And there were tons of them. No wonder I was tired. I’d travelled miles during the night.

We were managing a rock group last night. The drummer in this group was only very young but was a prodigy, extremely good at his job so one of the other teams in the league decided that they wanted to sign him. I said that he’d only go if they made a ridiculous offer and we had another drummer to replace him. My team in the transfer window arranged a few more transfers in, a defender, an attacker and one player whom I didn’t know. I didn’t recognise his name so I wondered where he came from and what he did, thinking that he might be a replacement drummer to replace the one whom we were about to lose but it wasn’t. In fact he was another outfield player. So I explained to the club that it doesn’t matter how much money they offer, they can offer as much as you like but if he’s still under contract with us and we don’t have a replacement then he can’t leave for another club.

And that really does make a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

Mr Teale, our geography teacher at school was telling our class about the Midwest USA. He was talking briefly about the Oregon and California Trail that they took. So when he finished I told him about the time that I’d visited there and seen it. I had my photos that I showed everyone. I mentioned the big baskets at the top of the hill where the descent into California starts, where back in the past they went through and found all old bits of wood lying along the trail. They picked them up and stuck them in this basket. It’s extremely likely that much of the wood in there comes from these crashed Pioneer wagons that failed to make the descent correctly and came to grief somewhere along there on towards the end of the trail on this downhill slope

Regular readers of this rubbish in another format will recall that we have spent a considerable time on the Oregon and California Trail. in 2002 I went to see the famous trail ruts and Register Cliff IN GUERNSEY, WYOMINGand then went back there IN 2019, and one day I’ll finish editing the … gulp! … 6,000 photos from my famous trip

Then I put some knock-out drops into the air when our Geography teacher and one of the other teachers were talking about the summit of the Oregon and California Trail. I’d been there of course and knew all about it but it seemed appropriate for the class to have a break and go to sleep so that the rest of the room could occupy ourselves for a bit

As for the summit of the trail, it’s not easy to know what is meant by it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we have been TO SOUTH PASS which is the watershed, where rivers to the east drain either into the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico, and to the west where rivers drain into the Pacific, so I suppose that that might be described as the summit.

However you’ll never lose a wagon down the descent there. Edwin Bryant, in his book WHAT I SAW IN CALIFORNIA described the slope either side as being so gentle that you’d hardly know that it was there, and that was my opinion too.

I also started later on talking about my Will, where I was going to leave money and to who. Actually finding it is a bit of a struggle but it was above the treeline on the route that these Oregon Trails took. But I found it sure enough and opened it to read. It’s different from the one that I have at home. My property will just be left to my heritee whoever that will be, with no mention of sorting it out amongst the people who ought to benefit so I hope that other people will understand, if they find this document, exactly what I want to do. I’ll have other ideas but I probably won’t get them down

That’s something that I really need to do – to write my will. It will be pretty straightforward and simple, and won’t take long. But that won’t be the end of the story because there will be a lot of work to be done in its respect and also in the respect of carrying out my wishes.

Apart from a few bits and pieces, it’s all going to be dropped into the lap of one person, and that person will certainly earn their share of the inheritance at the end of it. Mind you, they’ll deserve it

So who will that person be? The answer is that even though there’s a lot of ground between us, there’s really only one person honest and reliable enough in my entourage upon whom I could in theory rely.

And if that person doesn’t carry out my wishes? Well, there’s not much I can do about it, except to come back and haunt them, rather like the two gay ghosts who really gave each other the willies one night.

But that reminds me of Liz (not “this Liz” but “that Liz” who died in 2009) going in for a serious operation, and writing down a list of names
"Is this the list of people you want us to tell how it went, mum?" asked Kathryn?
"No, dear" replied Liz. "This is the list of people whom I’m going to come back and haunt if it all goes wrong".

Liz would have known about all of this, though. Having served on many University committees she’s had plenty of experience of holding hands sitting around a table and trying to contact the living.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed – as I said … "when?" – ed … but didn’t record, the people making this programme … "which programme?" – ed … presented her … "who?" – ed … with a teddy bear afterwards as a kind of memento of a trip that she’d made. Of course no-one from that voyage is with us these days except of course the teddy bear. That’s the only survivor of that first 1840s voyage across from East to West

That looks like an awful mess, doesn’t it? It looks as if it’s related to the Oregon and California Trail, but what’s the rest of it all about?

And then I was back at my little house in Winsford as well last night, wondering how things would have been if I’d actually stayed in Winsford and not taken the opportunity to move to Gainsborough Road in Crewe.

That’s a really good question. I quite liked my little house in Winsford but for some reason I felt really uncomfortable there.

Nevertheless, even though it was a Barratt House, I won’t ever hear a bad word against them as they helped me onto the property ladder. I went in three years from living in a van to owning (with a mortgage of course) a brand-new semi-detached house and I wouldn’t ever have done it without them.

While I was writing out my dictaphone notes I fell asleep again. It’s one of those days, I reckon, so in the end I went and made my leftover curry. It was delicious and the naan bread was cooked to absolute perfection. I’d eat all of this again and again if I could.

But now I’m off to bed. And I go, as Joachim du Bellay said, "heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un beau voyage" “happy is he who like Ulysses has had a good journey”.

What I’ll be hoping is for more pleasant dreams like I used to have when TOTGA, Castor and Zero used to come to see me. It’s all very well giving me medication that has a side-effect of blanking them all out but as Tennessee Williams said, "If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels"

Tuesday 13th February 2024 – I’VE BEEN SUMMONED …

… back to the Centre de Re-education. They’ve arranged a visit for me for the 5th March, and even sent me a bon de transport so that I can have a taxi there and back.

There were several pages of notes setting out my medical history and what they have discovered during the examination. They reached the conclusion that

dealing with my case was difficult due to all kinds of problems
technical aid is proposed
a timed walk that should have taken 43 seconds took me 6 minutes
a further appointment is planned

And so by the same post an appointment on 5th March was sent to me.

And at 09:20 too – be there 10 minutes beforehand. What do they think that I am? I know that I might be up and about on my own two legs by that time but I’d hardly say that I would be coherent enough to discuss my medical affairs so early in the morning.

Mind you, I’m hardly coherent at the best of times so I don’t suppose that it makes much difference

However, I’m intrigued as to this “technical aid”. I wonder what they have planned for me. There isn’t much that would work around here that immediately springs to my mind.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

Last night, I couldn’t go to bed.

What I mean by that is that I couldn’t summon up the motivation to leave my comfortable chair and drag myself off to bed. Instead I wandered aimlessly through the internet and it was well after 01:00 when I dragged myself off.

You know the feeling though – when you can’t seem to find whatever it takes to raise yourself up and go to bed.

It would be no surprise to anyone if I had had a difficult start to the morning but instead I seemed to be quite lively for a change – and that’s a surprise. I shall have to do this more often

So I hauled myself off into the kitchen to take my medication.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I had been during the night. We were back in some kind of music dispute between Hawkwind and a group called Wyneb Wyneb … "which is Welsh for Face-Face" – ed …. It concerned a song that Wyneb Wyneb wrote. There was a considerable amount of plagiarism in the song, so Hawkwind said, and they were very unhappy about it. The two groups found themselves at the same music festival and this led to a great deal of complication and confusion with people threatening to sue and to counter-sue etc. It was sorted out at the last minute by Wyneb Wyneb withdrawing from this concert and playing at another at a later date with a couple of other acts who were also withdrawn. Basically anyone who bought a ticket for the main concert and didn’t want to go because Wyneb Wyneb weren’t appearing could claim some kind of refund that would go towards the cost of a ticket for the next festival.

Anyone would think that I have an obsession with Hawkwind. They have been regular visitors during the night over the last couple of weeks. It would be interesting to find out what’s going on that’s triggered off something like that.

What else has happened ever since they’ve been appearing is that my whole dream pattern seems to have changed and they are nothing like what they were in the past. So is one of the tablets that I take in the evening playing havoc and disturbing my subconscious? Or is something else happening?

But be that as it may, I had a Welsh lesson to deal with and that went on until 16:30, with a couple of breaks and an interruption from my cleaner who brought me my post as mentioned above.

Once it was all over I had my hot chocolate and then had a good scrub down and a change of clothes to make myself all pretty for tomorrow.

During the breaks I was dealing with the radio programme that I’m planning, and writing the notes. I managed to complete some and was planning to write more but instead I crashed out this evening.

All through the lesson I was fighting off waves of sleep but my bad night eventually caught up with me and I didn’t finish it.

Tea was a nice taco roll with some of the rest of the stuffing, and I’ll finish that off tomorrow in a leftover curry with one of my naan breads. I’ll have to make some more naan dough sometime soon as I’m in danger of running out

So that’s it now, ready for tomorrow. I need to take some bread from the freezer to defrost ready to make my sandwiches because it will be a long day. My appointment is at 12:40 when I shall find out my future.

What I suspect is that they’ll transfer me to a more local hospital – either Caen or Rennes, and more likely the former. I’m sure they won’t keep me there, going back and forth to Paris with what it costs to transport me.

Nevertheless, "how you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?" And knowing hospital food as I do, at least I had friends in Paris and Leuven who would smuggle me some supplies now and again. I know no-one in either Caen or Rennes who can help me break the monotony of the dreadful food supplied in these places..

And as Joni Mitchell SANG,
"I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive
Nobody was calling me up for favours
No one’s future to decide
You know I’d go back there tomorrow
But for the work I’ve taken on
Stoking the star-maker machinery
Behind the popular song"

And I am going back there tomorrow, maybe for the last time. I can’t see me going there again, certainly not unfettered and alive anyway.

That’s a shame because of all the times that I’ve walked through the city singing that song, and the nights that I’ve spent trying to get the metre of the song correct when I’m trying to play it on the guitar.

The last time that I walked through the city was almost two years ago, in the company of someone who figures regularly on these pages, usually during the night, but right now I can’t even wander around my apartment.

Frank Harris, in his rather … errr … explicit autobiography said "all human beings took what pleasure they could get whenever they could get it" and that’s certainly true of the past and the present. Make the best of whatever comes your way because that’s all that there is.

As for what happens after tomorrow, I shall just have to rely on my hero the Irish politician Boyle Roche and "all along the untrodden paths of the future, I can see the footprints of an unseen hand".

When I climb into that taxi in the morning I shall remember the words of Tom Bombadil – "be bold, but wary! Keep up your merry hearts, and ride to meet your fortune".

Thursday 9th February 2024 – THIS MORNING AT …

… 02:44 I was sitting on the edge of my bed.

Not going to bed, or not getting up, but rubbing cold cream into my lower legs. It was as if my legs were on fire last night.

It had been like that for a couple of hours but in the end it became insupportable and I had to do something about it. And the cold cream actually worked too. After a couple of hours they had cooled down sufficiently for me to go back to sleep.

But not for long because the alarm went off at 07:00 as usual and I felt like absolute death. For any sum of money whatsoever I would have gone back to bed.

However I raised myself from the dead and took my blood pressure – 18.7/10.6, compared to last night’s 15.1/8.5 – and then went in search of my medication.

Having dealt with that, I had the weekend’s bread to make. And having taken on board everyone’s kind suggestions and different flour and different yeast I actually managed to make it rise somewhat.

There’s still a long way for my bread to go before I’m really happy with it, but it was definitely an improvement and actually looked like proper bread rolls too. The one that I ate for my cheese on toast was delicious.

However I’m rather depressed by my small oven and wish that I had the big one up here along with the furniture to fit it. As I said yesterday, I’d make a rice pudding and I did too, but the only dish that would fit in with the bread tray was a very small one and there ended up being not enough milk

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night – apart from the edge of my bed of course. I had two daughters last night. One was the kind of girl who enjoyed taking risks and getting into strange situations etc while the other was very much a stay-at-home orderly girl who wanted things to be much more orderly. She was going through some kind of crisis as to why she couldn’t possibly be like her sister. I was having to reassure her

And then we were on the subject of this young bassist again. At 15 years of age she left John Mayall to go to play in her own group. Of course that’s the story of Andy Fraser from Free in real life, and I’m ever so impressed that I could remember that fact in a dream.

Later on, Hawkwind were at a hotel. They were on tour. A flash of lightning hit the swimming pool and everyone was electrocuted. There were several stars at the time as well as Hawkwind’s bassist whose name I’ve forgotten. The Energency services arrived and first of all they began to deal with the American stars. Everyone else was left to wait. Robert Calvert and Nik Turner and the girl who was with them had to sit there and watch their bassist die in front of their eyes while all these other people were receiving first aid for relatively minor injuries

And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve sat and watched someone die and it’s the most horrible experience on earth

What was more horrible about that though was although she was someone who was popular and had a wide circle of friends, she was totally deserted by everyone when she fell ill. She had to ring me up, who had been out of her life for seven years, to come and take care of her for her final months because no-one else would.

All of her religious friends said that they would pray for help but she needed far more help than that. And when they found out that she had a man in her apartment they were horrified, even though I (and Cécile for a short while until her mother fell ill) was the only one who had offered to take care of her.

Five months I was there watching her die, when all of her friends had turned their backs to her. It was a dreadful situation in which to be.

As it happens, I actually own a burial plot in Ixelles cemetery but I don’t want to be put in there. I want to be donated to science, where they can take out whatever organs they need, let students practise their arts on me, and then my remains, if there’s anything left, put in a natural cemetery with a tree growing on top

Not cremated though. I hate the idea of that.

But let’s not dwell on that kind of thing right now. Let’s dwell on me tidying up the kitchen and sorting a few things out later on. It looks quite tidy now, and that’s unusual

This afternoon I’ve been planning future radio programmes, and my plans have now taken me up until the end of November.

It’s amazing how much music I don’t have that I need for those next couple of months. I have a lot of hard work to do in preparing those problems, whenever I get round to it.

The cleaner came round today for an extra hour to carry on with the deep cleaning, and then finally, the garage turned up for Caliburn. He’s now gone for his annual check-over (not that I have been anywhere this last 12 months) and biennial major controle technique.

He needs attention to the headlights, that I know, and probably standing around for 4 months will have seized up an odd joint here and there.

The bodywork is looking tatty in one or two places too but this summer he’ll be 18 years old. What do you expect?

It was strange when the cleaner came. Having had a very disturbed night I was flat-out on my chair when she came in and I took some awakening. She brought with her the new medication, which is basically just double the medication I was taking before the lot of medication that I now have to abandon.

It’s crazy, isn’t it, all of this?

But never mind awakening, right now I’m going to take some sleeping. I’m feeling the effects of that bad night and need to catch up.

There’s the blood pressure to take, and the medication too but I’m also going to smother my legs in cold cream before retiring, just in case.

If I’m not careful, I’ll end up like that soldier described in Paris-Match in the 1960s as "waiting for his fiancée in the uniform of the Cold Cream Guards".

Thursday 8th February 2024 – WE’RE BACK TO …

… where we were a few months ago with the freezer, and how it’s now jam-packed to the brim with food.

Actually, that’s quite good news because it means that I don’t have to worry too much about from where my next meal is coming.

Having said that though, there are half a loaf, a bread finger and four bread baps in there that are taking up some of the place and if I were to eat those there would me more room in there, but I’m not ready to do that yet. As long as I can continue to make bread, I’ll make it and if there’s any left over, I’ll freeze it for another time with all of the rest that’s in there.

That will give me something about which I can think the next time that I’m lying in bed tossing and turning 1.e.not a night like last night where, despite having a late night I was out like a light and remember nothing at all until I awoke.

First job was to check the blood pressure + 17.4/10.5, a bit of a change from 18.2/11.6 this morning. There were also some note to tape to the dictaphone because when the alarm went off I was on another planet somewhere

After the medication I came back here to start work – or, at least, to try to, but once more it was really difficult to get going this morning

Once I’d come back round into the Land of the Living I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This time, I had managed to go for a wander. There was a Led Zeppelin song going through my head last night. I was singing it and needed to know whether there was a background music being played with it or not. If the song had background music being played to it, it would be liable to tax. I’d have to pay money but how would I know whether there was any background music being played to it or not at this time of night when I’m asleep?

And I wasn’t surprised that I dictated that last night because I’ve given up being surprised by what goes on during the night

Later on there were two of my assembled pizzas. I had two of them done and they were in the fridge. They’d been in the fridge for several days. What I needed to do was to take them out and put the tomato sauce on. I was in the kitchen but it wasn’t mine. A small girl came along to help but I don’t know why she did that either.

So if I’m dreaming about my pizzas during the night that’s a sign of something, I’m sure. But putting the tomato sauce on top? No thank you very much

When the alarm went off I was dictating the notes for a radio programme. They included a young girl bassist. I was writing all kinds of notes about her and what she’d been doing. She was quite young. I’d made my way down from the start and I think that she was one of the ones who was almost near the end of the programme

All of that reminded me OF MATT MINGLEWOOD’S BASSIST whom I met when I was photographer for the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival in Fredericton. As I believe I said at the time, she could come round and have a strum on my instrument any time she likes.

On the subject of radio programmes, that was today’s task but first I had to deal with a phone call. And it was exactly as I suspected it might be. "Mr Hall, we’ve had the blood test results. You have to stop taking medication X and take medication Y instead. I’ll send you a prescription."

So the prescription duly arrived, and then I had to change all of the print cartridges in the printer which is now printing and missing lines to I had to clean all of the print heads. So you ever have the feeling that it’s just not your day?

While I was printing off the prescription I printed off some paperwork about Strider. He’s now no longer officially mine and I hope that he has found a good home with his new owners.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s a shame about Strider. We travelled tens of thousands of miles together from the semi-tropical climate of Georgia up to the frozen peri-Arctic wastes of Northern Labrador, as far as it’s possible to go by road northwards.

He’s just the right height for me to slide in and out and using the cruise control, I can drive him with just my left foot. But I’m over here and he’s over there and that’s that.

And Liz has been very helpful too. She sent me a little parcel that arrived today with a knee support in it and also a vegan cookbook, the same one that she used when she was starting out.

It’s all an early birthday present for me and she says that she hopes that I find the cookbook helpful. Secretly though, I think that she’s fed up of me asking her all these silly questions, but I know that you love me really.

Who was next to interrupt me? Ahhh yes – I had to send off my Leclerc order as I’m running low. And so are they with this farmers’ dispute. Quite a few items of the dairy line are not available and there are no substitutes

But that’s not a real problem if I run out of desserts. Strangely enough, as it happens, I have been fancying a rice pudding for ages so when I bake my bread for the weekend tomorrow morning, I might put a rice pudding in with enough to keep me going for several days.

So halfway through writing up my notes for the radio programme the Leclerc delivery came and so I had to sort out everything and put it away, as well as de-coring and de-pithing a couple of peppers to go into the freezer. I have to build my stocks back up.

Earlier on, I’d sent a message to my cleaner about the new prescription and she popped down to pick it up and tell me the latest gossip about the building.

Back at work and I’d almost finished the radio notes when Rosemary rang for a chat. Just a short chat this evening, only 52 minutes. Barely enough time for an exchange of pleasantries

By now it was tea-time and I fancied steamed veg with falafel and cheese sauce. But I found some veggie balls made out of kidney beans that needed eating and they went down with cheese sauce just as well as falafel.

While I’ve been typing up my notes, I’ve been listening to Al Stewart again and SWISS COTTAGE MANOEUVRES came round on the playlist.

Right near the end of the song are the words "and I couldn’t say what I had won or I’d lost, or even just what I had seen. But when I’m alone I just think of her once in a while". Does it remind you of anything?

It certainly reminds me of something. I’m still shaking my head over that three days in the High Arctic. It was the strangest period of the really strange life that I have led, and there’s still no explanation that I can work out about what was going on.

Let’s face it – I’m well aware of my own limits and this was way beyond anything that would have been contained within them. I certainly couldn’t explain whether I’d won or lost, and I certainly couldn’t explain what I had just seen.

But many of Al Stewart’s songs are like that. These are of some kind of vague pining for a lost adolescence that might have been, if only we had been older and wiser, and doesn’t that apply to most of us?

It’s often been said about “how I wish that I’d had all of my adolescence back, but with all the experience (and the money) that I have today. Wouldn’t things be different?”.

Mine certainly would have been, but I don’t think that it would have been better. It wasn’t until I left Crewe and came over here that I really began to encounter real life in a much wider cultural setting. But as Paul Pena wrote and Steve Miller sang in BIG OLD JET AIRLINER – "you know you gotta go through hell before you get to heaven"

And while this certainly isn’t heaven, living in Crewe was certainly hell

Monday 7th February 2024 – THERE WAS NOTHING …

… at all on the dictaphone from last night. And it’s been a while since that happened.

And it wasn’t because I’d had a really good night’s sleep either. In fact quite the reverse. I don’t think that I slept for more than 5 minutes.

It wasn’t one of those nights where I lay tossing and turning for most of it but in fact there was all kinds of things going on in my brain – such as it is – and there were all kinds of images and things flashing up behind my closed eyelids.

It really was quite an extraordinary situation and I’ve never known anything like it. There was no point in grabbing the dictaphone to record anything because it was all happening so quickly.

But anyway, it was rather a waste of the nice clean bedding if I wasn’t going to enjoy and make the most of it.

So when the alarm went off I fell out of bed again, totally dead to the world, and went to take my blood pressure. 18.3/9.5, compared to 18.8/10.8 at bedtime last night.

Having done that I went off to take my medication, all of it, and then came back in here.

With no dictaphone notes to transcribe I tried my best to stay awake. It’s Yoan’s turn to come round to inject me with the Last Resort and to take my blood sample and last time that he came, he found me stark out.

He had the usual battle to find a vein and then wandered off, leaving me to it.

And so today I’ve been alternating between working and fighting off waves of sleep, probably more of the latter, but not too successfully either.

Anyway, I’ve finished off the notes for the radio programme that I started on Monday, and then I’ve been tracking down music for the next one.

That one is going to be much more complicated and I didn’t have half of the music that I needed. Knowing that I didn’t have it was one thing and tracking it all down was something else completely.

And when I’d done it I had to work out a way to download it and then to convert it all to the correct format. It took me an age, especially as I was half-asleep for much of the time.

Eventually though I had all of the music that I needed and it’s all paired off ready for me to write the notes for it over the next few days

The cleaner came round today and decided to clean one of the shelves in the kitchen because she found a few stains. It appears that a can of fruit has burst somehow and the syrup has been leaking out making a mess everywhere.

But cleaning the shelves is one thing, putting all the stuff back is another, and then me looking for stuff and trying to find it later is something completely different again.

One thing that I learnt at a very early age was never to put anything away in someone else’s garage or kitchen.

When I’m at my niece’s in Canada I’ll happily wash up and dry the dishes but I won’t put the stuff away. You do that and you put it in what you think is the correct place but it isn’t and they can never find it again.

Yes, in the past I’ve spent hours looking for stuff that people have helpfully put away for me. Mind you, I’ve spent hours looking for stuff that I’ve also put away, so there’s no real difference.

The blood test results are in. Having stopped the anti-potassium stuff the potassium is now back above the upper limit.

As far as the rest of the measurements go, while the blood count is holding up for now with this “last resort” injection, the platelets count is now falling well below the acceptable limit and my carcinogenic protein, which should be less than 104.0 is now at 240.5 . The “active” part, that should be less than 11.8 is now at 27.2.

So I told me cleaner to stand by tomorrow for a new prescription changing more things round, or even giving me yet more medicine.

Tea tonight was a delicious, really delicious left-over curry with soya yoghurt and a naan bread. It really doesn’t get much better than that, honestly

As well as that I’ve had the guitars out – the bass as well as the acoustic. I’ve been listening to Al Stewart again and having a play around with a couple of his numbers.

We all know about ZERO SHE FLIES, to whom it relates, this “girl, she’s almost a woman” and the man “from the mountains watching her, biding his time”.

That’s a lovely track to play on the acoustic guitar and the bass line is really good too, if only I could get it right. The lyrics are really nice to sing but I can’t sing them and play bass at the same time – as yet.

Another track that I’ve been playing is MODERN TIMES.

Many of Al Stewart’s songs talk about the pain of growing up, of your teenage years, and we can all relate to them to a certain degree. “Modern Times” is a fantastic song for people like me desperate to cling on to whatever bit of youth they have left, and how our teenage friends have grown up quite differently to how we would have liked them to be

It’s probably the greatest song of its type, not to mention the lead guitar solo at the end of it.

It’s a song that I could play, either on the acoustic or on the bass, all night.

But not tonight because I’ve already crashed out once this evening after tea while I’ve been typing these notes. I’m going to bed and hope for better luck tonight with my nocturnal voyages.

But I have to laugh at some of the lyrics in “Modern Times”, where
"the red light girls were coming after me
For a forty dollar show"

Not long after I moved to Brussels one of my friends with his coach contacted me. There was a problem with it and he needed help.

In the middle of winter so I was dressed in my overalls and all kinds of woolly clothes of all shapes and descriptions to keep warm while I went down to help him change his starter motor.

Being underneath a coach for half an hour I was covered in oil from head to foot as we did it, and was in a right state when I set out to walk home.

And as I went underneath the arches at the Gare du Nord, a “lady of the night” emerged from the shadows and said to me, plastered in old engine oil and in dirty, filthy old clothes, "hello, sexy lover boy"

Despite knowing Brussels like the back of my hand, I hadn’t realised until then that the “ladies of the night” of the city all suffered from a visual impairment.

EPIC HALL

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