Category Archives: cleaner

Monday 27th November 2023 – IT WAS A GOOD …

… job that I rang up the taxi company to tell them that the authorisation for my journey to Paris had been received from the Social Services.

It seems that the letter that I gave to the driver the other day hasn’t found its way into Head Office so they hadn’t reserved a car for me. But that’s now arranged and at about 08:30 on Friday I shall be on my way to the Haematology department at the Hôpital Salpetrière in Paris.

This is presumably when they’ll decide whether or not to take over the case of my cancer from Leuven. If they do, then all well and good.

If on the other hand they don’t, then we’ll be at an impasse. The last time that I was in Leuven was in September and the travelling was total and utter agony. Had I not had the support of Alison, Jackie and Hans while I was there I would have been finished.

My health has deteriorated since then and I won’t be able to undertake the journey.

It goes without saying that no matter how good the treatment might be in Leuven, it’s all totally pointless if the strain of travelling is going to make me worse. I’m quickly reaching the point where the best and most comfortable way of proceeding is to do nothing and let nature run its course

Obviously, staggering down the stairs into a taxi and being driven to Paris is the lesser of several evils, but then we have the climb back up the stairs when I return home that will negate the effects of whatever treatment I might have had.

At least, last night was rather less mobile than some have been just recently so I could have a good relax, even though I was quite late going to bed.

And there were some strange goings-on during the night too. I was awake early this morning and after a while I looked at the time on my phone – it was 06:00 so it must have been about 05:30 that I’d awoken. At some point I must have gone back to sleep because my brother awoke and asked me what time it was. I told him that it was 05:00 and to shut up and go to sleep. He obviously didn’t believe me because he got out of bed, switched on the light disturbing everyone else in the room and went to look. Once he’d satisfied himself that I was correct he went back to bed and began to listen to his radio. After a few minutes of this I told him to put an earpiece in. Then I must have gone to sleep in the dream because I began to dream about some child who was ill but at that moment the alarm went off and awoke me.

It’s actually been a while since I’ve dreamed that I’ve fallen asleep and dreamed that I was dreaming in a dream – if that makes sense

From the bedroom I tottered into the dining area and had my medication, and then came back in here to check my mails.

After a while when I’d come round into the Land of the Living I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at a beach seaside resort with a small port last night with a couple of girls. We were standing on the cliffs watching the storm. There were some kayakers in the port, in individual or in North American canoes in which could fit several people. They were being tossed around like corks in there. It looked really interesting so in the end went to arrange for one of them. We climbed into two and were having fun in the storm. By now the boats had grown into more like canal barges and were having an enormous amount of fun either trying to ram each other or trying to pass each other. In the end it developed into a race on foot between me and someone else with a couple of shopping trolleys dashing through the centre of a town going through roadworks etc. I was in the lead but the other guy kept trying to overtake me. I was all like something out of a Formula 1 car race.

Later on I was in Crewe waiting to turn left into Nantwich Road at the traffic lights. As I pulled up to the lights an Austin Healey Sprite with Swedish number plates and huge tyres pulled up in front of me. The guy in it, an older type of guy with a young girl sitting next to him was doing wheelies in this Sprite and generally showing off. As usual I thought tl myself ‘this is a recipe for disaster”. With the lights being on red he left his car and went for a walk around. I was itching for the lights to change before he came back so that I could give him a full blast on the horn. Just then a load of Austin Cambridge MkII cars pulled up. There must have been 4 or 5 of them. They all looked in really good condition except that the paint was missing on part of the bodywork. I left my car and began to paint the bodywork with the old BMC maroon-type paint and a brush. I ended up painting the wheels with it too.

After I’d had my coffee and bread-and-butter pudding I sat down to make the next batch of hummus for the next few weeks.

And my new FOOD PROCESSOR really is the business. It made pretty short work of grinding and mixing everything up, much better than the little machine that I’ve been using up until recently.

There are now 5 small containers of hummus, four in the freezer and one in the fridge for current use.

For the benefit of new readers, of which there are a few just recently, a decent hummus is quite easy to make if you have a decent food processor or way of whizzing things up. The recipe is

  • 50% chick peas, drained
  • 25% tahini (sesame seed paste)
  • 10% olive oil
  • 10% chick pea juice
  • A large handful of fresh garlic
  • some sea salt
  • plenty of black pepper

Whizz all of that together into a nice purée and then add your extras. Whizz that in just enough to break the extras into pieces but not so much that it dissolves into the purée.

Half of my batch has chilis added to it. The other half has olives and there should have been sun-dried tomatoes in there too but I didn’t like the look of them.

Having been to Transylvania and walked the parapets of Castle Bran (and I have, too) I can confirm that garlic is a very important ingredient in my cooking, for all kinds of reasons.

After lunch I had to telephone the hospital at Caen about this IRM that they want me to have on my heart and then to telephone the ambulance company about my trip to Paris.

The cleaner came by too to drop off my mail and we had a chat too. It seems that my neighbour who is ill isn’t going too well right now and people are becoming worried about her. The nurse also put in an appearance and we had a chat about my next Covid injection.

And in between falling asleep I made a start on another radio programme. I’ve chosen the music, paired it off and written over half of the notes. I can finish off the rest of them tomorrow and dictate them tomorrow night.

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg and there’s plenty of stuffing left for my taco roll tomorrow and a leftover curry for Wednesday along with one of the naan breads the dough of which I made on Sunday.

Plenty of garlic in there too, and soaked in the garlic butter that I made the other week, that should be really good. I won’t ever be worried about vampires coming to see me in the dead of night, although it might actually explain why Zero, Castor and TOTGA have been keeping their distance.

So now I’m going to have a hot drink and go to bed. Welsh lesson in the morning so I need to be on my best form.

At least I can have a good sleep in the afternoon afterwards.

0

Wednesday 15th November 2023 – ALL MY SESSIONS …

… at the Centre de Re-education were cancelled today, and cancelled tomorrow as well. No-one has told me why but I suggest that Severine has been overcome after a couple of sessions of massaging my feet.

She’s not the first, of course. I remember when Nerina wanted us to have one of these Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs.
"What will it eat?" I asked
"The same food as us" she replied
"And where will it live?"
"In the house with us" she answered
"And where will it sleep?" I asked
"On the bed with us and the cats" she answered it
"And what about the smell?" I asked
"The pig will get used to it" she said. "The cats and I had to".

So with no physical training today, I’ve been very busy.

And not just during the day either. I was quite busy during the night too. There was something about a rock group having produced a follow-up album to one that was a great success. There was something to do with 9 minutes in this follow-up which made the disk less attractive to anyone who wanted to buy it. A discussion was going around about how the recording society was really compromising this album in respect of this particular 9 minutes and something needed to be done for the group to reassert itself. But it was like one of these dreams where I walked into the middle of something that was already going on and then walked out again before it finished. I can’t remember any more than that but it was well under way when I first became involved in it

We were back with this group again later, when they had gone to ground over something to do with this 9 minutes. While they were doing it they discovered some music that had been registered by someone who had been there a couple of years earlier and which had been totally overlooked. Now they were saying that this piece of music might make all the difference about how their new album is going to progress.

There was something going on last night about food prices. Prices were starting to go through the roof. People were beginning to stock up. One of the issues was cat food which had begun to be really expensive. Someone in the house where I was living gave me a voucher for 4 tins and asked me to go to the Co-op. As I did, one of the cats ran to the door and ran outside. I had to grab it and bring it back inside the house before I could set off. That had me thinking about walking to the Co-op. I was after all quite ill but was still going along doing all of this, going to the hospital, still doing as much as I could. I remember my father when his wife was ill, how he basically dropped everything and just stayed at home, ostensibly to look after her but I suspected that it was a kind-of fatigue that enters your body once you are old and you just don’t want to do anything any more. I couldn’t understand why it was that so many people seemed to give up hope as soon as they have some kind of severe illness and allow the illness to sweep them away etc instead of standing back up and fighting.

This is pretty much similar to several conversations that I’d had in the past. With most people, if you aren’t feeling too good today you can always leave the task until tomorrow when you’ll be feeling better. Anyone with a terminal illness will tell you that if you aren’t feeling too good today you can’t leave it because you know that tomorrow you’ll be feeling worse. You have to press on regardless.

It’s surprising how an illness like that can change your life for the better, because it keeps on driving you forward.

When I was on the taxis in Crewe I saw dozens of people who had worked all their lives to the sound of the factory hooter and had died a few months after retirement because they didn’t know what to do and so had sunk into a fit of lethargic depression that proved to be terminal.

Mind you, Crewe is rather like that. It’s the kind of place that when the Luftwaffe dropped a stick of bombs across the town during one of the “Baedecker Raids” in 1941, they caused £14,000,000 worth of improvements. It’s the kind of town that sucks your soul out of you and I’d had my fill of it long before I actually left.

There was a competition on the internet a while back for people to submit the most depressing photograph or slogan that they had ever seen. The winner, by a country mile, was a banner seen at a football match that said
“Born in Crewe – Live in Crewe – Die in Crewe”

On the subject of football, during the night I remember something about being at a football ground last night for a football match. It was a windy evening and I was carrying these large pieces of plastic that I’d picked up as littler. I opened my arms and legs in a form of St Andrews’s cross with the plastic as a form of background, just for a bit of fun I suppose, when a gust of wind hit me. It caught the plastic and blew the plastic and me all the way across the ground into a wooden bench seat on the far side which broke into several pieces. I remember thinking to myself that it seems to me that I’m just being dogged around by all kinds of misfortune and bad luck at the moment. Everything that I’m touching seems to be going wrong.

Nothing new there.

I remember thinking, in connection with the last dream, that I’d much rather wait a couple of weeks and have what I want at a price that I could afford rather than going out and buying the first thing that I saw that would do the job but was probably 5 times more expensive than it actually ought to be.

And then I was in Virlet last night down on the farm. In the neighbourhood all running around was a load of little kids, probably 8 or 9, something like that. A few of them were girls and one of them seemed to be pretty much attached to me, which was rather sweet and reminded me of someone who appears occasionally during my nocturnal rambles and makes me go all broody thinking about the daughter whom I always wanted, which I didn’t actually realise until I had a daughter for 3 years. Anyway I took out my bike and decided that I’d cycle to Montlucon to go to the shops. It was night but I reckoned that I’d be there by the time that it was morning and the shops would be open. I set out. The front light was working but the rear wasn’t, but that’s never bothered me before. The father of these kids said something about the rear light but I pretended not to notice. I cycled off and ended up in Longton. I went into a butcher’s shop. Who should also walk in but Zero’s father. I can’t remember now what I ordered. It was something like a meat faggot (it must have been a dream). I asked how much and he told me so I paid it and took it. I could see that Zero’s father was intending on doing something with her, buying something, but I couldn’t make out what was going on in his mind. I got back on the bike and set off. I went to inspect the roadworks along the road out of Stoke on Trent. Just as it was becoming light I was cycling into Stockport which had been one of my planned destinations.

But fancy that – Zero hovering around somewhere on the periphery of my voyages last night and I didn’t manage to see her. Mind you, with one or two things that did unfold during the night and which you really don’t need to know if you are eating your tea, maybe it’s just as well that I didn’t.

So today I’ve finished off the notes for the radio programme on which I’ve been working, and then I’ve tidied up the Radio directory on the big computer.

After that, I carried on with editing the photos from Canada 2022. Right now, STRAWBERRY MOOSE, Strider and I are on our way to Woodstock to do our shopping for our stay.

Before we set out though, we had to give Strider a thorough cleaning because with having stood idle for three years it looked as if someone had been growing potatoes in him.

And it’s a good job that we cleaned him out because we needed the space. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, by the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong.

There were also several interruptions as we went on our way around. The cleaner came, of course, but she brought with her a letter inviting me to a hospital appointment in the cardiac unit in Paris on 24th April next year.

And then an hour later, they rang me up to ask me to go for another consultation, this time with the haematology department. They wanted me to come next Wednesday and interesting as it might be, it’s not really practical to make the arrangements that quickly.

So instead, we agreed on 1at December – 2 weeks or so’s time. That should give me enough time to arrange transport.

This will presumably be when they will let me know whether they will take on my case from Leuven. Much as I love going to Leuven and meeting my friends there, I just can’t cope with the travelling.

Tea was a leftover curry lengthened with supplies from the European Potato Mountain. And I was right about the garlic butter on my naan bread. Every time I breathe out, I burn another 2 layers of paint off the wall.

So having done that, I’ll make myself a drink, dictate the radio notes and then go to bed for an early night. We’ll see how much work I can do tomorrow, but I also have to order food, so blanching and freezing carrots will interrupt my flow.

But the sooner we start, the sooner we finish. We have to make the most of our couple of unexpected days off.

0

Tuesday 14th November 2023 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning, I was round at Liz and Terry’s. Two visitors came round, a young couple. The woman was a teacher at the same school as Liz. There was a big banquet that had been prepared but there wasn’t very much that I could eat so I had to pick my food carefully and then I ended up eating some feta cheese by accident. While I was sorting out my food I was listening to this couple recounting to Liz and Terry a tale of woe about how some kind of dirty deed had been performed against them. As I listened, a light went on in my head because I recalled from a previous conversation that I’d had with someone else that I’d heard this story before, told by a different person and from a different point of view which, nevertheless, didn’t put it in any better light.

So I made it to my feet and went off in search of my medication. I’m starting to run out of some of that now so I’ll have to contact the doctor and see what he can do about it. I’m going to have to be much more reliant on him these days if I’m not going to Leuven again.

Back in here the first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes. And there were quite a few this morning. I’d had a busy night. I’d done some work on the laptop and gone to put the SSD back into it but it wouldn’t work. It took an absolute age to load up. I replaced the SSD with another one and then another one but each time it took really so long for the opening programme to load up onto the laptop – the homepage. I couldn’t understand why. Usually a clean install works quite well, the original hard drive was unaltered but the two other ones were new. There I was, stranded again with all of this going on again without a laptop for the moment.

And then a group of us had tickets for the European Cup Final. We arrived at the stadium quite early and found it fairly empty. We settled down on a couple of seats right at the very edge of where the stage was. There was a lot of discussion about football clubs – who was qualifying and where? Who did you need to support to get someone else, a long complicated discussion. I was busy looking at the speakers on the corner where we were sitting thinking that we’ll be deafened by these. They were in fact old PA speakers from The Who from one of their tours a few years ago. I couldn’t understand why they would be there. Slowly the hall was filling up as people were coming in and people were going. I was beginning to wonder whether we ought to make for a better vantage point than this because the music out of the PA speakers just by where we were sitting would be absolutely deafening.

There was something happening in my life about being divorced or separated etc. Catherine came to see me because we’d had a discussion the previous day or two ago about some kind of appointment. The Social Services had intervened early on that particular morning because the situation that I’d described to them had changed. Catherine asked me for the official date of my divorce or separation. There was no such thing as far as I’m aware. We agreed in the end that once the Social Services had found out the change in circumstances, should we say “5 minutes before that?”. It made no difference at all to me so I agreed. Then she suggested taking me off for an appointment with various different Social Services and Welfare people. She wanted to know about my personal papers, whether I had all of them. I replied “as far as I’m aware”. She asked “there’s no sign that your cupboards and drawers have been forced?”. I replied “no. They aren’t even locked”. She was astonished by that. I said “we aren’t that kind of people. We didn’t really have secrets”. She found a lot of it extremely difficult to believe. I don’t think that I was able to convince her of the truth.

With all this talk of divorce the fan must have been working quite hard. Just as we were talking about Labrador, the “Big Land” the head of the fan flew off and hit a dog that was standing close by us.

At some point I remember being in a motorbike race when I lost control of my bike on a band and skidded across the track and collided with the corner of a grandstand making some people sitting in there jump for safety

And then I’d found a mouse when I was round at someone’s house, a yellow golden colour, not exactly a mouse but something of that description. We managed to catch it and keep it in a jar. It was extremely friendly. We let it out at night when we went to bed. Next morning when we awoke it was still here. We caught it again. I decided that I’d keep it (as if that is ever likely to happen) and take it home. I went to the householder and asked if there was any food that the mouse could eat. They thought that there might be some bread or something but in the end when we looked through the fridge we came across half a cold cheese and mushroom omelette. We have it some of that. The person who fed it gave it an enormous amount, probably 3 times bigger than the mouse itself. I thought that if the mouse was starving you don’t want to give it that much food. It could quite easily kill itself. We put the mouse down to attack away at this cheese omelette.

And that’s pretty similar to the story of the Donner Party. In 1846 they set out on the Oregon and California Trail – a trail that I’ve been following bit by bit on foot over the last 20-odd years – from the Mississippi to emigrate to California, which was in those days part of Mexico.

Edwin Bryant, who travelled part of the way with them, wrote in his autobiography “What I Saw In California” that he was so dismayed with the slow progress that the Donners were making that he and his friends abandoned them and pushed on alone, and I had a lovely lunch in 2019 at one of their lunch stops among the same cottonwood tress where they ate their lunch along the Sweetwater River in Wyoming back in 1846.

Anyway, Bryant was not wrong. The Donner Party arrived in the Rockies so late that they were snowed in and ended up eating each other to stay alive.

But worse was to come. One of the few survivors so gorged himself on food brought by John Sutter’s relief expedition the following year that he dropped down dead.

And it’s a shame that I never made it as far as what became subsequently known as Donner Pass. I made it as far as South Pass – the watershed between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans – and a couple of miles further on, but that will have to be that.

Meanwhile back at the ranc … errr … apartment I went and had a good strip-down wash (I’m still wary about getting into the shower) and fighting off wave after wave of sleep I prepared for my Welsh lesson.

Today, I didn’t stay until the end. My first session at the Centre de Re-education was at 13:30 today so I had to finish early and prepare myself to leave. You really have no idea how long it takes me to put on my shoes.

At the Centre de Re-education I had a very long chat with someone who began the conversation with “how are things up on your rock?” and I don’t have a clue at all who he is.

But he clearly knows me, and that’s worrying.

There were just two sessions today, not three as I had been told last week. Someone had a chat with me about making some kind of plan to build up my muscle tissue, such as still remains, and then Severine pulled and tugged me about for half an hour.

It was later than I hoped by the time that I returned home, where I bumped into my cleaner who had run to LeClerc this morning and had taken a list of mine with her.

And thanks to her, we don’t just have the European Vegan Burger Mountain and European Potato Mountain but also now the European Vegan Cheese Mountain. She has done me proud.

But checking the spuds today, I shall have to do something with them. I suppose that there’s no reason why I can’t freeze them. When I’m freezing carrots, I wash, scrub, dice and blanch them and that works well enough for them, and also for the broccoli and sprouts that I have frozen from fresh.

And so I reckon that doing the same with potatoes will work well enough. If it doesn’t, I suppose that one of you lot will tell me about it

For the rest of the day I’ve been recovering from my exertions and doing a little radio work. As well as checking over the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend.

It’s always a good idea to listen to the programme before it’s included in the stream to broadcast. I won’t ever forget when Liz and I were running Radio Anglais back in the good old days when I’d prepared a programme about “Yes” bassist Chris Squire, only for him to drop dead the morning of the broadcast.

That must have been the quickest re-write in history.

Tea was a taco roll with some of the leftover stuffing, with rice and veg. And while regular readers of this rubbish will recall the monotonous nature of my meals, they are in fact quite tasty.

So off to bed now, and tomorrow I’ll push on and finish the notes for the radio programme if I can. And then off to the Centre de Re-education. Coming back up the stairs was a little easier than it has been and I wonder if really is Severine who is doing her stuff that is working.

It’s all very well about healing the sick, but I wonder if there’s a massage that will raise the dead.

0

Thursday 9th November 2023 – MAIS OÙ SONT …

… les neiges d’antan? wrote Francois Villon 550 years ago in his poem La Ballade Des Dames Du Temps Jadis.

And I wrote something similar last night in my tale of woe about “Ladies From Former Times” when I wrote about Castor, Zero and TOTGA and the absence thereof during my nocturnal ramblings. Where indeed are the snows of yesteryear?

So of course it goes without saying that last night Zero and TOTGA came to see me – at different times, I have to say. I don’t think that I could cope with them both together.

It was all extremely confusing because I had another bad night – one of many that I seem to be having these days. I think that it must be my guilty conscience catching up with me, or something like that.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. As I said, at some point TOTGA came by. We were talking about an expression that I’d used in a conversation – one of these superlative hyperbole expressions. At first she didn’t understand it so I explained that it came from the “Round The Horne” programme which was very good at doing that kind of thing. I went to give her an example and was about to talk about Geronimo and his Indian braves when I suddenly had the most appalling attack of cramp in my left lower leg and I awoke in absolute agony.

Can you imagine it? There I was, not only with the bird on my plate but just about to get my fork stuck in it and I had a bad attack of cramp. The first time that she’s shown up for quite a while too. Is there anything more disappointing than that?

Actually, all through the night I was having these bad attacks of cramp and it was probably all of this that was disturbing my sleep.

In fact, I was glad when the alarm went off and I could stagger to my feet.

It took rather longer than usual to come round into the Land of the Living, but once I was finally on the same planet as you lot, I transcribed the dictaphone notes.

TOTGA I mentioned just now. And later on I was in some kind of big city. One of these places with some impressive stone buildings like Bank headquarters etc. I was walking along a path that was on top of a cliff with all of these big buildings on my right. I came to a point where I couldn’t go any further. The wall of the building went right down to the edge of the cliff. I noticed that there was a gate in it. I can’t think why I hadn’t noticed this gate before. I walked through the gate and slowly went up the hill. There in the distance was a Fortis Bank cash machine. Luckily I had my new Fortis card with me. I picked up the card and tried to put it in the machine but it wouldn’t fit. I’d noticed that I’d actually left it stuck to the backing. I had to peel off the backing but it still wouldn’t fit. I noticed that there was still something else attached to it. It took me several goes to have the card completely separate from whatever it was that it was stuck to. I put it in the machine. At first I had a really difficult job to remember the code number. Eventually I recalled it and could access the account. I then had to think about drawing out some money – obviously, with not going anywhere near a bank these days, the more money I have on hand the better but there has to be a limit. I didn’t want to go too close to the limit in case the machine swallowed my card and then I really would be stuck. I had to think really hard about how much money I was going to ask for.

Actually this is a real preoccupation with me right now. I can’t actually go to the bank any more because I can’t climb back onto the bus at the bus stop. I have a little “fighting fund” of cash squirrelled away but it’s not going to last for ever.

It’s actually quite bizarre. When I was at University, as well as being Chair of Northern Europe I was also involved in Disability issues when I was on the Executive Committee and so I’m well-aware of the day-to-day problems that disability can present.

So I’ve never understood why, if the local council only has a certain budget to spend on improving the bus routes and facilities around the town, why one of the last bus stops to be raised up to a working height is the one just outside the Medical Centre where all of the ill and infirm people go.

That should have been one of the first to be raised up. But instead, the buses stop in the roadway far from the pavement and they don’t “kneel down” enough for wheelchairs and handicapped people to board very easily.

Anyway I digress.

A little earlier I also mentioned that Zero put in an appearance. But you really don’t want to know about the voyage that we had together, especially if you are eating your meal right now. It’s been a while since there has been anything really gruesome figuring in my nocturnal voyages, but when there is, there really is.

With a bit of luck she might put in an appearance tonight and we’ll have a happy ending.

Some nights, what goes on in my sleep is far more stressful than anything that happens during the day. It’s similar to the reason why I’m having serious thoughts about stopping my treatment at Leuven. It doesn’t matter how good the treatment might be and how efficient the care is in the journey to and from Vlaanderen is finishing me off.

Once I’d sorted that out I attacked the notes for the radio programme that I dictated last night. And I stuck at it and finished the programme. I’m actually now at 31st May 2024 with my totally-completed radio shows. I want to be as far ahead as I can possibly be because sooner or later the inevitable will catch up with me.

Afterwards I spent some time tidying the apartment. I’m having a visit tomorrow so the place needs to be clean and tidy. I know that cleanliness is next to Godliness but with me it’s next to impossible.

Neitzsche famously said “out of chaos comes order” but he said that a long time before I was ever thought of. Ezra Pound once said of Ford Madox Ford “Put Ford naked in an empty room and within an hour behold total chaos!”. That’s something that I understand very well

The bedroom is actually clean now and I’ve even vacuumed the floor. And you’ve no idea just how difficult a simple task like vacuuming is right now.

And then I had a good wash and brush up and the car came for me to take me to the Centre de Re-education. The ergotherapist had me opening and closing doors, laying tables, picking up pins and counters off the table, that sort of thing. She also says that next week she’ll come round here to give me practical advice about getting the most out of my apartment.

Severine the physiotherapist put me through my paces too and then, totally, exhausted, I headed back home in the car.

My cleaner was just coming into the building so she helped me up the stairs and into here, where I made myself my mug of hot chocolate.

The rest of the day, such as it was, has been spent pairing off the music for the next couple of radio programmes and beginning to write the notes for one of them.

Tea tonight was delicious. Steamed vegetables and a vegan sausage in a vegan cheese sauce. That was a meal that I enjoyed very much.

So now I’m going to bed, but not before I’ve sent someone a message. If I had to pick a favourite relative (and despite everything that I have said, I do actually have one) it’s the one who is getting married in Michigan tomorrow and I’m really disappointed that I can’t be there with her.

She actually works for one of the biggest transport firms in North America and was away on a mission for work when she was caught in the lockdown over across the border in 2020. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to fight the good fight at the shops if the wind has dropped because it was quite savage again today. And then I’ll finalise my tidying up ready to find out what is actually going on about this visit tomorrow.

The plot sickens.

0

Wednesday 8th November 2023 – I HAVE JUST …

… heaved a rather large stone into a swimming pool. And I shall now sit back and wait for the ripples to reach the shore

What has prompted this is that I am in receipt of “certain information” that suggests that things are not as they are supposed to be or intended to represent. And it might put someone in a rather uncomfortable position if what I have heard is true.

But how long is it since one of my many “moles on various committees” has come up with some goods? At one time 15 or 20 years ago it was almost an everyday occurrence but it’s been a good while since everything on that front quietened down.

It would have been nice for last night to have quietened down somewhat but instead it was yet another quite mobile night with plenty of things going on.

But nevertheless I staggered to my feet as the alarm went off but it wouldn’t be correct to say that I was actually awake. It took quite a while for me to make a start on anything.

Once I’d come back round into the Land of the Living, I started to transcribe the dictaphone notes. I was out on a World War I battlefield that was still undergoing some kind of hostilities. I wanted to meet a certain person in order to make a film about their life. When I knocked on the door of the room where they were suspected to be, no-one actually came to the door at first. It took quite some knocking in the end to arouse someone to come along and talk to me. I then went back to my studio and began to assemble some kind of model out of twigs, bark etc so that it looked like a hut that was in the middle of trenches. I then had to sew it. It was very difficult to sew the bark around some of the twigs. I must have pricked myself with a needle about a dozen times and I hadn’t even finished the first series of stitches. I could see that instead of being something fairly simple and straightforward this was going to turn into a complete and utter mess. I just didn’t have the control in my fingers to sew this hut together correctly.

And then I was writing the story of a suspicious death that many people thought at first was murder. A woman had murdered some guy when she was young. When she was finally confronted with this she became completely hysterical and accused the person accusing her of being implicated in the incident which was quite clearly not the case because his voice was different, his style of behaviour was different etc. The woman became quite hysterical. Just at that moment I had a really bad attack of cramp in my left leg, a bad one of the type that I’ve not had for a while that awoke me and everything disappeared.

Going back later to the dream of the woman who was suspected of having killed that person when she was younger there was a variety of reasons why that might have happened. It was suspected that the person doing the interviewing had suddenly as if by accident hit on the correct explanation and that was what had caused the woman such a great deal of concern.

There were still plenty of questions going through my mind about that murder last night such as why did Miss B change role with Miss G, and quite a few others. At one stage I was heading across a main road towards a bus stop when I noticed that the bus stop was indicating that the bus was going to Bollington which was nowhere near where I wanted to go so I had to think if it might pass a railway station that would bring me home but I couldn’t think of it. I walked across this really wide grass verge at a road junction and found myself walking down a canal towpath. I had to go up a very steep slope over a bridge and found myself hundreds of feet above ground level looking down thinking that somehow I had to be down there so that I could carry on. This was when I had the dream flash back about this woman or girl and the murder

We’d had a few people staying last night and when I awoke the place was an absolute mess. I’d never seen such an untidy place in my life. There was all kinds of stuff, half-eaten food everywhere. In an effort to clear up I ended up throwing away a huge lump of cheese that I hadn’t seen under some waste paper on the worktop. That made me quite angry. I was always taught that you never took to your plate any more than you intended to use. I had a really good moan at everyone who stayed last night. When I went back into the kitchen Nerina was in there busy tidying away everything. I asked her why because I was in the middle of doing it. She said that it was because I sounded so annoyed. I replied “that’s never changed anything between us in the past. There’s no need to do it just because we have guests and show off”. This led to a continual discussion with all this going on. Then she began to pull the wallpaper off the bedroom wall. Some of the plaster was loose and it was dropping off onto the floor. I had to stop her doing it because it was make dust absolutely everywhere, in the bed, all over the place. She said “we could always plaster this aftenoon”. I said “plastering’s not something that you do in 5 minutes. It’s a whole project that needs a lot of thinking out” but she carried on pulling stuff off the shelves etc. In the end I was quite angry, so angry that I awoke.

Can you imagine that? I don’t mind (well, I do, actually) being stressed out by things that actually happen in real life but finding myself stressed out for real by the goings-on during the night Is rather difficult to accept and it certainly can’t be good for my mental health. Whatever happened to those nice dreams that I used to have when Castor, TOTGA and Zero would to visit me, or when I was having that series of really pleasant dreams about a girl whom I met (in a dream as it happens and never in real life, unfortunately) at school?

Eventually I went back to sleep and I had to go to pick up some taxi drivers at the end of their shift last night. When I found them they were all sitting around outside under some blankets in the frost, a group of about 7 of them. There was someone else who wanted a fare but I told him that he’d have to wait while I took these people home. 4 women got into my car and said “Pratchett’s Row”. Off I set. I was having brain-fade because I couldn’t think where it was for a moment One of the girls began to mess around with the meter which I’d already switched on so I told her to pack it in. For some reason I ended up in the demolition area at the bottom of West Street. To get there we’d had to drive through the snow, watching all these cyclists falling over on the ice etc. It suddenly occurred to me “is it Pratchett’s Row in Nantwich?”. The sarcastic girl replied “unless you know another Pratchett’s Row anywhere else then yes it’s the one in Nantwich”. I couldn’t understand why I was having all this brain-fade. As the car was going down the street I noticed its reflection in a plate-glass window that I only had one headlight working. I thought that this is going to be a recipe for disaster – I can feel it in all my bones at the moment.

So during the course of the day, apart from crashing out (which I have done a couple of times today), while the cleaner was here I finished off the writing of the notes for the next radio programme, which I’ll be dictating before I go to bed, and then I’ve paired off all of the music for the next programme and some of the music for the programme after that.

Yesterday, the car that came to pick me up to take me home was 90 minutes late. Today to pick me up, it was 45 minutes early. It seems that I just can’t win.

But at the Centre de Re-education I had a massage again from Severine and a 30-minute chat with an ergotherapist who discussed my living arrangements and how I look after myself … "very poorly" – ed … when I’m at home.

It’s correct to say that she also does home visits and as I have a prescription for such a visit we had a chat about that. But tomorrow she’s going to be giving me a few tests and depending on the results, she’ll be giving me exercises and handy tips to make the most of whatever autonomy I have left.

Back here I carried on working in between sleeping off my efforts and then I went for tea. A leftover curry lengthened with a potato from the European Potato Mountain and a naan bread from my supply of dough from the freezer.

So now I’ll finish off my notes, dictate my radio stuff and then sit back to wait for the whatsit to hit the wherever.

We are living in interesting times.

0

Wednesday 1st November 2023 – THERE WON’T BE MANY …

… people having much sleep tonight. And there’s a police patrol out on top of the cliffs just outside the front door making sure that no-one goes too close to the edge.

We are currently being battered by one of the fiercest storms that I’ve encountered so far, and seeing that this is the windiest corner in France, that’s saying something. It’s absolutely raging outside.

There wasn’t much in the way of sleep last night either.

It was rather later than usual when I went to bed and despite it being another turbulent night, I was actually up and about by 06:20. I couldn’t sleep at all.

Of course, being up and about is one thing. Being awake is something else completely and it took me quite a while to come to my senses. And that’s a surprise, seeing how few senses I have these days.

Once I’d livened up, after my morning coffee, I went tidying up. My bedroom is now looking a lot better than it did earlier. There were books and papers all over the place but now I can actually see some work surface.

In the kitchen and the dining area too. It’s been a couple of weeks since the cleaner has been and so the place is in a bit of a mess. You’ve no idea how difficult it is to perform even the simplest of tasks around here.

One thing that I did today was to switch on the heating. I’ve put it off for a couple of days because I wanted to see November in before I switched it on, and I was desperately clinging on towards the end.

Just now I mentioned the turbulent night. There were tons of stuff on the dictaphone. I started off with a girl whom I knew from Nerina’s office but I can’t remember very much at all about what was happening in it. I seem to have forgotten it all. I do remember suddenly realising that it was a Tuesday night. I’d been off sick for several days and if I didn’t go back into work in the morning I’d be in all kinds of serious trouble. I needed to get a grip, get my things together and head back into work in the morning.

Later on I wanted to sit down and write a letter about the apartment downstairs, how I thought that I ought to be moving into it. There were so many hoops and so on through which I had to jump that it was extremely complicated and needed a great deal of thought before I could sit down and write out a letter about it, making sure that the letter said everything that needed to be said without actually causing any problems for the recipient.

And then my brother and I were at it again last night … "again" sigh – ed. We’d had something to do and he wasn’t at all happy about it. I just couldn’t care less. I carried on going on my way anyway. We ended up in this building that had an Indian restaurant in it. I had a job there as a delivery driver. He’d been hanging on behind me as usual. I prepared everything and went out through the door into the street. For ages nothing happened so I had a patrol around the building to see whether there was anything else happening in there or anything else I could be doing because I needed to be earning some money. In the end I went back into the restaurant. My brother, who had now become some kind of girl Was actually preparing meals. He was moaning, complaining and shouting all the time about what he was having to do and how he didn’t want to do it etc, how he didn’t even like waiting on tables. The proprietor said “yes, I didn’t tell you about the waiting on tables bit but you knew everything else” but that didn’t stop him having a really good moan about everything. He was really unhappy about what was going on.

Meanwhile, I’d had an engine out of one of the Cortinas and had taken it to pieces to have a good look. I’d reassembled the block and sump and put them in position and had all the ancillaries like the manifolds, camshaft etc all there ready to go in. Nerina came round to have a look to see what I was doing. I showed her how the engine worked, what bits were where and what they did. She put her hand in there and touched something. She said “oh it’s loose”. I explained that everything there has to go in under tension – you can’t put one piece in, tighten it up completely, then put another bit in. You had to put all them pieces in together and tighten them up bit by bit while it all goes into tension – it’s all tightened up together slowly. She asked if I’d done anything to the engine. I replied “nothing, except to scratch the name on one of the pistons. This vehicle has done 300,000 miles and there isn’t a sign or wear in the bores, anywhere. I’d never seen an engine quite like this”. We were putting it all together. Also in the garage was an Austin A30 or A35. Some young person came into the garage to look around and saw the Austin. They noticed that the way that the grille and headlights were arranged made it look as if it was smiling and said “of look! This car’s really cute! It really likes me”.

But never mind that – last time I rebuild an engine from scratch in a Cortina it sheared off a big end cap from a con-rod while I was going down a dual carriageway at a rapid rate of knots

And finally a little girl came to see me in hospital. She was all of these “My Little Pony” humanoid figures lying around so she went over to look at them. Later on she began to play with some of them. I told her that she could choose one to play with because it had some work to do in the hospital and it was very important that it was ready when it was required to perform this particular task of work.

While we’re on the subject of letters, there’s a very important letter that I had to write today. I’ve not sent it off yet because, due to its nature, I want someone else to read it first. And so I’m going for coffee with the President of the Residents’ Committee tomorrow afternoon.

While the cleaner was here I finished off the notes for the radio programme, paired off the music for the next one and then wrote half of the notes for that one too. I’ll finish off those over the next couple of days and then dictate them late on Saturday night, assuming that the gale has subsided by them.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry and it was one of the best that I have made. The leftover stuffing needed lengthening, and as 5kg of potatoes was cheaper than 2.5 kg so that I now have the European Potato Mountain in my apartment, I lengthened it with a potato.

Into the mix was some soya yogurt to make it nice and creamy like a korma, and I took from the freezer some of the naan dough that I’d made a couple of weeks ago and had a garlic naan with it.

So I’m off to bed now, with my head stuck firmly under the quilt until tomorrow. And then we’ll see what people think about this letter that I’ve written. I’ve always worked on the principle that “if you don’t ask, you don’t get” and asking costs nothing anyway.

It might even be beneficial, and that would be something!

0

Monday 30th October 2023 – OHHH! THE EMBARRASSMENT!

This morning I fell in my apartment, and I couldn’t pick myself up again. I had to rely on my cleaner to pick me up and put me on a seat.

What I was trying to do was to tidy up the bedroom but my foot slipped on the parquet floor and I ended up on my knee. And it was only a few weeks ago that I could stand up from a kneeling position if I had something to cling on to. But not any longer.

However at least I was able to pull myself up from bed this morning without any assistance – including any assistance of the alarm. I put that down to the change in time that took place on Sunday morning.

After the medication I came in here to type a letter. My cleaner was off into town so I wanted to send her with a letter to the doctor to find out where I have to go for this cardiac examination and to ask for a transport voucher to take me there.

And it was tidying up in here ready for the cleaner to come down for the letter that I had my issues.

After she’d gone I had plenty of phone calls to make. Caliburn is being picked up on Thursday, and I’ve sorted out some banking issues, including requesting documents that I need for this claim for assistance.

There was a load of stuff that I did, and there is probably more to do too.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone from the night but I couldn’t remember much of it. I was in the middle of an enormous, lengthy dream that involved taxi licences. There had been two taxi licences issued for each small town in some kind of area. As the licences were occasionally handed back someone came along to pick them up and develop them. But I can’t remember any more about it than this because I had quite a dramatic awakening in the middle of this lengthy dream.

Then later on there was something about hospitals, military hospitals being used by some Middle-Eastern guerillas who were fighting for their land from a corrupt Government. Just as this dream was setting off I awoke yet again.

At another point there were two of us, me and someone else, driving in one of these big American articulated lorries along an Interstate highway somewhere, checking our maps and making our arrangements. The guy who was driving turned to his radio to announce that we were going to come off here to head down to the border. Once we arrive, maybe we’d stop for food but if he felt like it he might come off and instead, cut across country south-west and head for a different State border that way. We pushed on, left the Interstate and carried on driving. We came to the rest area where we were going to stop. My niece’s daughter was there. She asked about the recording of a concert. I said that I’d managed to record it and had it on CD. She asked if she could have it. I said that I needed it – obviously I’d recorded it because I wanted it but I could copy it for her if she had a spare CD that I could copy it on to. She hadn’t but she said that she could give me a different concert by this group that was shorter but I said that that still wouldn’t solve the problem because I still wouldn’t have the original concert that I wanted.

Looking at that dream, or, should I say, reading it again, it reminds me of the many times that I’ve rolled up and down Interstate 95 stopping off for home fries, beans and toast at Dysart’s Truckstop near Bangor and that famous night when a bus-load of cheerleaders dressed for action dropped in while we were filling our faces.

There was also that legendary trip in 2017 when Strider STRAWBERRY MOOSE and I went to see Rhys, my friend from University, down in South Carolina and then we crossed over into Georgia just to say that we’d been and then came back up the Outer Banks and over Long island Sound, then back up I-95.

Jackson Browne sang about DRIVING DOWN THE 295 OUT OF PORTLAND, MAINE – the “295” being the ring road that takes I-95 around Portland and if you listen very carefully, you’ll hear the tour bus that he was on while he was playing his guitar.

One thing that I missed was that I never ever had the chance to drive an 18-wheel rig down one of the Interstates. The biggest vehicle that I ever drove down I-95 was a 7.5 tonne GMC flatbed taking a big V8 engine from Canada to Weare in New Hampshire for reconditioning.

Still, the way things are, I suppose that that will have to do.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … , bed there had been another dream in which a woman wearing a red jumper was being followed around by a tall, older guy, some kind of down-and-out. It was clear that he had mental health issues but wasn’t a particular danger but it was extremely uncomfortable for this girl. One day he followed her into her office. She decided that she would skip out and wait for the guy to be tackled but he wandered into the room where she worked. He asked if anyone had seem the woman in the red jumper. Someone said “she’s gone down to the canteen for her lunch” to which he replied ‘that’s a shame. I have no money for any lunch” which sent some kind of alarm signal that made the other people in the room begin to think that this was a situation that wasn’t quite correct.

The rest of the day has been spent writing notes for the next radio programme, having paired off the music earlier. I’ve almost finished all of the notes for that one now. There was also time to review and send off the programme that will be broadcast this coming weekend.

Tea was a stuffed pepper – slightly singed but nice enough nevertheless with vegetables and pasta.

So lots to do tomorrow, including a Welsh class, a few forms to fill in, a few phone calls to make and a Re-Education course to begin.

But looking at some of the notes that I’ve been dictating and typing recently, I seem to be spending far more time looking backwards rather than looking forwards. I suppose that it’s normal, what with things being the way they are and that I only have memories to look forward to.

It reminds me of AE Housman
"Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again."

0

Friday 27th October 2023 – THE PREVIOUS DAYS’ …

… completely entries are now all on line.

That’s because I have now found a decent internet connection – yes, I’m back home.

And getting back home was an adventure all of its own as you will find out as you read on.

Last night I’d gone to bed early ready for my early 05:30 start but as usual, I couldn’t sleep. I awoke at 12!50 with a start. I had the radio on and was still listening to it. Somehow the dictaphone that was by the side of the bed fell on the floor. I couldn’t find out where the noise that I was listening to was coming from. I searched round the bedroom for a minute or two until I suddenly regained my senses and found that it was my radio. I took off the headphones ready to go back into this dream and carry on.

And so I dictated into my little machine.

At some point I must have gone back to sleep but I awoke again at 03:00 and that was really that. By 04:30 I’d given up any attempt to sleep and ended up listening to the old-time radio programmes.

At 05:40 someone came round to take my blood pressure and then I had the breakfast that I was promised.

After everyone had gone I had a really good wash and then carried on with selecting the music for the next series of radio programmes. Nurses came and went of course but I battled on and I’m now up to 29th November 2024, with several holes in between such as my Isle of Wight Festival and my Hawkfest programmes for which I’ve yet to decide on the music.

The Hawkfest should be exciting though. There have been a whole variety of Spacerock groups from all over the world who have performed at the various Hawkfests and I managed to talk to a few of them at some point or another. I’ll probably end up with a couple of hours of music and there will still be a lot that I’d have to leave out.

At 11:50 I was whisked off to the IRM unit (in a wheelchair – how the mighty have fallen) where they injected me with a radioactive substance and left me to simmer for an hour, and then they stuck me in another Stargate where I went back and to for 20 minutes.

Back at my unit I was eventually allowed to eat my lunch – several hours later – and the doctor came to see me.

She told me much of what I already knew – about how the cancer is spreading through my kidneys, my heart and into my nervous system via a few other parts of my body.

She thinks, as I have been told elsewhere, that I wouldn’t be able to survive a heart transplant in my state of health so that’s out of the question. As a result she advised me not to buy any long-playing records.

However, she wants me to have an IRM done of my heart, and that can be done locally. It may be that some tweaking can be done to it to keep it going.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that right back at the beginning of all of this in 2015 I was told that I had a coeur de champion – the “heart of a champion” and that’s what will keep me going, but if ever my heart begins to give out, it’s the downhill slope.

And so her comments weren’t any surprise.

She did have some good news. She’s talked to the Haematology department and they may well be willing to take me on instead of my having to go all the way to Leuven. I’m entitled to transport to any hospital within 500kms of home. Paris is 334 kms and Leuven is 650 kms, so continue to go to Leuven means going by train and really, I just can’t do it any longer.

And that’s a disappointment. I had quite enjoyed my spell at Leuven because firstly it’s a beautiful city secondly, I get to see Alison, and thirdly it awoke all of the Flemish that I’d picked up when I lived in Brussels.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I first met Alison at that weird American company where I worked for almost a year after I left General Electric.

The doctor took my telephone and spent the next hour or so reading all of my reports from Leuven and translating them from Flemish to French. She’ll take them to the Haematologist and have a chat.

Presumably they’ll look into the other things that are going wrong with me.

The car pulled up for me just over an hour late and then we set off into the traffic.

Paris and its outskirts were nose-to-tail all the way, and we crawled slowly out of the city. Once we hit the countryside we could put our foot down and began to make good time, only to be pulled over in a Gendarme control.

It’ s obviously near the end of the month and the Gendarmes don’t have enough victims so they went over the car with a toothcomb until they found something for which they could write out a ticket.

It was 21:00 when we finally arrived here and my cleaner was waiting for me. She and the taxi driver helped me up the stairs into my apartment for which I was grateful. It was an agonising climb.

Once I’d recovered I made myself baked potato, baked beans and vegan sausage and that was that.

Now I’ve written my notes I’m off to bed. There’s no alarm in the morning and I’m going to have a lie-in – if I can. There’s usually always someone who comes along to interrupt me.

0

Thursday 19th October 2023 – IT GOES WITHOUT …

… saying that last night was just as bad as the others that I’ve been having just recently. Having a nightmare at about 03:00 didn’t help matters any.

Anyway, as a result it was another difficult crawl out of bed when the alarm went off

What surprised me though is that I seem to be moving rather better than I was a couple of days ago – to such an extent that I actually managed to walk 14 paces without grabbing hold of any support, and that’s an improvement over the last few weeks.

So I made it into the living room and had my medication. Then I came back in here and checked my mails and messages. There wasn’t anything exciting in the mail this morning – no letters or messages from any Health Insurance people. Time is running out.

Once I’d come round into the Land of the Living I transcribed the dictaphone notes. There was a review of what needed to be done in the garden, tasks performed, items bought, etc to prepare it. From there we went on to a football match which Morton won 4-0 which was to the disadvantage of Oldham Athletic. Someone was saying that it’s a shame that Morton’s new manager didn’t score a goal. Someone pointed out that he did in fact score a penalty earlier on in the match. When we had a look to see who it was I saw that it was one of the existing players but I couldn’t remember now who it was.

So later on, back to where we were before. One of the Morton players had pushed this guy who was his manager, pushed him around in a wheelchair during part of the match, pushing him around to show him off to the team or vice versa, something like that.

I was in a dream later with Nerina. She was going off to do a taxi job and I was preparing the cars ready to go out. One of the estates didn’t have an MoT on it. We’d let it expire while we’d been away. We had to go to check it over to make sure that it was OK. I was taking out the radios etc ready. I decided that I’d go through the diary, check on all the big jobs that we usually do and go through for when they were ready for renewal to see if that would give me a clue about how I could manage the car MoTs better. Nerina was going out to do a couple of jobs so she was confused about what was going to be happening to the radio in the office if I was outside fixing all the cars.

There was also something else, as I mentioned earlier, but you don’t really want to know about that.

This morning I’ve been sorting out paperwork and making another assault on a different target. They actually replied too, telling me that I had the wrong address. But at least they posted the correct one so I could redirect my correspondence.

They also provided a phone number that I could ring, so if no-one has contacted me by mid-morning tomorrow I’ll phone them.

There’s also a personal profile that I need to create for the French Government’s healthcare site so I spent some time doing that. It might be too late for that to be of any use but you never know.

All in all, it took me an age to do everything this morning.

This afternoon I finished off pairing the music for the third radio programme in this batch that I’ve just done and then I wrote out all the notes.

Before I go to bed later I’ll dictate the notes for the first one. I did four one after the other last time and I was exhausted by the end so I’ll do one at a time over the next few days.

My neighbour gave me the phone number of her ergotherapist. She told me that she was very impressed with the one who came to see her so I may as well try to have an appointment with the same one. He wasn’t in but his secretary took a message.

My cleaner came by too to bring me a letter. It’s good news from the Belgian Social Security – I’ve had a pay-rise for my pension. Whatever am I going to do with this extra €1:02 a month?

Tea tonight was an attack on the European Burger Mountain in my fridge, with pasta and veg and the rest of that vegan pesto from the other day. Pretty basic, but pretty nice.

So when I’ve dictated the radio notes, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’ll be shopping and then I imagine that I’ll be panicking about this trip on Monday, making a raft of phone calls and eventually, I imagine, making a phone call to book a train.

It’ll be a blooming miracle if this taxi thing comes off.

0

Wednesday 18th October 2023 – THESE NIGHTS ARE …

… not getting any better. It was another dismal night of being awake for hour after hour after hour.

And then being flat out asleep, dead to the world, when the alarm went off.

And so with having slept for probably about half an hour it was a very weary me that staggered to my feet when the alarm went off.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I had some correspondence that needed my attention. I’ve sold yet another photo from my adventures around Labrador and you’ve no idea just how many hoops you have to jump through for $200.

Not that I’m complaining of course. I’ve sold a fair few of my p =hotos but this is the most that I’ve ever received for one.

There was then the information that I needed to collect, which I mentioned yesterday. That took a good while and then I could send it all off by internet. A phone call won’t be sufficient because they will need to see the information that I have.

While I was at it, I decided to contact my former employers. They have a Social Services and Welfare department so I may as well try to involve them in whatever problems I have going on. The more the merrier, I reckon.

At that point, I drifted off into the Arms of Morpheus for a good half-hour. And then I sent off a couple of radio programmes to be broadcast this weekend and next weekend.

Climbing into the bath, even using a wooden box as a step, was almost impossible. I had a real struggle to fight my way in, and finding my way out again wasn’t all that much easier. This is starting to become rather grim.

While the cleaner was here I attacked the notes for the radio programmes and not only did I whizz through one from start to finish, I did some of the next one too. If I’m lucky and don’t have too many distractions I’ll be able to finish that one tomorrow.

After the cleaner left I had my hot chocolate and then attacked the washing. That’s everything now done for the moment.

But have you any idea how difficult it is for me to move a basket full of moist washing into the bay where I keep the clothes airer? It’s this kind of simple thing that is causing me all kinds of anguish right now.

There was (surprisingly) some stuff on the dictaphone. I was doing something with a rock group last night. Things weren’t working out too well so at some point I went round to the place where we kept all our things and began to take everything away that was mine. I noticed that some of them had actually got together with one or two other people and were in the process of trying to create something but I didn’t want them to use my things. I was in an extremely bad temper, even down to things like my telephone answering machine so I took it away. They had changed the message on it so many times that it was now absolutely useless anyway. I ended up with seven or eight bags that I dragged off as best as I could, came back to my bedroom at home and dumped the lot on the floor while I sat and thought about my next move.

It was then our students’ union annual conference taking place at some hotel in Manchester. Things were so up-in-the-air and so confused that I set out from home with absolutely nothing except the clothes that I was wearing. I boarded the tram that whisked me off. When I arrived in Manchester I eventually found the venue. It was a very small hotel with several floors but no matter where I went I couldn’t find anyone in charge of the organising. No-one would give me any papers or any timetable, I didn’t know anything about having food etc. There was a meeting taking place on the Sunday to which I’d been invited but there was nothing at all like that. The guy running that particular meeting grabbed hold of me and asked me why I hadn’t done a few things. I explained that I needed paperwork so he wandered off. I spent all that Friday evening wandering around this hotel trying to find someone to give me some information to tell me what on earth was actually going on and what I was expected to do.

Not of course that it makes no difference because I don’t ever know what I’m doing. That was always the advantage of living in a small village – if you didn’t have a clue what you were doing, everyone else knew.

Tea tonight was a chili sin carné using the leftover stuffing lengthened with a large handful of peanuts. What with all of the bulghour that was already in there, there’s enough protein in that lot to sink a ship.

But right now, I’m off to bed. I wonder how much good the mails and letters that I’ve written today will bring. Probably not a lot, but if you ask, you might receive, or you might not so there’s a 50/50 chance. If you don’t ask, you won’t receive at all.

But we’ll find out soon enough. But if no-one actually does anything, I can see myself walking to Paris on Monday morning.

0

Tuesday 17th October 2023 – THIS TRIP TO PARIS …

…is becoming more and more complicated as each day passes.

My cleaner took the paper to the Health Insurance people for stamping. However, because it’s more than a certain amount it needs to be pre-approved by their head office.

"You should have your reply in 15 days" said the clerk to my cleaner.

And I travel on Monday.

But be that as it may, I ended up having another miserable night. What with a raging thirst and the stabbing pains back in the sole of my right foot, I was pretty much fed up of how the night went.

However even though I saw 06:40 come round, I was flat out asleep when the alarm went off at 07:00. And as you might expect, it wasn’t exactly easy to leave my stinking pit.

Anyway, there I was. And after I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I’d been to a Remembrance Day parade. There were whole choirs of people including soldiers and civilians singing the Eric Bogle song NO MAN’S LAND two or three or four times consecutively, one after the other. I’ve no idea why because there’s nothing else that I remember

And then Nerina and I had been on holiday and had just come home. We’d slowly started to unpack. I couldn’t find half the things that I’d taken with me, CDs, that kind of thing and I was going round in circles. Nerina decided that she’d go to bed and I suddenly got it in my head that I’d go home. I left our house and began to walk on my crutches down West Street in Crewe. A train pulled up but it pulled up further down the platform than it usually would and a tram came in right behind it. By the time I reached the train to board it, it pulled away and left me standing there. Then I looked at my ticket and found that it was for travelling in the opposite direction, not out towards Nantwich. I stopped for a think and decided that I’d head back into the town centre. It was a wet evening but somehow very nice. I walked into the town centre, which became part of the old Brussels town centre. I couldn’t find a chip shop that was open. There were all these wonderful smells from barbecues, food stands and the brewery was creating quite an odour as it was working. I was aimlessly wandering around taking it all in. Then I wondered why it was that I was thinking that I was heading home because I was actually living with Nerina. My home was there. I thought that I’d set out back and wander back towards home. I noticed that by now I wasn’t using my crutches. I was going slowly but I seemed to be walking much better and didn’t need them. I was totally at a loss as to what was happening. I was going down these stone steps at the back of the town centre etc. Although my right leg was hurting it was still keeping me upright. I remember thinking that it’s a beautiful evening out here in the town centre just wandering around, looking around, taking in all the smells and sights. Maybe the two of us ought to come out and do this kind of thing more often

Later on I was with Nerina again. We were wandering around a shopping street somewhere in a tourist area in a city like Bruges. For some reason we became separated and I was on my own. There was something like a tiny kiddy’s tricycle that you’d sit on and push along with your feet. Someone disabled was using it. I found another, sat on it and began to push myself along the street on it. It was really interesting because there was a whole new perspective of views that you could imagine that a small child would have when it was being hustled along by its parents. I was taking it all in and slowly going down the street. Suddenly I heard her call in the distance, wondering where I’d got to. I thought “never mind. She’s heading in the right direction. She’ll catch me up quite quickly. I just carried on pushing myself along through the crowds on this kiddy’s scooter.

Having done that, I had to fight off a huge wave of sleep and then sit down and prepare for my Welsh lesson.

And to my surprise, the Welsh lesson went really well and I actually enjoyed it. That makes quite a change, the way things have been just recently.

Once the lesson was over, I had to wait for the doctor’s office to open and then I could telephone him. I spoke to his secretary and explained the issue with the Health Insurance. She promised that she would tackle them herself and let me know how things develop.

Next issue was to see about a vehicle to take me. My idea is that if I wait until I have confirmation that the cost is taken in charge, there will probably be no vehicle available. If I book one now and, if the cost won’t be reimbursed, I can always cancel it.

And cancelled it will be, if it’s not reimbursed. I only wanted to borrow the vehicle for half a day, not to buy it.

But there is another plan going through my head about this trip, and it will involve the collection of a mass of paperwork and a phone call to Italy.

More of this anon.

For what remained of the afternoon I chose some more music for the next couple of radio programmes and paired off the music for one of them.

After tea, which was a taco roll with rice and veg, there was football. Y Barri v Pontypridd

This was a typical lower-table derby match – at least, during the first half – with a few moments that could best be described as “warm”.

In the second half the game came to life and there were actually some moments of sublime skill. Y Barri’s opening goal, scored by Harrison Bright, was one of the best that I’ve seen for a while.

In the end Y Barri won 2-0 and if it hadn’t been for Wales under-21 goalkeeper George Ratcliffe in the Ponty goal, they could have had a hatful.

Y Barri’s centre-forward Kayne McLaggon is one of the best attackers that I’ve seen in Wales and he would have been able to take on the best if he ever had had some decent service. He’s been carrying their attack for years – up until this season.

A few years ago I saw a few games in the WPL where a young centre-forward called Ollie Hulbert played on loan for Cardiff Metro from Bristol Rovers and he impressed me very much. Y Barri signed him this summer and I reckon that once he and McLaggon work themselves out, and when they finally have some luck, they’ll be an unstoppable force up front.

So later than usual, I’m off to bed. I have a lot to do tomorrow so I need to be on form. I hope that I have a better night than last night.

0

Monday 16th October 2023 – MEANWHILE, ON THE …

… telephone –
Our Hero "I have to travel to the hospital in Paris and the doctor has given me an authorisation for transport"
Health Assurance Official "you need to bring the form in here so that we can stamp it"
Our Hero "if I were able to bring the authorisation into your office, I wouldn’t be needing the authorisation"

You can’t make up stories like that.

And so it’s been another day when I’ve done almost nothing at all.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone from the night too and strangely, I don’t remember some of it. Although I’m asleep when I’m dictating the notes, when I’m transcribing them there’s some kind of lightbulb that goes on in my head about most of them.

But last night there were a few that meant nothing at all to me when I came to listen to them.

When the alarm went off this morning I staggered out of bed and went off to take my medication. And then I came back here.

It took a while for me to come round into some kind of working mode, but my relaxation had been interrupted by the doorbell. The nurse had come to see my neighbour but she didn’t open the front door for him so I was obliged to stagger to the door in here to press the switch.

When I finally felt more like it, I had a listen to the dictaphone. Nerina had gone to the hospital to have an operation to have an operation on a cancer or something. Everyone else had disappeared and I was at home on my own. I’d been in Canada, dealing with the fall-out of a ferry that had sunk in one of the big rivers there. There was a great deal of talk about conspiracy theories regarding it, how it was time-expired and couldn’t find insurance for it etc. Whoever it was who was also with us then came back and handed me an envelope. I’d asked them to bring me £1000 cash back from the bank so they brought it back for me. It was all wrapped up in a little packet and they thought “why has the bank gone to this length with this money?”. I asked about Nerina and explained that there was a phone call that she needed to make but I’d left the details back downstairs. Then this person began to talk to me about a British aircraft carrier, “Eagle” that had also sunk in mysterious circumstances. That person seemed to think too that there was a problem with insurance etc, how it was a faulty build etc, how sinking was probably the best answer for it as far as the Navy was concerned. This conversation went on at some length. I explained that there was talk of this ferry, that suddenly the insurance offer had increased from several hundred thousands to¨£3,000,000. The person said that the same thing had happened with “Eagle” but that was done under the counter in a pub or café. I began to ask about Nerina and her operation, how she was doing.

In fact Nerina did once go into hospital back all those years ago and I did go to see her – but not for long. I have a horror of operations, tubes, pipes and all that kind of thing and if I had stuck around I’d have found myself in the next bed.

What I’m going through when I go to hospital is my worst nightmare. They are all well aware that the staff isn’t allowed to discuss operations with me and when I went two years ago to have the carcinogenic bit cut out of my kidneys no-one said anything. They came, pushed me out of my room to downstairs and stuck a gas mask over my face and that was all I knew about the entire proceedings

It’s one of the reasons why I never wanted children – because I’d be expected to be in the delivery room and there would be no way on this earth that that would ever happen. Of course, it’s always possible to be excused attendance but it’s the kind of thing that would be thrown back at you in any kind of dispute. And quite frankly, there are enough reasons to moan at me and complain about me without actually going looking for them.

Later on there was a group of us doing some things around the Crewe area. One was my brother and the other was a girl whom I knew when I lived in Chester. We had to go to some shops for some medication from the chemist and something else. We climbed into my car and drove. At a certain moment going up the street a woman appeared on a bike on the wrong side of the road. I didn’t see her until the last moment. I swerved to miss her. I hit the tyre on the kerb and burst it. I went for a slow limp to somewhere where I could change it but then another tyre burst. I thought “this is no good”. There was some stuff that we needed in the car so I was trying to group it all together in a bag. It was extremely difficult. My brother was making his usual remarks so in the end I gave him the bag and said “here, you carry it”. We set off but they began to wander off in the wrong direction. I said “if we go to the chemist’s in Bedford Street we’re only a couple of hundred yards away from Nantwich Road. If that chemist doesn’t have everything there are 2 or 3 chemists there. The other thing we need can also be bought from a shop there too”. We set off to walk down Bedford Street. I was talking to this girl about the area where she lived in Chester. I told her that I thought that the pub “The Beehive” had now become something else but she didn’t know. I asked where she lived, if she still lived in Chester. She said no, that she lived in Scapa Flow. We ended up taking a short cut through a building. I said to my brother “how do you fancy a nice cheap flat in Edinburgh,” because it was very cheap and it wasn’t really all that bad for the money. We went through this flat and out of the front door into the street.

And then a few of us were talking about my sister’s van. She had a Morris 1000 van and was having a few transformations done to it. When it was finished it looked like a pest on wheels. She would go round the shops with it until one night we stole it and hid it. One night we were down at a pub and she was out in a car. She came past and tried to attract our attention. We thought that we’d better disperse. We scattered and a couple of us ended up in Queen’s Drive in Nantwich where we were being overtaken by a film – a ship thing had passed which was this Morris 1000 van covered in brambles and weeds etc. There was something too about asking my sister the old question of days, the 21st, 24th and a couple of other occasions in that month. She found out the dates wrote them down on a piece of paper and stick them against the bridge behind my headboard in the dark.

Finally I had to go to Whitchurch to see a member of my father’s family. A letter had been delivered to my house for one of them. It was now 04:00 and we were finishing off the taxi work so I set off to deliver it. When I arrived at where I thought they lived I couldn’t identify the house. I saw something that might have been it and began to prowl around. In one of the outbuildings I found the bodyshell of an ancient 1950s Standard Vanguard Vignale … "actually a Phase I" – ed. There was also a set of number-plates on the floor written in Latin alphabet and then in Arabic. I wondered what they’d been doing with the number-plates off a Turkish lorry at one time. As I walked out of the barn I bumped straight into the guy. I came up with some kind of feeble excuse and handed him a letter. He seemed to be extremely delighted. I suddenly realised that it was his taxi wages that I was giving him. We had quite a chat. He asked me if we’d been busy on the taxis. I replied “very busy. I’ve not had my tea yet” and dawn was breaking the following morning”. Then I set out for home. As I was trying to put the key into the ignition some car tried to squeeze through the gap where I was parked. I told her to be a little patient but she snapped at me. When I set off I was driving on the wrong side of the road for a while. When I ended up in Whitchurch I was now on a bike. There was a cyclist in front of me moaning and complaining that I wasn’t in the correct lane, I was too close to him, all that kind of nonsense. He and I had a few words then I carried on heading for home.

Later on, the doctor came round to see how I was doing.

He gave me the famous bon de transport to go to Paris, another one for when these sessions at the Centre de Réeducation begin. Then there’s a prescription for something to help me in and out of the bath (not a student nurse, unfortunately) and finally, a prescription for an ergo-therapist.

An ergotherapist is one of those people who come to study your lifestyle and habits, and suggests ways and items that might improve your quality of life.

If he examines my lifestyle and habits he’ll have a hell of a shock.

Next step was to arrange the purchase of this IMac. I’ve decided that I’m going to buy it because at the very least it’ll replace the laptop that I’m using in the dining room to watch DVDs when I’m having my tea.

There was another visitor too. My cleaner came to see me and brought me my post. She’d heard about my story with the transport authorisation and as she’s going to the veg market tomorrow morning at Yquelon she can drop my form off as she’s passing, and also pick up my bathroom thing.

We went through a pile of stuff too about these chairlifts and tomorrow I’ll be ordering brochures.

Tea was later than usual – stuffed pepper and pasta. Just as nice as usual. So now I’m going to bed.

But I’m sickening for something again. This evening I’ve developed a really raging thirst and that’s always a sign that something is going on in my body. A collapse in health usually follows and what’s sad is that there isn’t much health left to collapse.

But if the Health Assurance people do agree to pay for my trip in a taxi to the hospital, that will be an enormous weight of my mind. I’m not looking forward to the trip if I have to go by train.

0

Saturday 14th October 2023 – BETTER LATE THAN …

… never. And it doesn’t get much later than this.

As I begin to type out these notes it’s 01:48 tomorrow – if you see what I mean. And there is no reason whatever for this lateness because, as far as work goes, I’ve done nothing at all. I didn’t even begin to type out the dictaphone notes until about 00:30, and I’ve not had any food this evening either.

The day started off as it meant to go on, with a desperate stagger out of bed in an attempt to beat the second alarm. I managed it too, but not by a lot.

After the medication I checked the mails and messages, to find that I’d been invited out for a coffee this afternoon so I’d better have a good wash and a shave etc

Later on, I finished off the soup that I’d opened yesterday. With no bread here today (except in the freezer) I had a go at baking some of this precooked bread in the air fryer.

It worked better than I expected, so when I bake the second one tomorrow I’ll turn down the heat a bit and cook if for a shorter time. But it opens up the door to all kinds of possibilities.

What I have been doing is to resolve a problem with the computer. It performed an upgrade during the night and from then on, I couldn’t log into a site that I use. I had to leap through all kinds of hoops to finally make it fire up properly

Something else I’ve been doing is to do a little research. One of my friends is selling a dual-screen IMac set-up. It’s an old piece of equipment but it seems to be fairly powerful – even with a 1TB SSD

They are reputed to be much better than a PC for working in graphics and one of the screens in the set-up is a whopping 27-inch and that looks interesting, so I’ve been going through the list of programs on it to see what it has and see whether, if I decide to buy it, it will do what I want.

It’s not as if I’m expecting much for my money, but I’m not paying much money for it. I’ve seen the list of known defects in these machines and there’s nothing on there that worries me.

Later on I went upstairs to chat with my neighbour and her daughter who is visiting. We were there for several hours chatting about all kinds of things.

One of the plans, for which I did some research later, was to find out about one of these chairlifts to go up the flight of steps to where the lift is. There are several disabled people in the building and we are all struggling to climb these 12 steps.

On the way up, I was detained by one of the other neighbours, and then a different neighbour detained me on the way down. I seem to be quite popular these days.

No tea tonight because I wasn’t hungry, but it’s not as if I had anything more important to do.

And later on I had the dictaphone notes. I was writing out some notes for some radio programmes last night. I’d come across a song going back to the late 60s recorded by a boy and girl couple. I added it onto the playlist and began to look for some information about them. I came across a whole series of photos taken quite quickly one after the other, one of which was the boy carrying the girl. The caption was something along the lines of “this is how to cherish your pet when it begins to rain”. It turned out that these photos were taken of 2 kids, one of whom was 15 and the other was celebrating her 14th birthday. They had sung together at school and gone on to make records. I couldn’t find out what had become of them, whether they’d married, broken apart or just drifted out of the scene. It was really strange because all the information that I could find about these people stopped at this birthday party

A little further on in the same dream I was doing my Welsh homework and answering a few questions but there were several that had me stumped. I read one of them out loud but I couldn’t think of the verb. The teacher turned to me and asked “do you think that (such a verb) is good to use in that place?”. I replied “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you” so he asked again but I still couldn’t hear. He probably said the sentence to me 4 or 5 times but I still couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying, almost as if I was having some kind of blank spell of deafness while he was asking me the questions. I couldn’t understand anything he was saying. It was just a blurred kind of burble when he talked to me.

Then there was something back in the dream a third time about (something) beer and bowling makes a great afternoon out. I thought to myself that I should be doing quite well at this sport but it’s not the slightest bit of use whatsoever if you can’t hear anything that someone is saying to you.

We also had a competition between people. I don’t know what competition it was now but my name was pulled out of the hat to be paired with Hercule Poirot. I said “oh no! Not you again!” in a rather exasperated tone of voice

Then a large white cross appeared in the middle of a programme that was going on and I was recording, about your elderly ones being on TV etc. I was hoping that the person whom I was looking after had a great deal to say so I was interested in having her try to go on this programme but I wasn’t doing very well at all.

Finally, I was back in Crewe and had been working on Caliburn. There was a lot of work that needed doing and I’d done most of it. Some of the stuff was quite heavy and I needed some things. My father said that he’d be home at lunchtime and we’d finish it off in the afternoon. So roll round 17:00, 18:00 and I’d been standing there for 5 or 5 hours. There was no sign of him, which was nothing new. I was beginning to think about the wasted holiday. I’d just come over here to see everyone and all I’ve ended up doing is standing in this drive waiting. A few girls whom I knew came round. They were going out to drop some things off on some people. They asked me if I’d like to go so we piled into their car and set off. We stopped at one of the streets off Nantwich Road to drop off something at someone who had a poodle. The girls were making some remarks about these people and this poodle. We all ended up walking along Nantwich Road. I was miles away with my head in the clouds as usual. I noticed that these girls were crossing the road so I shouted and ran after them. They all laughed. We wandered along the road looking at the things in the shops. They seemed to be having a good time but I was still feeling extremely depressed about everything that I’d planned to do, everyone whom I’d hoped to see etc but there I was, just waiting around for things to happen, which seemed to be the usual state of affairs.

So now I’m off to bed to sleep until I wake up. And I’ll have a little think about this computer. The last time that I used an Apple was in 1992 so it will be fun to have a play around with this IMac for as long as it lasts. It won’t last all that long but then again neither will I.

0

Thursday 12th October 2023 – I’VE JUST FOUND …

… myself flat out on the chair asleep. I’ve no idea why but what it probably means that I’m going to have another restless night tonight.

Actually, last night was one of the better nights that I’ve had just recently and I didn’t move around much during the night. The only problem was that there wasn’t enough of it. It was extremely late when I went to bed

You’ve no idea how much of a struggle it was to leave the bed when the alarm went off, but I did manage to beat the second alarm to my feet.

And I was right about what I thought yesterday about the fall that I had making things worse. I can’t walk with just one crutch now, and I can no longer rise up from my knees.

After the medication I came back in here and didn’t do very much for quite a while as I slowly came round into the Land of the Living.

However I was disturbed on several occasions. Firstly the nurse came round. The hospital want me to have a blood test before I go so I had asked him if he would do it. He came round to collect the prescription to check what he needed to bring with him when he comes.

Next was the doctor’s secretary. I’d written to him a few days ago and apparently he wants to come round to see me to discuss the points that I raised. We tentatively arranged Tuesday morning, but that will of course depend on his other commitments.

After that was the cleaner. The forms for this Autonomy service had arrived in my letter box so she brought it up to me. There’s tons of stuff that they need, including bank details and a medical certificate. So I’m glad that my doctor will come round to see me.

There’s something going round in the back of my mind that someone else disturbed me too but I can’t think of who it was.

Despite the much calmer night, there was still some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I’d been away for a few days and was coming back home to Virlet in my yellow Cortina estate. When I pulled round at the front of the house there was my mother and some small girls cutting up some firewood, burning brambles etc. My mother looked at me and burst out into a tirade of nonsense about “what on earth am I doing coming home?”. She’s the one who’s supposed to be working tonight. How’s she going to make her money if I keep on taking hours away from her? I didn’t understand anything. I’d been away from home for a few days, I’d just come home and I was going to go to bed, sleep for a week and leave everyone else to do the work as I usually do on a Saturday night. I’d no intention of taking any work away. Instead we had this absolutely hysterical outburst

There was also something about a demonstration taking place going from somewhere in the Midlands to the Isle of Anglesey, coming by Virlet. Out of all the people taking part they had arrested one motorcyclist for something or other. I had a look at his motorbike. It was a big 4-cylinder thing. I tried to climb onto it to sit in the seat but found that I couldn’t. That was when I reluctantly came to the opinion that motorcycling is not going to be for me now.

Next thing to do was to to deal with the correspondence that’s been building up. Some of it is extremely important too and can’t be left loitering around for too long. It was extremely complicated too and involved a lot of research. But now that’s all done and I can take it to the Post Office tomorrow.

That’s one thing to which I’m looking forward about going on the bus to St Nicolas. They have said that the Carrefour is bigger than the one here, it’s much closer to the bus stops, which are both raised to a reasonable height, but the crucial point is that the supermarket, the Post office and a Chemist are all right next door to each other so I don’t have to stagger very far.

There isn’t much time though so I suppose that I’ll be having a coffee in the Agora Centre while I wait for the following bus.

The rest of the day was spent working on another one of the radio programmes for which I dictated the notes at the weekend. That’s all assembled now, and there’s just one of that batch left to do. That’s the task for tomorrow afternoon.

Tea was exciting tonight. To create some room in the freezer I finished off the last slice of the lasagna that I made a while ago. I had with it steamed vegetables and vegan cheese sauce. all of that gave it a certain je ne sais quoi.

So now that I’m awake again I’m off to bed and if I have as good a sleep as I had last night I’ll be more than happy. I just hope that it’s much longer than last night.

0

Wednesday 11th October 2023 – I ALMOST FELL …

… out of the bath this afternoon. as I was climbing out, my right knee gave way again and luckily I was able to grab hold of the shelving unit before I hit the ground.

Not that it’s any surprise. I was wondering how long it would be before I actually fell over in here. I’ve been expecting it for quite a while.

But I’ll tell you one thing for nothing – and that is that I was right about what I’ve been thinking. I’ve had the idea for quite a while that each time the leg folds up it seems to make things worse subsequently. And that certainly seems to be the case today.

Not that things could be much worse actually. It was yet another miserable night although while I had the pain in my foot again, I didn’t have all of the burning in the lower leg. But whatever it was, it still kept me awake for much of the night.

When the alarm went off I was nevertheless fast asleep and had something of a battle to leave the bed.

After I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages it took me a good while to come round into the Land of the Living and then I sorted out the rest of the food that needed to be put away.

And there was quite a bit of it too. It’s not exactly that I’ve gone berserk but I need a minimum order of €50:00 before they deliver so I’ve had to think about things that I’ll need sooner or later when it comes to making up a large enough order.

Next stop was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night. And there was an enormous pile of it too. I was with someone who might have been Captain Povey from the Navy Lark last night. he was telling everyone about how his wife had gone on a course and afterwards he was intending to apply for a course so he could go to join her, which was met with a great deal of guffaw from a lot of people. The scene then moved to Crewe, a railway station. But to reach the railway station you had to go down what was called the Horse Landing last night. They’d extended the station out from the main part of the building to that particular point. All the vehicles. All the vehicles were driving down the Horse Landing to drop off. As we watched, there were two old Mark II Consuls or Zephyrs. One was being driven by a woman. Both the vehicles picked up fares at the same time at the bus stop and both were to go down to the railway station. One got away quite quickly but the other was in all kinds of problems. It took a good deal of time to actually depart. It then put its indicator out to turn left down the Horse Landing. It was a standard series II big Ford like that with a roof bar with the taxi sign. I was interested to know that the indicators weren’t on the bar but where they normally would be, on the bodywork. I thought that that would make life confusing as they would be less visible than if they would be up on the top where everyone could see them.

Later on I was at another railway station that was all built in wood. It was in beautiful repair and the colours were all reds and yellows and lilacs, it all went really well together. To access it you had to walk round by a car park somewhere where there were bus stands, crush barriers etc. Even though it was no real practical plan, the fact that it was a beautiful building, I loved actually going there to it and walking around down the path that led to the front door.

It had been hot, miserable and sweaty while I was having the other dream just now but when I started to think that I’d roll the bedclothes back it was cold but it became a really nice environment for me to sit back, relax and sleep which might sound strange because there was nothing happening. Just me and the cool breeze here trying to sleep.

And then I was back in that dream at that pretty wooden station again. A vehicle began to reverse across the car park and made the people crossing there dodge for the pavement. One woman wasn’t quick enough and the bus almost hit her. She fell to the ground and her fibre mug of coffee went everywhere. In the end the crowd called out for the driver to stop. Luckily he did so before he ran over the woman. That would have been painful if she’d actually ended up underneath it.

We were back in an earlier dream where I’d been visiting some kind of hotel. Several members of my family were there but weren’t actually involved in it. I’d gone to my little sister’s room to have a look round and for one or two things while she wasn’t there. I was quite distracted so I left everything as it was, including some of my things there while I went to do what else needed doing. But time caught up with me and I could hear all kinds of people moving around in the building. I thought that I’d better run back to her room to collect all my things and hurry back to my room. One of the things that I had in that room was STRAWBERRY MOOSE and he wasn’t very easy to smuggle down the corridor so I was looking for a towel in which to wrap him so that I could pretend that he was a bundle of clothes. As usual, every time I organised something it created 2 other problems. Going forward to gather my things and leave the room as quickly as possible, there were just more and more things coming along to delay me. I felt that at any moment now I’d be caught and have to explain what I’m doing.

We were back in that hotel where I’d been just now. We were preparing to leave so we effectively left, but we’d left behind all our things. In the end we went back. The room in which my sister had stayed was an absolute mess. There was all amount of stuff everywhere. My brother had been sharing the room too so there were things of his there. At that moment the receptionist knocked at the door to ask about breakfast. She saw the state of the room and made some kind of commentary so I thought that we’d better start to pack it up. I was holding up clothes etc asking “whose is this?” and throwing them to the person concerned. By now my sister had transformed into Zero and she was now being an extremely busy bee, dashing around getting all her things together. Every time she had a bag prepared she’d rush off downstairs with it and then rush back upstairs again for the next one. This was going on quite quickly and the room was being emptied quite quickly. I had a smile, and her parents saw me smiling. They asked me why so I explained that I’d met a girl a few years ago who would have been Zero’s age now. I could see exactly the same characteristics, exactly the same behaviour and it’s really funny to think that even though they come from opposite sides of the World they seem to have become clones of each other. That was what was making me smile.

So hello again to Zero. It was nice to see her again. And strangely enough, when I was on a ferry across the Strait of Belle Isle between Newfoundland and Labrador, I did bump into a girl who would have been the spiting image of an “a few years-older Zero”. And there was also the girl in the café in Brussels.

For the rest of the day I finished the radio programme that I’d started yesterday. That took an effort to align because it ended up over-running by quite a distance and I had to do some hefty editing

In between, I went to have a shower and to meet my fate as I climbed out At least, though, I’m nice and clean. But what I’m going to do is to look for some plastic boxes that I can use as steps to climb in and out of the bath until I can make a better arrangement. I’m disappointed that I’ve had no reply as yet to my letter to the doctor.

While the cleaner was here I wrote the notes for part of another radio programme. But we also had a good chat, part of which was that I’ll tell her and the other housebound inhabitant of the building when I’m next about to order from the supermarket.

If I can persuade them to add in their orders to mine, I can make up the €50:00 without having to go mad myself, help out everyone else and the delivery charge is the same no matter how much I order so it makes no real difference to me.

For tea tonight I had a left-over curry, and I made some naan bread dough seeing as I now have some soya yogurt. And it really did taste nice too

So much later than usual, I’m going to bed. Tomorrow I have a few letters to write and a few radio programmes to prepare. The if the doctor isn’t going to reply, I’ll need to sort out a train and a couple of taxis to go to the hospital. I don’t want to leave myself stranded.

0