Category Archives: cleaner

Friday 6th October 2023 – IT’S NOW OFFICIAL.

In the post this morning came my two disability permits. One for me and one for any car in which I might be travelling. It’s a sign of the times of course and something that will inevitably happen to all of you at some time or another. All I can say is that I’ve had a good run for my money

All I need now is a car which I can drive, but that’s not going to happen any time soon. For that, I’ll have to see what these people at APA have to tell me, but even now they STILL haven’t sent me the forms that they promised a week ago. This is going to be a lengthy process.

My sleep last night was a lengthy process too. For two nights on the run now I’ve slept right through until the alarm went off. And then I had a struggle to get to my feet before the second alarm went off.

There was time to listen to the messages on the dictaphone before I did anything else. There was some kind of uprising taking place. All the citizens were required to rally to the defence of their city. Someone was suspected of being behind all of this so hat they called for was to examine the metadata of a couple of files on his computer to see whether they had been altered in any way that might give grounds for some kind of suspicion. When they asked for this information he did everything he could to defy them, delay them etc until in the end they were all swamped by all the mails that were coming from the citizens so it was going to be so it was going to be something much more complicated than it might have been had they done it a day earlier.

And then I was working for a company last night and had to go round to collect a debt from someone that was owed. I went round to their house, and it took some finding. When I arrived I knocked on the door but it swung open so I walked in and shouted. Eventually an old woman came into the kitchen and asked why I was there. I explained that she had a bill to pay. She apologised and said that she’d pay it so I went back to my office. There was some kind of building project taking place that needed to be done quietly so we decided that we’d do it in the dark. At night we dressed in clothes, it was a wet and windy November night. When everything was quiet and everyone had gone we set out. It was then that I realised that I didn’t have my gloves. I was told that I had to have them. They were on the floor by the washing machine in the laundry room So I’d have to run back to fetch them while everyone waited for me. That was quite a long way but I thought that it would really be uncomfortable working in this without gloves so I’d best set off.

We were back in Davenport Avenue later. It wasn’t exactly like it but a mirror image. Nerina and I were tidying up a few things because we were having visitors. It turned out that my friend Malou and her friend were coming to visit and we were going to hang around together and then go off out. Nerina was busy planning in her mind who she’d allocate with who and decided that I’d take Malou in my car. I didn’t want to explain to Nerina that there was no tax or MoT on my car but in fact it was probably a wise idea to go in Malou’s car but she was quite insistent so when it reached the time to go outside one of our party (I can’t remember who) was at the front of the house and saw Malou pull into the drive with her friend. We walked down from the bottom of the drive up to the street to meet them. I remember thinking “my house is so untidy, such a tip, that i’m not sure that this is a good idea to go inviting people to my house” … "nothing new there" – ed …

Finally I was with Alison and another girl walking around Brussels. We ended up around a section that was really modern. There were all these huge aeroplanes flying overhead and it really looked like something out of another world. It was dark and misty and these aeroplanes were so impressive flying through the low clouds at night like this with all their lights on. Then we decided to carry on walking but there was a really good view there so I stopped to take a couple of photos. Then I wandered off to take some photos of my bedroom window which was only a couple of hundred yards away. I dashed off and took the photos. I could hear some people talking outside as if their conversations weren’t being overheard. That was really interesting. In the end I set off back out again. I hadn’t gone far when I realised that I’d forgotten my camera. I carried on anyway. There was a woman on crutches with a couple of kids, and lots of other people. I couldn’t see Alison. I thought to myself that maybe we should have made better arrangements to meet than this. Suddenly she was at my elbow and told me that she’d put on the shelf all the information concerning our trip. I told her that I’d been keeping a log for the whole month and that was all together too. We sat down to work out where we want to go

Then I headed out for the bus as I had things to do in the town. I’d taken with me the letter that I’d written yesterday to the doctor, with the intention of giving it to the receptionist. But as you might expect, the way things are these days, there was a strike on and the receptionist wasn’t it.

Round at the Carrefour I did the shopping and made it back in time for the bus. It was a struggle to climb aboard, as I imagined that it would be.

However, there was some good news. I’d interrogated the driver and he told me that the bus stop at St Nicholas does indeed have an elevated platform so boarding the bus for coming home shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

The big difficulty though is that there is only 12 minutes between the bus dropping me off and it coming back again, and that is going to cause a few problems of its own.

Mind you, after how I felt after my trip out today, I don’t think that I’ll be going anywhere again. I can’t keep this up. it’s really hard to believe that it wasn’t all that many weeks ago that I walked back from town after a shopping trip.

Back here, having staggered up the stairs under my heavy load, I made my coffee and my cheese on toast, and then came back back in here where, in a marvellous fit of bravado, I finished off the arrears of the dictaphone notes from when I was in hospital last autumn.

My cleaner came round to see me afterwards. I’d sent her a message about my failure to leave the letter at the doctor’s. I’d asked her if she would take it for me on one of her forays down to town next week. I realy and honestly don’t think that I could do it, and it’s quite an important letter.

Something else that I did this afternoon was to bake a loaf of bread. With not going out tomorrow I won’t be having one of my lovely crusty baguettes so I need to do something about that if I want my cheese on toast.

In fact, going back to baking isn’t a bad idea really. At some point in the proceedings I have to make more fruit buns and more pizza dough so it seems like a good moment to have another go at making a vegan pie. I picked up some potatoes today so I have enough to keep me going for a while.

Finally, I chose all of the music for another radio programme and paired it off. If I can write the notes for that tomorrow I’ll have four sets of notes to dictate and that will give me something to do over the next week

Tea tonight was a burger on a bun with salad and a baked potato. Nothing special at all but quite nice for a change.

So now I’m off to bed. I’ve had a really busy day as you can see, and I’ve crashed out once this afternoon already, but only for a few minutes. Now I want to crash out for a good while and sleep until the morning.

Then I’ll see what can be done about all the things that need resolving. There are plenty of those.

Wednesday 4th October 2023 – I COULDNT GET …

… out of the bath this afternoon.

Getting in the bath was difficult enough but getting out of it was even worse. It was quite a struggle and I’m sure that it took longer to climb out than it did to actually take a shower.

There’s no doubt about it. As I might have said the other day, my condition is deteriorating before my eyes and I’m at the limit right now of where I’m going to need some serious help.

On Friday I’m going to attempt to go into town on the bus but I’m not optimistic. The difficult part is climbing back on board the bus because there’s no kerb there and it’s a long way up. But there is a ramp on the other side of the road and if necessary I’ll have to get on the bus as it heads out of town and do a full circuit.

But I have begun to prepare an emergency pack with the vital necessities in it. It’s as well to be on the safe side.

Even more strange news is that once again I was up before the alarm – at 05:30 this morning and I could have been up half an hour before that too.

But I’ve had a very productive day because apart from beginning to assemble my emergency pack, I’ve been attacking the radio programme. I’ve finished off collecting and pairing off the music for three programmes, written the notes for one of them and am well on the way for doing the second.

What else I’ve been doing is going through the local supermarket’s on-line shopping programme because I have a feeling that I’ll be using it very shortly.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too so I transcribed that. I was with a group of people in a kind-of classroom situation and we were discussion one of PG Wodehouse’s novels. It turned out that the hero, his valet and someone else, having left someone’s home, had each procured some kind of minibus thing or taxi to take them to the railway station where they’d caught the train home. A while later, maybe a few days, we were still discussing PG Wodehouse and a similar kind of situation came up. The teacher asked if anyone knew how these people would have returned home. I volunteered the same kind of way of doing it with the minibuses and the train. For some reason I expressed myself really badly and the teacher didn’t really listen very much to my answer. That led me to believe that it must have been incorrect but she did ask everyone to guess so I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t all that happy or keen when someone like me did.

Then there was something about being at a famous actor’s house, all sitting around as she reminisced about a few stories of her younger days. A while later – it may have been a couple of days – I was there on my own. I was treated to another gala performance of all of this, which was really impressive considering how old she was and what her illnesses were.

As well as that, I’ve transcribed a few more entries from last autumn. There aren’t that many to transcribe now – just 10 or so and I’m hoping that I’ll have those finished by the end of the weekend. Then I can set about updating the entries for that period.

My cleaner came round and was horrified to see the set of steps in the bathroom. She thinks that I’m courting disaster by trying to climb into the bath. But I’m not sure what other alternatives there are. In any case, it’s not climbing into the bath that worries me – it’s climbing out.

We talked about the possibility that she would be able to do my shopping for me at LeClerc but she pointed out a few quite understandable, major pitfalls and I’ll have to pass on that for the moment.

It’s no surprise that at some point in the proceedings I crashed out for an hour or so. This early start really did take its toll of me.

Tea tonight was a chili sin carne based on the rest of the leftovers from Monday. So now I’ll have to plan some exciting meals. Once I make some room in the freezer I’m going to bake a vegan pie again. I haven’t had one for ages and I really fancy some potatoes veg and gravy.

But that’s all for another time. Right now I’m off to bed and tomorrow I’ll carry on with the radio stuff. I’m going to go all out for the next few weeks and try to build up a store of stuff. I have a feeling that it won’t be long before I’ll be needing it.

Friday 22nd September 2023 – I MADE IT …

… down into town and back today doing a round of various places that I had to visit. And strangely enough, I felt much better for it too.

It rather reminds me of the time in my late teens when I was staggering back home after a visit to the Lion and Swan in Crewe and stopping at Crewe Bus Station for “obvious reasons”.

“Phew!” I said. “Just made it!” And the guy standing next to me said “blimey! Can you make me one just like it?”.

Unfortunately, Crewe Bust station and the public conveniences that it housed have been demolished, and that’s a shame. It was thanks to a careful study of the helpful diagrams on the wall that I passed my Biology “O” Levels.

They were at one time planning on giving guided tours of the public conveniences on the Bus Station. The cost would have been 2/6d per visit, or 2/7d if you wanted to see all of it.

Last night was one of those extremely turbulent nights where I travelled miles and consequently didn’t have much in the way of sleep. And so what with my trip into town today and my long walk around, I’m surprised, really surprised, that I kept going.

When the alarm went off I staggered out of bed and went for my medication and to read my mails and messages. Once I’d done all that I headed off for a shower to make myself look pretty.

When I awoke there was an enormous torrential rainstorm going on so I was really thinking about abandoning my trip out, but by the time that I hit the streets it had stopped.

The bus dropped me off at the Port and my first call was at the Credit Agricole to have them sign a form. The Belgian Government is starting to pay Old-Age pensions directly into bank accounts and I need a rubber stamp and signature on the bank details form.

And for such a simple task as that, I was there for about 15 minutes while they tried to work out how to apply a rubber stamp, a signature and a date to a form.

Next stop was the Post Office to post off a few letters that I’d written just recently, and then to the chemist’s to pick up the Aranesp that I’d ordered yesterday. And there I encountered my cleaner picking up some medication for another one of her clients.

At the Carrefour I did some basic shopping and then headed back for the bus home. It’s quite a climb into the bus because there’s no pavement where it pulls up but for some reason it was easier to climb in today.

Back here I put everything away and then made my coffee and cheese on toast. The Amazon fairy had been too and left me a package, the stuff that I’d ordered on line earlier in the week.

Apart from the silicon bowls that fit in the air fryer and the Christmas pudding steamer, highlight was my new waist bag. I’ve had various ones over the years and they are very handy when you go travelling, but the one that I’ve used for the last 12 years or so is falling to bits and one of the zips doesn’t work properly.

They had them on line that were bigger than that one, with more pockets and a holder for a bottle of water so I treated myself. And it really does seem to be the bee’s knees. It took a while to pack it because I wanted to make sure that it has everything that I need.

One of the most important items in my waist bag is a couple of sheets of … errr … tissue paper. I was caught out once in Romania 30 or so years ago and I won’t be caught like that again.

A little earlier I mentioned that it had been a turbulent night, and I wasn’t exaggerating. There was another long rambling dream that I seem to have lost. It concerns some things involving a lot of girls. They aren’t really what they seem to be, these things. There was one situation where we were on a train, a works train going back to the station after doing some work. On a train that was coming in behind us they loaded up some furniture. One woman said that she wanted it but I was hopeful of having it, a nice metal two-door cabinet. When we finally pulled in at the station we’d had to wait for a few minutes at a platform. Had I known, I would have nipped off there. When we pulled in, the train had caught up with us and they were wheeling the cabinet away. I woman in front of me was racing after it and of course I couldn’t go as quickly as I ought to do so I didn’t make it to have the cabinet. There was much more going on than this, including people, the kind of things that we’d bought. Someone came out with the name of an author – it might have been Richard Graves. I said that I knew his grand-daughter. She was a girl whom I knew and was hopeful of being friendly with her. They were asking if anyone wanted any torture equipment, but it was more like practical joke things, whoopie cushions etc rather than torture equipment. When I found out what it was I was rather disappointed. There was much more than this but it’s all melted away from this dream that went on for hours and was really exciting.

Did I dictate the dream about chasing after this furniture that was being brought into the station behind us on a works train, someone beating me and going ahead to the kiosk for it first? … “yes you did” – ed.. We’d then been out in town shopping. Everyone had his own chair that the restaurant or café kept. It had their name on it. Luckily the girl I’d brought with me was extremely new and only had an old T-shirt like that with a name on. It was called Carol or Caroline, just looking at this girl’s number, She told Caroline to go home and let the world know about your new hobby of collecting these T-shirts.

Did I mention that there was a story about some chairs of some description? … “yes you did” – ed. We had to sit on them in this café, some special luxury leather chairs. Someone would come over from one of the islands to the mainland, our friends, and treat us there instead of a workman (… at this point the dictaphone went quiet, except for my snoring …)

Something occurred that reminded me of something similar to the Lords of the Rings – 5 Lords of Darkness, a giant, an elf, a dwarf and a few others. They had cornered whoever was the hero and his friends on an island. The evil people decided that they wanted to capture them so they chose 3 of their number to assault the island. They were met by a rain of arrows from one of the party who was on the island. In the end 2 of these 3 people looked like pin cushions but the arrows weren’t particularly hurting them. In the end they charged the island. The biggest one of the 3, he was struck by a pike that one of the defenders was holding which ripped off his head from its socket. A second one was killed with a sword and the third was taken prisoner, the one who was mostly affected by arrows. The other 2 and their supporters were then disillusioned and disheartened and weren’t really sure what they could do now to resolve the situation.

Something else to do with this dream concerned the recital of a poem. I can’t remember how the poem went. It was something like “it’s not the eyes that provide the allure of …” (whatever it was). Once again it was something that evaporated immediately

At another moment I’d committed a robbery and stolen millions of Pounds. I had it hidden under the floor in the basement in the house where I was living in London, a 3-storey terraced house with the living room on the first floor, the bedroom on the second and a kind-of cellar/laundry room etc on the ground floor. The Police obviously suspected me. They were around searching my house. I was convinced that eventually they’d find it but I’d give them a run for their money in looking for it. I’d been outside somewhere and was on my way home. Word must have gone round Gangland – I’d noticed several people whom I’d not seen before loitering around. As I went to try to put the key in the door a couple of these people approached me quite quickly but discreetly. I turned to them and said “oh no you don’t!”. That slowed their tracks and I closed the door behind me. What I then did was with these people now loitering outside my door I told the police in my basement that there was some kind of street issue going on outside. A couple of policemen went out, took these people by surprise, harangued them and made them go away. I thought that it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. When they came back in we had a really good laugh about it. I told them that that’s really the first time that I’ve ever felt uncomfortable living in this particular house

Meanwhile 4 medieval soldiers had been trapped inside a gatehouse to a walled city for several days. With nothing else to do in a desperate situation they quite simply roared out of their building and charged the attackers and actually managed to drive them away which took everyone by surprise.

Finally, there was a group of us living in a house. We had to leave it quite quickly so I began to pack my basic essentials and there was still some stuff left over. I had a pile of small cardboard boxes. I told one of the guys living with us that he was far better placed than me that he could have the boxes and someone would have to take my stuff with him while I went to fetch Caliburn and come back to pick it up. At first he was being extremely difficult about it and I couldn’t understand why. In the end he asked “could I see these boxes?”. I showed him and his eyes lit up. He said “that’s no problem at all”. I explained to him that certain stuff was for throwing away, certain stuff was stuff that he could keep and the rest was mine. He should take everything away and I’d be round for my stuff again when I’ve managed to pick up Caliburn

Having done that, I transcribed another day’s worth of arrears and then finished off the notes for the radio programme.

In between everything I baked a small loaf of bread. I’m not going shopping tomorrow so I need something for my cheese on toast and for sandwiches on Monday. And then I made tea. Some kind of burger – I don’t know what it was – and a salad and baked potato seeing as I had the oven on to bake my bread.

Tomorrow will be a quiet day without very much excitement. It’ll do me good to have a quiet weekend ready to Fight the Good Fight on Monday morning. I’ll be ready for Paris, but will Paris be ready for me?

Wednesday 20th September 2023 – APPARENTLY THINGS ARE …

… hotting up around here.

My cleaner actually works for an association called APA – the Allocation Personnalisée d’autonomie, an association of which the aim is to help people in difficulty maintain their autonomy.

She’s recommended that I contact them with the details of my difficulties and see whether or not they may have something on offer that might be of help to me.

Consequently I’ve had an extremely busy day today doing all kinds of things.

For a change I had a nice deep sleep and awoke about 15 minutes before the alarm was due to go off. I was actually planning a dramatic raising from the dead but instead I fell asleep again and the alarm had to awaken me.

After the mails and medication I began to sort out the paperwork.

You have no idea the hoops through which I have to jump in order to go to this perishing hospital. As well as being admitted, I’ve been notified of several tests and I have to ring up to confirm each one.

And then there’s a form that I need to fill in in order to be admitted, with details of my health insurance, medication, all kinds of stuff like that.

Interestingly, one thing of which you don’t have to notify them is your dietary requirements. You are served a standard meal on the day of your arrival. That’s not much use to me, and probably many other people too, so I would have expected it to have been a priority.

Anyway, that took up a whole age of my time.

But there is some good news, and it just goes to underline why I like living here so much – and that’s the solidarity amongst the inhabitants that you don’t find in many other countries these days.

The president of the Residents’ Committee who helped me with the purchase of the apartment downstairs is in Paris next week. She wants to come to the station in Paris on Monday morning and help me on my way to the hospital.

That’s something that I found to be really sweet. It’s not really necessary because I will have the railway company’s personnel helping me, but I’m not going to discourage the best intentions and willingness of someone who is so keen to help

This afternoon I made a big batch of hummus. It’s been ages since I last made some, and this time I regrettably put too much salt in in. That’s not like me because I rarely use salt. But there’s plenty of garlic gone into it and I won’t have too much trouble with passing vampires once I start to eat it.

While the cleaner was here I made a start on writing the notes for the next radio programme, then after she left I had a listen to the dictaphone. We were going somewhere on a works outing from Crewe. We all piled into a coach and set out. We were supposed to be going to Stoke on Trent but we ended up round the Warmingham Road area. We went past the bit where they had straightened out the road. That would have been possible to go to Stoke on Trent that way. I thought that the road was too narrow so we carried on with the intention of going to the roundabout by the railway station and going down there. The guy in charge of the party came over and told me that we can’t go that way. There are all kinds of roadworks. I then suggested that we go to near Kidsgrove and drive down the A34 and took the A500 that way which he agreed. Then something happened and we ended up with not enough places on the bus or something. There was a motor bike there so I went on it and took someone as a passenger. I ended up being tangled up in a group of other motorcyclists. One one particular bend a woman fell off her motor bike. We carried on riding. We eventually ended up at our destination. Then I had a bad attack of cramp and awoke.

I was somewhere in the Philippines last night. There was a young boy doing some kind of DiY project to make some kind of really basic kitchen, basically no more than the size of a large tray. I could see immediately that there were several ways in which he could make things go better. We ended up having a talk about everything. I ended up giving him some help. He was pointing out a few things that I was doing that weren’t correct from his point of view. I was pointing out a few things that weren’t correct from mine. We were talking about all kinds of different things as we were assembling this kitchen arrangement that he was making out of scrap material

While I was at it I did another day’s worth of arrears from when I was at Alison’s just now. Just a couple more days of those to do and then I can attack the ones from when I was in hospital last year. I wish that I could organise myself better these days.

There were other things that I was hoping to do but instead I crashed out on the chair here in the office. Miles away I was too and I don’t understand that because it wasn’t as if I’d had a bad night. I’d been doing quite well just recently too.

Tea tonight was a chili sin carné, the leftovers in the fridge lengthened with a tin of kidney beans. It was actually quite nice too. The freezer is slowly emptying nowand if I’m not careful I might even be able to put the bag of carrots in there – the ones that are currently languishing in the fridge’s icebox.

With a bit of time left I went through another batch of music on the computer to weed out the duplicates, the live albums and to edit the metadata, now I know how to batch-edit it.

But now that I’ve finished the notes I’m off to bed. I’ve put all the clothes away that were loitering around here and it’s looking just a little more tidy. There’s still a lot to do but I’ll worry about that another time. I’ve done enough for one day.

Friday 8th September 2023 – THAT WAS A …

… horrible journey and I don’t ever want to do it again.

As usual, when I’m going away, I had a bad night’s sleep and spend much of the hours of darkness tossing and turning.

Nevertheless I was up and about (in principle) before the alarm went off

First thing that I did was to grab a shower and then I did a few last-minute things before going out for the bus.

The bus was there but the driver wasn’t so I had to wait a few minutes before he turned up. And then we set off with a bunch of kids who were staying at the youth hostel in the town and who had been for a morning run.

The bus threw me out at the port and I had a 200-metre walk to the bus stop around the corner where the next bus would pick me up. And it was this 200 metres so early in the journey that convinced me that my travelling days are over.

There was a 20-minute wait for the bus during which time firstly my cleaner went past and rearranged my backpack on my shoulders, and then one of the girls from the radio came past and said hello.

The bus didn’t drop me off at the station but across the road so it was a long walk. And with my carriage being right down at the far end it was something of a scramble to be seated before the train pulled out

Updating all of those files took an age, not helped by the fact that I had a little … errr …relax at some point, and we were late pulling into Montparnasse too.

What with one thing and another I’d decided long-since that I was going to throw caution to the wind and have a taxi across Paris, but the walk to the taxi rank was about as far as the walk to the underground, which is regrettable

The ride with a friendly taxi driver wasn’t as expensive as I thought, but my leg had collapsed again getting into his car so I wasn’t enjoying it one bit

To make matters worse I staggered into the Disabled Persons’ room and asked for assistance to board my train to Brussels but they told me to clear off because I hadn’t booked 24 hours in advance.

So four of the assistants there sat and watch me make my slow weary way all the way down the platform to my carriage right at the far end of the train.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone from the night. We were back at school – some kind of sports day with competitions etc. We were with our own House and had to stay with our own House all day. There were all kinds of things going on in the way of competition etc. The final one was a football match so we all had to go to our various common rooms afterwards to prepare. It was then that I realised that in all my things I didn’t have any shoes with me do it looked as if I would be playing in my socks. I didn’t really fancy playing too much because of that so when they began to talk about goalkeepers someone asked a girl “have you ever tried to be rather rough with a goalkeeper when you have the ball in the penalty area. I replied “you can always try it with me and see what happens” but no-one seemed to pick up on it so I didn’t bother all that much. I went up to the common room to prepare. One of the girls was closing the door so I had to insist and make some kind of rude comment before she’d open it again. There was a girl there from about 2 years younger than us whom I knew. Her boyfriend was in our year. The two of them were together and there was another girl in a green check dress – our colours were blue so I don’t know where she was from and what she was doing in there.

Back into this dream again, I eventually made it into the room when they let me in and sorted out into houses except these two girls and I don’t know what was happening with one of them. The other one was with her boyfriend, and we were joking about the football with my ingrowing toenail on my right foot and wasn’t going to be very happy for it especially as I didn’t have my shoes etc with me.

Back once more into the same dream and we were all back in our groups again, going back up Welsh Row towards the Grammar School dressed in our school uniform. Something happened and one of the boys pointed to another one in our class and called him names because he was more interested in eating a bar of chocolate than playing football. There were a few other things like that too.

This was another dream that took place in connection with a school. This time I was in a bath and the water was coming out with such a force that I was sure that it would break the porcelain fittings etc so I was prepared to be dumped into the middle of the bathroom. Somehow the contraption kept on running which surprised me greatly.

still on the theme of children, there was something going on about therapy for children who had been troubled. It was like a drawing and colouring class. What they had for adults was like a painting-by-numbers where you could go along and paint yourself a picture and hope to get rid of stress and tension by doing that.

This final part looks as if it might be something to do with the previous one. There was something about a clinic, people who have financial health problems. Part of the therapy there for children is drawing. For adults they had a few of these huge “painting by numbers” outfits with pictures even taller than the people themselves. The adults could spend as many hours as they wished simply painting the image.

At Brussels I didn’t have long to wait but climbing into the train was next-to impossible on these double-deckers with their steep stairs. Next time I go to Leuven I’ll have to wait around for one of the local stopping trains. These are all on the same level, and a level that is level with the platform so there’s no trying to climb in.

Leuven was roasting hot when I arrived and the walk along the platform to the lift finished me off.

And for some reason my phone wasn’t receiving messages so Alison and Jackie didn’t know that I’d arrived.

Eventually we met up and roared off to meet Hans at the Airport.

Alison knew a lovely Indian restaurant in Sterrebeek so we went there and had a delicious meal. Then we cam back here and sat outside in the heat until God Knows what time chatting.

My sofa is comfortable so I’m going to get in it and sleep for a week. I don’t ever want to do that journey again. Not on any terms.

Wednesday 6th September 2023 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S DISASTER …

… I’ve had a much better day today.

Mind you, having said that, it couldn’t have been any worse at all.

In fact, with a little application I could have been up before the alarm went off because I was awake at 06:56 but I wasn’t quick enough to haul myself out of bed.

When the alarm went off I stirred my stumps and hauled myself out of bed. As expected, it took me an absolute age to bring myself round into the Land of the Living, but at least I managed to have my morning coffee and fruit bun.

Later on, I staggered into the bathroom for a shower in the hope that it might awaken me and whether it did or not, at least I felt better – and cleaner too.

And while we’re on the subject of “cleaner”, I had a lap around the kitchen and dining area to make sure that the cleaner wouldn’t die of fright when she came.

The rest of the day has been spent on the radio programme. I completed the one that has been hanging around for a couple of weeks waiting to be finished, and then I managed to finish off the notes for the next one.

There was even a few moments for me to make some kind of desultory start on choosing the music for a further one.

The cleaner came round this afternoon and attacked the apartment. It’s looking much nicer and cleaner now which makes a change. Although how long it might last like this is anyone’s guess.

I don’t suppose that it will take too long to mess it up. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … my kind of life reminds me of Ezra Pound’s comment about Ford Madox Ford – "Put Ford naked in an empty room and within an hour behold total chaos"

After she left I put the washing machine on. There was some bedding in there from the other week so I put it all on quite a hot heat today to give it a really good and deep washing. Normally I just put everything on a 40°C “mixed fibre” wash but every now and again it needs a little extra.

Having set that off on its way I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I’d gone quite a distance too. I’d been quite friendly with a girl and decided that I’d ask her out to the cinema or something. We agreed that we’d go out for the Friday night. In the meantime I was very friendly with a girl who worked in the Building Society (as indeed I used to be in real life years ago). I was laughing and joking to her about taking her out. She said “why not?” so we arranged to go out together on the Saturday to the theatre because there was something on. Later on (I’m not sure whether this would be the Saturday) I was with this girl walking through Crewe. She wanted to know about going home. I said that I had my car parked somewhere nearby. She then added “unless you want to go for a walk-around in the woods or something like that. It would be a great place to find some firewood. Do you need any firewood?”. Seeing as she was keen and it was her idea I said “yes, OK” and we walked into the wood, actually down on the west side of the town. We were in the town centre. We had an interesting discussion about Spain and the castles, how in certain circumstances some rebellious knights could be charged with treason for attacking the King but the charge for treason would be raised by the Constable of Spain. That seemed to be a strange situation in which to be, where it was someone else who would be deciding on treasonable activity and not the King. We had a really lengthy discussion about that.

There was another lengthy dream. I’ve forgotten most of it. It was about me owning an electric bus and doing some work in it. We were dividing up a kind-of list of things, ecological things, between us. I asked if I could do the beekeeping. That was agreed but it was disappointing news to someone else who wanted to do it. Later on we were told that we could have an assistant part-time so the lad who was refused the time before when I was given the job came over to me to ask if he could help. Considering that he was interested and seemed to know more about beekeeping that I did, of course I said “yes” because it would be quite useful to have someone who knows his stuff and is keen working with me.

And then we’d been out with my father somewhere around the Audlem way. He had a Rover 2000 estate and we’d gone in that. He was driving extremely quickly. The people whom we went to see were in some way distantly related to me. Another friend of mine was there with us too. He had to go inside to see these people. When he came out ha was going on about how poor they were etc. I don’t think that he realised that they were part of my family. I asked him if there was a weedy man there with a very short, very fat woman to which he replied “yes”. These were of course my uncle and aunt but I didn’t like to say anything to him. We drove back extremely quickly. My father was telling us of a Portuguese guy who lived in the village who had really been something of an odd-job man but had now bought one of the local small businesses and was running that. When we came into Nantwich my father said that it’s probably quicker to go home via Wells Green so we ended up driving through the centre of Nantwich past the bus station.

There was a Court hearing taking place about something or other. I was involved in some kind of abstract way as a potential witness or similar. We were taken in a vehicle to somewhere and left in the vehicle while they went into Court. This went on until about 13:00 when someone came back to tell us that we could go but we needed to come back the next day. So we had to sit in this vehicle again, and no-one came at all. In the end I was outraged and so were the other people sitting in the vehicle. We saw on of the Clerks of the Court walking down the street. I grabbed hold of her and asked her what was going on. We found out that it was 16:00, I’d missed a football match, I’d missed everything. I was really angry and tore strips off this girl. In the end several people came over. They explained that this Hearing was still going on and hadn’t finished. I still couldn’t get over this discourtesy of leaving us sitting here in a car or van in the middle of the town centre while all this was happening. We’d been there for what seemed like 8 hours, no refreshments or anything so I was in an absolutely foul mood. I was tearing shreds off everyone and they were scattering and disappearing. In the end there was someone on the ‘phone and I asked him about what was happening. He said that he was still on the ‘phone to the Court trying to make them hurry up with the case otherwise everyone would be going and the case would collapse. I told him a lot of home truths about my thoughts and opinions on the way that this was going on, how everyone had been treated and I was on my way up the stairs to this ‘phone in the gallery to wrench the ‘phone from his hands to speak myself to whoever it was to whom he was speaking.

That dream was something quite interesting. When I said that I was involved “in some kind of abstract way as a potential witness or similar”, it wouldn’t be anything unusual.

In fact in the Old Days in the Crewe and Nantwich Magistrates Court they had a special term to describe people like me. We were called “The Defendant”.

Some people would even say that I gave the local farces of law and order in South Cheshire a great deal of assistance. They always seemed to be asking me to help them with their enquiries.

Finally, I had another dream that I can’t remember how it began. We had to go somewhere. Someone was having to organise the trip. My mother was somehow involved but she was prevaricating about it and decided that she wouldn’t go. After some discussion I asked her to state unequivocally that she didn’t want to go, which she did so I said to another person “then we can go any time at your convenience then”.

Tea tonight was the remainder of the stuffing lengthened with a small tin of kidney beans, with rice and veg. With a little extra chili added to it, it really was delicious. But, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my meals might be boring but they are delicious.

There are just a few things to do and then I’m off to bed. Surprisingly, I managed to go the whole day without crashing out and that’s something well-worth noting after yesterday. I hope that I can keep it up for the next few days.

Maybe an early night might help – I dunno. But it can’t do any harm.

Wednesday 23rd August 2023 – IT’S QUITE STRANGE …

… how my Welsh course is going. It seems that every time I have a good day, a bad day follows immediately on its heels. I can’t seem to manage to have two good days one after the other.

And so having had a reasonable day yesterday, today wasn’t so good at all. Couple that with the fact that the mike on my webcam is feeding back and I can’t make the remote mike work on the computer, it’s not been a very good day.

That’s a shame because I’d been to bed fairly early (comparatively speaking) and had a reasonable (comparatively speaking) sleep for a change. And at some point during the night, Zero put in an appearance, so “hello” again to Zero.

Then I had awoken at 06:30 ready to leave the bed early but I fell asleep again and had to be aroused by the alarm.

Once I’d had my mails and medication etc I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was going for a ride on something like an elephant. There was a couple of others and we were quite high up on this thing that was moving around. It ended up in some kind of hall or ante-chamber. At that moment a young girl whom I know came out of her room with what looked like her baby brother or something like that. She had a chat with me up on whatever it was that I was on and she down below. She said that she was taking whatever it was to the bathroom. I said “we’d better make sure that we don’t step on him then”. She asked what I meant by that. I replied that i had to go to the bathroom too.

My passport – I’d lost it a while ago and I’d been issued with a temporary Belgian 6-month passport. That was running out so I had to go to renew it. It meant going into this warehouse place, a dingy Government office and queueing. There were quite a few people in there. It was rather disorderly. It was coming to 21:00, 22:00 and we were still there, a few of us waiting. I was worried that a couple of people would push ahead of me in the queue and be seen out of turn, meaning that when the place closed I’d be out on my ear. One person was being attended to and the girl working the machine was having no end of problems. Eventually one or two of the people in the queue had to show her how the thing worked. I was sitting here thinking that this is totally crazy. It’s 22:00 and I suppose that she wants to go home – I know that we do – and what will happen if it turns out that my passport isn’t actually valid and I should have applied for a British one when I lost my original one?

Finally I was back in Virlet. My place was a total mess as usual but there were all locals around there cleaning all the vegetation away from around the house. When I arrived I couldn’t enter the house so I was sleeping outside. The bad-tempered neighbour was there with her brush-cutter cutting away all around me. They were all going in and out of my barn and garage etc. I was becoming annoyed about this but they were taking absolutely no notice at all. Then I decided that I had to think about leaving as I was leaving the following day and had someone to pick up at some town near Chartres at 17:00 and I needed to make arrangements as to where they’d be. I also had some bits and pieces that I had to take back to Caliburn. That was a real hike through the village to where I’d parked the other van and then march back. While I was asleep it had begun to rain. I was asleep out there in the rain but the neighbour who was brush-cutting abandoned her cutting, went and lay down in the grass and pulled a tarpaulin over herself which I thought was the strangest thing I’d seen for quite some time.

That wasn’t everything either but you really don’t want to know about that, especially if you are eating your tea right now.

Once I’d done all of the I spent a while revising my Welsh and then, armed with a coffee and fruit bun, attacked the lesson. We had a new tutor today who has a strange way of teaching, it has to be said, and that took us through to knocking-off time.

At lunch time I went for a shower and then sorted out the dirty clothes, seeing as I’m on the point of running out of clean ones. I also tidied up the place a little so that the cleaner doesn’t die of horror.

At the weekend I’d bought a pile of fruit because it was cheaper to buy in bulk than loose, but I was somewhat overwhelmed with the stuff, so I gave my cleaner a pile of fruit when she left.

And then I set the washing machine off on a cycle and then went to see a neighbour for a chat. Not that I’m all that much in favour of socialisaing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I have to make an effort.

Back here I hung out the washing and then made tea. There was some stuffing left so I added a small tin of kidney beans and ate it with rice and veg, another really nice meal tonight, nice and spicy. But I do like those new containers that I’d bought.

So right now, nice and early, I’m off to bed. Two more days of my course to go and then I’m going to relax. Until Wednesday next week, that is, because I’ll be then off to Paris and I’m not looking forward to that at all.

They probably won’t be able to do much for me, but I won’t ever find out if I don’t go.

Wednesday 16th August 2023 – TODAY’S WELSH LESSON …

… passed off quite a bit better today.

The unit on which we were working was a revision unit which involved discussing several of a selection of about 30 different topics, chosen by lot.

It’s quite true to say that I don’t know much and I can’t remember much but one thing about talking and chatting at large is that basically you just talk about what you know with whatever bits of grammar and vocabulary you can remember.

It doesn’t need to be complicated, and if you can keep it simple, then that’s all you need.

In schools in the UK, languages are taught in a ridiculous way. The emphasis is on grammar and being absolutely 100% correct, with the result that kids are quite timid and rather afraid to speak in case they make a mistake.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I was in Belgium I worked with people of all different nationalities and it didn’t take long for me to get the message that grammar counted for next-to nothing.

Iit didn’t matter what you knew and what mistakes you made. The aim was to make yourself understood to people and to understand their reply.

Knowing 100 words and using them is much more important than knowing 10,000 words and all kinds of obscure rules of grammar but not being able or being unwilling to use them.

But I digress.

Once more, the night that I had was marginally better than things have been quite recently. I didn’t travel far either. It was the annual meeting of our Students Association. I was with my friend who is no longer with us. Instead of flying to Birmingham we caught the train. When we arrived we actually arrived at the airport. It was a long walk through security, check-in etc out into the concourse where we found some people who my friend knew from the Association who were sitting around so she waved at them. I asked who they were and she told me but it didn’t ring any bells with me at all. We walked past a hotel at the airport concourse. The guy with us said “that’s where we should have stayed. It’s a much better place”. We ended up at reception at our hotel and given the keys. We all went into our room. I was busy chopping and dicing an onion ready to make sandwiches but had the onion all over the floor, all over the carpet. I was picking it up. I asked my friend if she had a plastic bag but she said no. I asked if she’d go to fetch one so she did. There were some other people in this room too who were clearly members of the Association, talking to someone on the phone saying “you’ll be here by tonight. Look for the Ealing branch” and a few other things like that. The way they were going on it sounded extremely doubtful about anything really. I was expecting something much more professional.

There was also something about me being in the USA. I was on my way to meet someone. We came to a very steep hill, so steep that you couldn’t actually see over the bonnet of the car as you went down. I had to be very careful as there were lots of cyclists etc about. There were traffic lights at the bottom so I stopped. As the lights changed and the car set off, I fell out of it and the ca, an automatic, went off on its own. It went round and round in a circle at this interchange, not hitting anything. I was trying to catch it to stop it. A passer-by came to help but we couldn’t manage to do anything. All of a sudden it changed direction slightly, came round, rolled up to my stomach and stopped. I was so relieved because this was the kind of thing that could have gone on for hours and could have been disastrous.

That wasn’t everything either but you really don’t want to know about the rest, especially if you are having your tea right now.

It was another slow start to the day before I transcribed the dictaphone notes, and then what time was left was spent revising my Welsh ready for the lesson. and wouldn’t it be nice if some of the stuff would stick in my brain?

At lunchtime I went and had a shower and then did some tidying up ready for when the cleaner would come round.

After the lesson the cleaner and I had a chat. We’ve worked out some kind of plan of action about the place and she also filled me in on a few things about the place that I didn’t know before. It’s always good to know about things like that.

Tea tonight was a curry from the freezer – one of those special ones I made about a year ago. And having matured for as long as that in the freezer it really was quite delicious.

But while we’re on the subject of the freezer, it’s slowly starting to empty itself now. I’ll wait to see what’s on offer in Noz at the weekend and if it’s a disappointing day I might just bake a vegan pie at the weekend to fill up the space.

That’ll be a good idea because there’s stuff in there like vegan minced soya stuff and using some of that in a pie would be a good idea.

While i’m at it, I’ll see about finding a recipe for some vegan sausage stuffing so that I can have a go at making sausage rolls. As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’ll have to buy pastry for that because making flaky or puff pastry is a difficult and complicated procedure that’s beyond my capabilities.

That’ll give me something to think about while I try to sleep.

Wednesday 9th August 2023 – THERE REALLY ISN’T …

… any point going to bed and trying to go to sleep early if I wake up at 03:00 and then can’t go back to sleep again. It really does defeat the point.

However, I did manage to go back to sleep again, but not for long and when the alarm went off I was already up and about (after a fashion).

Once I’d had my medication I attacked the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. I was down in the jungle last night with a pair of socks or something that wouldn’t behave themselves. It was like if I took them off they would keep on attacking me each tme that I turned over in bed or something like that.

Later on I did a lovely turn on the football pitch last night. A foul or offside or something was given in our favour so I went back to take the kick but the full-back decided that he’d take it and kicked it upfield. It was a really weak kick and 3 or 4 different players scrambled for it including me. I reached the ball and managed to flick it behind me. I turned and caught everyone totally unawares – including me – and had a shot at goal which hit the post, came back in but unfortunately broke back up the field. We were all caught out by a breakaway back down the field into our penalty area.

I was going away to a music festival at another point. I’d made enquiries and found out the pitch where my friend from the Wirral and his wife were staying which was one of the ones in the middle in a depression or hollow somewhere. I’d arranged to have a pitch very close nearby. We went down there and were one of the first to arrive. We had to sort through all our things to erect the tent. Then I decided that I wanted a shower. The only way to have a shower was to actually have a shower on your bed. My bed was in the middle of 2 or 3 others so I had to prepare for the shower, rig up a hosepipe or something then sit on my bed and wash myself with the hosepipe. The idea that this was going to ruin my bed and bedding never entered my head all at the moment. There was more stuff than this too, including something about the security arrangements. There was a company called Fitz Security that was doing it but I can’t think now what brought that into the conversation during the night.

Back at this folk festival again. It’s now mid-afternoon, everyone is arriving and starting to set up. There’s a food stall being set up somewhere and people are starting to queue for it. Again there’s much more going on than this but I can’t remember it. Some of it relates to the kind of food that was in some cases rather unpleasant.

Actually, if I were in the UK at the moment I would be on my way to a music festival even as we speak. It’s “Cropredy” this weekend, the Fairport Convention festival in Oxfordshire.

Did I dictate the dream that I was working for a taxi company? … “no you didn’t” – ed … A woman turned up and awoke me out of bed. I had to hunt around for my dressing gown. I was most uncomfortable but I let her in. She began to talk about another taxi company, how she’d seen their adverts everywhere and how she was looking forward to maybe working for them etc. I realised that she’d come for an interview at the wrong place. I let her carry on for a while. Suddenly she disappeared, I can’t remember how, during the dream and the interview finished. Then the boss came home and I told him about this incident. I also told him that the immersion heater wasn’t working again and I’d tried to fix it but I wasn’t able to. He was annoyed with having no hot water. he had a look around. The office was quite shabby. he asked “when are you going to paint it as you promised?”. I asked him what colour. he replied “lemon”. I said “yes OK. I’m glad about that. I don’t like white”. We made arrangements that I’d start to paint the place.

There was also something about a Zeppelin type of thing. It had a leak and there was condensation inside the gasbag that was leaking out in drips of water. We landed the Zeppelin, stripped down the valve and installed a new one, fitted it. That seemed to make the matter worse. In the end we went to a Government office where we could maybe find the parts. We were sitting around there for hours. In the end one of the women with us managed to buttonhole one of the clerks to ask him about it. He replied that these parts are special. They’re on the secret list and can only be sold to people who are bona fide citizens of the UK. The guy had a strange foreign accent so I went over to the woman and we had a laugh about the idea that the parts can only be used by bona-fide British people but can be sold by just about anyone in the whole wide world. It didn’t make any sense. We carried on chatting and ere there for quite a while talking about nothing in particular

We had a long rambling dream about being up in the Arctic ready to fly back. We had to wait for a couple of weeks while the weather ship went to pick up some weather information. It went all the way across to Greenland, round the Davis Strait and back. I grabbed hold of one of the officials and asked about the possibility of going out on the weather ship the next season next year. They said that it was simply not possible but I harassed and harangued them and generally tried to insist but it was no use at all. I was there for ages trying to convince them. Then we flew back. We arrived at the airport. I was with Nerina. As we left the plane she said that she’d forgotten something and she’d see me after Immigration. We had to run all the way round this spiral staircase thing going through different rooms, round and round to our left all the time down these stairs. We reached the bottom and had to board a bus. After the long descent down the stairs we boarded this bus. There was just one other man and me. He asked what I thought about the flight. I replied “I can’t remember anything at all about it. I remember boarding the plane and having a cup of coffee. The next thing that I remember was coming in to land at Fredericton and I had a cup of cold coffee”. He didn’t realise that we’d landed at Fredericton and was surprised when I told him the name of the town. He said “you’re wrong about the coffee. You had to go to the machine yourself and put a token in etc”. In the meantime the bus was going down the road at quite a rate of knots into the city. Suddenly it came to a spot where there was a car parked on either side of the road, a lot of cars on one side and just one on the right-hand side. They hadn’t left enough room for the bus to go through so it came to a grinding halt.

There’s no doubt about it – you’re certainly getting your money’s worth with this.

There was the Welsh homework to do and then we had the lesson. It passed reasonably well today, but we have a long way to go of course.

The strange thing was that while I was awake in the middle of the night I was working through my Welsh from yesterday. It’s preying on my mind, I suppose, and I hope that some of it might stick. I can’t remember any of the vocabulary though.

The cleaner came around too and we had a little chat in the middle of everything.

When the lesson was over I attacked another radio programme. I’ve chosen all the music, paired it off and even written the notes for about half of it. I really don’t know what’s happened to me.

Tea was leftovers with a half-helping of curry from the freezer and a naan bread. I won’t be bothered by any vampires for the next couple of days either – that new batch of garlic butter than I made is pretty good.

So now I’m going to try to go to bed early again, and hope that I can have a better sleep than last night. I haven’t paid all this money for this course not to take any benefit from it.

There’s plenty of other stuff going on too so I have my work cut out right now. At least it keeps me out of mischief.

Wednesday 2nd August 2023 – I MANAGED TO KEEP …

… on going this afternoon until about 17:00 before I crashed out. And then it was only for about 10 minutes or so.

That makes a change from how things have been just recently. But there’s no need to crow about it because one swallow doesn’t make a summer, as we all know.

And in any case, even if it were to be the situation, past experience tells us that what goes around comes around and it wouldn’t be too long before we’re back there again.

Mind you, it’s a real surprise that that’s all there was, considering the night that I’d had. Because I’d certainly been around the block, and more than once too. There was some kind of weird dream about cats and football goalkeepers and these wafers that you have on which you spread your food but I can’t remember any of it at all.

Then there was something to do with the town football club that had been playing in Wales. They’d played against three Welsh Premier League clubs and had been beaten comprehensively in each one 4-0. They went on some kind of outing. I was there and took part in it. We had to walk through a really old building. When we reached the far end someone opened the door and there was a very small yard outside. The tour must have stopped at this door but there was no-one about to talk to and we hadn’t actually seen anything. It was one of these dreams where one expects something to happen and you grip the edge of your seat waiting for it yet nothing does. You end up being in some kind of void about it. I was walking without crutches but having some mobility problems.

There was another distressing dream about being in the Southern Hemisphere where the penguins there were being fed live rodents, just tearing these rodents to shreds. The squeals were horrible. In the snow was a strange vehicle that went past. It looked like a tadpole travelling in reverse making a noise as it scrunched past the snow. But it was the squeals of these rodents that were being torn to bits that got me.

We were also talking about these animals that were watching a football match. They somehow managed to escape from the crowd and ran down this narrow footpath through the ice. People chased after them in different cars and machines and so on. One person was on foot and managed to corner them in the kitchen of a house somewhere but they threw some product onto the fire to make an explosion that broke these people’s trains of thought so that they could escape without being noticed

Later on I was back in Crewe. There was a wedding of a membr of our family. I’d no intention of going. My sister was going but there was no-one to do her job. They couldn’t find a replacement at the pub where she worked in Nantwich. I said that I’d go to do it. I prepared myself . That took me much longer than I expected. In the end I set off in this ancient Ford Transit van that was rusting and generally falling to bits. When I reached where I was going to park, an Indian guy came over to ask me what I was doing. I told him. He had a look inside my van and saw tons of stuff lying around. He went round to the passenger side and just with the force of his hands slid down the window from the outside. I shouted at him and told him what I thought. I said “if I come back here and find stuff missing I have a good idea of your face and I’ll call the police about it”. He asked “what would the police do?” as if the police wouldn’t be interested in a case like that. He explained that he owns several properties in the town and rented the rooms out to different people. I replied “God help them!”. Making sure that the van was locked I set out to walk to the pub but bumped into a friend of mine. As we were walking down towards the river bridge in Welsh Row the subject of Charles Hawtrey came up. I explained that I’d once actually met him. He replied “yes he’s a wonderful guy. You’re really lucky. I would really have liked to have met him”. I was thinking that I was already running late . Everything that’s happened since has been to delay me. I’ve no idea what the time is now. I was too afraid to look in case I’d messed the thing up totally and completely.

Finally I was back in Crewe again, this time for the first time in years. I’d gone to help out to work on the taxis. There was a job to pick up at 01:45 from a house. I didn’t recognise the address but someone said that it’s next to a certain pub near Nantwich. I knew where the pub was soo I thought that I could find the house. I set out but the whole entire road layout had changed. New roads had been added. I completely and utterly lost my bearings. In the end I had to retreat to a place that I knew in the centre of Nantwich and walk the way that I would walk 30 years ago. I found out where I’d made a mistake and eventually found my way to this house. I was running ever so late because of all this confusion but it really was bewildering how all of the roads had changed. I didn’t recognise anything.

As you can tell, it took me quite a while to type out all of that. It was quite a voyage last night.

Something else that I had to do was to re-do part of the radio programme that will be broadcast at the weekend.

As you might expect, being so far in advance causes all of its own problems, and we had the usual one that having dictated something along the lines of “and is still performing even now” about a musician, he then duly obliges by shuffling off this mortal coil to go to that Great Gig In The Sky.

It’s all very well being “not frightened of dying – Any time will do, I don’t mind” but I wish they wouldn’t do it a week or so before the programme is to be broadcast.

While the cleaner was here I finished off the notes for the next radio programme and then after she left I turned m attention to the notes for the trip around Canada in 2017.

Right now, I’m coming off the Eagle Plateau and out of the Mealy Mountains down into the valley of the Churchill River where I’ll be heading east and then north to North West River, the furthest north that it’s possible to go by road.

Well in fact, it’s possible to go further north, but not in a continuous drive. Strider and I would have to take a freighter and head north to one of the Mission Stations where the Moravian missionaries attend to the spiritual needs of the Inuit.

That would have been an interesting trip prior to the Influenza epidemic of 1918. There were about a dozen or so Mission Stations but several of them were wiped out and abandoned. There are now just five.

But as for the road, that didn’t go to North West River in the past. Access was by boat and then a cable car across the river.

However, the discovery of a deposit of uranium at Makkovik at the height of the Cold War led to the construction of a road, which reached as far as North West River before the deposit was found to be uneconomic.

The road was thus abandoned and piles of radioactive rock was left lying around causing a health risk to the local inhabitants.

Tea tonight was one of the best that I’ve made. It should have been a leftover curry but I’m saving that for tomorrow because I won’t have much time.

Instead, I had the meal that I promised myself – steamed vegetables in a cheese sauce with a spicy vegan sausage. It really was delicious.

So I’m off to bed, hoping to have a really good sleep. Or if not, a really good voyage. The other night several of my favourite characters came to accompany me and it would be really nice if they were to turn up again.

Wednesday 26th July 2023 – I WAS WELL AWAY …

… with the fairies when the alarm went off this morning.

Mind you, it didn’t seem as if I’d had any sleep at all. I know that it took me a while to go off to sleep again once I finally went to bed and I suppose that that’s the reason.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too so it must have been a restless night. My parents had gone out for the evening. I was at home with my sister. I was working on the computer and she was doing something. Later in the evening I noticed that it had all gone quiet. There was only me. It seemed that she had gone off to bed and not said anything. I carried on working. All of a sudden the door burst open. It was my parents back. They had brought with them another couple and 6 or 7 children aged from about 9 to about late teenage. I was watching Connah’s Quay play on the internet against another Welsh club. A couple of boys sat down and started to watch it. One of them made a suggestion about who it might be so I said that it was Connah’s Quay. he said “I have a season ticket for them” so we began to watch the football. But I was much more interested in watching the 2 girls who had come with these boys and their parents who I thought were quite nice. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t heard about these girls beforehand

Then I was at the airport waiting to pass through Immigration or Boarding or whatever it is to go down to where the planes are. We all had forms to fill in. I filled in mine and handed it immediately to the guy at the small desk place. So did a few others. We weren’t allowed to pass through yet. Then they called the flight so everyone else formed a queue there. All their documents were read and stamped etc. I was wondering why there were a couple of agents standing round doing nothing and why people were just forming a queue with one guy and not going to the others. Eventually the others began to call people to them and we were all through. I was expecting that he’d give me back all these papers so I’d take them on to the next stage. The first thing that he said was “I’d better go to fetch the ones that are filled in” which for some unknown reason had found themselves back on the table where we started. They were all in envelopes so we had to go through the envelopes again. I was still hanging around there in limbo waiting for something to happen which didn’t happen, thinking that I would have these back but he didn’t seem to want to give them back to me. We were just standing there looking at each other.

We also had a couple of cats. My partner and I went for a walk and the cats came with us. One of them found a potato so it picked up the potato in its mouth and began to carry it around as if it was a kitten. Then it came to another one so it tried to carry both but they were far too heavy. In the end I was carrying these 2 potatoes for the cat. We set out to return home through Nantwich. It was early in the morning so there wasn’t much traffic about so we were lucky that we could do this. I didn’t fancy the cats running around on the side of the road in Hospital Street when there was plenty of traffic. We managed to shepherd them along even through the busy interchange at the roundabout outside Churche’s Mansions. A policeman in an American car gave us some strange looks. At one stage one of these cats was a duck waddling along but then it became a cat again a little later on. It was a really weird situation with these 2 cats that had come with us for a walk and these potatoes that they were trying to nurse.

Later on there was someone with a big van pulling a mobile home which they were using as a caravan. They’d parked at this camp site blocking everyone’s view so that they could see the lake while they had lunch. I was trying to have them move to a more convenient space because this wasn’t very good. In the end they agreed to move but the area to where I wanted them to move, there was no access to vehicles so they were there blocked with this vehicle somewhere. The guy got out to go for a look around on foot. He ended up being stranded somewhere. We were left with this mobile home blocking just about everyone with loads of people wandering around.

Finally I was somewhere else with a group of people, one of whom was my friend from North Wales. We were staying in digs somewhere. I’d had a wash and a shower. They decided that they wanted to go to the pub called “The Great Eastern”. It was quite late at night but we set off to walk. Halfway through it I realised that I didn’t have my watch. I wondered if I’d left it back at my room or whether it had fallen off my hand somewhere. We ended up on a main road. I joked with my friend that the pub she wanted to visit had closed down and was now a night club. I found that on this particular corner there was the pub, some kind of café and a night club too. All the people with me, including my friend waltzed off into the night club. I supposed that I had to follow but I really had no interest at all in going to a night club but that was what everyone wanted to do.

It’s no surprise that after all of that I was flat out at 07:00.

Not that I could do all that much either once I was up and about. It took me an age to get going yet again. Eventually I gave up trying and went for a shower to try to wake myself up and to make myself smell nice for the cleaner when she comes.

And then I transcribed the dictaphone notes that you read just now.

After lunch I did some tidying up and sorted out the clothes that I’d washed last week, and then while the cleaner was here I finished off the notes for the next radio programme.

There was also some time to carry on with my notes from Canada 2017. Not much though because firstly, regrettably, I fell asleep again.

Secondly, I’ve been trying, rather unsuccessfully, to track down the details of the supposed settlements of Salome’s Point and Crooked House Point on Earl Island.

What would really help would be if the Newfoundland Museum Antiquities Department would publish an itemised list of all known or suspected archaeological sites instead of having to pick through the theses of various researchers.

Tea tonight was a chili sin carné with the leftovers in the fridge with a small tin of kidney beans added in. It was delicious as usual, and then regrettably I crashed out again once I came back here to sit down.

But right now even though it’s early I’m going to bed. I really need a decent night’s sleep and I know that I won’t get it, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t make an effort.

Wednesday 19th July 2023 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… day today that’s best forgotten. In fact, I’m actually so surprised that I’ve accomplished as much as I have.

But start as you mean to go on. I was actually up and about (well, sort-of) before the alarm went off. I’d had such a disturbing dream that it actually awoke me and I ended up sitting bolt-upright.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages it took me a while to come to my senses – after all, I have so few left these days that it takes a while to find them, I suppose.

Anyway, once I was there or thereabouts I pushed on with the medical receipts. It was quite a struggle because there were so many, but eventually they were all done and dusted. Just one more lot to send off but I’ll wait until Friday when I’ll have bought this next month’s batch of Aranesp.

The next thing that needed doing was to fill in this form about my disability. That was a whole rainforest of paperwork that I needed to complete, and as well as that, I had to print off some stuff from the computer, like copies of Identity cards and electricity bills and the like.

But going through these forms, I’m surprised at what I’m entitled to claim. There’s no doubt that the elderly and infirm are much better off here than in the UK.

However, it goes without saying that I’m not claiming for much because I don’t really need it. If I can have a parking pass and a public transport ticket that will suit me fine. My medical expenses are taken care of because I’m classed as long-term permanently seriously ill

Ending up with a pile of paperwork like this, that led to some tidying up in here. And that’s not like me at all, is it? I suppose that I ought to be more focused on things like this but it isn’t easy.

A little later I had a shower, and then while the cleaner was here I organised the music for the next radio programme, paired it all off and then actually wrote out all of the notes. And that took me an age because I fell asleep in the middle of doing it. And fell asleep definitively too.

At some point or other I managed to transcribe the dictaphone notes. There were a couple of people who were being besieged, rather like Murdoch and Lamb (I actually mean Murdoch and Guyler) of the Men From The Ministry. When they began to run away from their hiding place they found that their enemy’s ship was anchored no more than a couple of feet away. They tried to dodge into a building just as the ship opened fire. It practically obliterated the building in which they were trying to hide but they managed to go inside what was left of it. another point-blank broadside brought them back out of the building again and they were obliged to surrender.

There was also a film about 2 guys who were playing cricket. Their team wasn’t particularly good but they were doing really well. There was a break and these 2 guys disappeared and no-one knew where they had gone. The people who ran the club were devastated because they were the only 2 who were doing any good. Then it turned out that someone checked the contents of a dustbin lorry. There had been a film that had taken place there about some dwarf warning the population about the dangers of eating when there were seagulls about. One of the guys missing from this group was a dwarf as well. There were 2 people talking about the perils of being in a boat who resembled 2 of the persons from this group who were missing so speculation was that they’d all been caught out doing something that they shouldn’t be doing and were arrested. They were now having part of their punishment which was to talk out loud on the radio about these things that they shouldn’t do

I was in bed last night really hot and felt the urge to spread myself right out to make the greatest surface possible so that I could transpire better but for some unknown reason I was really worried about disturbing whoever it was who was asleep on the other half of the bed. Eventually after quite a while I realised that there wasn’t anyone asleep there and that I’d just imagined there being someone else there in bed with me at the time

Finally, I’d been staying in an Air B&B somewhere and was due to leave. The final account had been e-mailed to me to pay. Someone looked at it and told me “do you know that you have to pay 11,000 (whatever the local currency is) for your stay in that place? That works out at £2,000 per week”. It was only a single room in a small house. I was astonished by that, so much so that I actually awoke

And after last night’s escapades I managed to have some food tonight. Plenty of stuffing left so I had a taco roll, the one that I should have had last night. I know that my meals are all very samey but they are all very nice regardless.

Tomorrow, with all of my work done, I can finally have a day working on Canada 2017. But as usual, something will be bound to crop up to disturb me. I mustn’t forget to order the Aranesp either. When I go into town on Friday to pick it up I can post all of my letters.

There’s enough there to keep me out of mischief for a while.

Wednesday 12th July 2023 – I’VE JUST SEEN …

… one of the worst games of football that I’ve ever seen in my life. And I’ve seen some bad ones too.

It’s the Preliminary Round of the European Cup this evening and TNS have been playing away in Gothenberg against the Swedish Champions BK Hacken.

TNS lost 3-1 and really and honestly it could – and should – have been 13-1 and TNS would have had no cause to complain because they really were awful.

But it wasn’t the score or the difference in technical ability that upset me so much. What had me going was the fact that TNS sat back – not in their own half and let the opposition come onto them – but in their own penalty area. They simply camped on their own 18-yard line and tried to soak up the pressure.

If you’re going to play like that, you have someone always in the centre circle. It ties down a couple of defenders and you know where you can clear the ball. Whoever is up front can hold onto the ball while the wingers break free and you can start an attack.

But no. Everyone was in the TNS penalty area.

If TNS don’t have a dramatic change of plan for the home leg next week it’s going to be all over for them yet again. I don’t know what it is but they just can’t do it on the European stage. They seem to make a business of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

One thing that I could do today was to be up before the alarm went off. A good 5 minutes too this morning.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages I went for a shower so that at least i’d be nice and clean. And then I revised my Welsh.

The lesson seemed to go much better today and I actually understood what was going on. That makes a nice change too. But when we finished we were way behind where we are supposed to be and I don’t know how they are going to fit in the missing work.

The cleaner was here this afternoon and she was still here when the lesson finished so we had a quick chat before she left.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I’m surprised that I had time to wake up early. With the consumption of alcohol falling off some bar owner had decided to go in for live music. He realised that this would cost him more than he might make but he was going to give it something of a go and hope that he could entice in a lot of patrons. His regulars had quite mixed feelings about the idea but he’d see how it would work out. There was more to it than this but I can’t remember now.

There was an important sports match taking place so everywhere was sold out. All the people were making all kinds of strange arrangements to see the game, drones being tethered to balloons, free-flying balloons, loads of people on these hydraulic platforms like skyjacks etc that were being raised up. Everything was having a problem. One guy’s daughter had bought him a kind of small dirigible to which he could attach his drone so that it wouldn’t leave the ground. He reckoned that it was probably 3 feet below the level of the ground. They couldn’t make the drones point in the right direction. All these platforms were breaking up and extremely unsteady. People weren’t falling out but they were having to lower the platforms down because they were so unsafe. It really was an absolute nightmare for people to manage to see this game with all of the tricks that they were trying to ba able to see over the fence into the ground. It looked like some kind of jungle with lots of trees in it all peering up and peering over the fence into the ground.

We were then out doing something around the offshore islands in Labrador last night but I can’t remember what it was. We visited several and checked the heights etc then flew the information back to the central point with a drone but that’s all that I remember

There was a dispute about an inheritance with 2 young boys who were inheriting from their grandfather. It was suspected that one of them was illegitimate so wasn’t able to accept. This led to all kinds of disputes. In the end he was packed off to school anyway but his DNA was sent off to somewhere. Some time later it came back. There was no formal announcement of the results but he was sent the coveted black sweater of his clan. It was sent to his school and I had to pack it along with the belt to hold up his trousers. This obviously meant that he had actually been recognised as a blood descendant and was now no doubt a member of the family clan and could inherit everything.

Actually, there was a real case like this going on in the USA. Some rich guy had died and left his estate to be divided equally between his sons, of whom there were two. Subsequently it turned out following a DNA test that one of his sons isn’t actually his – his wife must have been up to no good at some time – so the real son was suing the other one for the return of his half of the money.

Finally there was a programme on TV last night about taxi drivers saying that about 1 in 4 licences issued were bogus licences to people who aren’t going to be engaged in taxi driving but need them for some other nefarious purpose. There was a lot of talk about that and also some talk about a new differential for a black cab that seemed to improve the gearing and manoeuvrability. They were discussing that. I had to take a sample in to a garage. The asked about the sample and what I was looking for. I said that it’s the quality of the facing joints as far as I’m concerned. A few other people had different ideas but to me as long as the facings were of perfect quality then that would be a very good start for the construction and assembly of these differentials

With the football, tea was quite late tonight. With not much in the way of leftovers I had a half-helping of curry out of the freezer to go with it, and a naan bread. That was all really delicious and I’ll have to do that again. But I’m not sure what I’ll do for tea tomorrow. Probably invent something.

But I’ll worry about that another time. Right now I’m off to bed ready for a revision session in the morning before my lesson. I’m hoping that I can keep up this improvement. But I reckon that it’s only temporary. Nothing whatever is sticking to my brain.

Wednesday 5th July 2023 – I MANAGED TO …

… beat the alarm clock again this morning, even though I didn’t feel anything at all quite like it. When it went off this morning at 07:00 I was sitting on the edge of the bed dressing

It goes o show that nothing in this life is permanent. I remember not so long ago going through a phase of not being able to get up out of bed at any price and I remember thinking at the time that it’s just going to go worse.

But the way that things have turned out, then I suppose that there are some grounds for optimism. I just wish that I knew what they were.

However, as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … being up and out of bed is one thing. Actually being at my desk and working is something else completely.

Isabel the nurse was the first to dislodge me from my reverie this morning. She’s supposed to be giving me a blood test tomorrow but apparently this one is extremely complicated and has to be done at the laboratory.

The laboratory opens at 07:30 and I need to be there before 09:00. And she hopes that I won’t be in a rush because these are “special” tests that take about 10 days before the results are ready.

Next person to ring was the nerve specialist’s secretary. I was wondering why I’d been copied into a blank e-mail but it turned out that the e-mail should have contained the copy of the prescription that he sent to me. He wasn’t available and his secretary needed it for her records so could I send it to her?

It all sounds quite bizarre to me, but who am I to interfere?

Having sorted out the playlist for the next few days, I wrote out a few more notes for a radio programme. It’s quite strange really but my heart doesn’t seem to be in it right now.

But to be honest, my heart isn’t really into anything much right now. All my get-up-and-go seems to have got up and gone at the moment – quite a change from that dramatic burst of energy that I had a couple of weeks ago where I was ready to take on the World.

Yesterday I mentioned that I’d revised half of my first Welsh course book. Today I looked through the other half. And I’ll keep on doing that through the summer, I reckon. The only difficulty is that with my teflon brain, nothing is sticking. I’m going to have to do something dramatic about that too.

The rest of the day has been spent walking around on the Furdustrandir, the beach where the Norse voyagers landed on their epic voyage down the North American coast – or, at least, where I think that the Norse landed.

Everyone has their own preferred location as to which beach it might be, and find 100 reasons why it won’t be anywhere else, and then someone else finds 100 reasons why it’s not where anyone else says that it might be.

The early writes on the subject, like Carl Rafn, Gustav Storm and Arthur Middleton Reeves put the beach as far south as Massachusetts and quote the number of daegr – or “days” quoted in the Sagas, and the average speed of a longboat.

However, no-one is going to sail a ship in unfamiliar waters full of shoals and rocks during the hours of darkness, and they weren’t in a longboat anyway but in a cargo vessel.

William Munn wrote a book in 1914 to suggest that Newfoundland was the likeliest spot for the Norse to have settled and when confronted about the problem of “vines growing in the neighbourhood”, Munn’s suggestion that “maybe the climate was different in those days” – the first ever reference to Global Warming – was loudly ridiculed by his contemporaries.

In any case Vaino Tanner, the Finnish anthropologist, whose ancient Norse language is bound to be more reliable that many other Westerners, tells us that “vinland was originally a nomen appellativum derived from the early Nordic word vin (pronounced vinn), plural vinjar, which signifies grassland or pasture suitable for cattle.”

And as for the critics who say “grassland or pasture suitable for cattle in Labrador?”, they’ve obviously never been to Greenland and seen what passes for pasture there.

So I suppose that that will be my next project, if ever I finish this one. To write up my notes of my visits to the Norse sites in Greenland.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone again from the night. I had a couple of wax mannequins or dummies in my house that I used either for decoration or putting clothes on etc. What people didn’t realise was that they were in fact some old friends of mine, including Rosemary, who I’d somehow managed to kill and coated in wax as a way of disguising their bodies while I had a think about what I was going to do with them. They’d been around in my apartment now for a couple of years and I was beginning to wonder how long I could get away with it if none of these people had, say, featured on their social network in that time. Someone would be bound to ask me a few questions about them, where they are. One idea that went through my head was to use their mobile phones to establish some kind of connection so that their online presence would be noted but that would inevitably draw people in to where I was and that wasn’t what I wanted at all. I was in this enormous quandary about what I was going to do and how I was going to do it

My brother had his motorbike and we were planning on doing something with ours. We said that we’d meet at a certain pub after a music concert. He got onto the pub who said that we could leave our motorbikes there during the concert. We wandered slowly home to fetch the bikes. He had his and I told him to wait a few minutes. He said that his wouldn’t start so he’d have to push it. if we set off now we’d be there at the same time. Off we set. I went into the barn. It was filthy, untidy, dusty and dirty etc, a real mess. I even found 20p in the dust and an album cover from a Who album. Trying to get my motorbike down was really difficult. I had to pull myself up with my arms and elbows onto another half-floor above. I needed a great deal of strength to do that. I had to open a cupboard, the door opened upwards, take the bike out and somehow lower it down to the floor below. I wasn’t looking forward to doing this at all. I reckoned that it would be extremely difficult. Then I thought that I hadn’t run the motorbike for years so what if it doesn’t fire if the petrol has gone stale or something like that?

I had some cars that needed washing. They were all kinds but mainly ancients – stuff that you find that’s 100 years old that’s dragged out of a barn. I had them in this kind of workshop and coupled up the hose but it wasn’t long enough. It made life really awkward. Someone found an extension piece for the hose. I put that in but there wasn’t enough water pressure so it was taking just as long anyway. There were all kinds of stuff – vans from the 1920s rotten as hell. There was one vehicle that we couldn’t really identify at first. It was dark green and big like a furniture removal lorry with Yale locks on it. It looked as if it was from the 1930s. I thought that I could make out what was a Bedford plaque from much more modern times so we were sitting there trying to decide what kind of vehicle it actually was until we could get close up to it to have a look

Tea tonight was a vegan chili using the leftovers and a small tin of kidney beans. This time I used chili powder rather than tipping the tabasco sauce in and it worked well enough.

So now I’m going to bed. Exhausted yet again and I have to go out early tomorrow morning. And I don’t really feel like it, but then again I don’t really feel like very much at all right now. In fact, early though it may be, I’m ready for bed.

My cleaner did a good job of tidying up the place so at least I don’t have to worry about that. And that’s just as well. I have plenty of other things to worry about right now.

Wednesday 28th June 2023 – I REALLY MUST …

… remember that the bottle of tabasco sauce doesn’t have a drip feeder.

After tonight’s leftover chili I’ve had to put the toilet paper in the fridge. And if there ever would be a damsel in distress stuck in my apartment and a knight in shining armour came to rescue her, I’d make pretty short work of him. Who needs a dragon after my tea tonight?

Well, actually, I needed a dragon this morning to get me out of bed because I was flat-out in the arms of Morpheus when the alarm went off.

It was quite a struggle to rise to my feet before the second alarm went off but I managed it. And I staggered into the living room for my medication feeling like the Wreck of the Hesperus.

Today I’ve been organising stuff for the radio now that I’ve finished (for the moment) updating the directories on the computer. Another pile of stuff went the Way of the West today and I do really wonder why most of it hadn’t been filed away correctly.

And having organised that, I’ve been back in Cartwright down the Labrador coast.

At the moment I’m out in a small boat at Muddy Bay. That was the site of one of these Residential Schools about which so much has been written over the last few years and was something that I had wanted to see.

However this one is rather different in that it wasn’t designed for imprisoning native children who had been forcibly removed from their parents like most of them. This was effectively an orphanage opened in 1919 to house the children who had lost both parents in the Influenza epidemic that devastated the coast and who had nowhere else to go.

There have been several accounts written by residents and in the main it seems to have been a respectable and reasonable place. However two boys obviously didn’t think so as they burnt it down in 1928.

There’s also the mystery surrounding Marguerite Lindsay.

She was one of the Grenfell Association’s “WOPs” – volunteer workers who came “With Out Pay” to help the coastal communities and taught sport to the girls in the orphanage. In August 1922 she went for a walk – and never came back.

Four months later they found her body frozen in the ice with a bullet wound.

The official verdict was that she fell and landed on her pistol which discharged itself with the shock. But as you can imagine, conspiracy theories abound.

The cleaner came round today of course and we had a good chat. She doesn’t think that my neighbour will ever recover her health after the bad fall that she had, and that’s sad.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I was doing some research into suicides amongst children for a University thesis. I was busy compiling a whole list of case studies and statistics of everything that I could find going back several years. I found so much stuff that I was having difficulty trying to think how I would write it and what information I would use. I didn’t just want to discuss one case after another, I wanted to write about them in groups or something like that where each group had a common factor. I came across something very interesting while I was doing it, a kind-of game similar to American football where you’d throw an object down a field and a cat would chase after the object, catch it and bring it back. I ended up being totally engrossed in this idea, reading all about famous cats and famous games in which these cats had played “fetch”. That was something that would sidetrack me completely because it was much more interesting than what I was doing. Some of these cats were quite impressive with some really high-class performances that took me by surprise.

And isn’t that the story of my life? When I was at University I had a thesis to write but was side-tracked completely and while what I wrote was well-researched and well-written, it went totally off-topic and I received a miserable mark for it. I would make a useless academic. I went for an interview once to see about doing a PhD but I was told quite frankly that I didn’t have the temperament to sit and concentrate all my efforts into one narrow sphere.

Then there was someone from Crewe in the Victorian era who went to explore the High Arctic and was lost. He was due to marry and his finacée had a nervous breakdown. Everyone was trying to console her. She actually worked in a building in the Town Centre, a kind-of early 5 or 6-storey skyscraper that was one room on top of another on top of another etc, called Robles and Co, an art-deco kind of 1920s dark red brick building.

Later on I was at a party in the Auvergne with a lot of people from the Alternative Society, one of these ecological meetings. I was feeling really bored because I didn’t really think all that much of most of them. Just wandering around and someone introduced me a girl there. We began to chat. It turned out that she was a folk singer from San Francisco. We began to talk. She asked me if she could borrow something or other so I took out my wallet to get it. It was a card with my number on she wanted. Of course I had a pile of railway tickets there and they all fell out. That made her smile. I picked everything up. We carried on chatting. I kept on asking her questions and getting everything wrong, like I mentioned LA and she said no, she came from San Francisco etc. In the end she was showing me posters that she still had on her of when she first played different gigs etc. I was just on the point of asking her if she’d like to get together to maybe have a jam some time when I awoke. That’s typical isn’t it?

Finally I’d found myself a little job working part-time in a DiY paint shop in Crewe town centre, Market Street. I was just there for a couple of hours helping out the girl who ran it. The first time that I was there she gave me a couple of things. The second time she gave me two big brushes. When it was closing time I locked up the shop. As I was leaving I bumped into my brother who was leaving his clothes shop a couple of doors away. I walked home to Macclesfield and on the hills at the back of Macclesfield it was snowing quite heavily. I heard someone whistle behind me but I didn’t pay any attention. It whistled again so I turned round. It was the girl who lived a couple of doors away who was rather ethereal. She had a big stick about 2 metres long, very straight, that she was carrying. I said “that’s a fine staff to go to a solstice with”. Just then a circular saw in the neighbourhood started up so I had to repleat myself 2 or 3 times. By this time I was carrying a large stuffed toy. She mentioned stuffed toys so I told her that it was to be a companion for STRAWBERRY MOOSE which she thought was quite funny. That was when I awoke.

What’s interesting about last night was that it’s usually my family or someone like that who comes along and sticks their oar in when I’m having serious chats with nice young ladies, but last night, just as things were becoming interesting, my subconscious awoke me, obviously trying to tell me something.

Not that it has any need to do that, because the chances of me encountering any presentable young ladies right now is absolute zero and even if I were to do so, the chances of enticing them back into my lair and into my evil clutches would be even less than that.

And talking of Zero, whatever happened to her and TOTGA and Castor?

What was disappointing about today was that I lasted until about 19:00 before crashing out. Even though I was exhausted today, I was hoping that I could keep going all day but it wasn’t to be.

Tea was, as I said, the leftovers in the fridge with a small tin of kidney beans, rice, veg and rather too much tabasco sauce. I’ll know all about that tomorrow.

But I have to go to sleep, and that I’ll be doing right now. There are lots of things to do tomorrow so I can’t hang around. And then if I have time I might go off to Cartwright and another adventure.

That’s actually the kind of town where I wouldn’t mind being stuck for a while. And if that doesn’t bring property prices crashing down over there, I don’t know what will.

EPIC HALL

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