Category Archives: Leclerc

Friday 27th March 2026 – AND SO, AFTER …

… last night’s theatrics, I managed to survive into today.

Not without problems, though. I am still having these severe coughing fits, my nose is running and I’m freezing, freezing cold. In fact, although for the past few days I’ve just been running the heating at night, it went back on on Thursday for twenty-four hours per day. And yet I’m still perishing.

So after I’d finished the notes for yesterday, I managed to find the time to dictate a few radio notes, making a horrible mess of them, and I reckoned that that was nature’s way of telling me to go to bed.

But not before I’d switched off the alarms and set one for 07:30. A lie-in will do me a little good, I hope.

However, there was just one problem. The alarm that I’d set didn’t have a sound. Consequently, it was the vibration and the buzzing that awoke me, rather later than it might have been. I was dead to the World at that moment.

As usual, it took a while to haul myself out of bed, and as I was already dressed (yes, I’d gone to bed again fully dressed) I sat at the desk and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And again, it was somewhat disappointing.

I was in dialysis last night. There was some discussion amongst the staff about cases of food poisoning going around. I listened quite carefully because when someone began to mention a couple of the symptoms, I realised that that was actually how I was feeling and how I was suffering. However, the only thing that I have to eat or drink there is the orange juice and coffee so I don’t know where this thing about food poisoning might have come from at dialysis.

That was rather prescient, I suppose, because the idea of food poisoning had gone through my mind at some point during the afternoon on Thursday.

When the alarm went off, there was something going on about weddings. We’d been planning some kind of wedding for something or other and a couple of people had said that this is going to be the kind of wedding that we’ll never forget. But I didn’t manage to go very far down into this dream at all because the alarm went off and awoke me.

What a shame that the alarm awoke me just as this dream was starting up. I would have loved to have known how it would have developed.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort out my legs and feet. He didn’t have much to say today, especially after I’d told him that I’d gone to bed at 20:00. I suppose that he was pondering on how to deal with the situation in his capacity as a nurse, but he simply dealt with my legs and feet and left.

Once he’d gone, I could deal with breakfast — the first meal that I’d had in twenty-four hours — and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’ve finally finished the sorry tale of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where, like just everywhere else in the Balkans, the citizens handed their country over to the Ottomans on a plate. We’re now turning our attention to Rome, which seems to be where all of the exiled Kings and Princes ended up, living at the mercy of the Pope.

The list of royal personages who found refuge there is impressively long, that’s for sure, and it includes the names of some of the most powerful in the medieval Balkans.

Back in here, I had plenty of things to do now that my week’s work is finished. The most important was to pay my property taxes for my place in Canada, and now that’s done. There was also the food order for Leclerc to review and send off. And as you might expect, there were several items unavailable.

However, they did have a butternut squash, so my roasted butternut squash soup for Easter Saturday looks like it might be on.

Another thing that I’ve been doing is to back up the files. Now that I have an 8 TB disc drive in the new office computer, I’ve been merging all of the files that were on different hard drives, and they are all now on this large one. I’ve merged in the working files too, and the next plan is to format the two external drives, split the contents of the large back-up drive into two and copy them onto the two external drives, half each, as an extra insurance back-up.

My cleaner turned up as usual to do her stuff. I explained that I wasn’t well, so she sensibly left me to it and left at the end of her session.

Not that I had much rest because fifteen minutes after she had gone, Leclerc turned up with the shopping. So I had all of that to put away (and it’s still not all away) and one kg of carrots to dice, blanch and freeze. And to save the water for the base of the butternut squash soup.

Back in here, I drifted off on my travels for a short while and then had a look at some of the notes that I’d dictated just now. Two of them were the notes for joining tracks so I edited them both and assembled the programmes. That’s me now well ahead for self-sufficiency.

Tea tonight was the curry that I was going to eat last night, a korma from out of the freezer, with rice and veg followed by vegan trifle. And I noticed that the agar-agar jelly seems to be breaking up. It’s probably not meant to be kept as long as this, so I shall have to make a smaller one next time. I hope that this one survives a little longer and doesn’t end up completely in the waste bin. That would be a tragedy.

It will also be a tragedy if I don’t get a move on and go to bed while I still can. I need a good night’s sleep and this looks like the best chance of having one.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about weddings … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked "why does the bride always wear white at her wedding?"
"It’s to symbolise purity and chastity" I replied
"Of course it isn’t" retorted someone else. "If you look around, you’ll find that all kitchen appliances come in white these days."

Friday 6th March 2026 – GUESS WHO …

… has been a busy boy today?

It’s difficult to understand where all of this energy has come from, but it was certainly there today and I hope that it will still be there for the weekend too and I can keep it up.

Last night, though, it didn’t look as if it would be a good day today. Once more ♬ I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied, lost my way and don’t know where to roam ♬ and ended up being quite a bit later than intended going to bed. If I’d rushed, I could have been in bed by 22:30, I suppose, but it was in fact 23:30 when I crawled under the covers.

At least, I went to sleep straight away, which was one thing, but it was rather sad to awaken at 05:00. I could have done with much more than that. A good few minutes were spent deciding whether I should leave the bed at that point but instead, I curled up in the warmth of my quilt and went, surprisingly, back to sleep.

But not for long. I don’t know what time I awoke after that, but the alarm went off a short time afterwards and I tried my best to raise myself from the Dead.

Eventually, I was able to stagger into the bathroom for a good scrub-up and then I went into the kitchen for my medication and hot drink. And DISASTER – no fresh lemons. I had to make do with processed lemon juice, and it’s not the same.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was a huge meeting of some kind of Gamblers Anonymous thing where people were invited to comment on how they stopped gambling. There was one guy who gave a lengthy speech about how he’d managed to stop gambling etc. and everyone applauded him. He was taken as being one of the shining examples of this meeting. Later on, while he was with his friends, they all went off somewhere and left him on his own. It was then that someone else came round to bring him a prize that he’d won when he’d been gambling. It was a huge prize too, and there was no possibility of hiding it. The people who had brought him this cheque decided that they’d take him out for a meal, and they ended up presenting formally this cheque to him in a restaurant where his friends were actually dining at the time. That proved, of course, to be something that was most embarrassing to everyone. Of course, his friends were really angry at having supported him at this Gamblers Anonymous thing. They went over to the table later where he was sitting, or he went over to theirs and they had a most acrimonious argument or discussion about this whole affair.

This was a strange dream. It’s another one that seems to have come out of nowhere, with nothing that has happened in recent times provoking anything like this.

I’d met a girl walking around Granville and I began to chat to her. She was part of a large family whose father had died and they had been evicted from their house where they were living and were basically on the road looking for somewhere to stay. They were heading in the Rennes direction. It turned out that the previous night they’d spent in a hotel just down the road from where I was living, one of these cheap village hotel-type of things. I felt really disappointed that I hadn’t seen her then. After we’d had a really good chat and she had wandered off, I went down to look at the street. I thought that what was this big hotel had been all boarded up and padlocked. There was no possible way in to it, so I didn’t say or do very much. I realised then that she was actually at the house next door because I could see the tables being laid out for breakfast the following morning, so I loitered around there but she didn’t turn up, and neither did any of her family, so I wondered if they had moved on. At some point a little later on, I met her again. She said that they were leaving and were going towards Rennes. I was spending some time chatting to her. She had this very large family and one of the children was underneath my bed, stuffing stuffed toys up underneath the mattress, so I had to chase her away. I was chatting to this girl when this old, strange minibus turned up. She basically said “goodbye” to me, and I felt terribly disappointed that she was leaving. They all crowded into this ancient minibus, one of those that had the luggage underneath the floor, and they set off. I decided that what I would do would be to try to hitchhike down towards Rennes to see if I could catch up with her at some point. So I set off and arrived at Rennes. I was on an airfield when this strange aeroplane came in to land. It nearly knocked down an officer, who made some kind of gesticulation at it, but I thought that he shouldn’t have been walking across the landing strip anyway. I wondered if this was the family arriving, so I ran towards the aeroplane, but it had crash-landed, sticking up with the tail in the air, landing on its nose. There was some kind of riot going on around this ‘plane and the police were called to quell it, which upset the commander of the base because he didn’t think that it was appropriate for the police to intervene in some kind of military affair. But there was a description of the airfield somewhere, and somewhere, people were talking about the different places where the aeroplanes were parked etc, but I didn’t take much notice because I was hoping that this was the ‘plane in which the family had arrived and everyone in it, especially her, were all OK.

And I was going to say that this was another one too, but meeting a girl in the street and staying in one of these shabby village-type of hotels of the kind that you would have found in every French village fifty years ago but are now long-gone reminds me of my hitchhiking trip around Finisterre in the mid-seventies when, in Morlaix, I was staying in such a place, I did meet a girl while I was walking around the town, and we did have quite a chat.

Furthermore, the streets in which this dream took place resembled very much some of the streets in the Quartier St Paul of Granville around which we drove yesterday looking for one of our passengers.

The rest of the dream would seem to be pretty meaningless, especially the part about the airfield and the part about the little girl shoving stuffed toys up underneath my mattress.

Isabelle the Nurse wandered in as usual and organised my feet and legs. She had a little more time today so we had a little chat. She seems to think that I ought to buy some garden furniture so that I can sit outside. And I would, believe me, if only I could lift myself out of it afterwards.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

The period of the Frankish occupation of Greece is coming to an end, due to the marauding Turks, and we’ve been discussing the Battle of Nicopolis when a reinforcing army coming from the West to relieve the besieged Franks in Greece was annihilated by a Turkish army, ending all hopes of salvation for the besieged. The End Is Nigh, right enough.

Back in here, I had things to do as usual, one of which was to send off an order to Leclerc because I’m now about to run out of soya milk. One thing that I really did fancy was a butternut squash because I wanted to make some butternut squash soup for next week, but it had gone out of stock since yesterday, which was a disappointment.

When I’d finished what I needed to do, I attacked the next radio programme and now, all of the notes are written, ready for dictation.

There were several interruptions too. I went to set the washing machine off with a load of clothes. I’m no longer able to hang the clothes up on the airer so I’ve arranged with my cleaner that I’ll do the washing on Friday lunchtime and she’ll hang it up when she comes in on Friday afternoon.

After she’d hung up the washing and done some cleaning, we emptied the top shelf in the wardrobe in here. There were plenty of bags, backpacks and so on, but we also found a large plastic box full of tools, screws and all kinds of similar stuff. I’d been looking for some of this stuff since the day that I first moved in here when I needed to erect the shipping radar aerial but couldn’t find it anywhere. So that’s another box to sort out this weekend.

Rosemary called me for a chat today too. Only a brief one – a mere fifty or so minutes – and, as usual, we didn’t discuss anything of any importance.

With what time was left, I began to prepare the following radio programme. This one will fall on the anniversary of the Day of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, and you’ve no idea how many songs I have in my library that include the word “child” or “children” in the title. I could make a really good radio programme with all of those.

Tea tonight was baked beans with cheese, chips and vegan sausage, followed by the last of the apricot halves and some more of my delicious home-made ice cream. Tomorrow, I can start back on my birthday cake and finish it off during the coming week.

But right now, ordinarily I would be going to bed but onto the playlist has come a COLOSSEUM CONCERT FROM 1971. This is a really strange concert, because every time it comes round on the playlist, something dramatic happens. It appeared on the playlist on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR in 2018 when I met The Vanilla Queen, and also in 2019 when Castor suddenly appeared on the scene, and we know how dramatic those encounters were. I was never the same again.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links on the sidebar for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

But before I go and listen to the rest of Colosseum, seeing as we have been talking about Gamblers Anonymous … "well, one of us has" – ed … there’s a similar society for people who suffer from alcoholic issues.
"Is that called ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’?" asked one of my friends.
"Knowing the people whom I’ve met and known" I told her "it’s more like ‘Alcoholics Unanimous’."

Friday 6th February 2026 – I HAVE THROWN …

… away another huge pile of food today. And that included the leftover Christmas cake and mince pies.

And what a tragedy that was – all of my Christmas stuff consigned to the bin. It just shows you how ill I’ve been over the last couple of months that I couldn’t bring myself to eat all that much of it.

But last night, as I said, I was beginning to feel better. For the first time for a long, long while, I’d managed to eat a proper-sized meal, and that is definitely progress.

So back in here afterwards, I wrote up my notes, although I’m still not as well as all that because I managed to fall asleep a couple of times while doing them. In the end, by the time that I’d finished everything that needed doing, it was about 23:45 when I finally crawled into bed. And it didn’t take long to go to sleep either.

But here’s a thing.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying that I was convinced that it was the after-effects of the dialysis, particularly the following morning, that were causing me so many problems with my sleep, leading me to wake up at some silly time of the morning. However, last night I slept all the way through to the alarm at 06:29 without moving a muscle.

So much for that idea.

Anyway, another desperate struggle to leave the bed, followed by a stagger into the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was with a woman and her daughter – it might have been Laurence and Roxanne. We’d been for a drive somewhere, just aimlessly driving around the suburbs of this city. I remember that we came to some traffic lights and I was waiting for them to change, but I was busy talking. Suddenly, the car behind me beeped and overtook me. I could see that the lights had changed and I hadn’t noticed. We turned into the main road, and there was a side street on the left that I had never ever been down. We went down there and came to this really magnificent parking area. It had kind of wooden pavilions, lock-up garages and trees, these monkey-puzzle tree things, and there was a lake. The lake was enormous and there were quite a few people sitting around there enjoying it. Whoever I was with, she knew the owners of this lake. They were extremely rich people and this was part of their property, although people were allowed to go on it. We had some flasks, so we went to sit down by the water’s edge. One thing that we noticed was that there were several families. One of them was a small child, younger than the girl who was with us. That child was standing there, arms folded, in a real sulk. We wondered what could possibly have been wrong with this child, given the absolutely beautiful view that we were having.

The road, the traffic lights and the parking place with the lake are so familiar to me but I just can’t put a name to them. I’m wondering if it might have been when I was at FORT NIAGARA IN OCTOBER 2010.

As for the child sulking, I’m not going to embarrass someone who might (or might not) be reading these pages by reminding them of an incident at Pegwell Bay in Kent in 1966 or 1967.

Isabelle the Nurse was rather later than usual this morning, and she didn’t hang around very long. But she was in an exceptionally good mood today which was quite surprising.

After she left, I could make breakfast and read some more of Mortimer Wheeler’s MAIDEN CASTLE .

Now that he’s left his rambling preamble behind, his notes of his excavations are much more orderly, although not on a par with those of James Curle. It’s still rather difficult to follow his timeline for the occupation of the site.

But, going off on a tangent as I usually do, I ended up reading a critique of Wheeler’s work. He hasn’t yet reached the cemetery, as far as I have read, but someone, in his critique, has posted to the effect that Wheeler has posted “some kind of fanciful description” of a battle that took place at the site between the natives and the Romans but says that there is “no evidence to support it”.

Leaving aside completely the fact that “absence of evidence” is a totally different concept than “evidence of absence”, our critic notes that Wheeler uncovered some kind of ad hoc cemetery with twenty-odd skeletons in it, many with wounds that can only have come from battle, one of whom has a Roman ballista arrow embedded in his spinal column, but notes that “there is no evidence that they actually died there”.

Now, I’ve commented before on Wheeler’s flights of fancy, but even so, nothing in this World is going to convince me that these people with battle wounds died elsewhere and that some people hauled them all the way up to the camp from wherever it was that they died, simply to cast them any old how into a series of hastily-dug, poorly prepared graves.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … office, I had a few things to do this morning and then I had to prepare my shopping order for LeClerc as I’m running low on a few things. After that, I finished off the radio notes for the programme that I’d started earlier in the week.

Having done that, I then began to research the next programme. That took some doing too, but having found out what I needed to do, I had to track down some music, and that wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

When my cleaner turned up, I had to knock off because we needed to make an inventory of the apartment and work out what we need the joiner to do when he comes back here for a day’s work. There’s quite a lot to do, and I’m sure that anyone who has visited this apartment can think of a few other things.

As my cleaner was leaving, she bumped into the delivery man bringing the food, twenty minutes early. And so the next hour or so was spent putting away all of the food and cleaning, dicing and blanching a pile of carrots ready for freezing. Only a kilo today rather than two because there are some left, although not enough to last until the next order.

While I was blanching, the ‘phone rang, so while the carrots were draining, I checked to see who had called.

It was Rosemary, who wanted a “little chat”, so there I was for one hour and nine minutes having this “little chat” with her. And once more, we talked about nothing much at all. But she was shocked to learn that my bill from the supermarket for three weeks’ worth of food was just €69:00. But it’s true, give or take the odd few mushrooms for the Sunday pizza that my faithful cleaner brings me.

There was time afterwards to finish selecting the music, reformatting, remixing and re-editing it and then pairing and segueing it. I even managed to write some of the notes for it.

Tea tonight was chips, sausage and beans with a pile of cheese melted into it, followed by some of the fruitcake from before Christmas with a soya dessert. It was a fair-sized meal, not the largest that I’ve had, but I still managed to eat it all, which, I suppose, is progress.

While I was messing around in the fridge, I threw out a pile of stuff that was long past its sell-by date and, as I said earlier, all of the uneaten Christmas stuff followed it into the bin. It really is a disaster, but it can’t be helped. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s not like me to throw away food. I really must have been ill over that period.

After finishing the washing-up, I put the water in which the carrots had been blanched into a glass bottle and put it in the fridge to use to make my leek and potato soup next week (I bought some fresh leeks today) and then put the carrots into the freezer to freeze for future use.

And now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, late as usual. I wonder if I’ll sleep as deeply as I did last night, or was that just a one-off? We shall see.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about those skeletons in that cemetery at Maiden Castle… "well, one of us has" – ed … Tessa Wheeler asked her husband Mortimer "fancy letting themselves be killed like that. Why didn’t they fight back at all?"
"Well, darling" said Mortimer "people like that just don’t have the guts to do it."

Tuesday 6th January 2026 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

But that’s not surprising. After all, if you don’t go to sleep, you can’t dream, can you?

Last night, I remember saying “The biggest problem right now is the pain in my foot, and it’s killing me. It’s the worst that I’ve ever known it to be”. And I was not wrong either. It really was total agony.

What was the worst thing about this was that it really was an early night. I’d put a lot of effort into finishing off my notes etc and was in bed by 22:15, looking forward to at least eight hours of beauty sleep … "and he needs it too" – ed …

However, being wracked one minute by a fierce, stabbing pain in the foot and the next minute by an intense coughing fit, I just lay there in agony, watching the clock go round and round. When it reached about 05:30, I thought “I’m bound to fall asleep at some point” so I switched off the alarm, thinking that I’d at least sleep through until Isabelle the Nurse would come.

That didn’t work, though, and at 07:25, I couldn’t stand it any more and sat on the edge of the bed.

It took a good fifteen minutes to raise myself to my feet, and then I cleared off into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then went for my hot drink and medication. Surprisingly, I began to feel a little better after the hot drink. I wonder if I’m being dehydrated too much at dialysis, or whether the liquid is coming from the wrong place.

Back in here, I’d barely sat down to restart work when Isabelle the Nurse came in. While she sorted out my legs, she showed me some photos of her daughter in Paris yesterday. It wasn’t the daughter she wanted me to see but the snow. And it was impressive, although not as impressive as my galvanised steel dustbin, nor as impressive as all of the snow around St.Lô that my taxi driver had shown me yesterday.

After she left, I made breakfast. But strangely, and for the first time ever, I didn’t finish my porridge. I wasn’t in the mood for it and I don’t know why. Usually, it’s the food that I most look forward to. I didn’t even finish my toast, complete with the last serving of mushroom pâté, but that was for a different reason.

What happened instead was that my head slowly began to spin around and I started to feel light-headed. I decided that the best place for me to be would be in bed, so I tried to stand up.

The first attempt was a miserable failure, so I breathed deeply and made a superhuman effort to try to rise to my feet, and then all the lights went out.

Some time later, I awoke. I was lying on the floor, surrounded by a fallen chair and a few other bits and pieces.

“This isn’t going me much good” I said to myself, although there wasn’t really much that I could do about it. I can’t rise to my feet at all if I’m flat out on the ground. And my ‘phone was in the bedroom. So I went on all fours into the bedroom to find the phone to send a message to see if my faithful cleaner was still at home. But no, she’d gone out.

In the end, I rolled over onto my back and, pushing with my feet against the office chair that was wedged against the desk, I managed to slide up and onto the bed It took me twenty minutes to do it, though.

To recover, I lay on the bed for a while until I felt better. And that was when I noticed, to my dismay, that there were only twenty minutes to the start of my Welsh class and I’d done no revision yet. I was seriously thinking of abandoning it today, but I did what I could and then I went to join it.

Surprisingly, it all went quite well and I actually enjoyed it. It’s a shame that I won’t be present next week, but I have to go to Paris for the news about how the chemotherapy went. Not that I need to be told, because I already have a good idea of that they will tell me.

Once the lesson was over, I sent my order off to the supermarket. I saw that the only delivery slot left was between 16:00 and 18:00 so I booked it quickly before it was taken.

My faithful cleaner turned up at about 14:15 to do her stuff and to put me in the shower, but I declined. It’s not a sensible idea for me to shower if I’m unsteady on my feet as I am right now. “We’ll see how I am on Friday” I told her.

Margaret Thatcher once said something like "anyone can do a good day’s work when they are feeling like it. The secret of success is to do a hard day’s work when you aren’t feeling like it."

And so it was today; even though I was feeling wretched, I attacked the next radio programme. And by the time that I’d finished, I’d edited a concert track down to about fifty-eight minutes and written enough speech to cover about two and a half minutes. That’s plenty to be going on with. There was even time to start the next one too, which is also a concert.

The LeCLerc order should have arrived by 18:00 at the latest. They had telephoned me at 17:56 to say that they are running late, which is no surprise in this weather. What was a surprise was that they turned up at 19:35, just as I was taking a bag of frozen food out of the freezer. Never mind though – I put the cooling and cold stuff in the fridge or the freezer and I’ll tackle the rest tomorrow, and I continued.to make tea.

Tonight, it was a taco roll with beans à la mexicaine, but not as à la mexicaine as I like them, of course and veg, followed by Christmas cake. Once more, it was a struggle to eat them, although I managed it. And right now, I’m off to bed, hoping yet again for another good sleep and another hard-working day on the radio. The new laptop should be coming too, which should make things a little easier.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about falling down … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was in a pub once where there was a man staggering around, falling over, not being able to stand upright.
The landlord came over to throw him out, but I intervened. "Let me see if I can find his address and I’ll take him home."
So I reached down and rummaged through his pockets. I found an address. It wasn’t too far away so two friends helped me carry him to his doorstep.
His wife opened the door so we explained what had happened, about him staggering about, falling over and not being able to stand up, so we brought him home to save him the disgrace of being thrown out.
"Very good" she replied. "Now, where’s his wheelchair?"

Saturday 13th December 2025 – I HAVE JUST …

… seen probably the most exciting game of football that I have seen for a long time.

It’s Welsh Cup today, the last sixteen, and with many of the big guns already eliminated, there’s a frantic race to the final when some unsuspecting and unprepared club will win and find themselves playing in European competition next season.

Consequently, it’s been “no holds barred” with a ream of sendings off, and in the game that I was watching, we had three yellow cards in the first fifteen minutes.

But meanwhile, back at the ran … err … apartment, last night was another late night. Not as late as some have been just recently, because I did actually put my foot down and dash along with the stuff as quickly as I could, but it was later than I would have liked.

And there I lay until all of … errr … 04:40, when I had another dramatic awakening. After that, I couldn’t go back to sleep and at about 05:37, I called it a night and left the bed.

Thinking that I may as well take advantage of an early start, I finished off the notes for the radio programme on which I’d been working, and then I dictated them so that they are ready for editing.

Once I’d finished, I went into the bathroom to sort myself out and then into the kitchen to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to take with my medication. While I was there, and seeing as I wasn’t in a rush, I decided to fix a couple of the drawers that had fallen apart. These cheap and nasty IKEA drawers really are getting on my wick.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in to sort out my feet and to give me my ‘flu injection. She had to sit with me for fifteen minutes afterwards to make sure that I had no after-effects, so we talked about nothing much in particular.

Then there was breakfast and some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. We’re now in Silchester, or Calleva Atrebatum as it used to be. It’s a well-known ruin, well-mapped by different archaeologists, so it holds no surprises for us

The shopping from LeClerc turned up, so I put most of it away, and then I had 2 kg of carrots to wash, dice and blanch. That took longer than it ought to have done.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were quite busy at home – well, at the place where I was living. It was like a big collective place with lots of different people living there. I was busy with a friend of mine. Early in the morning, we’d had a delivery of food from the supermarket. My friend brought it in and she put it down by the side of my desk. However, I wasn’t at the side of my desk for ages so it sat there for a while. As time drew on, I began to think about making tea so I went into the fridge, where I noticed that the carrots were all soft and inedible. I wished that I had some fresh ones. Then, I suddenly realised that I had because the order had come from the supermarket earlier. I dashed over to my desk but the bags had been moved again. Eventually, I found them, but of course there was the frozen food which was now all defrosted. I thought “never mind. It can’t be helped” and went to put it in the freezer. The freezer was, as usual, crowded out with stuff and there wasn’t really any room for it so I had to do my best to invent some room. Then, there were all of the other things too so I went to put them on the shelves. I was surprised at the number of sweets that I already had in boxes on the shelves, and I’d ordered some more, and I thought that this was never going to do because I was going to be here forever trying to sort out all of this. And the frozen food, having melted, just about put the tin hat on everything.

The part about the shopping presumably relates to this morning’s delivery. However, that passed OK, except that both the freezers are now full to overflowing and there’s no room to swing a cat in there

Later on, I decided that I’d go off on another trip to the Arctic so I contacted the people with whom I went last time and booked some kind of voyage with them that they were making up to some of the old Arctic exploration camps. I packed my suitcase and packed a smaller one and set off on my crutches to the bus station. When I arrived at the bus station, I had to look around for the buses that would take me to the airport and climbed on board a bus. The bus set off, and when I alighted at Manchester, I only had my small suitcase with me. I suddenly remembered that while I was looking at the bus timetables, I’d let go of my larger one and I must have forgotten it. I thought that there was no time now whatsoever to go back and pick it up and I was on a ‘plane to Montreal right now. At Montreal, I alighted, still with my small suitcase and walked round to my hotel. We were told that we were leaving in half an hour so that gave me half an hour to go around the shops to see if I could find some clothes, because I’d freeze to death in the Arctic like this. Of course, it was 08:30 and I found the big Army and Navy Stores where they would have most of what I’d need but it was still closed. It wouldn’t open until 09:00 and by then we’d be leaving. So with reluctance, I set off back to the hotel where we were meeting and came across an open-air market. I had a quick look around there but still couldn’t find anything so I set off back to the hotel. On the way back, I realised that I’d left my small suitcase at the market so I had to go back. Luckily, it was still there and I carried on back to the hotel. People were already congregating outside. A few people knew me and asked me how I was doing, so I made a grimace. One of them said “never mind, Eric. You’ll be great once you are on board the ship with us”. I thought to myself “if only they knew what kind of disaster this is going to turn out to be”.

It seems that I’m definitely yearning for Montréal and the High Arctic again, but of course there is a good reason why I’m not going. My health won’t stand it. However, being absent-minded and distracted away from my luggage is nothing new. As for the clothes in the Army and Navy store, back in the distant past, had I gone to the one in Crewe, I would have equipped myself with Arctic gear with no problems. What I should have done in this dream was to simply ask the organisers of the trip to postpone the departure until I’d kitted myself out. It would only have taken half an hour.

As for the open-air market, the one in Crewe closed down in 2016. That’s a really sad state of affairs. The whole town seems to be dying. It was bad enough when I lived there. It must be a hundred times worse these days.

The next task was to edit the radio notes that I’d dictated. And by the time that I’d knocked off in mid-afternoon, the notes had been edited and the two halves of the programme assembled. The final track has been chosen and the notes written, and they are awaiting dictation.

Back in the kitchen, I iced my Christmas cakes. And what a mess I made of that, especially when I was whisking the aquafaba and let go my hold on the bowl. We had aquafaba all over the kitchen, walls and worktop, the clean crockery and cutlery and also all over me. It’s a good job that I had some more in the freezer.

The icing sugar ended up being too runny and it ran down the side of the cakes, so I had to leave it to set a while before I could give it a second coat.

Not to worry, because we had Cardiff Metropolitan v Caernarfon in the Welsh Cup.

With only five Premier League teams left in the competition, and with two matches featuring games between four of them, there will be only three, or maybe even two in the next round if Greford Athletic of the Second Division knocks out Barry Town. So it’s anyone’s cup, and a cheap passport into European competition.

So the Met and the Cofis were going at it hammer and tongs, with the game swinging like a pendulum from one end to the other throughout the match. The Cofis scored first, but the Met equalised. The Met scored a second but the Cofis equalised almost straight from the restart.

With the game heading towards a penalty shootout, a moment of magic from the Cofis’ Portuguese midfielder led to a third goal, and with the Met throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at the Cofis’ defence in the final seconds, they left themselves wide open to a rapid counter-attack, with the inevitable results. Hats off to Cofis manager Richard Davies for introducing a new, rapid pair of legs up front in the final minutes.

So what with Bangor City of the Third Division despatching Trefelin, second in Division Two, and Trearddur Bay of the Third Division hitting five past Newport, fourth in Division Two, we are going to have some interesting cup matches in the next round. And who knows? maybe a completely unexpected winner, especially as another one of the early favourites, Penybont, was bundled out by lowly Y Fflint this afternoon.

Tea tonight was baked potato, vegan burger and the rest of the baked beans. And then I had an enormous amount of cleaning to do in the kitchen to make the place look vaguely presentable. Hence I’m running incredibly late tonight. I hope that my lie-in works tomorrow morning.

But seeing as we have been talking about playing in European Competition … "well, one of us has" – ed … these European competitions have been around for millennia.
In fact, in 33 AD, a very important match was played just outside Jerusalem at a stadium called Golgotha. Someone called Jesus was actually playing in the defence, and when Billy Graham wrote his match report, he mentioned that at one stage, Jesus had joined in the attack.
He wrote "and Jesus went up for the cross".

Friday 7th November 2025 – WHAT AN ABSOLUTE …

… debâcle this is turning out to be.

My niece and her daughter turned up at Charles de Gaulle Airport this morning at 10:30 as arranged, on Flight AC872 from Canada. However, their luggage didn’t. It’s still in the airport at Toronto, according to the tracking system.

"No problem" said my niece philosophically. "These things happen. Here’s my uncle’s address. Send it on to us when it arrives."
"Oh, we can’t do that " was the reply. "You have to come back tomorrow and pick it up "
"I can’t do that" replied my niece. "We’re only here for four days, we have a train booked and paid for, a hotel booked and paid for … "
"There is no other solution" replied the Air Canada official, and terminated the discussion.

They are now stranded in Paris, no luggage and trying desperately to find a hotel that they can afford.

Outraged, I rang up Air Canada’s helpline. After holding on for no less than seventy-four minutes, my call was finally answered.
"There’s nothing that I can do" replied the assistant
"In that case, put me through to someone who can"
"There’s no-one else here"
"You mean to tell me that, as a worldwide airline flying millions of passengers to thousands of destinations every day, there’s just one person on the helpline? Come off it!"
And I had the telephone slammed down in my face.

Air Canada has not heard the last of this. I have friends in the Canadian press.

My day has not gone as I would have liked it to go either … "but nothing like as bad as theirs" – ed …

Last night, I tried my best to finish at something like a reasonable time, but it was still almost 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed and curled up under the covers.

It didn’t take too long to go off to sleep either but, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, whenever I have to wake up especially early, I have a very mobile night. And last night was no exception.

When I awoke for the final time, it was 05:35. And a couple of minutes later, with a great deal of effort, I left the bed and went into the bathroom.

It was a good job that I was early too, because this 06:45 of the nurse was nothing like. I hadn’t even finished dressing when he arrived.

On the basis of “what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out”, I didn’t take my medication and just had a disgusting drink to keep me going while I awaited my faithful cleaner.

She staggered in, half-asleep, at 06:50 and sorted out the anaesthetic for my arm and then staggered off back to bed, poor thing. The sacrifices she makes for me are unbelievable.

The taxi turned up at 07:05 and we went off to pick up someone else who also goes to dialysis. We arrived quite early but they were having problems with the weighing machine so everything ended up running late.

The first needle went in fine but the second was one of those that really hurt and I suffered throughout the session. So much so that I didn’t do anything like as much as I wanted to.

They still hadn’t disconnected me when the taxi turned up, so the poor driver had to wait fifteen minutes for me, much to the disappointment of two other passengers. And then we came home via a Tour of Normandy so it was really late by the time that I arrived home.

There is one thing to be said, though, and that is that with these new Securité Sociale regulations, I’m seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment, and I discovered that they had tried to deliver another parcel (which should be arriving this coming Monday) but as there was no-one in, they have left it at a collection point. And seeing that I can’t go to pick it up, I’m not sure what will happen next.

Back in here, I sent off my order to the supermarket for delivery this afternoon, and then I made breakfast and had my medication. While I was eating, I had my … errr … frank exchange of views with Air Canada.

It was my plan to make a vegan lasagna today so I had some lentils cooking overnight in the slow cooker. This afternoon, I attacked it and after a couple of hours, it was ready. Once more, I’m over-estimating the cooking time of this oven and it’s scorched around the edges.²

However, while I was doing it, I could feel my health slipping away and I began to feel really ill. Doing the pile of washing-up finished me off and when the food delivery arrived, it was all that I could do to put the frozen food in the freezer. The rest can wait to be put away.

But seeing as we have been talking about my cooking … "well, one of us has" – ed … I have had quite a few requests. Most of them are physically impossible, of course, but I have had a request for the recipe for my bean tajine.

Of course, it’s not my recipe, but I have modified it to suit my palette.

240g dried white beans
1 large onion
garlic to your taste
honey to your taste (seriously)
4 carrots
1 tin of tomato purée
concentrate of tomato (I use Harissa, the spicy stuff)
olive oil
salt
turmeric (2 heaped tsps)
other herbs if you like (I added basil and oregano)
coriander (fresh if possible)

soak your beans on “high” in a slow cooker for an hour
drain, rinse, then soak again overnight on “low”
drain the beans and rinse again.
peel, then dice the carrots fairly fine
put some oil in the slow cooker, on “high”. Then add the chopped onion and fry until transparent
add the honey and stir
add the carrots, tomato, turmeric, garlic, other herbs, and stir well
add the beans and stir really well
add water to cover, and stir really well
bring to the boil on “high” then leave for a couple of hours on “low”
garnish with coriander
serve with couscous, peas and mint.

Back in here, I sat down and although I didn’t crash out, I definitely wasn’t in. And for a good hour or so too. My left shoulder was in total agony. At one point, I went to lie down on the bed but I couldn’t go to sleep. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, sleep is my cure for all ills.

Instead, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was playing in a group with two other guys and living in Crewe. There was a home match played by Crewe Alexandra so I asked a friend of mine who worked for the radio whether he could obtain a few complimentary tickets for my friends and me. My girlfriend wanted to come too, but I can’t remember who she is. The two guys from the radio turned up but they didn’t have any complimentary tickets with them, so we chatted. Then someone else turned up with two kids and the conversation continued. I noticed that my girlfriend was taking some food with her to the football match so I went and found a flapjack that I’d made, and put it in my pocket. There was a knock on the door, and I thought that it might be my two friends who were coming with us, but it turned out to be two more people. One of them was in a wheelchair and the other one was on one of these low-down foot-forward bicycles. They came in. by then there was quite a crowd of us. Someone said to me “I hope you’re going to be OK after the game, Eric, with five people staying with you”. This was the first that I’d heard of this. “And those five people include those two children” someone else said. I said to these two kids “I suppose you want to sleep on the double bed in the spare room, do you?”. They replied “no. That double bed has been there for years, hasn’t it?”. So I had a think, and I thought that the double bed was about thirty-five years old so they were probably right.

Now, who was my girlfriend? It’s not like me to miss out on remembering something like that. There are many other things in this dream too that seem to have no significance either.

There was another dream about a man who was a comedian. He’d been invited to appear before a group of evil mafia-type people to entertain them. He wasn’t happy about this because she’d heard that they were pretty vile to people whom they didn’t like. He needed a lot of talking before he agreed to take it on. What he didn’t realise was just before this concert took place, there had been a serious jewel robbery with millions of pounds-worth of jewels stolen. He went along to this concert but as soon as he walked into the room, he took fright. He pulled out his gun, shot a couple of people and then ran. Of course, everyone ran after him, but he was hiding in places inside this theatre to try to shake them off. Then he made a break for it, and ran right across the motorway. Somehow, he’d managed to pick up this case full of these jewels in the meantime so everyone was chasing after him. They weren’t so lucky going across the motorway and a couple of them were knocked down. The rest of them couldn’t pass over to the other side. In the meantime, this guy was wandering up some kind of main road miles away from the scene, still with this briefcase. Stopped at a set of traffic lights was a mobile home, so he climbed in. This upset the owner but in the end the guy convinced the owner that he meant no harm, so the owner agreed to take him somewhere. Then he found the guy shaving inside the motorhome. There was something in the clause of the purchase of this motorhome that it should belong to the first person who shaved inside the vehicle. The owner hadn’t yet had a shave inside it so he had to relinquish control to this guy. The guy decided to drive off. In the winter, he’d be down in the southern tip of Italy or Greece and in the summer, he’d be back in Western Europe again.

This one is just like the first – a confused mass of nothing of any significance either.

Did I dictate the dream about the British guy who somehow managed to take possession of Heligoland in 1914 and succeeded in keeping the Germans off the island so that they couldn’t fortify it throughout the whole of World War I? … "no, you didn’t" – ed … I can’t remember very much about this dream but I wondered whether I’d written it down.

Heligoland, off the coast of Germany, used to be a British possession but the British swapped it for Zanzibar in 1890. It was a naval base in World War II, and the installations were destroyed in 1947 in one of the World’s biggest non-nuclear explosion.

I was with a guy and his two young daughters. As civilians, we were being pushed back from where we were living or where we’d been, rather, by an invading army. We had a few nightmares and confrontations but eventually, we made it back to his house. The fighting swarmed past his house but we stayed indoors while it was all going on. When things had quietened down, these two girls gave a big sigh of relief. One of them then was speaking to someone on the ‘phone and suddenly saying, “oh, I’m stuck in this huge wall of fire at the moment”. She didn’t realise what a wall of fire was until that particular moment when the battle raged past the house. Next morning, I had to prepare to leave. I had to wear all my heaviest clothes and carry as light a load as possible, but I had a lot of difficulty trying to find my boots. Eventually I found them and I could pack. But this guy and his daughters were already up and dressed, so I went for a chat after I’d dressed. I told them that I’ll have to be in touch with them because I needed the signature of the eldest girl for a reference to join the local library. We exchanged names and telephone numbers etc. Then I made big plans to slip out of the house and do my best to head for home. But the chat with those girls was really interesting, the one that I had. And I wish that I could remember it.

Children seem to be playing quite a rôle in my nocturnal adventures right now. I’m not sure why, though. But as for the warfare issues, that’s something that relates to whatever I’ve been reading just now. For example, at dialysis these last few days I’ve been reading Sir Douglas Haig’s reports to Parliament on the activities of his forces on the Western Front in World War I.

Tonight, I haven’t made any tea. I really couldn’t face anything cooked, for some reason. Instead, I finished off that cream cheese with some crackers. Not very healthy but it will keep the lupus from the porte, as they might have said in Ancient Rome while I go to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my altercation with Air Canada … "well, one of us has" – ed … I can recall part of the discussion that I had with that obnoxious helpline attendant earlier.
After I had explained the situation to him, he replied "I don’t have any words to say to that."
"Well, I have" I replied. "Would you like to hear them? "
It was shortly after that when he hung up, and before I’d really got going too.

Tuesday 30th September 2025 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

… afternoon that ended up just like so many others just recently – with me hunched over the table in some kind of catatonic fit for well over an hour.

Perhaps not exactly a catatonic fit because for a good part of that time, I really was asleep. I know that because of how far the Byrds’ concert that I was listening to had advanced.

That’s the thing, though. When I’m having one of these fits, I can hear quite clearly everything that’s going on, but I’m just not capable of reacting to anything. Perhaps one of my followers from Avranches, presumably the dialysis clinic, can supply some information in this respect to help me understand what is happening.

But all of that is for another time. Right now, I’m more interested in what happened last night.

What also seems to be the case is that no matter how quickly I finish my notes, everything else seems to take correspondingly longer and I’m still no earlier in bed, no matter how I try.

And such was the case last night. My notes went on-line at 22:41 yet it was 23:30 when I finally crawled into bed and made myself comfortable. I don’t know why it takes so long to motivate myself these days.

During the night, I remember awakening and turning over a couple of times, but when I awoke at about 05:50, that was that and I couldn’t go back to sleep.

After vegetating around for a while, I left the bed and went for a good wash, followed by the medication and something to drink, because I had a thirst that you could photograph.

Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out what had been going on during the night. It was in the Revolutionary War again. We were there patrolling the outposts of the British front line. We noticed that one of them had seemed to be under attack by the Native Americans because there was food scattered around, indicating that there had been some kind of fight during the lunchtime. We had to think about how to reinforce these posts with enough men to defend the front line, making sure that first of all we didn’t step on the toes of any colonist there, and secondly, that we could find some trained troops to do it, who wouldn’t panic and run if the Native Americans decided to attack.

By the looks of things, I seem to be totally immersed in BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. I wish that I could dream like this about other things in which I have an even greater interest.

And then the Social Services had intervened in the case of a girl and her baby. One of the many things that they were doing was trying to sort out her car for her, an old Ford Escort estate. They had been in contact with a female friend of mine about this car. She had asked me to come along to look at it. The guy from the Social Services had sent a long list of work that needed to be doing on this vehicle, much of which wasn’t really all that important, such as grinding off the surface rust and treating it, painting it etc. I noticed that one of the gutters had come away and was flapping around. While I was examining it closely, I saw that the sill on the nearside was rotten. It would need to be replaced. First of all, I went to attack this gutter mount but I couldn’t find any self-tapping screws the correct size so I would have to go back to my garage to look for some. But the sill, I marked it off with a big piece of chalk where it needed to be replaced. I thought that at the weekend, I’d go to the body panel shop to see what I could find. But as soon as I’d put this chalk mark on, my brother went to fetch an angle grinder to cut it out. I told him not to do that because if we can’t find a sill and the existing sill had been cut away, we are going to have an awful lot of problems. I could patch it if necessary with some of the sill remaining by welding a few plates over the missing pieces, but if it’s all cut out, it’s going to be extremely complicated to manufacture something. When I explained this to my brother, he picked up the angle grinder again. I had an enormous amount of problems trying to stop him cutting this sill out. I still wasn’t sure that he was going to take any notice, and the moment my back was turned, he’d cut it away, and that would be that as far as this car goes if I can’t find another sill.

Once upon a time I did actually have a Ford Escort estate. It was quite a nice car and I wish that I’d kept it now. But the number of cars that I must have welded up in the past when I had my big oxy-acetylene kit – it must have been phenomenal. I remember once having to weld the floor back into someone’s ancient Cortina but we couldn’t remove the seat to take out the carpet. So I was underneath welding it and every time the carpet caught alight, the guy would tip a bucket of water on the flames – and on me via some of the holes in the floor.

And as usual, my brother is up to his shenanigans – not being able to leave things alone and doing his very best to make the situation even worse than it already is.

It’s Isabelle the Nurse’s turn to be on duty now for a week, so she breezed in as usual just as I was in the middle of doing something. She didn’t hang around long, though. She took my medical card so that she could do her accounts and when she’d seen to my feet and legs, she cleared off.

That was the cue to make breakfast, and with my porridge, toast and coffee I read some more of the aforementioned book.

The British invasion of the Hudson Valley from Canada has come to a shuddering halt and an embarrassing defeat AT SARATOGA, WHERE WE VISITED ALMOST EXACTLY TWELVE YEARS AGO.

It’s a defeat that can be summarised by three factors –

the failure to adequately supply General Burgoyne with the necessary men and stores
the failure of General Howe to push General Clinton and his troops further up the Hudson Valley to take the American defenders in the rear
the overall lack of aggressiveness and haste in the British Army, who, having cornered the Americans on several occasions, was far too slow to press on and finish the task

Although Point Three is probably the most crucial. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall – at least, those of you who were with me twenty years ago at the THE FIRST BATTLE OF BULL RUN – that the Confederates had the Union Army – and Washington DC – at their mercy, but failed to press home the advantage. This lack of the killer instinct seems to be infectious.

After breakfast, I came in here to revise my Welsh, and then I went to class. And how our numbers have grown! There are quite a few new faces, as well as one or two returning former classmates.

For a change, not only did the lesson pass really well, I actually felt confident, and it’s not at all often that I can say that. I reckon that over the summer, despite having done almost no studying, I’ve been listening to a large amount of Welsh football commentary, and I suppose that it’s a case of throwing a lot of whatsit at a wherever and some of it will stick. I was disappointed when the lesson finished.

Nest task was to book my taxi for the Centre de Ré-education tomorrow, and then to send off my order to LeClerc.

It was quite a large order today, and it took an age to unpack and put away correctly. And having done that, that was when I had my little wobble, and had to go to sit down.

It’s quite worrying really, these little fits that I seem to be having. One of these days, I’m not going to awaken from one of them and that will be that. I’ve tried to speak to people about them but no-one seems to be all that interested in discussing it with me. I have the feeling – and I don’t think that I’m too far from the truth – that the treatment that I’m having is more palliative rather than curative, maybe because the overall long-term prognosis is not good at all.

After a while dealing with the radio programme that I really need to finish, I made tea – a taco roll with rice and veg. And I managed to eat it all tonight – just about.

So my physiotherapy begins tomorrow morning. I’ll probably be worn out again after that but if it’s free, why should I worry? I’m not expecting it to do much good but it’s worth giving it a try. What do I have to lose?

Right now, I’m off to sleep in the hope that I can actually recover some of my force and energy. I’m not doing too well right now.

But seeing as we have been talking about force and energy … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the doctors once prescribed some force and energy pills for me
However, I had to ring him up – "do you remember those pills that you prescribed to give me force and energy?"
"Yes I do" he replied
"Well, I don’t have the force and energy to be able to open the bottle."

Wednesday 30th April 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… another wonderful day out today. And I’ve been shopping today again too. It was really pleasant to hit the streets again and I enjoyed it tremendously.

And that’s even after the lack of sleep that I had last night.

In fact, it was after 01:30 when I finally hit the sack. I was quite wound up after all of my efforts yesterday and couldn’t settle down. Instead, I found a few things t do on the computer and had a wander around in cyberspace doing a bit of this and a bit of that. As for “a bit of the other”, I managed to restrain myself.

When I finally made it into bed, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned for quite some considerable time.

However, I must have dropped off to sleep at some point because BILLY COTTON awoke me at 07:00.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t as tired as I might have been. I made it into the bathroom and sorted myself out, as far as it is possible to do so, and then went into the kitchen for my medication.

There was a beautiful draught of air coming through the open window (I’d left it open all night). And as I sat there, the sun rose from behind the church and immediately the current of air became warm. I was only there ten minutes too.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, and the answer was a predictable “nowhere”, given the amount of sleep that I had had.

The nurse was in full chat mode and for a change it was quite interesting. He also mentioned another one of his friends who had some kind of connection with a building company. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I know all about his friends.

While we’re on the subject of friends … "well, one of us is" – ed … my friend turned up shortly afterwards and we had a good chat as we waited for the builder to show up (late, as usual, but we expected that).

When he turned up, we found that he was quite efficient, quite frank and quite easy to talk to. He made me fully aware (however, I already knew) that there would be no guarantee or promise that his company could start work within my deadline. It was that that impressed me the most.

He’s arranged for an appointment on 3rd June (when I should have possession) to measure up and talk to his contractors. And it can’t be done any quicker than that.

After he left we had breakfast and continued our discussion for a while, tearing apart all kinds of ideas and plans for downstairs.

Eventually, we decided to make the most of the lovely weather and went out to the car – or, rather, we went outside and my friend went and brought the car to me.

Our first stop was at Donville-les-Bains. The branch of my bank there is much easier to access and parking is easier so I went in and drew out some cash – the first time since I can’t remember when. Not that I need it, because I do have an emergency supply here in the apartment and I haven’t spent any in ages – but it’s always handy to have around “just in case”. And I won’t have many other opportunities.

After we left, we went down the hill to the seafront and had a very, very leisurely drive along the coast as we chatted about old times. We saw some wonderful sights, and made quite a few U-turns as our path led up into various dead ends.

We decided to go to Coutances for lunch and my Artificial Intelligence search engine made several suggestions as to where a vegan could eat.

However, I don’t know what France has come to these days.

When Marechal Foch took over overall command of the French Army in 1918 it is said that he said that he only had two conditions – "a free hand with the Army, and two hours for lunch". We arrived in Coutances well before 14:00 only to find that every single restaurant that we tried had closed its kitchen at 13:30

We ended up at the LeClerc supermarket where we grabbed some “Tricatel” food, thanks to a couple of nice serving wenches who took their time closing at 14:30 so that we could just about have time to be served.

On the way back home we stopped at Noz, my first time since October 2023 where I struck lucky with some fabric softener, some coffee, some noodles and a pile of frozen vegan food.

Leaving Noz, we drove slap bang past the place that my nurse had mentioned, so we went in anyway. His friend wasn’t there but a helpful girl gave me several pointers and arranged an appointment for someone to come to see me. There’s no harm in it, I suppose.

On our arrival home, we found that my faithful cleaner had been to LeClerc in Granville and had found my pyjamas as well as more of those curry patties that we had bought yesterday.

For tea I had lasagna out of the freezer, making space to put in everything that we had bought. It’s not ‘arf crowded in there but it all went in, right enough.

Our chat, reminiscing about old times, continued for ages. He showed me some photos of our project in the UK – the “before” and the “after”. The “after” is so impressive and looks wonderful and we will soon be ready to start Stage Two of our project but the “before” photos are horrifying and I was genuinely appalled.

Eventually he left to go back to his hotel ready for an early night as he has to set off for back home at 05:30 tomorrow morning. We had a lovely two days together, going to places, catching up on old times and discussing new times, but what kind of state is this to be in when someone has to drive all the way from Newport in Shropshire to take me to the shops?

Now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, later than usual yet again. Dialysis tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to it at all. I wonder if there will be any more feedback from my rebellion on Monday

We shall see.

But seeing as we have been talking about going down a few dead ends … "well, one of us has" – ed … I am reminded of a report on male sterility that was published a few years ago.
A newspaper had laid its hand on the article and the headlines the next day were "Male Sterility – a dead end?"

Tuesday 29th April 2025 – WHAT A LOVELY …

… day I have had today. You won’t believe this, but I have been shopping, for the first time since I can’t remember when.

Not only that, I have the living room window open because it has been a scorching hot day today and I have made the most of it.

That was despite a horrifically late night too. It was well after 01:30 when I finally fell into bed after everything, and yet despite that I couldn’t go off to sleep for quite a while.

When the alarm went off to awaken me, I was dead to the World, completely dead. And I really don’t think that I have ever found it to be so difficult to leave the bed. It was a real stagger into the bathroom where I remembered to telephone the nurse to say that I was back.

The stagger into the Kitchen was quite a struggle too but I took my medication and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was in the middle of a dream and when I reached for the dictaphone it evaporated again. But it was to do … I can’t even remember properly what it was but it ended up with some well-known singer having to change his clothes when it was time for him to go out. He ended up changing his behind some kind of screen or other where there was no-one. Prince, the singer, he was there somewhere. He made some kind of remark about the fact that this guy was changing his clothes in public behind a screen and wrote a song about it which contained some not very nice lyrics about it at all about what was going on at that particular point.

The usual incoherent ramble when I’m being totally out of my tree in the middle of the night … "nothing new there of course" – ed …

The nurse came around and while he was dealing with me, he quizzed me about the hospital. When I explained the situation to him, he approved of my decision to walk out. Waiting around in a hospital for no good reason is a waste of everyone’s time. It might have been possible for a doctor to pull a few strings and arrange a scan despite the backlog, but she should have tried, informed me of the time, and then left me to my own devices to make my own way there if I were so determined to leave.

After he left I came back in here to listen to this week’s radio programme and send it off. And I was so engrossed in what I was doing that I actually forgot about breakfast.

My friend came round at about 11:00 and we had a coffee. Being an architect, he has access to an online 3D Planner (and so do I now, and I wish that I had had it years ago in the Auvergne) so we spent a happy three hours measuring the apartment downstairs by trigonometry and counting the floor tiles in the photographs, and then plotting where I’ll fit my furniture.

The conclusion is that I have far too much furniture and I’ll need to downsize – yet again. It’s a mystery how it all fits into this place.

Then we decided to go out. I have my old microwave that rotted away underneath me and the television that hasn’t worked properly since one of the ginger beer bottles exploded in the living room while they were keeping me in hospital several years ago and sent a shower of fragments of glass through the screen.

So in the glorious boiling-hot day with not a single blemish in the sky and the windows wide open, we drove to the dechetterie, after which I had two fewer things to worry about.

From there we drove to Centrakor, my first time in a shop since January 2024 if I remember correctly. We came out with all of the curtain poles, attachments and rods for the net curtains that I’ll be having.in my new place. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago I interviewed for the radio the lady who makes the clothes for the Carnival Queens. Her shop is about 250 metres from here, inside the walled city at the back, and I’ll be arranging for her to make my curtains.

Next stop was Aubade, the big bathroom suppliers. I sent my friend in and he came out with a couple of huge brochures through which I shall be thumbing at my leisure to pick out the things that I need for my shower. One thing that I am going to have for the toilet is one of those cisterns that has a small sink on top. I’m not going to keep on wandering around into the bathroom all the time.

Final stop was, of course, LeClerc. We had intended to go for a meal there but the restaurant was closed. Instead, we wandered around the shop, at a snail’s pace of course, and bought a few things. I still can’t find any neutral yeast though, so it looks as if I shall have to keep on with this horrible smelly yeast.

Back here, while my friend nipped back to the town for a lettuce (mine looked quite depressing) I made a giant salad with what I had and some of what we had bought. We’d also bought two vegan burgers with liquid curry filling that I had seen for the first time and was keen to try, so they went into the air fryer.

The pièce de résistance was the vegan mayonnaise. We found a simple vegan mayonnaise and with the food processor, I had a go at it. And believe me, it beats any vegan mayonnaise that I’ve ever had from a proprietary manufacturer. It was wonderful.

The curry burgers were delicious too so I took a photo of the label and sent it to my faithful cleaner, to ask her to buy a couple more packs for the freezer next time she’s there. I need to vary my diet more.

After my friend left, I washed the mountain of dishes and the food processor, then came in here to write my notes.

So having done what I needed to do, I am now going to bed. Much later than I would like but I don’t care. I’ve had a lovely day. It’s so nice to be out and about in the sun and I really have missed it.

What made it better was spending the day with an old friend. We had many adventures in the mid-seventies when we met in Manchester and then afterwards until, when with grown-up lives, we drifted away.
He comes from Grimsby and when I was over there once many years ago I asked him "shall we go to watch Grimsby Town? They are playing at home this afternoon"
"No thanks" he replied. "If I want to watch someone mess around and fail to score during ninety minutes, I’ll come with you to a disco"

Friday 18th April 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a visitor today

My tenant has finally decided to present herself to me this afternoon.
"What do you want to do about the kitchen in the apartment?" she asked.
"If you look behind you" I said "you’ll see some kitchen units in boxes. I ordered them, paid for them and had them delivered a long time ago. It’s rather late in the day to tell me about yours"

She then began a long complicated spiel about the difficulties she was having with the apartment for which she has signed.

However, I cut her rather short. "That’s not my problem" I interjected. Then I proceeded to tell her what my problem was. I explained my medical issues, in rather forthright terms and how she was contributing to them. I told her that I had proposed an exchange of apartment but she had refused.
"But I can’t walk upstairs. I have this bad back"
"Madam" I replied. "In case you haven’t noticed, you’ve just walked up 25 stairs this very minute to speak to me. Your medical problems are obviously nothing like as bad as mine and I have to do that at least three times per week on crutches"

We carried on with that kind of chat for a couple of minutes and then I interjected once more, saying "I have nothing more to add to the matter. If you have anything further to say, you must say it to the letting agent" and I escorted her to the door.

Now she can walk the 25 stairs back down again.

She’s obviously not received the letter that I sent to the letting agent this morning because I have now decided on a course of action.

Gotthold Lessing once famously said "better counsel comes overnight" and that’s certainly true, especially when you have had a lot of night in which to think.

Having dashed through everything last night, I was finally in bed by not many minutes after 23:00, which made a very pleasant change. Looking forward to a good night’s sleep, I curled up under the bedclothes and made myself comfortable

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I had been up for an hour and a half. So much for my idea of a good night’s sleep. Of course, it’s dialysis night but it’s usually Saturday night / Sunday morning when I have sleeping issues. So it must be my guilty conscience preying on me.

But when you are awake at 05:05 and don’t leave the bed until 05:28 you have plenty of time, all nice and peaceful, to think of a plan.

My plan was firstly to go into the bathroom and have a good scrub up. And then into the kitchen and have my medication.

Back in here, armed with a mug of instant coffee, I sat down and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I came home from school and found my mother doing her usual things, talking, and then our father came in. He was talking about a couple of things that he was intending to do in the future. One of them was “we have to pack because we are moving”. This took everyone by surprise. He said “we’re moving to London – I have a job down there. I already have the house and it’s all ready for us to move”. “Oh God!”. My mother and I were completely taken by surprise because he’d never said anything to anyone. We hadn’t put our house up for sale and there were still lots of little tasks that needed doing. The first thought that went through my mother’s mind was “I bet he hasn’t bought a house. He’s probably rented a room somewhere for us and the next stop will be two rooms and a bathroom then some kind of council house”. My mother was very dispirited. So was I. I said “I don’t want to go”. She replied “that’s not like you. You’re always wanting to move on”. I replied “yes but I want to move on to my place on my terms, not go down to south-west London”. My mother replied “you aren’t obliged to go, are you?”. I replied “no, but I’ll have to find a job, all that kind of thing, leave school”. My mother was worried about all kinds of tasks that needed finishing off, like the garage floor, all of that, but it never seemed to change anything and we were just extremely unhappy and dispirited by it all.

That is in fact just like my family. They never ever planned anything for the future. It was always a question of carpe diem quam minimum credula postero as Horace would have said and “make it up as you go along”.
.
Another intriguing thought is “why did I say “South-West London” “? I actually lived in Wandsworth once for a couple of months, that’s true. I was so fed up listening to someone’s sad tale of “never finding work” and having an excuse for every suggestion that I made, that I took action.

What I did was to place an advert in one of these local papers in South-West London – mainly because it was the only area of London that I didn’t know very well – and within 48 hours I had a room lined up. I caught the train down and found my room, dumped my stuff and went for a walk.

Around the corner was a pizza restaurant advertising for casual kitchen staff and delivery drivers (evenings) and a few doors down was an Employment Agency with an advert in the window looking for bus drivers to drive schoolkids around mornings and evenings. So within 20 minutes of arriving at my digs I was effectively in full-time employment.

It really was that easy.

When my mother said that not wanting to go was not like me at all, she was perfectly correct. I was always the adventurous one. If I had had my way, our family would have immigrated to Australia under the “ten-pound Poms” scheme in the 1960s.

After I’d finished, I sat down and wrote out my letter to the letting agents, the one about which I talked earlier. I set out all of my medical issues and all the action that I had taken to date vis-à-vis my tenant.

And here’s the crunch. The lease will definitely finish on the due date. And if she wants to stay on afterwards, she can do so – but on hotel terms and conditions and at hotel rates too. I finished with “these terms are non-negotiable. It’s ‘take it or leave it’ and I want to hear no more of the matter. The discussion is finished”.

The way she came upstairs and went back down after having rejected my home exchange offer eighteen months ago “on health grounds” has only made me more determined.

The nurse came round to sort me out and I asked me if he knew anyone in the Mafia. He seems to know everyone else who might be disreputable. It might come down to asking “Luigi and a couple of the boys” to help me do a home removal, and we’re not talking about my apartment either.

Once he’d gone I could make breakfast and read more of MY BOOK. We’re still in Kenilworth Castle having a good wander around looking at the architecture. And nothing has happened that is controversial as yet.

But seeing as we have been talking about breakfast… "well, one of us has" – ed … my hot cross buns were absolutely exquisite. Just as they ought to be, in fact. This is a real success.

Back in here, there was more discussion. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I should have had a ‘phone call from the UK last week. However, due to a family emergency it never happened.

Today though, we had a very lengthy exchange of messages, discussing the finalisation of phase one of my project and the projected start of phase two. We’ve had an estimate of sorts for the work and we discussed other work that we could also include. All we need to do now is to save up some money

Next task was to finalise my LeClerc order and send it off. They had almost everything too, and acceptable substitutes for what was missing.

We haven’t finished yet either. My niece and a couple of my little great-nieces (or great little nieces) contacted me for a chat and we had a lovely time together. Amber has just finished her exams and is quite confident that she’ll graduate in May. It’s streamed live and so she’ll send me a link.

Her High School graduation was streamed live too and I enjoyed watching it. It’s really hard to believe that in December 2003 she was such a tiny baby and I was bouncing her up and down on my knee in a car in a howling snowstorm in the Appalachians of Maritime Canada.

My first disgusting drink break, late that it was, was interrupted by the arrival of my cleaner who set about her afternoon’s task

After she left I could make a start on my Saturday At Woodstock, but not for long because my LeClerc order arrived and I had stuff to put away. With the LeClerc order came the tenant, about whom I spoke earlier, so I had her to deal with too.

Finally, I had everything put away (well, almost) and so I sat down to restart my Saturday At Woodstock.

And no sooner had I started then Rosemary rang. Just a short ‘phone call today – one hour and thirty-eight minutes. I forgot to mention earlier that I’d been speaking via text messages to Rosemary throughout the day, helping her to fix her computer at a distance.

It’s hardly a mystery that she’s having so many problems. I finally managed to receive her “SysInfo”. Her OSbuild is 5371 and mine is … errr … 5737, 360 rebuilds later, and mine’s not new. And her operating system is dated Seventh August … errr … 2020.

What I suggested to Rosemary is that she comes to help me move (if I ever do) and brings her laptop with her. I’ll fit one of my spare 250GB SSD units in it and give it a clean install from new.

What with one thing and another (and once you start, you’d be surprised at how many other things there are) it was a very late tea of salad, air-fried chips and some of those vegan nuggets, followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. All really nice, that’s for sure.

So horribly late, I’m going to bed. It’s dialysis day tomorrow. But what a day that was today. I’m glad that it was a Day of Rest. What would it have been like had I been busy? Just about everything happened today and that makes a change from the usual.

But seeing as we have been talking about Italian restaurants … "well, one of us has" – ed … a new Italian restaurant opened in Crewe and I went for a job as a delivery driver.
Nerina thought that I was crazy going for that job and that I’d never have it
However I did succeed in my application and when I saw her in the street later I gave her a wave as I drove pasta.

Friday 28th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning when I awoke.

And that’s not surprising either seeing as I didn’t go back to bed until 04:15 and I was awake again at 06:50 (you will note that I said “awoke” – I didn’t say that I left the bed).

Last night’s fiasco was enough to put the shakes on just about everything. After my rather dramatic exit from the dialysis centre, coming home and going straight to bed where I was probably asleep before I hit the horizontal position, there I stayed in a state of what I can only imagine was unconsciousness until after midnight.

When I awoke, I was fully-clothed still, with a thirst that you could photograph. Luckily I still have some of that banana-flavoured soya drink that I like that I bought in Belgium (is it really eighteen months ago since my last trip to Belgium?), so I helped myself to a litre of it, wrote my notes and backed up all the files.

After I’d finished what I had to do I still wasn’t tired so I found a few things to do to keep me occupied and then eventually crawled into bed, fully clothed again.

It was difficult to go back to sleep, so I don’t suppose that I slept all that much, and when I looked at the time and saw that it was 06:50 I gave up all hope.

The alarm clock made up my mind for me so I crawled out of bed and went to the bathroom to sort myself out. Then into the kitchen to take my medication and to do yesterday’s washing-up which I had forgotten. I hate going into the kitchen in the morning and finding the washing-up still there.

With nothing on the dictaphone I found some things to do and then Isabelle the Nurse arrived. I told her about yesterday and she thinks that the machine was too powerful for my heart to cope and that caused the dramatic loss of blood pressure that triggered everything off.

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

We’re still discussing these stone circles and avenues in the West Country. At Stanton Drew he makes the point that while there are circles and avenues that suggest that Arcturus was the target when they were constructed, at 1690BC and 1410BC, he finds that "With regard to this N.E. circle … " – the third one in this series of circles – its strange alignment "… would suggest that the N.E. circle was really erected to provide the alignment, from the centre of the great circle, or from the Cove, to the summer solstitial sun, about the year 870 B.C.,".

Furthermore, "There is other evidence, to which I attach importance, as it deals with a method and policy found in many temple fields in Egypt, that of blocking the alignment of an older star- or sun-cult, which the astronomer priests replaced by their own. The stones of the avenue, of the solstitial N.E. circle I expect once blocked the May sunrise line from the great circle ; judging from the Ordnance map, and remembering the number of stones that have disappeared,"

According to my “wave of invasions” cheat-sheet, a huge wave of Celtic invaders began to arrive in England round about 800BC. They brought with them the Iron-Age “Halstatt” culture and their superior tools and weapons would have overwhelmed the previous settlers. If those previous settlers were pushed west, they would push before them the people who had previously occupied those lands, so maybe they replaced the previous culture of the worship of Arcturus with their own culture of worship of the sun.

What is also interesting is the reference he made to the situation in Egypt where the worshippers of one star arrived and overwhelmed a previous culture. Archaeological evidence lends a great deal of support to this idea, so I’m now interested in plotting, as I said yesterday, a timeline of the worship of Arcturus and seeing if I can follow it through Europe and maybe arrive in England at the same time that the worship of Arcturus seemed to have begun there.

But this is all sounding like my University studies. I’d start by researching something and be so engrossed in what I’ve found that bore no relation to what I’d be studying that I’d go miles off course on a tangent into some other realm that had nothing whatever to do with the subject. I enjoyed what I was doing, enjoyed it very much, but the lecturers didn’t.

His next chapter is actually on “folklore”, but not the folklore what we know. He’s more interested in finding relics of customs that relate to the old forms of worship and how they became tied into Christianity, rather than using them as I would and as LAURENCE GOMME was doing – plotting the migration of groups of people by the relics of the customs that remain in modern society.

After the book, I came back in here and prepared my LeClerc order. And I was really struggling to complete it too. Despite the fact that I haven’t sent in an order for three weeks, I’m not eating as much (or as often) as I did and I was really struggling today to reach the €50:00 minimum order

Times are really bizarre around here. I look at my “usual products” and my “reminder list” and think “I have some of that” or “I don’t need that” or “I don’t feel like eating any of that”. I don’t think that I can ever recall a period such as this that has lasted for so long. I look in the kitchen and the shelf unit is full of stuff.

Once I’d sorted that out, I spent the rest of the day (or much of it) on my Woodstock programme. I now have every song that I need, and they are all re-edited and remixed. Some of the tracks took some hunting down, others had to be extracted from the soundtracks of concerts that I have.

Every song (except one) was actually played at Woodstock by the band or musician concerned, although I can’t use any sound that came from the loudspeakers at Woodstock. I’ve had to use versions from other places.

My cleaner put in an appearance to do her stuff as usual, and while she was here the LeClerc delivery turned up. I usually order it for “after 16:00” but he often rings me up to ask if he can come earlier if I’m the only client in the afternoon. I’d rather have it after my cleaner has left but I’m not going to stop him having an early finish on a Friday if he can.

After my cleaner left I had 2kg of carrots to wash, dice and blanch ready to freeze and then back in here Rosemary, back from her break in Italy, rang me up for a chat. I’m convinced that she has a camera hidden in here somewhere to find out when I’m free.

Tea tonight was a rushed salad and chips with some of these vegan nuggets and it was delicious. The chips were cooked to perfection in my air fryer.

Tea was rushed because we had football, Drenewydd v Y Barri. Y Barri needed the win to keep alive their push for the European playoffs and Y Drenewydd needed a win to keep alive their hopes of avoiding relegation.

Y Barri came out of the traps so much quicker and played some nice football and were looking comfortable at 2-0 up. But Y Drenewydd came alive in the last ten minutes and when they scored with three minutes to go, they threw everything that they had into the attack.

Y Barri won the ball and roared upfield with a one-on-one on the Y Drenewydd goalkeeper – only for the Y Barri forward to miss the easiest goal that he could have scored in his life. That spurred Y Drenewydd on and we witness some desperate defending in the final minute and Y Drenewydd couldn’t find the goal that they needed.

Why they hadn’t played like that with the same desperation throughout the game I really don’t know, but now, while they are not mathematically sure of being relegated, they are going to have to find something special from somewhere.

At half-time I did the washing up and then I grabbed a slice of my new orange, ginger and coconut cake to eat for the second half. And it really is as delicious as I thought that it might be. I’m proud of that.

So now that I’ve finished my notes and backed up the computer, I’m off to bed ready for an exciting (I don’t think) day at the dialysis centre.

But seeing as we have been talking about shopping … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m glad that I don’t go shopping any more. It saves unpleasant surprises.

Once I was in a supermarket in Belgium and a woman came up to me and asked me "aren’t you the father of one of my kids?"
That stopped me dead in my tracks. I had to rack my brains and think hard. There was the girl in Morlaix and the other one at that strange house when I was hitch-hiking around Brittany but that was in France in the mid-seventies.
For a whole minute I had to rack my brains about trips that I’d made into Europe subsequently. In the end I gave up.
"I can’t really recall anything" I said, shaking your head.
"Oh, I’m sorry" she replied. "I’m sure that I’ve seen you bringing Roxanne to school. She’s in my class this year"

Friday 7th March 2025 – DOES ANYONE WANT …

… some cabbage?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday 14th February 2025 – HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY …

… to everyone who didn’t have anyone to send a Valentine’s Card to them.

Not that I am in that bracket, of course, … "he said, smirking" – ed … because at 00:01 precisely on Valentine’s Day morning a Valentine’s Card fell into my electronic inbox. You know who you are of course, and so do I, and a big thank-you to you because it cheered me up immensely. I imagine though that with all of your connections, you weren’t short of too many

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, Gotthold Lessing once famously said "better counsel comes overnight" and that’s not true in my case because all the night did was to harden my resolve.

And my resolve is just about the only thing that will harden overnight, Valentine’s Cards notwithstanding, these days. Times are definitely sad.

But what I have decided is that I am not going for a fourth session of dialysis. I have to draw the line somewhere otherwise I’ll be living there permanently. Not only that, my cleaner has her own life and a business to run. She can’t plan all of her affairs around the caprices of the dialysis centre.

Consequently, I foresee a major argument breaking out on Monday afternoon. We shall see.

Anyway, I had plenty of time to brood on my situation last night because this was yet another night where I had almost nothing in the way of sleep. Tossing and turning and perspiring all the way through the night with just the occasional flash of sleep, an odd five minutes here and there. How many nights is this now?

When the alarm went off I was however asleep, and once more it was a desperate struggle to fight my way out of bed before the second alarm. And having said the other day that I had never felt less like doing it, I now wish to withdraw that remark.

After a good wash I went into the kitchen to take my medication and then came back in here to find that the computer wouldn’t fire up. Well, it would fire up, but it wouldn’t launch the software operating system.

That’s twice now that it’s done that after a major update, and the last thing that I felt like this morning was to be playing about in the BIOS

When Isabelle the Nurse came round I told her of my woes. Her response was "but you have to" However, when I asked her to give me one good reason why, she was stuck for an answer. Instead, she was out of the apartment like a ferret up a trouser leg.

My appetite is still diminished but I made breakfast anyway and then went to read MY NEW BOOK

We’re discussing water supply at some of these camps that have no obvious source, and he is relying heavily on the presence of dew ponds, which is a somewhat precarious way to go about things.

He also mentions that "It is surprising how little drink is really needed even by modern man when he has perforce to stint himself; probably his Neolithic predecessor required still less, not merely for climatic reasons, but also by habit.^" Whether that’s the case or not, I’m intrigued to know what he thinks are the reasons why Neolithic Man had so many pot-boilers, clearly showing signs of heavy use, lying around if he didn’t have much water in which to drop them.

Back in here, once I’d finished playing with the computer and persuaded it to fire up, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. To my surprise there were actually some to transcribe.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when we were going though some kind of crisis similar to this one a few months ago, Castor appeared in the night and stood silently at the foot of my bed as if watching over me to keep me safe from harm. Last night, not only was Zero’s father there again, so this time was Zero. I’d been doing something with someone but I can’t remember who. It was quite late in the evening so we walked round to their house for some kind of reason. Zero was there with her parents. We talked, or, rather, I didn’t. The guy with me talked to Zero’s father but I was doing my very best not to fall asleep because I was so absolutely tired. As the evening drew on I felt even more and more tired. During this whole dream I just didn’t even say a word to anyone. I just listened to the conversation that was taking place. At the end of it we both set out to go back to from where we had come.

It was really strange that neither I nor Zero said a word during all of this. We just sat there looking at each other throughout the whole affair. If it’s this kind of thing that can summon up Castor and Zero, maybe I ought to throw teddy out of the pram more often.

A little later I heard someone read out the football results. There were just a few and one of the last ones that I heard was “Crystal Palace 1, Notts County 5” and then I awoke. I’ve no idea what would have inspired this.

There was also the Welsh rock band “Man” being included, trying to sneak along under cover and under disguise as the name of another group at one point during the night. Bizarrely, just as I am typing this, round on the playlist come George Jones (Mickey’s son)’s group “Son Of Man” with guest star Deke Leonard. So no early night for me while this plays out.

So there we are anyway. Zero came back to see me last night, and how nice it was to see her too.

Next task was to check over my shopping list and send it off, especially as my faithful cleaner sent me a message to remind me

Having done that, I sat down to think about preparing another radio programme. And by the time that I knocked off today, I had chosen the music, edited and remixed it, paired and segued it and written the notes for it too. So that’s two ready to dictate tomorrow night if I’m up to it.

There was even an hour or so afterwards to chill out.

That radio programme wasn’t all that I did either. About an hour later the delivery driver ‘phoned me. "I know that you said ‘after 17:00’ on your form but is it any problem if I were to come round in half an hour?"

Clearly someone wants to be away early today. I’m not going anywhere so it’s no problem to me. But I had to rush to put it all away before my cleaner came around to do her stuff. She doesn’t want to be tripping over it, which is why I don’t usually want it delivered until after she has gone.

Lunch was next, but only a short lunch as I wasn’t hungry. And while there was no mid-afternoon snack, there was still the disgusting drink break

So all-in-all I’ve been a very busy boy today. I ought to have a few more of these crises.

Just another small tea tonight – a handful of chips, a couple of vegan nuggets and a small salad followed by apple cake and lemon soya dessert.

So when Son of Man finish, I’m off to bed for what I hope will be a good sleep. I can’t believe that I’ve had so little sleep just recently but I’m still going on. Tomorrow I have to fight the good fight at the dialysis centre and then on Sunday there’s a Welsh Cup foot-fest as well as Stranraer hoping to stop the rot.

Four days at the dialysis centre? They must be joking.

But while we are talking of Zero appearing … "well, one of us is" – ed … a bunch of us, Zero included, went once for a day out years ago and I ended up buying lunch for her.
And quite frankly, I was amazed at what she was preparing to put away.
"Does your mum make you meals like this at home?" I asked
"Ohh no" she replied. "She doesn’t want to sleep with me."

Saturday 31st January 2025 – BROCCOLI STALK SOUP …

… is back on the menu … "PERSONSu" – ed … for Sunday lunch.

LeClerc has made a delivery this afternoon, and one of the options on special offer was a head of broccoli at €0:99. Consequently the head has been divided into its individual florets, blanched and is now in the freezer freezing. The stalk is being kept out of harm’s way in the fridge, along with about half a litre of water in which the broccoli was blanched. That will come in handy for making the soup.

While I was at the Dialysis Centre yesterday I reviewed my LeClerc shopping list, added a few things, subtracted a few things and prepared it ready for blast-off.

After I’d finished my notes last night and backed up everything (now that I’m having to take two back-ups) I reviewed my shopping list once again to make sure that I had everything that I needed, adding a few things and subtracting a few things and prepared it ready for blast-off.

Consequently it was another late night last night. But not because I was going over my shopping list. In fact I probably would have found something else to do instead to waste the time.

Once I’d finished everything I didn’t loiter about though, and was in bed quite smartly. If only I could show this kind of motivation when it matters

Once in bed it took a while to go off to sleep but once I was gone, I was gone. I seem to be having a few deep sleeps these days. I wonder if one of the medicine that I’m taking in the evening has this deep-sleep effect. I’ll have t look at the side-effects and if so, I’ll have to go back to taking it in the morning, whichever it is..

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and wandered off into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, and then into the kitchen for the morning’s medication. This is really getting on my nerves right now but there’s not too much that I can do about it.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. No sign of Moonchild, or any of the other Fearsome Foursome for that matter, which is a shame, of course. But anyway I’d been in hospital. I was in a ward. I was lying there. Something that I’d been doing had been giving me some kind of exercise so I was quite tired at one point. A doctor came in to examine me and asked me to sit up. Sitting up was at first extremely difficult. In the end I managed to sit up and he could examine me. But this brought back some memories of a few other people who had been in my ward a little earlier but I can’t remember very much as to who they are and why they came.

Never mind not remembering who came in beforehand, I can’t even remember this dream – not at all. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m usually in a deep sleep when I’m dictating, but even so, when I’m transcribing, something awakens in the back of my mind about what had gone on. But not in this case. Hospital dreams though are two-a-penny. It is after all where I spend most of my life.

Later on I went back to sleep at some point … "you didn’t even know that you’d been awake" – ed … and there was a story about a nine-year old girl who had been found dead in a hospital in a bath in her own particular ward. They were wondering why this had happened but that was all that I remember of this.

Like I said, hospital dreams are two-a-penny

There was also something about being at a concert somewhere where a friend of mine was playing drums. He had a black pearl basic drum kit with faces of native Americans painted on the skins. The drums were far too loud and were drowning out everything else on stage, but I wondered later whether that might have been due to the position of the monitor mikes that were picking up more of his sound to relay to us in the wings.

That’s not all either, but you wouldn’t thank me for telling you the rest, especially if you are eating your meal right now.

There was a friend of mine who had a drum kit like that, and it is he who figured in this dream. But he wasn’t known for his loudness when he played so I can’t think why he would be drowning everyone else out. As for sitting in the wings, for several years I did help a guy who was a sound engineer at concerts. He had all of his equipment but couldn’t drive, and I had the traditional Ford Transit and could help lift the gear. And, of course, slip a discreet C90 into the tape head on the mixer desk.

And that reminds me – on the music site from where I obtain most of my equipment, they had a lovely budget-priced table-top mixer with USB and Micro SD capability. Get thee behind me, Satan!

It’s Isabelle the Nurse’s last day today for a while. She’s off to the ski slopes tomorrow morning, lucky person. And there’s no room in her suitcase for me. Ahhh well!

After she left, I made breakfast and read my book. The three guys who investigated the Eddisbury Hillfort are now comparing it with a few others, notably Hembury and Cadbury.

Because of similarities in the construction and reconstruction of the three hillforts they are able to give some kind of date for the commencement of the major fortifications. They put it at something round about 400BC, which corresponds with the arrival of the Celtic people. Presumably the forts are built by the Belgae to defend themselves from the Celts, or by the Celts to defend themselves from counter-attack

There are subsequent stages of abandonment, with reoccupation and repair, indicating that there were a few really turbulent moments in the next few centuries. Unfortunately, the absence of any written record makes it difficult to date anything or to give some kind of coherent history.

But there is one interesting fact that comes out of all of this. There are, generally speaking, several types of hillfort. Despite being in a zone where the “Northwestern” design is most common, Eddisbury bears a much more startling resemblance to the hillforts of Southwest England. So what was happening here?

The person who excavated Cadbury in the 1970s was called Leslie Alcock and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in an earlier version of this rubbish we talked about Leslie Alcock’s book while I was reading it. His work has subsequently been amended by later research and I managed to track down a copy.

At least, I tracked it down to where it was stored. And you’ve guessed it – at Cambridge University Library and they want me to pay £19:00 to read it. I shan’t go into a rant this time though. I shall just sit and seethe quietly. If I had a spieen I would vent it.

Back in here I had a ‘phone call from Paris asking how I was. I told them that they ought to be telling me how I am, seeing as they have the results and I don’t. But the specialist is away on holiday this week so the results might be a few days.

They also told me that I will have an appointment soon.

"Days? Weeks? Months?" I asked

"Certainly not months" I was told. So expect an appointment in July some time.

Today I’ve been editing a rock concert. There’s a reasonably famous concert that was recorded live for an LP back in 1982 but it’s a little-known fact that the group did a dummy-run of the concert a week or so earlier.

What’s even less-well-known than that is that the concert was recorded, which is significant for the fact that one of the tracks that they played lasted almost 50 minutes in the first concert, and cut down dramatically in the second that was recorded onto the LP.

The reason why was that some of the changes within the track were so difficult that they kept on fluffing them at the practice conference, so they decided to leave them out. Unfortunately, this tape that I have has passed through a couple of hands before it came my way and a few people have had a play at editing it to leave out the fluffed parts and make a seamless concert, but they haven’t done it so well and each subsequent editing has made it worse. The bits that were cut out have been lost a long time ago, so I’ve been trying to create a seamless concert with what I have.

It wasn’t easy but I’ve managed it and it doesn’t sound too bad at all compared to how it was when I received it. In fact it sounds quite good and I’m reasonably pleased with it. And if anyone wants the 24 seconds in total that I cut out, I still have them.

Having done that, I began to write the notes. And for a concert that runs for 58:27, I don’t need much in the way of notes. Just 1:33 which at 17 seconds per line, works out at five and a half. Well, it did when I went to school. Heaven alone knows what it is now.

There were the usual interruptions. There was lunch of course, when I realised that I hadn’t sent off my LeClerc order, and then my cleaner who interrupted my lunch. So once the dust had settled I had to attack the LeClerc stuff. I have to eat. So I added a few things, subtracted a few things and off it blasted

There was Christmas Cake break, and there is some Christmas cake being left until Sunday, which is quite handy, I suppose because I can plan something else to make then if necessary. If not, it’s back to the crackers and hummus

But before the Christmas cake there was LeClerc. “After 17:00” was my delivery slot so he turned up at 16:10. "In a rush to get off for the weekend, are we?"

All of that had to be put away and the broccoli blanched. And now, after several weeks of calm, the freezer is full again. Full to the brim.

There’s not much left now to do for the notes of the concert, so I’ll finish that off tomorrow morning ready to dictate tomorrow night. I went for tea instead.

Tonight’s tea was chips and vegan salad with the other half of that strange vegan thing from a couple of weeks ago, followed by apple cake and caramel soya dessert. That should keep the lupus from the porte as they used to say in Ancient Rome.

Yes, with all of this stuff I’ve been reading about Julius Caesar and T Rice Holmes’s showing-off, it’s rekindled the Latin that I haven’t learned or used since school. Whatever next? Puer amat mensam I suppose.

But before I go to bed, seeing as we have been talking about Satan … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was talking to someone who asked me if I knew about the dyslexic devil-worshipper
"Was he the one who didn’t believe that there was a Dog?" I asked, smart @rse that I am
"That’s right. Him" said my friend. "He ended up selling his soul to Santa"

Friday 10th January 2025 – THIS IS SOMETHING …

… like pretty hard work.

The piece of music, all 65 minutes of it, is not the original. It’s been hacked around quite a lot and the joins in between the pieces are awful. Consequently today, I’ve been tracking down the original sound recording.

And now that I have it, I can see exactly why it’s been hacked about as it has. It’s for a very good reason. Consequently I’ve decided to run with the hacked-about version and see if I can improve the joints, but it’s not easy. Not at all.

Actually, it was easier that that to go to bed before 23:00 last night. And how long is it since that has happened? I’d finished quite early everything that I needed to do and once I’d backed up the computer I went and sorted myself out ready for an early night.

Once in bed, it was totally painless. I was out like a light and remember nothing whatever until just about a couple of minutes before the alarm went off, and I’m not sure why.

Nevertheless I didn’t move until Billy Cotton ROARED HIS RAUCOUS RATTLE and then I staggered off into the bathroom for a good piece of scrubbing.

After that it was into the kitchen to take my medicine, including the powder that I’m supposed to take when it’s not Dialysis Day. Honestly, I’m so confused with all of this medication, when I’m supposed to take it and why.

After that I came back to listen to the dictaphone to find out what was on it. And to my dismay, there was nothing at all thereupon. However there was a lot of this medieval, early medieval, Roman kind of stuff going on last night all through my head. There was so much of it that it wasn’t possible to collate any of it. I just kept on going from one thing to another without a pause.

There was also something about another civilisation, a rabbit and a cat flap. And whatever all of that meant I really have no idea.

The nurse was early today. He clearly had no blood tests or injections to carry out. We had something of a chat this morning and then he cleared off, leaving me to it. I could then go to rescue my bread that I had kept away from his evil cutches and then prepare breakfast.

There was MY BOOK. to read too. And our hero is stuck, trying to read the enigma of the extinct Iberian People. They had a language all of their own that is yet to be deciphered. He’s trying to link it to the Basque language and while there are similarities, there aren’t enough to draw the conclusion that one is linked to the other.

He’s busy trying to probe the theory that the Basque people came from the Middle East via North Africa and the Straits of Gibraltar rather than the established route via Turkey. There’s some mileage in this but he has then to explain why the Celtic people were pushed West into Galicia rather than North, back into France from whence they came.

Nothing that he has found – the barrow culture, the burial customs, the size of the skulls and so on add up, but it’s not stopped him carrying on his aggressive criticism down into a level of personal attack and ad hominem.

Back in here later, I had a few things to do and then attacked the radio editing. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s not an easy programme to edit. Huge lumps have been cut out – and for good reason too, as I discovered when I finally found the master tape

Consequently it’s been a very, very slow process of trying to reassemble it into some kind of spontaneous, simultaneous concert without the missing bits (that are missing for a reason). Some of it went together really well, but other parts are not so good.

There is one thing though, and that is that I’ve managed to write the notes for it. However, I have a feeling that I’m going to have to make them longer so as to fit some of the large gaps that I’m sure that I’ll be having to make in the music before long

There were the usual interruptions today. Lunch of course, with my slice of nice flapjack, and then my cleaner came by to do her stuff, so for a few hours I had a nice, clean apartment.

There was Christmas cake break too with some of that disgusting protein drink, but the final interruption was the LeClerc delivery. I’d reviewed my order this morning, added a few things, taken away a couple, and then sent it off. So there I was, at 17:00, with a room full of food.

Some of it needed to go into the freezer straight away, some needed preparing before I could freeze it, some needed going in the fridge and then there was a head of broccoli and 2kg of carrots to wash, prepare, blanch and freeze.

There’s now a broccoli stalk and about a litre and a half of carrot and broccoli water ready to make some soup, but I’d forgotten about the leeks that I have left over. So it’s leek soup this coming Sunday followed by broccoli stalk soup the following weekend.

Tea tonight was a vegan salad with chips and falafel followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert. And we’ll keep on eating that until it’s all gone and then we’ll make some more, seeing as LeClerc delivered some more cocoa powder.

But I really need to be more adventurous in my baking. That apple cake that I made a few months ago, for example, that worked quite well. But what else can I make that’s simple but different?

On Sunday I’m going to make some Vegan pies wit that flaky pastry that’s left. I’ll make a base of lentils, tofu and oats, maybe some potato and I’ll have to think of what else I can put in there

However, I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed because I’m exhausted. It seems that the more sleep that I have, the more I want.

In the meantime, seeing as we’ve been talking about ancient, dead languages … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Earl of Carnarvon discovered some writing that he didn’t understand on the wall of the inside of the Great Pyramid.
So after he died, he fund the ghost of Jean-François Champollion, the French hieroglyphics expert, who told him to tell him precisely what he saw.
"Certainly" said Carnarvon. "It’s ‘sacred maiden’ ‘hippopotamus’ ‘triangle’ ‘crocodile’ ‘rising sun’ ‘sacred maiden’"
So Champollion goes away to work out his translation, by reference to the Rosetta Stone.
Twenty years later Champollion contacted the Earl of Carnarvon to say that he had succeeded in translating it.
"What does it say?" asked Carnarvon eagerly
"It’s Tutankhamun leaving a note to his architect" he explains. "The first part asks if the architect can explain to him the difference between the door to the lavatory and the flap on the letter box"
"What did he say?" asked Carnarvon
"He said that he couldn’t right at this moment"
"So what did Tutankhamun reply?" asked Carnarvon
"He told him that he’d better find someone else to post his Pools coupon"

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: Leclerc

Friday 27th March 2026 – AND SO, AFTER …

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