Category Archives: Leclerc

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"

Friday 20th December 2024 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning, I was already sitting at my desk working.

Round about 05:20 I awoke all of a sudden, bolt-upright for no reason that I could fathom.

Despite trying my best to go back to sleep, by the time that 06:00 came round, I’d given it up as a bad job and rose up from the Dead. No sense wasting the early morning when I have plenty to do

It’s amazing really. It doesn’t matter how much I think that I have done on the previous day, it all starts again the following morning. It’s absolutely relentless.

Last night I was late going to bed too. It was almost midnight when I slithered into my stinking pit and I was soon asleep. And there I stayed until 05:20, as I said just now.

By 06:00 I was in the bathroom having a good wash and scrub up and then into the kitchen for the medication, remembering to take the medication today that I’m not allowed to take on Dialysis Day.

And then, for a change, I made myself a mug of instant coffee to help bring me round into the Land of the Living.

First thing that I did was to check the dictaphone to find out what I’d been doing during the night. I was with the Hobbits last night. We were baking a cake. Some time later I actually saw the cake appear. It was in my outstretched arm hovering above the bed. I went to reach it, but I couldn’t reach it at all. Every time that I closed my eyes it was still there but when I opened them it had gone again. It was like this for several minutes with me trying to touch it with the cake disappearing at that moment.

Now that was what I call a nightmare, being unable to grab hold of a cake hovering just out of my reach. And I can’t say if I saw it as a nightmare at the time because I have no recollection at all of any of this dream.

And then I was working on the radio last night but the radio was dying out. There was only really me sending stuff in. I was working on the programmes for August. I realised that I had changed my style considerably, that I was really only discussing the music rather than giving some kind of entry and exit to the radio. I’d lost a lot of the spontaneity that it had right at the very beginning. I was wondering what I was going to do about it.

One of the things about which I think quite frequently is how to change the format of my radio but I don’t have the time to think of another way of doing them

There was something else along here in the same dream where I ended up in Middle Earth with a party of dwarves being chased by a group of orcs, something rather like THE HOBBIT which is what I’m currently watching as I eat my evening meal, but that part of the dream is all very confused and didn’t really relate to anything.

It looks as if I have a fixation with Hobbits right now. They say that watching Peter Jackson’s films is hobbit-forming and who am I to disagree?

Later on, I was in bed when I was dreaming but I can’t remember where it figured in or sat in with anything

Now that’s more like one of my dreams. I can’t remember anything at all about it.

But I think that I now know what awoke me this morning. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that every few weeks I complain about a stabbing pain in my right heel, one of the worst pains that I have ever experienced. Every few minutes for about 12 hours there’s the sensation that someone is stabbing a needle into my heel

A couple of weeks ago it had moved into the sole of my foot but today, it’s started up again this morning, this time right behind the little toe and it really does hurt. Every ten minutes as regular as clockwork and I wonder if it was that which had awoken me.

And then I had a foot-fest. ¨Porthmadog FC who play the 3rd Division had put on line the videos of their recent matches in their League Cup so I sat and watched them.

First up was Porthmadog cruising home comfortably 3-0 away from home against Pwllheli. They they took on Llanidloes FC and won even more comfortably, 5-2 at home

Next up was their match against Y Rhyl and there they came unstuck. They managed a 1-1 draw but were knocked out in a penalty shoot-out 6-5.

Casting around, I managed to watch the next round too as Y Phyl took on Mynydd Y Fflint. That was a bad-tempered match, as it usually is when Y Rhyl are playing but for a third-division match there were bags of quality on view.

Y Rhyl won 2-0 but the big talking point is how come both clubs ended up still with eleven players each on the field after all of what went on

Isabelle looked at my foot when she was here, late as usual. She could see nothing but when she touched a certain spot I went through the roof. That hurt, and no mistake, so there’s definitely something going on.

Breakfast was next, and then I carried on with my book, which I finished this morning.

The conclusion is that the site was heavily occupied by a cattle-rearing concern also practising subsistence farming, wheat farming and operating a bakery too. But then the buildings abandoned when the farm was either absorbed into a larger unit of else ceased production completely..

A couple of generations later, it was occupied again for about 50-75 years, but on a much smaller scale and with lesser input from the occupiers.

The presence of some Germanic pottery shards suggests itself to the author of the report that there might have been some itinerant Germans passing through the site, but to me, I was wondering if it might have been settled by some German soldier in service to the Roman Army who had settled here after his military service had ended.

Back in here, next job was to deal with my LeClerc order and send it off. It’s the most expensive order that I’ve ever sent, but it includes quite a few Christmassy things, both for me and for others. As well as that, coffee was on special offer so even though I have a pile, I ordered some more.

For a change, LeClerc had everything that I’d noted down, so it’s my own fault that I forgot the clementines, not theirs

For much of the day I’ve been writing notes for my radio programme. I’m well into September next year so this talk in my dreams of radio programmes for August is already too late. Anyway, by the time that I’d knocked off for the day, everything had been written ready for dictation tomorrow night.

That was impressive because there were plenty of interruptions. For a start, my cleaner came in and now I have light-strings hung in the two windows, in the living room and dining area.

There was also lunch and my hot chocolate break, but finally LeClerc arrived.

In all the time that I’ve been having stuff delivered, I’ve never ever seen as much as this. There’s no room to put away some of it either so it’s going to have to loiter around for a while. But now I have my chicory, my leeks, my shallots and everything that I need. I might not be ready for Christmas, but I’ll have some phenomenal meals.

Mince pies too, which I’ll make on Sunday, because he brought the puff pastry sheets. And two kilos of carrots and a broccoli, so I’ve been dicing, blanching and freezing this afternoon too. And so on Sunday, there will be broccoli stalk soup for lunch, made with carrot-blanching water.

Tea tonight was a lovely vegan salad with air-fried chips and some of those vegan nuggets, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. Totally delicious, but I’m looking forward now to my Christmas meal

But the final word tonight goes to my faithful cleaner who went down to the chemist’s for the next month’s medication.
As she was going in, a man was coming out in tears so she asked him what was the matter.
"It’s the doctor" he said. "He told me that I have to take one pill per day for the rest of my life"
"No need to be upset" said my cleaner. "You should come back in with me and see all of the medication that Mr Hall has to take for the rest of his life too, and he’s not complaining or crying."
"Well, he would if he had my doctor" said the man
"Why’s that" asked me cleaner
"Well, " said the man, "the chemist has looked at the prescription and only given me four!"

29th November 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy this afternoon, and you’ve no idea how.

There has been a delivery from LeClerc and so I’ve been hard at work being quite domestic.

There was a good preparation for it too, because I was actually in bed before 23:00 last night. Not by much, I have to admit, but even a minute is worth noting as it so rarely happens these days.

Once more, once I had fallen asleep I had the Sleep of the Dead and didn’t stir until 07:00.

When the alarm went off it took me a few minutes to gather my senses, which is a big surprise seeing how few there seem to be these days. But once the World had stopped spinning and I’d alighted, I staggered off into the bathroom.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night; if anywhere, because I didn’t remember a thing. However There was a story at some point during the night that a farmer’s daughter – not The Farmer’s Daughter whom we all know and love – had an encounter with a group of extra-terrestrial beings, an unpleasant encounter at that.

Later on there was a story about some man in Crewe who had to go to school as quite a schoolgirl. He had to enquire of his family where the school was. It turned out that it was right down at the far end of Earle Street. he spent a lot of time making himself ready but when it was time to go he looked nothing like a schoolgirl at all. He was like a man. He could see immediately that this was not going to work and so wondered how he could leave off going. He checked with the woman who was going to be his mother in this thing. She replied that she would continue to be here until 12:00 before going to work, so he couldn’t actually extricate himself from it in the morning. In the end he set off with his sister for the purposes of this story but he was really I suppose the daughter of the people with whom he was staying. As they set off they saw one or two other men with beards dressed in school uniform. The girl made some kind of comment that the guy couldn’t appreciate anything of this because he was realising more and more that this wasn’t going to work and how he wished that he could abandon it. Later on there was something about several men having their beards shaved off for reasons that I can’t remember because that part of the dream has unfortunately evaporated but there are definitely men in this who were having their beards shaved off.

It’s a shame that that dream evaporated because it would have been interesting to see where it would have led. It did actually have a connection in real life, if it could be called that, with a group of people who go around dressed up as all kinds of things, furry animals, cartoon characters and the like and go swarming at a certain place at a certain time. Hannah and I ran into them once in Brussels early one morning while they were off to swarm somewhere round by the Heysel Stadium.

The nurse came early today which was nice. He didn’t stay long either which was even nicer. Neither did he have much to say, although he encouraged me to continue with dialysis at any price.

Once he’d left I made breakfast and then carried on reading ISAAC WELD’S BOOK.

He’s still going on … "and on, and on etc." – ed … about taverns, not just about the accommodation but now he’s added the quality of food available (or not, as the case may be) to his list of complaints. "Salted pork, boiled with turnip tops by way of greens, or fried bacon, or fried falted fifh, with warm fallad, drefTed with vinegar and the melted fat which remains in the fryingpan after dreffing the bacon, is the only food to be got at moft of the taverns in this country"

However, as he’s now on his way to Canada, and having encountered all of the difficulties, both natural and man-made, that it would be possible to encounter, he’s fetched up in Albany, the State capital of New York State, where he’s trying to hire a carriage. However, the two carriage hire companies are in collusion and holding him to ransom.

But it’s Independence Day in the USA and while this day "would, it might be expected have called forth more brilliant and more general rejoicings; but the downright phlegmatic people in this neighbourhood, intent upon making money, and enjoying the folid advantages of the revolution, are but little difpofed to wafte their time in what they confider idle demonftrations of joy"

However he saves his most poisonous vitriol for when he’s “entertained” by a prosperous farmer in the Lake Champlain valley and is shown around what he took to be a lush local farmhouse.

How he was disappointed by what he saw. Disappointed and more besides. "That people can live in fuch a manner, who have the necefTaries and conveniencies cf life within their reach, as much as any others in the world, is really moft aftonifhing ! It is, however, to be accounted for, by that defire of making money, which is the predominant feature in the character of the Americans in general, and leads the petty farmer in particular to fuiTer numberlefs inconveniencies, when he can gain by fo doing ……. Money is his idol, and to procure it he gladly foregoes every felf-gratification."

He’s now only a couple of days away from the border with Québec and I’ll be interested to see what comparison he makes between the USA and Québec. I’ve driven around here a few times and the border seemed to be fairly seamless to me.

Back in here I had my order for LeClerc to finish off and set in motion to be delivered this afternoon, and then there was paperwork to tidy up and bills to pay. But at least I could pay them via the internet so I suppose it isn’t as difficult as it otherwise might be.

While I was at it, I tried to contact the hospital in Paris but each time that I tried, I had the answerphone in response and in the end I forgot to carry on.

There was however an incoming ‘phone call. It was the chiropodist. He’s had an unexpected vacancy this afternoon so could he come by here? Well, the sooner it’s done, the sooner it’s over, isn’t it?.

After (a late) lunch I tidied up the kitchen, which was just as well because the LeClerc delivery came early. So now I have tons of food, including a butternut squash that will make a nice change roasted and mashed as a vegetable with some potatoes.

There were carrots of course, but also broccoli and a cauliflower so there was quite a load of washing, dicing, blanching and freezing. It’s a good job that I’ve made plenty of space in my freezer with this defrosting exercise

In fact, there was quite a lot of stuff, either frozen or to be frozen, on my list that needed putting in the freezer so that kept me busy too.

The chiropodist came round and saw to my feet. He thinks that my feet need much more attention than they have had in the past, which was no attention at all. He’ll be back again in a few months time to check on them.

There was bread to make too, seeing as I’ve now run out. I managed to do all of that in between everything else that I had to do.

Tea tonight was a vegan salad with some of those vegan nuggets and air-fried chips, followed by chocolate cake and lemon soya dessert. I’m running low on chocolate cake so on Sunday I’ll make a ginger cake now that I have some fresh ginger. Now that I also have plenty of coconut oil, it should be exciting if I use some of that too.

Isaac Weld, our author, passed through New York on his way north up the Hudson Valley, and looking at some of the buildings, it reminded him of a conversation that he’d had in Dublin with an American who had come “home” for a visit.
Weld was showing him around the city and he pointed out on particular building as being the pride of the city because of its architecture.
"But it’s so tiny!" exclaimed the American. "Back home every city has many buildings ten times bigger than that§"
"I’m not surprised" said Weld. "After all, it is the lunatic asylum."

Friday 8th November 2024 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I’ve had today. I’ve done nothing, accomplished nothing, have loads of things that I need to do and I’m going to be here until eternity just doing the most urgent things that I have to do..

And it all started off so well too. Even though I wasn’t in bed at 23:00, it was something quite like it – not a horribly late night like some have been.

Furthermore, although I wasn’t asleep quite quickly, once I’d dropped off, there I stayed for quite some considerable while. There was the odd awakening here and there but nothing that particularly kept me awake.

However, once I was awake at about 06:00, then awake I stayed and nothing at all would induce me to go back to sleep. So when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already up and about.

In a departure from usual tradition, I went and took my medicine straight after washing. Usually, the medication is taken at breakfast but I have a feeling that I’ll be struggling for time a little later.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were discussing radio programmes again. There was something to do with a famous star who owned a Triumph Herald. An interviewer had been talking to me about interviewing him. Then there was a change and we found ourselves on the Orient Express heading deep into what was formerly the USSR. I was on there in an ordinary carriage with someone else. The train was packed. We were coming into a village where we were going to change locomotive, which meant that we would be not moving for a good few minutes. I knew this village, and knew that there was a really first-rate ethnic Indian restaurant right by the station. I told the guy with me about it. We agreed that we’d take a risk and go there while the train was stopped. As the train was pulling into the station we left our seats and ran the whole length of the train. When we came to the sleeping cars we were told that there was no room in there. The train was crowded, which we knew but we took no notice and pressed on right to the front. When the train stopped we nipped out of the station and found this little café but it was now a big restaurant. There were loads of people there and it was really busy. It was quite upmarket, and it wasn’t what I was expecting at all and neither was my friend, but here we were. The first thing that I did was to grab a plate of something or other to take with me to the table because I could see how busy it was. There was a decent possibility here that we would never be served and have our meal by the time that the train is ready to leave. At least I wanted to eat something while I was here. I was really disappointed by this famous little Indian café place being no longer here and all the delicious hot food had gone – “hot” in both senses of the word of course.

This dream reminds me of that little Indian café that I found out in the Côte Vertu in Montréal. It really was nice and I went back there time after time. Going back in 2022 for the first time since 2019 I found that it had been enlarged and wasn’t quite the same, and neither did it have the same level of intimacy, as the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine might have said. The food was still excellent though.

There was something really bitty next. First of all I was round at a friend’s girlfriend’s house, somewhere where a group of us went quite often. I actually bought a jar of coffee to give to the mother to thank her for all the time that she’d made coffee for us. But somewhere along the line I had a new house, a brand-new solid front door and I was busy measuring it up to fit security bolts in it. But it was winter and I didn’t really feel like opening the door and working just there then with how cold it was outside.

There was actually a girl who lived near me in my adolescence who was the girlfriend of a friend, and it was pretty much open house. Any one could come round and visit, and several people made new acquaintances there. In fact, I made a little friend there who was my companion for a couple of months. However everything fell apart when my friend discovered that his girlfriend had become much too friendly with another one of the visitors.

Isabelle the nurse was late coming around this morning – swamped with blood tests as the laboratory is closed on Monday and no-one wants them done on Tuesday, for reasons that I have either mentioned or implied.

She didn’t hang around and was soon gone, leaving me to make breakfast in peace.

That thesis on the Border Marches has gone the Way of the West now. I think that we reached rock-bottom when our author described “Rhuddlan Castle, in Cheshire, right on the border with Wales”. Although it was in part of the lands that was administered by the Earl of Chester and so can be called “in Cheshire” at a pinch, it’s well over be border, almost half-way to Anglesey and the only way of supplying it was up the River Clwyd from the sea because the overland route was in the hands of the Welsh.

Having finished that I made a start on the history of Samuel Hearne’s famous trek to Coppermine on the northern coast of Canada where had he done the trek in 2019 Castor and I would have been there to him.

However I didn’t read much because the taxi came early for me. I hadn’t even finished my breakfast which was a shame.

At the hospital, with all of the renovations going on, we had the devil’s own job to find the radiography area, and then I was abandoned.

It didn’t take too long for them to come to see me and I was in and out of the machine in five minutes. I didn’t even have to undress or take off my shoes, which was strange if they wanted to look at my foot.

They pushed me outside where I had to wait for the taxi. And wait. And wait. One hour and twenty minutes in total, and there were two other passengers in the car so I went on a sightseeing tour all round Southern Normandy. 12:35 when I made it finally back home.

Mind you, once more I excelled myself. My faithful cleaner stood and watched in awe as I climbed all 25 steps up to here yet again.

After she left I warmed up the remains of my breakfast and finally managed to eat it.

The next task was to complete my order for LeClerc and send it off. It’s a cheap order this week as I have much of the stuff in stock, but olive oil is on special offer again so that helped bulk it up

My cleaner came round to do her stuff and we sorted out the medication, disposing of a load of stuff that’s no longer in use. It’s gone into a bag in the corner, not thrown away, because what’s the betting that sooner or later another prescription will bring it out?

Then I came in here to deal with the radio programme. I’ve paired off the music and segued it, and even made a good start on the notes but Rosemary rang me for a chat. But I had to abort that because the delivery came from LeClerc and I had to put away the frozen stuff

Having done that, I called Rosemary back and we had another one of our marathon sessions that went on for quite a while, and I forgot to check the time.

It wasn’t far short of tea time though, and only just enough time to put away the chilled stuff. The rest will have to wait until tomorrow, although with a session at the Dialysis Clinic, a football match to watch and some radio notes to finish, I’m not sure exactly when tomorrow it will be.

Tea was a handful of those mini-nuggets with chips and a vegan salad, followed by spicy ginger cake and soya dessert. Really nice too.

That was followed by starting to make more bread. You can see that my day is a long way from finishing. Blimey! What a day! And it’s not going to improve any either. And I’ve not had even one sip of coffee today either.

But a strange thing happened at the hospital just now. A nun came rushing out of the doctor’s room in tears.
A few minutes later the doctor came out so I asked him "what’s the matter with her?"
"I’ve just told her that she’s pregnant" said the doctor
"Blimey!" I exclaimed. "Is she?"
"Ohh no" replied the doctor "but I think that I’ve cured her hiccoughs"

Friday 25th October 2024 – I HAVE HAD …

… a really good day today, and accomplished everything that I set out to do, with time to spare.

Tomorrow I am going to have a morning doing some correspondence. Several people are awaiting e-mails from me so I am going to do my best to try to answer them. Post is building back up again.

What probably contributed to at least some of the good day today was that last night I made it to bed before 23:00. It was really nice to be able to do that for once. I don’t do it often enough in my opinion, but then again that could be said about a lot of things.

Once in bed I was asleep quite quickly – but not for long. It was freezing last night and I seem to have gone in one swell foop from sweating profusely during the night to shivering like a jelly as a lorry is going past

In the end I gave up the struggle and put on my dressing gown. Not an ideal thing in which to be sleeping but it was the nearest thing to hand. I have a feeling that it’s going to be a cold winter.

It was quite a restless night too, which seems to be normal after a session at the Dialysis Clinic. I was wide-awake at 02:30, 04:00 and 06:00 and although I made an attempt each time to go back to sleep, at the latter time I failed miserably.

Consequently, when the alarm went off I was already in the kitchen making the bread. Another early start.

While the dough was festering away I went to have a wash, and then came in here to listen to the dictaphone. I’d been for a dialysis and that included having a bath (and wouldn’t that be nice?). When I left the Centre I’d left my earphones behind – a beautiful little pair that I’d received free when I’d telecharged or ordered something off the internet and downloaded it a while back. I thought that I’d never ever see those again because they were so nice and I’d never ever have another pair quite like them. I was completely devastated by the loss of my earphones

–telecharged? Downloaded, you mean. We’re dreaming in French again are we? And I did once leave my headphones behind at the Dialysis Centre not so long ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And it will be the end if I do leave those behind and lose them because they are quite lightweight and fold up making them quite portable. I have another pair here and there’s a third pair somewhere and I wish that I could find them.

Next was a party of Arctic explorers stranded out on the ice trying to return home, having all kinds of difficulties. One of the young officers was in charge of manoeuvring the huge sledge that they had, loaded with all of their possessions. It happened to catch on something, tilt over and go in through the ice, and was lost. The dream went on to say that he did the only thing that he could. He saluted, clicked his heels, turned and walked out into the night. He was never seen again, leaving the other three members to make their way home as best as they could with what they had left, which was almost nothing.

The British had a frightfully stiff upper lip when it came to Polar exploration. While other countries sent their teams out with sleds hauled by dogs, the British insisted on man-hauling them. And consequently while casualties amongst the foreign explorers were generally caused by events such as ship-sinkings and to being iced in, the British pulled their sled by hand all the way to their doom. They were driven by the spirit of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, whose guiding principle was "the important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well". Consequently it was the foreigners who conquered and the British who fought well, but died by the dozen. As the Canadian historian Pierre Berton put it, the British "failed to conquer because instead of adapting to the environment, they tried to bring their environment with them". The later explorers who discovered the camps of the party of Sir John Franklin, 134 strong that was wiped out to the last man, found dinner plates, silver service, dress suits, bottles of claret and all the luxuries that a British officer and gentleman would require at the dining table of his stately home while my American namesake, searching for traces of Franklin, was living in an igloo amongst the Inuit eating blubber off his sleeping bag with his bare hands.

Later on we were back living in Shavington. I was running my taxi business from there. I had a girl who worked the radio for me part-time at weekends. She was a young, rather unkempt girl. I took one of the cars off for a little spin round and came back. All the cats were loitering around the house so I stopped the car right by the front gate and climbed out. This girl came out of the house to see me. She told me that I ought to give her congratulations. I asked why and she replied that she’d won nearly £50,000 on the football pools. Of course I was really pleased for her. She replied that at last she could maybe have a flat. I asked where she was living at the moment. Was it in a hostel? She replied “no”. She was living in someone’s garage, which I thought was horrible. To make it worse, she’d lost her job during the day so she was loitering around and the owner of the garage didn’t like that. She was talking about buying a little snack bar too. I was really so pleased for her and so impressed. I asked her how many proposals of marriage she’d received already. She replied “none as yet but not many people know”. We had a little chat about the future, maybe she might start to run a snack bar or something. I told her that if she needed any help she could always ask me. But I was really genuinely impressed and genuinely pleased for her.

This was another one of these nice comfortable dreams that I have occasionally. But running my taxis from Shavington – not that that would be likely to work. I was glad really to leave Shavington. If Crewe is extremely parochial and small-minded, Shavington is ten times worse. But then, most small villages are.

Finally, Nerina and I had flown to Montreal and rented a car. We’d gone for a big drive round. We found ourselves down in the south-west corner of the USA in California. We were quite happy driving around through all these desert tracks and I happened to notice from the GPS that according to the GPS we were now in Mexico. I thought that we’d better make it back to the USA before we find ourselves in trouble here. We headed back to the border and this time we picked up the motorway that brought us back to an immigration centre. By now it was very late at night. Eventually it was our turn to be investigated. He gave my passport a cursory once-over and handed it back. But Nerina’s he examined much more closely and began to speak to her in Italian. She was rather put out by this, being caught unawares, but I replied in Italian, so the border guard and I had a little chat. We talked about beautiful women. Eventually he have Nerina back her passport and waved us through. But he was studying our entry stamps quite carefully. Of course we had Canada, and Canada to the USA but there was nothing about us going into Mexico because we’d driven through the desert. When we were back in the car I said “when we’re back home I’m going to work out that route that we took and sell it on eBay. I bet that I’d make a fortune”. Nerina replied “ohh no. I’m going to tell the American authorities so that they can block it”. We came into a small town and Nerina climbed out of the car and went to look at an American car. She hung her lantern on the bonnet and walked away. She pointed to another American car that was bashed and battered. She then tried a house door, and it was open so she went in. She settled down on the sofa and said “I’m not moving from here until I’ve had a sleep”. I replied “Nerina, you can’t sleep there! This is the USA! They’ll shoot you if they see you!”. “Well, I’m not moving”. I pleaded with her to move. I told her that I’d find a hotel somewhere. She said that she’d looked on the internet and there wasn’t a hotel with a room in the neighbourhood. I pleaded with her for anything that she’d move because she really would be shot if some American were to find her asleep in his living room but it was all to no avail

It recalled MY TRIP THROUGH THE DESERT IN 2002. What a trip that was! Driving past all of the sites that I’d seen in so many Westerns in the past. But there would be no question of leaving Nerina behind to face her doom at the hands of a paranoid American armed to the teeth. Believe it or not, I happen to like Nerina. Anyone who will put up with me for nine years has to be worth liking. What went wrong in our relationship was that I was in a bad place at a bad time fighting too many demons, and I fought quite a few more than I ought to have done. And of course, both of us were too tired and too stressed to learn to talk to each other. There were plenty of thoughts that we should have exchanged.

Isabelle came – and went. She was in quite a rush and didn’t stop around to talk. She’s promised though to film the events tomorrow morning in the town centre when they try to set up the market amongst the major roadworks in the centre.

After she left I made breakfast and read my book. We’re still at the annual dinner, the talk on trees has ended and we’re now talking about sheep, geology and fossils. And, apparently "Mr. Houghton had been kind enough to bring with him some photographs of a very curious and interesting character"

Photographs of a very curious and interesting character? Wouldn’t I have liked to have been at that meeting?

Back in here I had to sort out a few things, deal with my order to LeClerc and then I attacked the radio notes. It didn’t take me long to finish off the notes for the radio programme that I’d been preparing, and then I went to lunch – a salad sandwich on nice, soft fresh bread.

But the bread was another failure. I made a careful study of it today. I put the loaf in the oven at exactly the same spot that I put it last week, and once again, one side of it didn’t rise.

That’s the side nearest the front, and so I think that the door is fitting badly and there’s a draught of air coming in around it. If the temperature sender is at the back, that will explain why the temperatures are so messed up, because with the current of air, the temperature at the front will be much lower.

It’s a shame because I have a perfectly good oven in the van downstairs but it’s beyond me to bring it up here.

This afternoon I reviewed the notes that I’d written a while back for a couple of radio programmes. They are rather complicated and involved so I’d left them to one side until I had a lot of time to go over them. So that was this afternoon’s task.

Some of the stuff I rewrote, some other stuff I corrected and I reckon that barring accidents I have them ready to dictate. I might actually do these tomorrow night and then they’ll be out of the way. But I imagine that they’ll take some editing.

My cleaner had stuck her head in the door this morning to pick up a few things to take into town, and while I was reviewing my notes she came in and did her stuff. Now the place looks as if someone lives here.

Just after I finished my hot chocolate and chocolate cake the food delivery came, so I spent a very pleasant late afternoon dealing with 2kg of carrots making them ready to be frozen, and putting away the rest of the stuff.

It was actually a struggle to make up the €50:00 minimum order today. It seems that I have a good supply of everything that I need.

LeClerc had no peppers thought. So stuffed peppers are off the menu for the next couple of weeks. But they had aubergines on special offer and I took advantage, so it looks like we’ll be in for plenty of aubergine and kidney bean whatsits for a while.

Tea tonight was a nice salad with chips and falafel followed by apple cake in caramel sauce. So what shall I do when the apple cake is all gone. I have a fancy to see how a rice pudding would do in the air fryer

So having spent a pleasant twenty minutes looking for and finding the missing headphones, I’m off to bed

But before I go, seeing as we’re on the subject of the desert … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’ll tell you about the encounter I had with three men in the desert whose car had broken down and they were walking to try to find help.
One was carrying the radiator, the other a hub cap and the third one a door and so I asked them why
"I’m carrying the radiator" said the first "because if I become too hot, I can drink the water"
"I’m carrying a hub cap" said the second "because if I become too hot I can shelter in its shade"
"I’m carrying a door" said the third "because if I become too hot, I can wind the window down"

Friday 11th October 2024 – IT’S HAPPENED AGAIN

It was 03:05 when I awoke this morning. It makes a total mockery of trying to be in bed before 23:00. There have been nights – days, in fact, when I’ve not even been in bed by 03:05 so I may as well not bother if it’s going to carry on like this.

And yes, I did make it into bed before 23:00 last night. Not by much, it has to be said, but by enough to make it worth noting. And while it might have taken me a little longer that it has done of late to go off to sleep, that wasn’t too much of a problem either.

So there I was at 03:05, wide awake and transpiring, trying desperately to go back to sleep without any success so in the end, at about 4:20 I gave it up as a bad job and went to make the dough for the bread.

For a change, I tried a mixture of plain flour and bread flour to see if there’s a problem with my bread flour, but it’s not that because although it rose, it didn’t rise up by enough to make any difference to the usual.

One mug of instant coffee later, I came back in here and decided to catch up with some personal stuff. I’ve buckets of stuff that’s been hanging around waiting for me to do something with it, and so with this unexpected couple of hours I made a start. And made quite a bit of progress too.

First of all though, I had a listen to the dictaphone and found to my surprise that there was something on there. I was playing in a rock group and we were round at Gainsborough Road preparing everything ready to go out. We had three vans, two long-wheelbase Ford Transits and my old small Ford Transit. We’d loaded everything up and were sitting around waiting, then my partner motioned towards us and said “it’s time to go”. She took one sticker for her van and another sticker for the other big van. I asked “what about a sticker for mine?”. She replied “no”. I asked “why not?” but she didn’t answer. We had something of a back-and-to for a while and I asked her about it again. I asked “so why aren’t you giving me a sticker? Are you ashamed of the van or something?”. She replied “that van’s not having a sticker and that’s an end to the argument”. We continued to argue about it and I expressed myself in a rather extreme fashion. My sister said to me “you shouldn’t speak to your partner like this”. I replied “you need to open your eyes and see what’s going on here”. My partner left the room to make herself ready. I knew that she was waiting at the door listening as an argument then started up between my sister and me. I turned round knowing that she was listening, turned to my sister and said “it’s not going to take very much more of this and I’ll be out of the door of this place”

it goes without saying that regular readers of this rubbish will recall having noticed that even though my partner has adopted a totally intransigent and unreasonable attitude, my family is blaming me for what happened. That, I’m afraid was just par for the course and after I was 18 and had finished my studies, I was “out of the door of this place”. I had a lot of sympathy for my friend’s daughter Tina who told me once "I’m fed up. Every time I do something wrong my brother tells my mom and I get yelled at. But every time he does something wrong I tell my mom and she yells at me for not watching him". Had she not been 3,000 miles away I could have hugged her because I’ve been there and done that. Oh! The angst of being 11 years old! But mine lasted for years. I don’t have one single pleasant memory of my childhood.

Having made enormous strides (which means something completely different in Australia) in what I was doing, I finished off and went to give the dough its second going-over. As I said just now, it had risen, but not as much as I would have liked it to have done

In the bathroom, I had a good scrub up and then went into the kitchen to put the oven on … "clothes would have been better" – ed … While I was waiting for it to warm up I came across one of these half-cooked vacuum-packed baguettes that I’d bought a while ago and needed using so when the oven was ready and the bread went in, I bunged that in too and went back into my office to do some more work.

Isabelle the nurse was off on her high horse today. I’m supposed to tell her not to come on Monday because the Dialysis Centre wants to inspect my legs to find out why they aren’t healing.

But I’m not standing around all morning with no socks and no plasters and going down to Avranches and the Dialysis Centre like that, oh no, according to Isabelle the nurse and she’ll tell ’em too. On Monday I’ll have my plasters and socks put on in the morning by her and like it.

And as for having the dialysis at home, certainly not under any circumstances and she doesn’t care if it is Emilie the Cute Consultant who wants me to. She’ll ring them up and tell them that too!

So if it isn’t all over between Emilie The Cute Consultant and me already, it looks as if it will be by the time that I arrive there on Monday afternoon. I shall have to chat up Elise the Dishy Doctor at the Centre Normandie instead.

While I was eating my breakfast I was reading MY BOOK. We’ve left Yorkshire and are back on the South Coast at Bramber Castle.

Having been sure that the Iron-Age hill forts on the Welsh border were actually Saxon strongholds, he’s now convinced that Bramber Castle is a prehistoric site. However subsequent archaeological excavations have found nothing earlier than Norman on the site.

Still, for an untrained amateur archaeologist, some of his opinions have sometimes been dramatically borne out by the facts.

Next stop was to prepare an order for LeClerc. There’s plenty of stuff here so I can cut back on the order, but there are still some essentials that need buying.

That took longer than it ought too for all kinds of reasons, not the least being that I need to bring the order up to €50:00 so that they will deliver it. In the end it reached €53:00 or thereabouts.

Lunch was a cheese and tomato butty on some of the baguette that I baked this morning and it was nice, followed by some of the fruit. I’ve been told to cut down on the fruit that I eat which is disappointing so bananas are regrettably off the menu from now on.

This afternoon while the cleaner was here I finished off the radio notes and I do have to say that I’m quite pleased with what I’ve written. For once, it all hangs together. It’s not as disjointed as it usually is.

Not that I’m complaining about my previous programmes though, but trying to be erudite and preparing a work of literature in a foreign language is not that easy.

It wasn’t too bad when Liz and I were running Radio Anglais down in the Auvergne because that was in English, but this here is … errr … challenging. How on earth Rhys is managing with his “Rutube” channel in Russian is mind-boggling.

After my cleaner left and LeClerc had delivered the supplies, I tried a little experiment.

My friend Ann tells me that she’s not used her big oven since she bought an air fryer. I have a few of these spring-loaded cake tins of various sizes, one of which fits in my air fryer, so seeing as I am now forbidden chocolate, I resolved to make a chocolate cake in the air fryer and “yah booh sucks” to the dietician.

First lesson is that one cup of measured for the oil cake produces too much so I need a smaller cup

Second lesson is that in its airproof and windproof drawer it goes up like a lift and is the softest cake that I have ever made.

Third lesson is that it needs the temperature turned down and cooked much longer (like 70 minutes) before it’s done

Fourth lesson is that even with a piece of baking paper over the top (thanks for the tip, John), it still burns the top, but that can be cut off and sampled so it’s not the end of the world.

And so the conclusion is that it produced the best cake that I have ever made, but the procedure is much more complicated so we’ll call it a draw. Further experiments are called for

Having stuffed myself with offcuts of chocolate cake I wasn’t in the mood for much tea. Just a small salad, a few chips and a few of these micro-mini vegan nuggets that were on special offer. No pudding though – we’ll call the chocolate cake offcuts the pudding.

So now I’m off to bed. I’ve not been the remotest bit tired today despite the lack of sleep so I’m hoping for a good sleep tonight.

But talking about Tina … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of the time that her class at school in Florida went to see THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT.
Having an English father and spending all of her summer holidays in Winsford, she has a complete understanding of British slang and a British sense of humour. So when the film was shown, she was rolling around the aisles in laughter and her classmates were looking at her, totally bewildered.
Marianne and I actually went to see it in Brussels where it was shown in English. And you could tell who were the native English-speakers in the audience because we were roaring with laughter while the Belgians were looking on, completely disorientated.
But that leads us onto that famous discussion between Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock and "it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners".

Friday 27th September 2024 – AND I ALMOST WROTE …

… Vendredi too. Obviously the stress is getting to me.

Today, my old microwave has gone the Way of the West.

When I moved here, I bought everything new, but (apart from the bed which was expensive) really cheaply so that I could have everything all at once, and then gradually replace it with something much better item by item as the cheap stuff gave out.

A few things, like the kettle, my office chair and so on have gone before it, but today it’s the turn of the microwave.

It’s not actually stopped working. For €49:95 seven years ago its mechanism is still boldly going forward, but the enamel has flaked off in places inside to leave bare metal and it’s become corroded.

Anything that might be living in there has long-since been radiated into nothing but it’s still not looking good. However I was rather hoping that it would soldier on until I am downstairs, I can erect the two cabinets from IKEA Munich that are still in the van and buy a fitted microwave.

Meanwhile back at the ran … errr … apartment, my neighbour who has left to go to live in a Home had her family in liquidating her apartment. None of them wanted her microwave because it’s another cheap €49.95 affair but it’s only a few months old.

So, as they say, the rest is history. I hope that it’ll keep me going until I can sort myself out downstairs, whenever that might be.

It would have been useful here last night if I could have fitted my bed into it, because once again I had another late night. The stress of the dialysis is getting to me too and I couldn’t haul myself out of my chair and cross the Great Divide of several inches over to my bed.

All of the tasks had been finished early and I could have gone to bed early too had I forced myself, but never mind. “Ahh well …” as they say.

But something happened last night that made me realise that maybe there is an improvement with this dialysis. And that’s going to cause me more than a few problems at the moment.

Once I was in bed, long after midnight, I slept all the way through until … errr … 05:00 when something awoke me in another mess of perspiration. But I didn’t stay awake for long and was soon back asleep.

It was a real struggle to haul myself out of bed when the alarm went off. Nevertheless I staggered into the kitchen to make some dough for the bread. It’s not the best mix that I’ve made but it would do.

After I’d scrubbed myself up I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was summoned for an interview at a Government office. When I arrived there and was in the waiting room some guy eventually came to a little cubby hole and called my name so I went forward and stood there. He began to look through the papers and I heard him say under his breath “oh God it’s one of these cases”. When he looked at me I said “I’m really sorry for being ‘one of these cases’ and wasting your time”. He made a smirk but didn’t really say anything and then began to ask me questions. But it was strange because he was actually reading through the notes, stopping and asking me a question about what he’d just read instead of having read the thing through thoroughly first and prepared a list of questions. It’s true that quite often you never ever reach the end of your list of questions because you’ve gone off down a side trail somewhere but even so you have to have some plan about where you’re supposed to be going and I could see that I was becoming just as exasperated as he was by all of this

It’s important during a contentious interview to establish a moral ascendency over your adversary. And it’s also a good idea to be thoroughly prepared, have your list of questions ready, have your responses ready to whatever questions they might ask and be ready to go off at a tangent and side-track the issue whenever there’s a possibility. Also, and most importantly, answer the question and nothing but the question, and do not volunteer any information that isn’t directly asked for. You’d be surprised at the number of people who actually talk themselves into trouble. And “yes”, I HAVE learned some bitter lessons in the past.

The nurse came along and talked away about nothing while she sorted me out, and then after she left I gave the bread its second kneading and them made breakfast. While I was eating it, I was reading MY BOOK.

Thomas Wright was still at Ozengell Grange for a while this morning. And I learned something that hasn’t made it into modern research.

Modern research has uncovered more graves that his excavations “missed” and his team has been roundly criticised for its shoddy work. But in fact, Thomas Wright made it clear that they only excavated where the railway wanted to dig its cutting, and they had to do it quickly as the railway company wanted to press on, so they did it when they could with who and what they had. They would come back and carry on “another time” as time permits but they clearly did not.

After that they moved on to Rutupiae to inspect the Roman fort. Regular reader of this rubbish in an earlier version will recall that we visited here in 2006 when we were on the trail of our forebears down in Kent. But when we saw it, it was quite different from how it was when Wright saw it in 1847.

He talks about the little foreshore and the remains of the Roman landing stage where the first Roman visitors to Britannica would have landed once the Romans had secured the area and built the defences. Today though, it’s all been obliterated by the railway that passes through the site

Some of the walls have been gone too, carted away by the local landowner of the time to use as hardcore or rubble.

It’s really sad when you think of what has been lost to history in only a handful of generations. When you think of it, two generations ahead of me and two generations behind me, and those five generations spans 130 years.

Back in here again I’ve been working on transparent *.gif files, overlays and trying really hard to remember *.srt encoding. It’s years since I’ve written an *.srt file and while I managed to finally work it out, I could only make it run in the trial version and couldn’t make it embed into the final video file.

It’s really sad just how much I’ve forgotten. I’m going to have to go back to Education and look for a free video-editing course offered by the Continuing Education Programme.

After lunch (cheese and tomato butties on nice fresh bread) my cleaner turned up with the microwave and we had a wave of laughs confronting all of the various problems and then solving them

One thing that I have done is to reorganise the shelving in the kitchen. The oven with its drop-down door was above the microwave whose door opened to the side and that was the wrong way round, so we emptied those shelves, cleaned them and rearranged it with the electrical appliances in the correct place.

So now I’m not going to drop boiling hot stuff on my head, but instead I’ll have a spice jar falling on me. I need to sort that out.

In the middle of all of the fun, LeClerc arrived. I sent off an order earlier in the day and it turned up in mid-rearrange. So having put the frozen food away and after my cleaner had gone and I’d had my hot chocolate and coconut cake, I had 2 kg of carrots to wash, peel, dice and blanch.

Once that lot was done, I could think about tea. Chips and vegan nuggets with a vegan salad, followed by the last slice of roly-poly that I found in the fridge

Now, its bed-time at long last and I need to psyche myself up for the next trip to the Dialysis Centre to which I am not looking forward at all

But thinking of Thomas Wright uncovering Saxon skeletons at Ozengell reminds me of another team that uncovered some skeletons from that kind of era and the professor in charge was talking to his pupils about some of them
"These two here buried in the same grave are obviously a couple judging by how their arms are entwined around each other" he sad "and if you look closely you’ll see that the one on the right is obviously a woman."
"How can you tell that?" asked a student.
"Examine the jawbones" he said. "The one on the right is quite worn down yet the one on the left is hardly worn at all."

Friday 17th May 2025 – I’VE JUST HAD …

… to defrost the freezer.

The build-up of ice in there was so much that the doors wouldn’t close correctly, which was making the freezer freeze up even more.

So, armed with the electric kettle and a saucepan with a heavy, thick base I went to work. It’s not perfectly defrosted, because the time that it would take, the frozen food wood melt, but at least the drawers fit better and the doors close, which was the aim of the whole exercise.

Mind you, it’s just about the only productive work that I’ve done all day. The other day, I mentioned that the partner of my friend in Munich had gone into palliative care. Unfortunately she didn’t pull through and just after midnight she left us to join the angels.
"Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee"
as John Donne wrote 400 years ago. I remember the delight that she felt when she came out of hospital a few years ago after just having her catheter port removed. For her it signified the end of the cancer treatment that she was having, that she was now fit and rehabilitated.

The removal of the catheter port was a symbol of victory back then. But how rapidly and wickedly fate can turn upon you. Rest in Peace, Ulli. It was a pleasure and a privilege to have known you.

As for myself, I’m not doing much better. My body is swelling up with all of these water retention issues that I’m having. And when I say “all” my body, I do mean “every bit of it”. I shall be looking like Bibendum, the Michelin Man, before too long

But last night anyway I managed to make it to bed and although it was a late night again, it was a decent sleep for a change and I can’t remember being interrupted at all, not even by a phantom alarm call. It was the Sleep of the Dead.

When the real alarm went off I fell out of bed to switch it off and then made my way to the bathroom for a clean-up, not that it did much good, I reckon.

Once I’d had my medication I set out the dining area for the nurse. My right leg is much better now, with the pain having diminished even more. But as I mentioned earlier, I have other issues with which to deal now that are causing me greater problems

While I was waiting I made a start on the bread dough for the weekend, mixing it, giving it a knead and then leaving it to proof for a while.

The nurs didn’t have much to say for himself today and was in and out quite rapidly After he’d gone I gave the bread its second working-over and divided into three lumps, one for each day.

Just for a change it went up like a lift, the best that I have ever made I reckon, and it baked really nicely too. My breakfast cheese-on-toast, which was almost lunchtime cheese-on-toast by the time that I’d finished, was delicious.

Back in here I crashed straight out despite the strong black coffee, and it was 13:00 when I finally rejoined the Land of the … well, perhaps not.

First thing was to check the dictaphone to see if there was anything on it from the night. And to my complete surprise, there was. This was before the Fall of France and we had a bomber aeroplane in Normandy. We’d given it a name. First of all we’d called it “Billy Jones” after the boy who was a dancer … "That was Billy Elliott. Billy Jones was guitarist with the Outlaws who committed suicide" – ed … but then we gave it some other name later but I can’t remember what it was. However the ‘plane was shot down on a flight over to the Channel Islands before the Channel Islands were invaded and unfortunately we lost it and the crew

Just a little reminder for the British people who criticised the French for not resisting the Occupier in World War II, the Channel Islands were occupied in June 1940 and no effort at all was made to free them until after the end of the War, never mind at D-Day or when the battle for Normandy had passed them by.

Of the eight ‘planes two were shot down taking off and the other six were shot down along the route but this dream continued lots of things – there was a young lad who was a store person who was enamoured of this girl who volunteered to sing a requiem but was not very good at at, dozens of things like that all through this dream that seemed to go on for ages

And if you are thinking that the one dream leads straight on to the other there was a three-hour gap between the two, according to the timestamps.

Having had my lunchtime fruit I checked over my order from LeClerc and then sent it off. It’s an expensive one this weekend but there’s stuff like coffee, olive oil and champagne on it.

Champagne, yes. It’s a neighbour’s 80th birthday on Sunday and I’m invited, not that I’ll be drinking any of it of course. Last time I had any alcohol was in Bulgaria in 1994, and that was due to force majeure.

Back in here again I was reading something on the internet when the next thing that I remember were the dulcet tones of my cleaner awakening me. I’d had another one of these crashings-out where the light simply goes off and I can’t remember a thing.

She came round this afternoon to do her stuff again and it was a good job that she was here because the delivery came early.

The frozen food went into the freezer (which was when I noticed the door issues) and the rest I put away after she had left. Well, most of it anyway. There’s still some to do

But after I’d had my hot chocolate I blanched the florets of the broccoli that I’d bought ready for freezing and saved the stalk and the water for a broccoli stalk soup tomorrow

Back in here and the light went off again just as dramatically as earlier, and how I am sick of all of this. It was 18:38 when I awoke, but at least that gave me some more time to work on the next radio programme.

Tea this evening was a vegan salad with chips and some of those vegan nuggets done in the air fryer, and it was delicious as usual. My salads are works of art, and I really do seem to have the knack about these air-fryer chips now

So tonight there’s one more extra star in the sky looking down on us from above. It just goes to show that there’s no escape for any of us. The Grim Reaper will get us all sooner or later. I just hope that those who have gone on ahead have paved the way for the rest of us.

And as I said the other night, this is not the time for levity

Monday 6th May 2024 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

… I might be having another visitor.

Most of the morning has been spent working out routes across half of north-west Europe to see if there’s anything that fits in with someone else’s peripatetic voyages around Europe and who knows? Maybe it’ll all work out.

What I can’t understand is why I suddenly seem to have become the flavour of the month. I’ve already had more visits this year than I’ve had in all the rest of the time that I’ve been here, and there are several more already organised to come

And then here I am with someone else who might want to try to visit.

Not that I’m complaining, of course. I m not usually the sociable type so I don’t visit many people myself, and even fewer since I’ve been disabled, so I’m quite happy usually with my own company – after all, with dissociative identity disorder you are never alone – but nevertheless it’s nice to see real people now and again. Real friends are just as important as your imaginary ones.

So last night, with a great effort, I was only 5 minutes late going to bed. And as usual these days I fell asleep quite quickly, a long time before my little scenario about which I talked last night finished.

And it was another deep intense sleep again. I remember nothing at all of anything that might have been going on. When the alarm went off there was something going on about girls in a school; but it evaporated from my mind as soon as I stood up, which was a shame.

Having switched off the alarm I staggered into the bathroom and then into the dining area for my medication. I then arranged the room how the nurse likes it and prepared for his visit but somehow I had a couple of very severe pains at the top of my hips at the front of my body. It hurt like hell when I walked or lifted my legs.

Despite all of that, and in spite of all of the pain, the nurse changed the dressing on my foot and put on my puttees. He thinks that I won’t need to bother soon because the wound has healed really well. He thinks that soon I can go back to wearing these elasticated socks.

After he cleared off I checked my messages and discovered one asking for travel advice so I’ve been working on that all morning. Crossing Paris by public transport in order to catch a train to come here is quite simple and straightforward, but not for someone who has never seen a train and doesn’t know how a Metro works. You have to explain everything in great detail and make sure that you don’t take things for granted and miss out a step “because everyone knows that”.

After my lunchtime fruit I had a listen to the dictaphonz to find out where I’d been during the night. There was an Avro Lancaster that flew to some remote valley in Austria and landed on a deserted airstrip. It had come from the UK and was full of wounded and full of all kinds of other stuff that the Resistance might need. The wounded were lying around in chairs and in the bomb bay. After every hour they had to change position with someone who was less comfortable than they were and so it went on. They landed on this deserted airfield and unloaded the goods that the Resistance wanted, they unloaded the goods that they’d brought with them, they unloaded the wounded and then collected up a lot of stuff that had been put there for them to take away. They taxied to the end of the runway, turned round and took off from it again. There was some rugby equipment that they’d been told that they could take and all kinds of electronic stuff and electrical stuff. They were leaving things like instructions behind on how to do certain things etc. It was really interesting to see what their plans were but I’ve no idea why they took a lane full of wounded with them to leave behind in Occupied Austria.

There were many occasions where British aircraft, usually Lysanders, would put down in Axis-occupied territory to unload supplies for the Resistance and pick up or drop off passengers, and it’s certainly true that on a couple of occasions larger aircraft did make use of abandoned airfields in Occupied Europe to make a quick landing and take-off on behalf of MI6. However, this idea of dropping off wounded personnel is certainly a novel one.

And then I was in a library checking for a former schoolfriend’s thesis that he’d prepared on leaving school. It had been filed away and referenced but there was no trace of it anywhere in the library no matter how hard we looked. I’d had to make some kind of summary report at one time so I mentioned this and I happened to mention that it would be nice if I had some extra staff. But then it turned into something of an argument with the head of this project saying about my demand for extra staff. I replied that I hadn’t really demanded extra staff – I’d just made a note on the report. That led to a bit of an argument which was a shame because I liked the guy usually. No matter how hard we looked and no matter where we searched there was no trace of this project anywhere. We’d even gone through all the pages of these books that were on display to make sure that it hadn’t been misfiled but there was absolutely no trace of it at all.

That reminds me of my fruitless search in the library of the University of Laval in Québec for one of the theses of the archaeologist Thomas Edward Lee.

The author James Enterline quotes from Lee’s theses which concerned the excavation of what might have been a Norse building in Ungava Bay in the north of Labrador in Canada. He gives the complete references of Lee’s works.

Armed with the details I set off accordingly to the University to track them down in order to refer to them and check Enterline’s information.

Both the theses are registered at the University Library – I know because I saw them on the index – but the librarian and I could only find the second one and not the first one, no matter how hard we looked.

However a very interesting fact was that Lee was a very controversial and confrontational person, not at all your typical academic. His forthright, sometimes intimidating style of writing clearly ruffled a few feathers and his application for a grant for a third year of excavations was refused.

As far as I’m aware, no-one has continued his work and the excavations have lain incomplete for 60 years.

Another disappointment was that having spent a couple of years writing my Magnum Opus on Eustache Lanouillier’s CHEMIN DU ROY between Montréal and Québec in the 17th Century, the actual plans for it are also at the University of Laval and I didn’t find that out until later.

The rest of the afternoon has been spent pairing off the music that I chose yesterday and then writing the notes for about half of it. I’ve not really been in any rush to complete it.

The cleaner came round with some soya milk that she found in the local supermarket which was nice. And then LeClerc rang up. They’d seen my complaint about my missing soya milk. Would I like a refund?

And so I explained that I’d rather have the milk, that I’m handicapped and can’t buy it any other way except through them. So sure enough, a delivery driver turned up with 6 cartons of milk later in the day

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper and there’s stuffing left over for a taco roll tomorrow night and probably for a leftover curry too. My diet might be monotonous but my meals really are delicious

So that’s all I’m doing for tonight. I’ll be in bed soon ready to rise again nice and fresh for my Welsh lesson, I don’t think

As someone once asked me "what happened to all of your ‘get up and go’?"
The answer to that is simple. I told them "It’s all got up and gone a long time ago."

Thursday 2nd May 2024 – THAT BLASTED LECLERC …

… delivery driver forgot to drop off the box with all of the soya milk in it

He managed to drop off everything else that I’d ordered but somehow overlooked the milk in his van. I telephoned him as soon as I realised but he didn’t answer his ‘phone.

It’s not possible for me to live without my soya milk. I get through quite a lot of it,, especially at weekends so I need a large stock on hand. At the moment I have very little in store on the tiled floor in the bathroom, so I’ve no idea what I’m going to do if he doesn’t drop it off.

Yes, before I went to bed last night I went through the shopping list to make sure that I had everything on there that I needed and then wandered off to bed rather later than intended.

It was another good night as far as I was concerned, and I can’t remember anything at all about it which is good news from the point of view of sleep, but not from the point of view of nocturnal rambling Many people have told me that I need to get out more, but in my sleep at night is the only way that I can do that these days.

When the alarm went off I was having a medical examination for some reason or other. The doctor who was doing it usually examined female patients so it was a rather interesting examination. Right at the end they said that if I were to leave something on the corner of his desk could he pass it to one of the women whom he’ll be examining in due course? He agreed to do so so I put it on the end of his desk. Just them, the alarm rang and awoke me

What was quite amazing about that is that the ‘phone, with the alarm, was situated at the end of my desk where it was being given an overnight cage by the computer, and where I imagined that I’d left whatever it was, that was exactly where my ‘phone was.

Having switched off the alarm I wandered off into the bathroom for a wash etc end then into the dining area for my morning medication. It’s a Thursday so I get to take everything today including the weekly Vitamin D capsule. I’m sure that people can hear me rattling when I approach them with all of this stuff inside me.

The nurse came round and sorted out my foot and my puttees. He tells me that things aren’t going too well with my neighbour whom he also sees and he’s becoming quite worried. However it’s no good trying to involve me. What can I do?

After he left I came back in here, where I promptly crashed out. So much so that I was actually quite late going for my coffee and flapjack

Back in here I finalised my order for LeClerc and sent it off, only to realise that I’d not ordered any potatoes or apples. And that’s a catastrophe too. I’ve really not done very well at all with this order

Having sent the order off I spent the next few hours tracking down tracks for the radio programme that I mentioned earlier. I now have a nice collection of music for what I want to do and so I can start organising it and pairing it off ready to write out the notes

Writing the notes will be difficult because some of the music is quite obscure and I’ve no idea about who the musicians in the groups might be. I shall just have to do my best

The order for LeClerc finally turned up – late – so I went to check it but there’s no receipt. That must be in the box with the milk, which also wasn’t there. As I said earlier, that’s a catastrophe. As far as I’m aware, everything else was there, including the strawberries that were on special offer.

It’s quite funny about the strawberries. On the way to Paris last week there was a lot of discussion about food, both on the car radio and with the taxi driver. Suddenly I had an overwhelming desire for strawberries. I’ve no idea why

And then on LeClerc’s promotion this week, they had strawberries! So I added a punnet.

In the middle of all of this Ingrid rang so I said that I’d call her back. Once I’d settled everything we had a nice chat that went on for about 50 minutes. If she’s not careful she’ll be changing her name to Rosemary at this rate.

So after we’d finished discussing our various health issues I went back into the kitchen where I washed, scrubbed, diced and peeled 2 kilos of carrots which I then blanched, followed by a couple of broccoli. Yes, that was on special offer too, so it’s broccoli stalk soup for lunch tomorrow

While all of that was draining I put everything away and then came in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night. I was in goal for England last night, would you believe. We were playing Italy in some kind of tournament. I’d been selected, I’m not sure why, but I wasn’t having a very good night. My throw-outs weren’t long enough so they were easily intercepted. Indeed the Italian goalkeeper intercepted one of them – he’d come forward for it and pumped it back in past me for a goal. At one stage we were 2-1 down but I caught him out because he kept on coming forward when I had the ball ready to throw out and I finally got to grips with my throws and managed to throw it. It went over his head into the goal. I scored a third goal too a little later on so England were winning 3-2 at one particular point. I wasn’t happy in goal – I was a little uncomfortable but never mind

When I was at school I actually kept goal for my house team but I never was selected for the school team. I thought that it was probably because I was probably rubbish – I had my lack of height against me.

Some time later though I learnt that the guy who was the school’s first-choice goalkeeper for my year went on to play professionally for Wycombe Wanderers and his substitute played for Northwich Victoria in the Conference, I was up against some pretty tough opposition.

Mind you, I might have been rubbish as well, but I kept goal for the office team when I worked for an Insurance Company in Chester after leaving school and also for several local teams on a one-off basis when they needed a goalkeeper urgently.

It wasn’t until later when I found my true niche, and that was when a local cricket team was short of a wicket keeper. I ended up quite happily keeping wicket for several years and enjoying every minute of it, and I wish that I could still do it.

Tea tonight was nothing important. Pasta and veg in a spicy tomato sauce with a vegan burger. One or two of the burgers in the European Burger Mountain are coming up close to their sell-by date and they need to be polished off before they walk out of the fridge themselves to complain.

So that’s it for tonight. I wonder what tomorrow might bring. My milk, I hope. I can’t go another fortnight without my soya milk. If it doesn’t come I’ll be in a few difficulties but it’s no use crying over spilt milk, is it?

It reminds me of the little boy watching the milkman put a milk crate full of empty bottles into his van
"Oh look mum!" he shouted. "A cow’s nest!"

Friday 15th March 2024 – THERE’S NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone from last night either.

But that’s not a surprise because I didn’t actually go to sleep. And don’t I know it now!

After I’d finished my notes last night and despite talking about films and falling asleep, I couldn’t even summon up the energy to leave my chair. I just sat there in a kind-of hypnotic trance – not the cataleptic attack that I have sometimes but just a total and utter lethargy as if my battery had run flat.

In fact it was about 02:30 when I finally crawled into bed, more in hope than expectation because by now I had a real killer-pain in my right knee.

As to where that had come from, I didn’t know at first but it gradually seemed to increase as the evening wore on until, as I was lying in bed, it was insupportable.

And while I was lying there I suddenly realised that I’d gone to bed with my elasticated puttees on. I’d better take those off I suppose, but no chance of washing then now. That will upset Isabelle the nurse.

Adjusting the genouillaire – the elasticated knee pad on the right knee, I almost ended up going through the roof. That was where it was hurting.

And then I realised what had happened. The elasticated puttees were doing their job, pushing the fluid in the lower legs upwards, right into the knee where the genouillaire was stopping it going any higher, and the knee area had swollen more than the capacity of the elasticated stretch in the genouillaire.

So in the end I took that off too and the pain slowly began to subside. Not completely because there’s still some kind of pain there as I found out when I went to put the cream on my legs this evening.

And what with one thing and another, and once you make a start you’ll be surprised how many other things there are, I just lay there in agony and watched the clock going round and round until the alarm went off.

That was the signal for me to fall out of bed and take my blood pressure. 15.7/10.1 this morning, which is not bad at all for a nuit blanche – a night with no sleep. I did remember to take it before going to bed last night, and it was 17.2/12.2, which is also not bad for a body wracked with pain.

To give you some idea of that I meant the other day about “not knowing what day of the week it is” I forgot to make my Friday bread. I remembered my medication (which I forgot last night) but was then busy tidying up everything ready for the nurse, like rolling up correctly these puttee things ready to apply.

Incidentally, if you want to know about my night’s routine after I finish my notes and before I go to bed, it’s

check for any last-minute mails and messages
take the statistics
close down all of the files
back up the computer
go for the medication
unwind the puttees
wash, rinse and hang up the aforementioned
apply the cream to my legs
switch off the computer
go to bed

The days when I could finish work and just fall into bed are long-gone.

So fighting off wave after wave of sleep, sometimes unsuccessfully, I made a start on work.

With nothing on the dictaphone to distract me I spent a while reviewing my order for LeClerc and being reasonably satisfied that there was as much on there that I could order of what I needed I sent it off.

It’s a shame that they don’t carry a full stock in the home delivery part of the supermarket. There’s tons of stuff that I would like that isn’t available and I have either to make do, send my faithful cleaner or else do without.

But be that as it may, beggars can’t be choosers. if I’d had this illness a couple of years ago or otherwise stayed in the Auvergne I wouldn’t have had anything.

The Auvergne was beautiful and I loved every minute of the time that I lived there. But it was simply not a practical proposition when I was ill.

For a start, with winters as cold as -20°C and snow for as long as 7 months of the year, if you wanted to heat your house you had to go into the forest with your chainsaw and find a convenient tree

Imagine trying to do that now. It was great fun when I was healthy and fit but had I stayed down there I’d have been pushing up the daisies for a long time.

We had the usual interruptions. Isabelle the nurse came round to put the cream on my feet and wind up my puttees. She wasn’t very happy with me, but neither was I to be honest. The night had been awful and I really must have been on some other planet somewhere

And then my cleaner appeared with what she had managed to prise out of the chemist’s. And that wasn’t everything that I needed either. Some of the stuff has had to be ordered but when it will arrive is anyone’s guess. I told my cleaner not to be in a rush. Things will be done when they’ll be done.

After lunch the order from LeClerc arrived. No carrots to dice up or freeze today but there was a pepper to clean out before I could freeze it. And they had some of my favourite breaded quorn fillets that I like so much. There’s a good supply of those now, which is good news.

There was the question of putting away the stuff but I now have so much that there isn’t anywhere to put it. Yes, the freezer, fridge and shelves are bursting with food and that’s exactly how I want them to be. It’s important that I keep things stocked up because I never know when I might need them and not be able to obtain them.

The rest of the day, when I wasn’t asleep, was spent editing some more of the backlog of notes and preparing a programme. That’s all done now and I’ve even chosen the final track and written the notes. When I find a quiet moment, and I’ve not fallen asleep, I’ll dictate everything that’s outstanding and ten I’ll have another pile to edit and build up.

It’s non-stop, isn’t it?

Tea tonight was vegan nuggets with chips and a vegan salad. All extremely delicious of course. No-one can fault the meals that are served up in this place.

And they better hadn’t, as word on the streets is that there might be a few people round to eat some of it very shortly, and I’m not talking about our usual travel group either, but more visitors. I seem to be quite popular these days.

But not popular enough to be able to delegate these tasks to someone else. I have to do them so I’d better press on.

And then go to bed and hope for some pleasant dreams at the moment, I feel like Barbara Follett, who walked out of her life after writing "My dreams are going through their death flurries. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money"

It’s not the world of Time and Money though. They are just dying of old age, like me.

Still, as my hero the Irish politician Boyle Roche once said, "The best way to avoid danger is to meet it plump." so I shall ride forth to meet my destiny. "Follow one’s own star, wherever it leads" as Jacqueline de Bellefort said.

So if all of these pains subside, I might even manage some sleep. And then we shall see what we shall see.

Tuesday 27th February 2024 – I HAVE JUST …

… been flat-out on the chair for half an hour.

And that’s a shame because I have managed to keep going almost all day without feeling the effects

What’s particularly sad about it is that I’ve been a busy boy this afternoon too. My LeClerc delivery came and now the shelves in here are bursting with goodies. However, at the rate that I eat, the supplies won’t last long

It’s actually amazing how much food you need. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police who controlled the border between British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska in the Gold Rush days at the turn of the 20th Century wouldn’t let anyone pass into the gold-bearing areas without a ton of supplies for himself during the period when it was possible to work the streams up there.

As an aside, there’s someone in Western Canada who is still using her grandfather’s sourdough starter that was first begun by him as he set out for the goldfields over 100 years ago.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my adventures with sourdough, when the sourdough would react when I wasn’t using it and then fail to react when I wanted it. I never got the hang of sourdough.

It’s like the ginger beer. For a few weeks that was interesting and then we had the explosion while I was away at hospital, and since then my visits have prevented me from restarting. Ginger beer is not something that you can leave on its own to ferment, as the TV in the lounge will testify.

That was another short-lived experiment – the television and the HDMI cable so that I could watch internet football on the big screen. The glass from the exploding ginger beer bottle saw to that.

That was quite ironic though – of the batch that I was making at the time, two bottles were bottles that I’d re-used after buying them full of lemonade, and the third was a specialist bottle bought from IKEA. And guess which one exploded.

What was even more ironic is that the specialist bottle cost €2:49 whereas the others cost €1:69 and were full of lemonade too.

In the bathroom now is a nice collection of these flip-top stoppered bottles that I’d buy, ready to use for ginger beer or kefir once I’d drunk the lemonade that was in them (and delicious it was too).

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

So, nice and early last night, I toddled off to bed and settled down to sleep.

Not for long though because in the middle of the night I sat bolt upright, wide-awake. And that was a surprise. I couldn’t wait to see if there was anything on the dictaphone that might correspond with it.

It didn’t take long to go back to sleep and I was deep in the arms of Morpheus when the alarm went off.

First things first – what was my blood pressure? 14.7/10.5, so it’s slowly going down. Last night it was 14.8/9.4. Looking at the figures from a week ago it’s quite a difference.

After the medication I went and had a really good wash and scrub up, and even washed the shorts that I wear in bed. Having called the cleaner down during the night after my fall a few weeks ago, I have to make myself sort-of presentable in case she has to come again, regardless of how I usually like to sleep.

Then there were the dictaphone notes. I started off with that girl – the youngest daughter of the woman whom I knew in the Scottish Borders and I can’t remember the girl’s name … "it’s “Beth”" – ed … Everyone was living in Caernarfon, somewhere out in the hills at the back. She was going out for the night so her father wrote a cheque for £50 for her so that she could make sure that she had a taxi back etc. He began to discuss the taxi prices. Someone said that it’s only £3:50 to go to the coast so it won’t be that much for going back but I was sure that it would be more. Someone mentioned something about excess charges if she swore at the driver etc. Her father said “perhaps I ought to have written the cheque out for £100 for you in that case”.

But that was quite a rum do, that affair on the Scottish Borders, and a lot of it went over my head because I didn’t understand the half of it, even though it was one of my bolt-holes in those days.

It had a terrible air of tragedy too. One of the young girls (not the one in the dream) who lived there took a year out after school to earn some money before going to University. She found a job in a supermarket that involved a 20-mile drive at some silly hour of the morning to work in her ancient, creaking Opel Corsa.

One night, a German tourist landed at Dover in his big, heavy Mercedes and drove all the way through the night up the M6 and M74, coming off at the very junction that this girl drove over.

Of course, in the small hours of the morning, a minor interchange onto a minor road, being overtired and being accustomed to driving on the right, the inevitable happened and the Opel and its driver never stood a chance.

Who will ever forget the events that followed

And then Zero put in an appearance, so welcome back Zero after all this time. There was a party taking place at Audlem so I went down to visit it with a friend. We’d been invited, and it turned out that Zero had invited me so of course I went. I took a present for her and a present for her mother. It was a big, modern detached house. We had to wait at the door to be formally greeted by Zero’s mother, we had to hand over our present to her and then go in. We were wandering around and someone came round handing out dishes of pasta and vegetable soup. They stuck a big dish of it in my hand. I couldn’t climb up the steps into the next room. I had to hand my dish to someone while I hauled myself up the steps bodily and then the person gave me back the dish. We went and found a place to sit down. There was some issue with his soup so he went off to find a spoon. I found a better place to sit and he came along to join me. There was some milk going round so even though it was 4% milk I had a drink. Then Zero appeared. I handed her present to her and STRAWBERRY MOOSE was just about to say something to her when I suddenly, dramatically awoke – and I mean properly awoke too.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that my subconscious seems to be erecting a barrier between my young lady-friends and me. Here’s another case where one of them makes an appearance and I awaken dramatically before I’ve had time for any interaction.

After that, I revised for my Welsh lesson, and that passed really well, although I have a feeling that I fell asleep at some point – I blinked my eye and they seemed to have moved on from where I’d remembered. Nevertheless, I was pleased with what I accomplished today.

My lunchtime apple was next, and then I sent off my order to LeClerc, which meant arranging the stuff in the kitchen so that there was space to put it.

It was a big order too and I’ve still not put everything away. But there were 2kg of carrots so most of the afternoon was spent washing, cleaning, dicing, blanching and freezing them. Shop-bought frozen carrots seem to be pumped full of water.

There was some time to write some more notes for the radio programme, and also to have a play on the guitar too. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good bash.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with some of the stuffing left over from yesterday. There’s plenty remaining for a leftover curry, and than reminds me that I have to make some more naan bread dough tomorrow as I’ve run out. I can’t have a left-over curry without a garlic naan to go with it.

So what’s planned for tomorrow?

Apart from the cleaner coming round, I don’t think that there’s anything on the agenda. I might be a quiet day for once.

There’s plenty to do though, and the postwoman has brought me more bills to pay. It seems to be all outgoing right now, and I can do with some incoming.

These days, there’s too much month left at the end of the money, rather like in the old days when, instead of being paid weekly, we were paid weakly.

During the Welsh class I told the story of how we were so poor once when I lived in that squat near Audlem that after dark we raided a farmer’s field and made a big potato and mushroom curry. A moth flew into it at a vital moment and we couldn’t extract it, and we were that hungry that we just stirred it in.

That was what being poor used to be like and I don’t want a return to those days. People talk about “the good old days” but to me, that was ice on the inside of the bedroom windows in the morning and grinding poverty. There was nothing good at all about it.

Deborah Oluwaseyi Joshua wrote "one day, you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through and it will be someone else’s survival guide" and I suppose that to a certain extent, that’s true.

But that supposes that people want to survive. Far too many people are content just to sink further in, and that’s depressing.

For me, I’ll just be like Bhuwan Thapaliya who wrote in his poetry that "the older I get, the more I cherish the company of children. The children have no prejudices. They are what they are."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday 10th October 2023 – I WISH THAT I …

… hadn’t bitten the bullet and sent off that mega-food order this afternoon.

No sooner had I pressed “send”, received the acknowledgement and watched the money go out of my account when along came an e-mail

“Dear Mr Hall. You are requested to come to the hospital for 11:00 on Monday 23rd October. Please set aside one week”.

And so that, dear reader, is that.

As it happens, it was nice to have some good news for a change. After all, I had quite a dreadful night.

It was rather later than I would have liked to have gone to bed but an ache in my foot made it difficult to sleep. The pain slowly spread up the leg until by about 02:00 my entire lower right leg felt as if it was on fire.

Consequently I spent most of the rest of the night rubbing mint-tinted cold cream into my leg in the hope that the sensation would die down.

At some point I must have gone to sleep because there was something on the dictaphone from the night. I was with my friend from the Wirral and someone else last night. I don’t know what we were doing at the start but we’d ended up at Middlewich and gone to see my father’s factory. We went in through the back door of course and worked our way round through the garage. My father was working at a vice. I asked him if he’d seen (someone). He replied “yes, he’s upstairs” so we went up the stairs onto the gallery while whoever it was was doing what he had come here to do. My father came up a few minutes later. He had a razor and a few other things. It looked as if he was going to shave someone. Then I realised that someone was going into hospital for an operation that afternoon so I imagined that the shaving is due to that so he was there with the razor. He turned to me and asked “are you ready?. I asked “ready for what?”. He replied “you’re donating the tubes, aren’t you?”. I answered “I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to discuss it, I don’t want to be involved or anything. If you want to take something out of my body just hit me with a piece of wood and do it while I’m unconscious, and don’t say anything. I don’t want to know about the procedure or anything else that happens”.

Not very much but I was surprised that there was anything at all on there.

When the alarm went off I went and had my medication and then checked my mails and messages. Having then transcribed the dictaphone notes I sat down to revise my welsh but regrettably fell asleep at the computer.

Armed with my coffee and fruit bun, I joined the lesson and to my surprise it seemed to pass quite well. However, my brain is still all churned up with rubbish and nothing seems to stick.

After the lesson I went through the shopping list to update it and have several goes at sending it. Some of the stuff that I wanted wasn’t in stock, and then the order fell below the minimum £50:00 limit so I had to track down some more supplies that I might need.

My weekly shopping bill for food usually runs out at about €35:00 and I was buying for a fortnight, so I was bewildered as to why I couldn’t reach €50:00 with ease.

What I should have done, I suppose, is to have asked one or two of the other housebound people in the building if they needed anything that I could have ordered for them.

And then I had the e-mail from the hospital. They want me to have a blood test before I go, so I had to ring the nurse to arrange for him to come round on the Saturday before I go to do the necessary.

But even though I’m looking forward to the stay in the hospital and the likelihood of having some kind of treatment that might possibly help me, I’m not looking forward to the journey. In fact, I have the feeling that the strain of the travelling is wiping out all of the benefits of whatever treatment I might be having, and more besides.

Next task was to ring up the people who handle the Autonomy issues. I spoke to them almost a fortnight ago and they promised to send me a form, but it’s never been received. I rang them back to hustle them along and they agreed to send me another one.

Let’s hope that this one arrives.

Rosemary rang me too and we had a really good chat about all kinds of things, but it wasn’t one of our usual marathon chats because the doorbell rang – the delivery guy with my food. Some of it was frozen and there was a lot of chilled food so it all needed to be put away as quickly as possible.

So right now, not only is there not even one cubic millimetre of space in the freezer, there’s not even one cubic millimetre of space in the fridge either. At least I won’t be going hungry for several weeks, even if I don’t go out again.

While I was doing all kinds of stuff with the food, Rosemary had texted me back. She has one of these small Land Rovers so I’d asked her to raise the seat to its highest position and then measure the height of the seat from the ground. The answer was “60 centimetres”.

My chair here is 50 centimetres off the ground and it’s something of a struggle to rise to my feet. If I’m to buy a different car, it needs to have a seat more than 50 cms off the ground to make it easier for me to stand up so I need to have a few measurements lined up.

What’s annoying is that Strider’s seat is exactly the right height for this kind of thing. It was so easy to get in and out of him. I suppose that in theory I could have him shipped over here but he’s as old as Caliburn and salt on the roads in Maritime Canada haven’t been kind to him.

As well as that, his engine is an old-generation V6 “Cologne” engine of 4.0 litre and drinks petrol like there’s no tomorrow.

With what time remained (and there was some, after all of that) I edited the notes for another radio programme and that’s now ready to be assembled and completed, but not tonight. I’m exhausted.

As I had my wraps delivered I could have a taco roll for tea, with some of the leftover stuffing. There’s a little left so I’ll make a curry tomorrow. But now that I have some soya yoghurt I can make some naan bread to have with it. I’m not quite sure where I’ll put the leftover dough rolls but I’ll worry about that tomorrow, I suppose.

So now I’m off to bed now that I’ve finished my notes. I’m hoping for a much better night tonight and tomorrow I’ll have to put away the rest of the food. There isn’t any room right now to put anything.

But give me a week or so and there might be some space somewhere – and then I’ll be off to the hospital. I hope that they will be able to do something that might improve my situation and I can go back to have something like a better quality of life.

Mind you, I do have to admit, I can’t complain too much. At least I seem to be doing OK for food right now.

Saturday 30th September 2023 – I HAVE MADE …

… an executive decision, and for the benefit of new readers, an executive decision is a decision that if it turns out to be the wrong one, the person making it is executed.

Anyway, I went to LeClerc this morning to do my shopping. The drive there was horrendous because I can’t now work the brake sufficiently in Caliburn, and the left foot is struggling now to work the clutch.

Not only that, I didn’t have the power to climb back into the cab after my shopping.

When I returned here, I found that my usual parking place had been taken. The only other parking place up against a kerb that was free was right across on the far side of the car park. Consequently my shopping trolley and most of my purchases are still in the back.

Luckily, having had an idea that I might find things difficult, I’d taken a backpack with me so at least I could manage to bring the frozen and chilled food upstairs.

Coming back up the stairs, I did something else that I have never done. The lifts here are on the half-landing so I staggered (and I DO mean “staggered”) up as far as the first half-landing and took the lift up to the next one, and then walked down to my front door.

So in other words, what this means is that I am no longer going to drive. That is, not until I can find a car that works with hand controls only.

Meanwhile, back in the apartment, when the alarm went off I was reading a letter from a company to someone else about a lock-up garage that they were renting and for some reason they hadn’t paid their instalments. There was a family waiting to take it over so what were they planning to do with it. I don’t know why I’d had this copy but it immediately made me interested so I was busy sending it off to our company secretary to see what they could do about it.

So I crawled to my feet and wandered off into the bathroom. And then round about 08:40 I struggled down the stairs with my shopping trolley as far as Caliburn, and then the excitement began.

At LeClerc they had nothing exciting, but I found some vegan camembert-type cheese on sale on special offer so I treated myself to it for a change.

When I finally made it back here, I put away whatever it was that I’d managed to bring upstairs, and then made myself some cheese on toast and a pot of very hot, strong coffee.

Not that it did me much good, because I crashed out on my chair – and no surprise either because I was totally exhausted.

Later on I had a listen to the rest of the dictaphone notes. A group of us was going camping. One of my friends – it might have been a girl – had been to work so I said that I’d pick her up at about 01:30. I set my alarm for about 01:15 and went to bed. When the alarm went off I arose but I had so much to do that 15 minutes was going to be far too optimistic to accomplish it. Meantime I’d been collecting stuff to take with us. One of the things was like a stake that you drove into the ground and you added more stakes to it until it was quite tall and then a basketball hoop. It was extremely high off the ground like this but what my interest was that if I had some kind of long cloth I could make some kind of really nice wind protector for my tent or for when I’m sitting down on the beach, by sewing loops in it and putting each individual stake through each pair of loops to hold it. It was all packed in a big canvas bag like a tent bag so at the moment it was going to be quite easy to manoeuvre. Then I had my dishes to wash, things like that, and that was going to take me ages

And then I went to see my Aunt in London, and I had a woman and daughter with me, who might have been Laurence and Roxanne. We had to go so Roxanne carried STRAWBERRY MOOSE. We walked down from this big building where she lived to where I’d parked the car which was in some kind of extremely steep, muddy car park. I was right at the top so we didn’t have far to walk at all. We piled in and said our goodbyes. I had a packet of digestive biscuits. I made some remark about having made them specially. My aunt said “don’t be silly, Eric. You’ve bought them from a shop to eat on your journey home”. We rolled the car, which was my red Cortina estate, down to the bottom of the hill ready to set off. I remembered something that I had to take back so I left the two of them and the car there and ran all the way back up again. Really, what I wanted to do was to say goodnight to my aunt privately and to ask her about any situation going on that I ought to know. She anticipated this and came down. We met at the entrance to her building after I’d run back up the car park. It was quite an emotional reunion considering, and then we began to chat.

There was also something about some rocky fields and stone walls but I can’t remember anything more than that about it

There was football on the Internet this afternoon – Connah’s Quay Nomads v Penybont, played in a monsoon in a swamp in the Welsh Premier League – second v third.

And despite the conditions, it was an entertaining game with plenty of skill, really enjoyable to watch. And for 60 minutes or so Connah’s Quay roared into a 3-0 lead.

But then, a strange thing happened. Henry Jones, one of the best players in the league when he chooses to be, had been on the bench for Penybont and at the hour mark, Rhys Griffiths sent him on to play.

And a couple of minutes later we had two of the most bizarre substitutions that I had ever seen. I’ve no idea what must have been going through Neil Gibson’s mind but two of his best players, Harry Franklin and one of my favourites, Jack Kenny, who had been running the Penybont defence ragged, were then replaced.

As a result, 15 minutes later the score was now 3-2 and Penybont were going all out for an equaliser. A breakaway at the end of 90 minutes led to a fourth goal for Connah’s Quay but it could have been so, so different.

However, some of the substitutions that one or two of these managers make sometimes totally baffles me.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with salad and chips. And it was really delicious too yet again. I seem to be making good progress with my meals these days and I’m eating well, which is always good news.

So now having had a nice relaxing evening, I’m off to bed, to have sweet dreams and think about how my car-less life is going to pan out in the future.

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: Leclerc

Friday 10th January 2025 – THIS IS SOMETHING …

Friday 20th December 2024 – WHEN THE ALARM …

29th November 2024 – I HAVE BEEN …

Friday 8th November 2024 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Friday 25th October 2024 – I HAVE HAD …

Friday 11th October 2024 – IT’S HAPPENED AGAIN

Friday 27th September 2024 – AND I ALMOST WROTE …

Friday 17th May 2025 – I’VE JUST HAD …

Monday 6th May 2024 – IT LOOKS AS IF …

Thursday 2nd May 2024 – THAT BLASTED LECLERC …

Friday 15th March 2024 – THERE’S NOTHING ON …

Tuesday 27th February 2024 – I HAVE JUST …

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

Tuesday 10th October 2023 – I WISH THAT I …

Saturday 30th September 2023 – I HAVE MADE …

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