Category Archives: Nerina Hall

Saturday 18th April 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… a somewhat better day today. Mind you, that’s not at all difficult because yesterday was pretty awful.

But never mind. After writing my notes and doing everything that I have to do, it was about 21:00 when I finally made it into bed. As usual these days, it took a while to go off to sleep, but once I fell asleep, I remember nothing at all for quite a while.

At some point, and I’ve no idea when, I had to leave the bed, but I was soon back into bed and soon asleep again. At a later moment, I had to go down the corridor again, but I’d only been back in bed fifteen minutes or so afterwards when the alarm went off.

Despite the fact that I’d not long ago been up and about, it was another one of the usual struggles to leave the bed, and I eventually managed to stagger into the bathroom.

Afterwards, I headed into the kitchen for my medication and hot drink and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone.

Nerina and I had gone on a coach tour and we’d been put into a hotel room like everyone else, and we went to sleep. When I awoke this morning, I noticed that there was a mouse, a crab and two really strange creatures. One was blue and the other was olive green. There was also a huge spider. I managed to deal with the crab straight away and threw it out of the room. The next one was something with a hard shell, so I hit it with a fluorescent lamp tube that was lying around and it shattered the shell, so I threw it out of the bedroom window. The spider – I managed to chase it out of the room and it ran off down the corridor. The mouse was not a mouse – it was the thing that I’d hit with a fluorescent lamp tube. It resembled a mouse of a kind. The two others – they were really gruesome things. The green thing was like a starshell, like a star or something with its tentacles. I managed to catch that at the right time and with the door open, I could flick it outside. But this blue thing was really rapid. Every time I tried to catch it, it ran off down another end of the room. Eventually, Nerina came out of bed and joined in the hunt. We managed to corner it but it still slipped out. In the end, I had the bedroom door open wide and we manoeuvred it over to that side of the room so that when we came close to it, it ran outside the door and off down the corridor so we closed the bedroom door.

These are obviously my brother’s monsters from last night’s notes, following Nerina and me about. But what a hotel in which to stay when it’s infested with things like those. I wonder if any other room had such a collection.

However, reflecting on yesterday, if anyone had asked me even five years ago to go a day without coffee, I would have said that it’s impossible. I used to drink coffee by the bucketful. But ohhh! How times have changed! Needs must when the devil drives and all of that.

This was a dream where I was in Edinburgh, and I was asleep in my car. When I awoke next morning, there had been a couple of stickers stuck on it. I wasn’t sure what they were about, so I didn’t read them at first. Eventually, I managed to tear one off because these stickers were on the inside. It said something about bad parking and how my vehicle would be taken away if it weren’t removed. I then had a look at the other stickers. These were car park receipts with £0:00 in them so I don’t know what this was all about. Anyway, I was trying to make up my mind which car I was in because I couldn’t remember and it wasn’t until the day began to dawn that I realised that I was in a gold-coloured MkIII Cortina saloon and I have no idea what I was doing in there because a gold MkIII saloon is one that I have never owned.

Sleeping in my car is nothing new for me and even Nerina has shared a car with me on occasion. There’s a story about Nerina and me sleeping in the car in Cherbourg, but the World isn’t ready to hear it.

Surprisingly, MkIII Cortinas of all shades and colours have passed through my hands at one time or another, either as taxis or to be broken for spares, except a gold one. Even now, I still have a dark brown one and a bronze one, and I shan’t be letting them go at any price. They are both 2000E models so they are worth a fortune. The bronze one, one of the very few surviving 2000E estates, will fetch a mint of money.

I was planning on moving down to London, and I’d noticed this huge estate on the north-east side which was terrace after terrace after terrace of modern houses so I went along to enquire about one of them. It turned out that many of them were social housing, reserved for undergraduates or pensioners, but there was one part of it where single people could either buy or rent one of these places, so I told him that I may be interested in one of those. We went through all of the procedures and everything, and I ended up signing for one of them. Once the contracts were exchanged, they gave me the address of the property, which was in Onllwyn, which is in North Wales, so I went there to see what it was that I’d bought. It was a small cottage with a very large garden. I thought “never mind. I can do quite a lot with this”.

Leaving aside the fact that Onllwyn is actually in South Wales, in between Neath and the Brecon Beacons, I would love a small cottage with a big vegetable garden, but I need to be fit and healthy to cope with it. The housing estate seems to remind me of the flats in Bartle Road in London near Ladbroke Grove underground station, built on the site of Rillington Place where Christie, the mass murderer, lived.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and was pleased to see me looking better, just as I was pleased to be feeling better. She sorted me out and then wandered off on her rounds. I made breakfast and read some more of THE CELT, THE ROMAN and THE SAXON by Thomas Wright.

And here we go again. We’re revisiting Roman Roads, passing by briefly on our way to agriculture, and out author tells us "Antiquaries seem often to have been misled by their dissimilitude to the great Roman military roads, to imagine many of these to have been British. It is not very probable that the older inhabitants of the island, such as Caesar found them, divided into separate and hostile tribes, which seem often to have changed their boundaries, as they were pressed forwards by other colonies, should have been great road-makers."

How did he think that the “other colonies” managed to press forwards? And how did he think that products only found in certain places, like the blue stones of Preseli, travelled from one part of the country to the other, such as Stonehenge? It has been recognised for a great many years that there is a whole network of prehistoric trackways across Britain dating back to Neolithic days and even before.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, interrupted by a couple of bouts of falling asleep unfortunately, but then I set about editing one of the radio programmes whose notes I dictated a couple of weeks ago. That programme is now actually complete and ready to be broadcast, although editing out thirty-eight seconds of speech was quite a challenge.

After a disgusting drinks break, I was debating whether or not to start editing the next one in the queue, but my mind was made up for me when Rosemary rang for a chat. I don’t know for how long we were chatting, but it took me right up to the start of the football.

It was the last match of the season for the league, and what a dramatic day it was. Two matches were of major interest, Y Bala v Llansawel and Y Fflint v Cardiff Metropolitan.

The situation was simple – Y Fflint had to equal or better Y Bala’s result, and Llansawel had to beat Y Bala and hope that Llanelli would beat Hwlfordd so that Llansawel would qualify for the European playoffs.

We were watching the Y Fflint v Cardiff Metropolitan game, which I thought was the wrong one, and although it was rather “agricultural”, it had plenty of action. And as goal after goal was scored in both the matches, the pendulum swung from one way to the other – Y Fflint stay up and Y Bala go down, and then a couple of minutes later, Y Bala stay up and Y Fflint go down.

Our game finished in a 2-2 draw, but Y Bala were undone late in the game to go down 2-1 after leading 1-0 at one point, so Y Bala are relegated to the Cymru North next season. Llansawel, even though they won, were forestalled by Hwlffordd hitting Llanelli for six with no reply.

Y Fflint threw everything that they had at the Met and did everything they could to keep the Met out. They finished the game with only nine players, two having been sent off for “denying a goalscoring opportunity”. However, I thought that the first one was rather harsh as there were two other defenders rushing back to cover.

Other good news on the football front is that the five clubs whose Tier One licence application was refused – Colwyn Bay, Y Bala, Trefynnon, Caerau Trelai and Caerfyrddin – have all been successful on appeal. For the latter two, they’ll have to wait another season because they both missed the promotion bus this time around.

So right now, I’m going to bed, early as it may be, and hoping for a nice lie-in tomorrow. Isabelle the Nurse can treat my legs while I’m still in bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my old vehicles … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once said that the group “Queen” had written a song about me.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, who else would a Cortina landslide in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ refer to?"

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Sunday 5th April 2026 – YET ANOTHER NIGHT …

… when I’m going to bed without any tea, except, of course, a slice of my home-made chocolate cake and a helping of home-made ice cream

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m valuing my sleep much more than I’m valuing my food right now, and that’s not like me at all, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

You wouldn’t think that I’d had a decent lie-in last night. As usual, things rather dragged and it ended up being just after 22:00 when I went to bed. Never mind though, at least I could have a decent sleep.

That’s what I thought, anyway, but as you might expect, it didn’t work out like that. I awoke on a couple of occasions and once, round about 05:30, I thought that I would never go to go back to sleep.

However, I must have done at some point because, when the doorbell rang, I was so far out of it that I thought “who the heck is this waking me up at this time?” and I was half out of bed before I realised that it was Isabelle the Nurse. I had to dive quickly back under the covers and pretend to be asleep for when she came in here.

She was her usual chatty self, which is something that I don’t really need, early on a Sunday morning. But after she left, I could turn over and go back to sleep.

Eventually, I awoke and once I’d managed to stand up, which was not easy, I headed off into the bathroom to sort myself out. It was a respectable 09:40 when I arrived in the kitchen. No medication this morning except the urgent stuff. I simply made breakfast, including more of my delicious hot cross buns.

We started a new book today too. It’s HISTORIA BRITTONUM, written by Nennius in the tenth century. It’s a book with probably the most obsequious introduction that I have ever read, and it’s also one of the most inaccurate, although it’s one of the first to mention Arthur, even if it doesn’t describe him as a king.

The translation dates from 1838 and it contains one of the most glorious mistranslations that I have ever seen. How it passed the proof-readers, I really don’t know. Our translator tells us that "St. Germanus, after his death, returned into his own country". That would have been interesting to witness.

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

When I awoke, round about 00:44, I was busy working on planning a radio programme about some kind of index. It was importing likely songs into it but at the moment that I awoke, I was puzzling over what name to give to the file. That was the point that I reached when I awoke.

Usually, I can think of a really good name for my files, but most often, it’s about ten minutes after I’ve already named them and backed them up. But this actually relates to a discussion I was having on Friday with one of my regular readers, who was talking about my database. Actually, I keep an index in a series of text files and in an Open Office spreadsheet under the rather prosaic name of “Playlist”.

There was also some more about something from the other night. They had managed to identify the cowling of that ice cream lorry and had prepared one in plastic and sent it to him to fit himself. In the meantime, they were still making enquiries about that project that was discussed the other day but they hadn’t as yet made very much progress.

Now, I wonder to which dream this relates. I can see the cowling now – it’s off a Leyland FG-550 and it’s green – but this dream and the one to which it refers still don’t ring any bells with me now that I’m awake.

I was down in Virlet last night with Nerina. We were sorting out a few things down there with someone else. Then this other person left and we decided to leave too. Nerina climbed into her car, which was a blue Ford Classic … "it was actually a Ford Corsair" – ed …, and I locked up the house. As I approached Nerina’s car, she let out the clutch and moved off about fifty yards, so I walked along towards the car, and she did this on several occasions. I thought “what on earth is the matter with her?”. So we carried on like this, but then the next-door neighbour arrived in a kind of horse box. Just as I was about to go out of sight round a corner, a little boy shouted after me “mister, mister”. I turned round and he said that their house was on fire, so I immediately ran down there and asked them if they had a hose, which they hadn’t, so I went into the barn. They followed me in, and they were amazed by the three cars that were in there that dated to the 1930s and early 1940s. I was rummaging around looking for the hose, and I found it and plugged it into the tap, but it was very short. I thought that I had much more hose than this, so I had a search around and I found another length. It still wasn’t very long so I began to look around outside. Nerina was there by this time, and she pointed out a hose that was lying on the ground underneath some wood. I went to fetch it, but it was the wrong connection. In the meantime, no fire brigade had turned up, no ambulance, no police or anything, so I asked them if they had ‘phoned the fire brigade. They replied “you have a decent-looking pushbike there. Why don’t you ride into the village and tell the mayor?”. Although the pushbike might be decent, which it probably wasn’t, I was in no healthy state to get on a bike and cycle up and down a few mountains, so I carried on looking for this hose.

This wasn’t the Virlet that I know. In fact, I’ve no idea where it might be. And I can imagine Nerina driving off as I approached the car. In fact, I did that one with Laurence but she didn’t notice and climbed into the car that had pulled up behind.

The garage with the old cars is the same one that appeared in a dream several weeks ago, but down in the Auvergne, there would be no problem about hosepipes as I have miles of the stuff.

When I’d finished, there was a footfest. Firstly, Stranraer fighting to a 1-1 draw with Dumbarton, followed by Greenock Morton throwing away a one-goal lead to go down 3-1 away to Dunfermline Athletic.

After that, I attacked the radio notes for the next programme. And by the time that I’d finished, I’d prepared and assembled the two halves of the programme, chosen the joining track and written the notes for it.

That’s three radio programmes that I’ve assembled this weekend. That’s some good going, and I wish that I could do it every weekend.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happened after this. And for over an hour too. And when I finally did return to the Land of the Living, I couldn’t move for a good fifteen minutes. As I said earlier, it’s hard to believe that I had a lie-in this morning.

In the kitchen, I made a loaf of bread. Not a pizza, because as I said a little earlier, I’m valuing my sleep more than I’m valuing my food right now. And the loaf is cooked to perfection. I hope that it will taste as nice as it looks.

While it was baking, I washed up everything and then had my chocolate cake with home-made ice cream. The pudding was delicious as usual.

So right now, I’m going to sort myself out and go to bed. And as well as that, seeing as it’s a Bank Holiday tomorrow, I’m going to set the alarm to 07:30 and have an extra hour in bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about house fires … "well, one of us has" – ed … there were two men sitting on a pier in the Bahamas quietly fishing.
Neither of them actually looked like the flashy type so the first one asked the second "How come you managed to come here?"
"I had a house fire and I lost absolutely everything" he replied. "But the insurance company was very generous and paid me for everything."
"It’s pretty much the same story for me" replied the first man "except that it was a flood that wiped me out."
"Blimmin’ ‘eck!" said the second man. "However did you manage to start a flood?"

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Wednesday 4th March 2026 – AFTER YESTERDAY EVENING’S …

… excitement, it’s been a much more calm day today and I haven’t really done all that much.

Up to now, though, I have managed not to fall asleep … "although the night is young" – ed … and that’s already an achievement.

Especially when it was about 23:30 when I finally crawled into bed. But once in bed, apart from waking up briefly on a couple of occasions, I managed to sleep through until the alarm went off at 06:29.

When the alarm went off, my wife (who wasn’t Nerina), my brother and I were going to the FA Cup Final. For some reason, the FA Cup Final was being held in a provincial stadium, not in London. We had tickets for rows M4, 5 and 6. As we arrived at the stadium, my brother suddenly realised that he didn’t have his ticket with him and it was too late now to go back home so he joined the queue anyway. There were Morecambe and Wise there, and it seemed that Eric Morecambe had left his ticket behind too but he was going to try to blag his way through the gates, so my brother decided that he’d try too. We joined the queue for one of the gates and fought our way down to the front eventually and were let through but there was no sign of my brother. So when we came to find the seats, I found M94, so I imagined that we wanted the other side of the stadium, but it seemed that M94 was an addition to the row and was placed before M1, so our seats were just there where we were standing, so we settled down and waited to see whether my brother would come along and join in. Then, we had to leave the stadium afterwards. We found our car, and my wife was driving so I let her drive. We had some people to see on the outside of Birmingham so we went down a road. My wife was frustrated because the traffic was moving really slowly. She thought that it was a cyclist holding everything up and she was urging the other motorists to pass the cyclist, but then it turned out that a little further ahead, there was a train driving down the road, an old steam train pulling so many goods wagons. Eventually, we caught up with it, but she decided that she was going to stop and have a break so we pulled into the side of the road. We had a baby with us, and the baby belonged to a member of her family although it wasn’t hers, and she looked after the baby for a while. Eventually, we found ourselves in a house, along with our possessions and this baby. She was still looking after this baby, but upstairs, there was a very small child. The very small child was quite talkative even though it was only a few months old. It was asking about this baby, then it began to accuse whoever was looking after it that my wife was doing things to harm this baby, which the other one thought belonged to it. Of course it didn’t, and this all became confusing. We began to think of how we could possibly defuse this situation but we didn’t think that it was going to be easy because there is no reasoning with small children at all.

Now THAT was what I call a strange dream.

The stadium reminds me of a time when a friend and I went to Caen to see Granville’s cup tie with Olympic Marseille just before I fell ill, although there was no third person with us.

And what with babies on the scene, talking babies, goods trains running down the streets and all of that, I’ve no idea what must have been going on that had provoked all of that. And who was my wife if it wasn’t Nerina?

As well as all of that, as for my brother getting lost, well, he can do that as much as he likes, and in more ways than just one too.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and scrub-up and then went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I began to write up the missing notes from the previous evening but I didn’t manage to go all that far as Isabelle the Nurse turned up.

She was in a good mood, and we had quite a chat as she sorted my feet, and then she cleared off. I went to make my breakfast and to read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’ve been reading about the series of invasions of Greece, from the Bulgars in the north, the Venetians and Lombards from the west and the pirates of North Africa from the south, who all ravaged the country for a couple of hundred years round about the turn of the first millennium.

But now, the dark clouds are gathering, and so is the Fourth Crusade, ready to set off from Italy on its way to the Holy Land. Unfortunately for Greece and the Byzantine Empire, most of the Crusaders took rather too much of a fancy to the wealth of the various Greek and Byzantine cities and the Crusade escalated out of control, as we shall see over the next day or two.

Back in here, I finished off my notes, backed up the computer and took the statistics that I should have done last night. And then, I was free to listen to the dictaphone to see what else was on there.

I was living down in the centre of France again and was going through my correspondence about the late arrivals of my taxis and the problems with medical care. I seem to have sent one hundred letters to different people but no one has ever replied to me. On one occasion, I’d even been picked up, and we had to go many miles more to a railway station where the one train per week that came to the station, which was the TGV that came from Dublin, had a passenger to drop off on us. I remember having a cup of tea there and they poured it, and the first half of the cup was pure water. It wasn’t until well after that that the tea began to come through in the water. At some point, I was actually in one of the hospitals and I came across Nerina’s doctor, the doctor who had sorted out her appendix. I explained to him that she was on home leave at the moment and was feeling so much better for being at home, so I wondered if it might be possible for her to be discharged into my care and to stay at home for her recovery rather than the hospital.

She wouldn’t have had much of a respite with me. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m useless with all affairs of a medical nature. I had to go to see her in hospital once, and I lasted less than ten minutes.

And while it’s true that the taxi times are all up the spout some times, I don’t keep records and I don’t complain. After all, as I’m terminally ill, it’s all free to me and I don’t intend to bite the hand that feeds it. But TGVs from Dublin to the South of France are an interesting concept too.

After that, there were a few more things to do and then I began to mess around with some more artificial intelligence stuff. I began to work on a few programs with which I’d experimented last time, and I noticed that a few of the more undesirable features have been tightened up, which is good news.

However, I managed to find a few rat runs into a couple of the programs and what was interesting was that they seemed to employ an artificial intelligence probe detector that did really well to close up one rat run while I was still exploring it. Maybe a few more sites of this nature ought to adopt this probing detector and close a few more that are known to exist while they are at it.

But at least, things seem to be tightening up a little in this respect, which is good news.

After a disgusting drink break, I carried on writing the notes for the radio programme on which I had been working, and now they are all complete and ready for dictating.

Tea tonight was a slice of vegan pie with vegetables, mashed potatoes and gravy, followed by an apricot half and home-made ice cream. The ice cream had set far too hard so I had it out for half an hour and then mashed it vigorously with a fork before putting it back into the freezer. I hope that that works.

Anyway, I’ll find that out tomorrow because right now, I’m off to bed, hoping for a good night before dialysis tomorrow, although I doubt whether it will be as good as I would like.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Lombards … "well, one of us has" – ed … a friend of mine and I were discussing those acronyms that people used forty years ago to describe social groups of people.
"What was a Yuppie?" she asked.
"A Young, Upwardly-Mobile Professional Person."
"And a Dinky?"
"Dual Income, No Kids Yet."
"And a Lombard?" she asked
"I’ve no idea about that" I replied. "Was there anything?"
"Ohh yes" she replied. "A Lombard was ‘Loads Of Money But A Right D**khead’!"

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Tuesday 17th February 2026 – HAVING WAXED LYRICAL …

… yesterday about how much better I was feeling, I was brought right back down to earth this afternoon when I had one of those famous collapses that I have every now and again.

And it was looking so good too.

Last night, I strolled through everything that I needed to do. Nothing seemed to stand in my way and I was actually in bed by about 22:15, having finished everything that needed to be done. And it’s not very often that I can say that.

Not only that, I was asleep quite quickly too. However, you don’t need me to tell you what subsequently happened. You’ve heard me say it often enough, and you are probably just as sick as I am of hearing about it.

So there I was, at 04:15 this morning, lying in bed, trying my best to go back to sleep but without any success at all. In the end, round about 05:45, I dragged myself out of bed and, in a mad fit of enthusiasm, dictated all of the radio notes that were outstanding.

It has to be said, though, that I made a right dog’s breakfast of more than just a couple of them. Probably because at that time of morning, I can’t see straight enough to read my notes and I’m not awake enough to concentrate. There will be piles of editing to do, but it can’t be helped.

After I’d finished, I staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication. I really do like this hot lemon, honey and ginger drink, despite all of the rubbish that I’m obliged to take with it.

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

I dreamed that I was working for Birmingham City Transport. I was in a double-decker bus that had Route 454 on the front. I wondered where I was going because no-one had said a word to me. I tried to set the destination board to 000 but I somehow couldn’t manage to do it. It was displaying all kinds of numbers. The next thing that I remember was that I was in the middle of Birmingham Bus Station, in the middle where the buses wait to find an empty bay. Someone came along and said that I was in the wrong place. There were already one or two people on board so I set off to do a lap around the bus station to look for the bay for the 454. Everyone complained that I hadn’t picked up passengers, so I told them that I was doing a lap round to find the correct bay. They explained to me where I had to go, and there were half a dozen people waiting there, so I picked them up and drove out of the city centre. I had no idea where I was going, and we went there and these areas of total devastation where there had been acres and acres of demolition. By that time, there were just these two women on board. They explained to me that I had to take them to some kind of house where they were going to go for a visit. Of course, I knew nothing about this. No-one had told me a thing. I didn’t even know where this house was, so they said that they would guide me. In the end, we ended up walking through the countryside, chatting about all kinds of things, washing clothes in salt to remove bloodstains etc. And the views were wonderful. We met two other people and had a quick chat and just carried on walking into the countryside and we walked for miles. There were these two old Swedish Volvos parked at the side of the road. I noticed them, and they had foreign plates, but I couldn’t identify the plates at the moment. We were just chatting for hours as we walked through the countryside, and I had no idea at all what I was supposed to be doing.

Now, this was a strange dream, if ever there was one. Firstly, I’ve never driven a double-deck service bus. Plenty of coaches of course, and plenty of single-deck service buses but not a double-deck service bus. and as for driving around Birmingham, I know the various ways in and out, but I’d be lost completely if I had to drive a service bus route. However, there was a Birmingham bus route 454 that ran from the city centre out to Smethwick and that way.

So what would I be doing there? And why would I end up walking miles through the countryside with two women past a couple of pale green Volvos, two of the very last 164 models (I can still see them).

As for removing bloodstains, at dialysis yesterday a large load of blood was actually spilled onto my T-shirt and needs to be cleaned.

There was also something about being at home with Nerina. She was drinking a bottle of beer, and she said that this particular beer was really nice. I said that my friend from Munich might be coming to stay for a while, and he likes a special kind of beer, and my brother likes a certain beer, so if my friend from Munich comes to stay we’ll fetch a few beers of each type and we can have a nice night in, and she seemed to like the idea. Then we decided that we’d have to tidy up and she wanted to put some things in the fridge. The fridge was full, so I had to shuffle everything around and in the end, I managed to fit these things in but a couple of bottles of wine wouldn’t fit on the shelves inside so I had to move some things out of the door shelves to put the wine in there and to put the things that were in the door shelves into the fridge somehow. But the bottom shelf of the fridge was full of peat and that kind of thing, composted soil. I had to dig a hole in it to stand these bottles of wine upright in it.

This is probably a little more like it. Nerina wasn’t a beer drinker, but she would appreciate a very good beer very occasionally. I know that my friend does, because there’s a special order here every time that he tells me that he’s coming round.

We were much more into wine back in the old days, Nerina and I, and back in the days thirty or forty years ago, a plate of cheese and a bottle of Burgundy would have been our heaven. Planting a bottle of wine in the soil in the fridge is a novel idea, though.

And why would my brother be rearing his head in the middle of a convivial gathering?

The nurse was really early today – barely 08:00. But the sooner he comes, the sooner he goes and that suits me fine. I could push on, make my breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.

And we are reaching a really interesting point in the book, a point that has me fascinated. Firstly, he and his team are able to interpret the climate to such a precise extent that, judging by the state of the soil and vegetation immediately underneath it, they can tell you that the prehistoric burial mound in the middle of the hillfort was begun when it was pouring down with rain. And it doesn’t become any more precise than that.

Furthermore, by examining the mollusc (snails, etc.) remains in the various layers of soil, his team can tell you that the land was first climax woodland, then cleared, then abandoned and returned to scrub and woodland, then cleared again, then overgrazed and overworked, then heavily eroded and left to grassland with occasional farming. Different types of molluscs flourish in different types of soil and vegetation, and examining their remains in the different layers of soil can pinpoint the vegetation (or lack thereof) at the time.

But interestingly, I was dragged off on a tangent to an article about the “Beaker People”. Their culture (there’s a dispute as to whether the people came with their culture or not) arrived in Southern England round about 2500 BC and died out round about 1800 BC, to be replaced by the Bronze Age. What is significant about this period is that during that relatively short time period, about 90% of the genetic make-up of the population of Southern and Eastern England was displaced by an equivalent genetic make-up from Eastern Europe.

Back in here later, I had a few things to do and then I read a couple more chapters of my Welsh course book to do a little revision. However, what with my Teflon brain, nothing will stick.

After that, I had an important task to perform. What with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed … I hadn’t filed away my correspondence for well over six months, and there were mountains of paperwork everywhere. So I sat down, sorted through it, threw away a pile of unnecessary paperwork and then filed the rest.

It goes without saying that I really ought to be much more organised than I am, although I have said that a hundred times before, and still, nothing has changed.

My faithful cleaner turned up later and shooed me into the shower for a good scrub up and so that I smell nice, not that it will make much difference, I suppose. And then afterwards, we did our monthly sort through the medication and organised a few other things too while we were at it.

After she left, I came back in here to sit down, and that was when I was overwhelmed by an enormous wave of fatigue. I crashed out completely, and for over two hours too. I don’t think that I’ve ever been so far out as I was this afternoon. So much so that when I was finally able to move, I had to have one of these caffeine-laden energy drinks.

Eventually, I managed to pull myself together again and I finished choosing the music for the next radio programme, reformatting where necessary, re-editing and reconverting it.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and ratatouille, followed by the last of the jam roly-poly. I’ll have to think of a new dessert for tomorrow, but if all else fails, I bought some tinned fruit, having had my taste buds titillated by the fruit that my neighbour brought me the other week.

But that’s tomorrow. Right now, I’m off to bed, later than usual. And who knows? Maybe I might have a good sleep tonight. Wouldn’t that be nice?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about shuffling … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a friend of mine from when I lived in Chester who was bewailing his back luck at the racecourse during one of the racing weeks.
"I don’t understand it" he said. "If I’m having a game of cards, I usually always win, but at the racetrack, I never seem to win anything"
"Well, you shouldn’t blame yourself" I replied. "It’s not your fault that they won’t let you shuffle the horses."

0

Monday 26th January 2026 – AS I SUSPECTED …

… when they weighed me at dialysis this afternoon and calculated the figure against the dry weight figure the last time that they calculated it, there were just 19 grammes to remove today.

Telling them that I’ve eaten next-to-nothing this last week or so cuts absolutely no ice with them. Their calculations must be correct, and that’s all that counts. It’s a far cry from the days when they were taking out 2,500 grammes three times per week.

Last night, though, as I said, I did manage to eat something, even if it was only half a small pizza. And I still managed later to end up being late finishing off everything. Nothing that I seem to do makes any difference.

So it was not far short of 23:00 when I went to bed, and once again, it seemed to take forever to go off to sleep.

Even then, I remember it being something of a turbulent night, not being able to settle down. However, I was asleep when the alarm went off at 06:29.

Isabelle the Nurse told me to stay in bed this morning but, with so much to do, I left the bed … "eventually" – ed … and headed off into the bathroom. And I do have to say that I was feeling rather better than I had just recently.

In the kitchen, I sorted out my hot drink and medication, and then came back in here to see where I’d been during the night.

On a eu un deuxième .. – what am I doing, talking in French? We had a second lockdown and everyone was confined to home again. The first couple of days, it didn’t bother me at all and I had plenty of things to keep me occupied. But after a while, I began to feel that I had cabin fever, so I thought that I’d take advantage of the calm by going out for a walk. So I left my house, which was a little terraced house in a pedestrian area and began to walk towards the village square. The first thing that I noticed was a hairdresser’s, with the bust of a woman in a window, with some long, flowing hair on it and a sign “with sadness after 109 years”. However, the hair didn’t resemble at all anything of any woman of that kind of age and even in the 1960s when this style had been the rage, that woman would still have been well over forty and that didn’t look right at all to me. There was another terraced house with a white stucco front and no window, with newspaper cuttings on the front. While I was reading these newspaper cuttings, a couple more people came past so I ended up following them, only to be sidetracked again by some more press cuttings pasted on the end wall of a house as we turned the corner. Having turned this corner, I walked about another hundred yards and found myself in the village square. Across in the corner was a building that I recognised. Although it looked like the village hall, it was in fact the local supermarket. People were queueing to go in, with several people loitering in the vicinity, looking as if they couldn’t make up their minds whether to join the queue or not. I was debating whether to join the queue, to go into the supermarket just for a walk around and maybe pick up a packet of biscuits just for some comfort food when suddenly an enormous dogfight broke out between two big dogs. Neither of the owners of these two dogs could seem to control it. In the meantime, there was a radio broadcast about some event that had taken place. It was on the Saturday in September, a week before the cup final involving Seraing. But there would be no cup final taking place in September – the new season should be well under way so I wondered just what this news broadcast on the radio was all about.

This reminds me of the first lockdown. I had a medical appointment that morning so had to go out, and I’ve never seen the town so deserted. I was half-expecting a tumbleweed to roll out of an alley. And do you remember having to queue to be allowed into a shop?

But leaving aside the question of a cup final in September, there would be no chance of Seraing competing in it. It’s one of the professional football clubs in Liège, although its fortunes have been such that it’s played in the amateur leagues on several occasions just recently. As for Seraing itself, it’s the home of the old Cockerill-Sambre steel mill, and it’s probably the grimiest, dirtiest industrial place that I have ever known

We were coming back from the Auvergne towards Brussels and we ended up going round the bypass of some small town or village in the middle of Burgundy. I pointed out one or two buildings to my companion as we were going past, and I was surprised that I hadn’t driven through the centre, because the centre was extremely old and decayed but was really mysterious and weird at the same time. It was a town that I really loved. At some point, a group of us, who were together by now, stopped and being accompanied by one or two other people, walked through the town and came to some kind of bar or café. My companion made as if to go into the bar so I opened the door for her. However, she stood there at the door and glared at me with some kind of really evil look in her face so I made a laughing remark that “some people don’t like having the door open for them these days”. The guy who was with us gave my companion €2:00 and asked him to buy her a can of pop. She went in, still glaring at me, ordered two small bottles of some kind of alcoholic spirit and another drink. As soon as she had these bottles, the ripped the tops off and drank them both at the same time, followed quite quickly by this glass of beer or whatever it was. I had to remind her about the can of pop, which she eventually bought, and we made our way back. I carried on walking and ended up in the town centre of this really large city. I was on my own and that began to suit me much better because I’d seen a side of my companion that I didn’t wish to see. I began to walk, but then I had some kind of epileptic fit and was bouncing around on all fours on a patch of grass at the side of a pavement. One or two people came over to see that I was OK. One of them was this companion, and she made some kind of crazy remark about taking the wrong acid, but all that I wanted to do was to be there and calm down and let this fit pass, then gradually be able to get up and carry on with my walk. I was in no mood for company at that moment.

We’ve been to this small town or village before, in a previous dream quite some time ago. It’s not actually a real town, although when I was asleep, I was convinced that it was. “It was a town that I really loved”, probably because I’m “extremely old and decayed” too.

And what was going on with my companion was really strange and unnerving, especially when I had this epileptic fit.

I was back somewhere around the centre of France last night. I was in another small town. When I parked the car, I had a walk around the town to find out where the strongest radio signal was. It turned out to be right outside this doctor’s surgery place so I went in there to sit down, thinking that this would be a good place to wait in case anyone wants me on the radio. There were a couple of other people in there. The doctor came out and instead of inviting them into his room, he began to give them a medical examination right in front of me. I thought that this was totally wrong. He tried to make me move so that this patient could lie down where my chair was so I told him that there was another chair over there that he could use. He took this woman over to this other chair. All the time that I was sitting there with this mug of coffee and a young girl came in. She was looking for a place to sit so I asked her to sit next to me, and we began to chat. At that moment, my brother came in and he began to make some really sarcastic comments about me and what I was doing and why I was chatting to this girl. In the end, I just stood up, picked up my mug of hot coffee and threw some of it into his face. Everyone stopped and looked, including my brother, but I just sat down and carried on talking. After a while he came over and apologised but I took absolutely no notice whatsoever and carried on with what I was doing. Then, this girl and I decided that we’d go for a walk together. I found out then that the reason why she’d come into the doctor’s surgery was also because of the strongest radio signal. We went for this walk and it went just around this particular area where the radio signal was. But shortly later, we found ourselves out of the town, sitting down in a lay-by. We were having something of a picnic. My brother came up again and dropped some kind of map on the table. He said that the next day, he was going on a tour around the power stations of Yorkshire, and mentioned one or two. I pretended to be interested, but I wasn’t really, and carried on talking to this girl. After a while, we decided that we’d both get on my motorbike and head back into town and make plans to do something extremely similar the next day

So not only do I Get the Girl last night, I manage to put the family in its place too. That’s a rare event for a dream and I wish that I could do it more often.

The bit about the medical examination in the public waiting room of the doctor’s surgery is interesting, and I would love to know the significance of it.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in on her last day before her week’s break. She took my temperature, and it’s now down to normal. She wasn’t impressed when I told her that I hadn’t taken the doliprane, but I stuck to my guns all the same.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE.

It’s not just pottery where the developments have been quite surprising. Talking about wheelwrights for example, he tells us that "at the bottom of Pit LXX, which, from its pottery, had evidently belonged to the later period, lay the remains of a large wheel. It had been, on the whole, coarser and heavier than the wheels found in Pit XXIII,"

It really is surprising, this. Two possible explanations may be that the potters and wheelwrights had so much work that they were obliged to recruit less-trained assistants or, chillingly, some kind of cataclysm in the Western Empire had seen the wiping out of the skilled craftsmen, leaving their untrained assistants behind.

There are probably a dozen other explanations too.

Back in here, I had a radio programme to review before I sent it off, and then my Welsh homework followed it into the “out” box.

Finally, I could revise my Welsh but here wasn’t much time.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, followed by a neighbour who was also having a lot of trouble trying to have a fibre-optic connection installed.

There wasn’t much I could do for him, and after my cleaner left, I awaited the taxi.

It was early for once, but it made no difference as we had other people to pick up and drop off, so we were still pretty much at the same time as usual.

Here, I had my discussion about the weight. They were pretty much unmoved by my pleading, although in the end I managed to have it increased to 300 grammes – not a lot but nevertheless …

They left me pretty much alone today, although Emilie the Cute Consultant came to give me a prescription for these antibiotics – the original, presumably, being lost.

The taxi was waiting for me when I finished and, after dropping off someone in Sartilly, we came home. My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and she helped me into the apartment. After she left, I warmed up the other half-pizza and ate it, even if I didn’t feel like it. And now, I’m off to bed. I’m absolutely exhausted and I’ve fallen asleep twice already

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pleading … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once asked a friend why my pleading never seemed to work.
"Let’s face it" he said. "You’re such a miserable pleader."

0

Sunday 21st December 2025 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

… that starting work at 11:00 on a Sunday morning was some good going, how about starting at 12:00 today, then?

Not that it felt like it was going to be anything like that. As usual, thanks to drifting off to sleep on a couple of occasions while I was typing out my notes, it was another night where I failed miserably to beat my 22:30 deadline. In fact, it was so long ago that I was in bed before 23:30 that I can’t even remember when it was.

Anyway, when I had finally finished, it was more like 23:30 and I was really glad to be tucked up in my little cot. However, as seems to be the case these days, it wasn’t for long. It was 03:44 in fact when I opened my eyes, although a few coughing fits earlier had awoken me for a brief moment here and there.

Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep at that point. I lay there tossing and turning and watching the time on the ‘phone advance round to about 05:00. I began to think “give it half an hour and I’ll get up and do some work, like dictate the outstanding radio notes”.

The next thing that I remember was the nurse shaking me awake. Apparently I’d gone back to sleep again at some point. He sorted out my legs but wasn’t very happy about doing it while I was in bed. Mind you, neither was I. I’d have much rather been up and about and working rather than lying in my stinking pit, but there you go.

After he left, I reckoned that I’d give it a few more minutes and raise myself from the Dead, but it was somewhat more than a few more minutes. Actually, it was about 10:15 when I next awoke, and at that point I decided that I’d better shoot into action, otherwise I’ll be in here all day.

It was a quick nip into the bathroom and then a slow stroll into the living room to check the washing and to make breakfast. More porridge and coffee with two of the strange croissants that I made last Sunday. How could I possibly have rolled them inside out?

There was no rush at all this morning, and so it was midday when I was finally back in here. The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was still on the taxis last night, and so was Nerina. There was something happening about a coat of hers that had had a bowl of porridge fall on it so she was thinking of throwing it away. However, her mother, even though she didn’t really know what was wrong with it, said that she’d have a close look at it and see what she could do. That’s all that I remember of this.

There’s definitely something of an obsession with taxis right now, and I’ve no idea why. Those days are long behind me and they can stay behind me for all that I care. By the way, Nerina’s mother was a tailoress and she could work miracles with a piece of cloth.

Later on, I was in Crewe doing my shopping last night. I’d been to Woolworth’s to buy a few things. I’d sorted out what I’d needed and the shop assistant came along and tipped them into my bag and I paid for everything. I was then supposed to go to Marks and Spencers, but when I looked, I didn’t have very much time and had to go to the railway station. I picked up my bag, threw it over my shoulder and set out to walk. I found myself a couple of minutes later on a motorway interchange, the one up near Northwich. I had to walk all the way down the motorway to come off at Sandbach and then walk across to Crewe and had about fifteen or twenty minutes to do it so I thought that I should have to hurry. I set off down the slip road and there was a policeman there with his dog. The dog barked, which frightened the policeman. I walked past them and was looking at the traffic on the motorway bridge a little further down the hill. They were driving along normally on this bridge when suddenly, they leapt into the air and landed again as if they had hit a large object on the road. I was wondering what was happening there, but I thought that I didn’t have the time to stop and look because I had my train very shortly.

Those were the days when Woollies was next to Marks and Sparks. Woollies has long since closed down and Marks and Sparks has moved onto the new retail park where we used to go speedwaying and banger racing all those years ago. What a sad state of affairs that was when they demolished the old railway sports ground thirty or so years ago.

However, imagine walking down the motorway from Northwich to Sandbach, especially in about ten minutes.

There were also a few things going round in my head when I awoke that I didn’t dictate. Two things that I remember, so I don’t know if they were dreams or not, were firstly, there was some famous TV presenter sitting at a table with us who suddenly started to spout off a vicious anti-Welsh rant, to such an extent that I became violently angry. The second was being in a pub with friends of mine when suddenly one of them put on the table a very large and very dangerous-looking knife in a sheath. I remember saying that I’d told him on several occasions not to bring it out with him and that he was risking seven years in prison carrying it about with him.

Next, we had a footfest. Stranraer v Dumbarton. And while the unbeaten run goes on, it was a very poor, lacklustre performance that saw them creep to a very unsatisfactory 1-1 draw against Dumbarton. But with a squad containing five strikers, every one of whom is out injured right now, it’s hardly surprising that they didn’t manage to launch any kind of attack at all.

After that, I had the misfortune of coming across the St Johnstone-Greenock Morton game. And it was embarrassing to watch Morton slither to a miserable 5-0 defeat. Their squad just isn’t up to Championship-level football and I’ve noticed in a couple of previous games that several of their players look less than interested in what’s happening out there on the field.

For some reason, it was as quiet as the grave out there right now, so I decided to dictate the radio notes before the endless streams of tourists go strolling past.

When I’d finished, I edited the notes for the joining track for one of the radio programmes. That programme is now assembled and ready to go. It was actually thirteen seconds over the hour, but a judicious piece of editing enabled it to fit the timescale exactly.

Next task was to edit the other notes, which are the major part of the following programme. I didn’t get very far into those before it was time to knock off and go a-baking. Homemade bread and homemade pizza were on the list for today, so I made a couple of piles of dough.

While it was all festering, I came in here and did a few more bits and pieces of my Welsh homework. And this is a really difficult exercise because it’s revising a lesson that we learnt when I was absent in chemotherapy a few weeks ago.

So back in the kitchen, the bread and pizza were all made, and the pizza, such as I ate, was delicious. But once more, there’s half of it left that I shall finish off for tea tomorrow. All that remains to cook for Christmas now is the vegan Wellington, for which Liz sent me a recipe a couple of years ago, and the hash browns.

As well as that, I might try a little experiment. I’ve received a recipe for homemade baked beans and, struggling to find any good ones here, I might give it a try and see how they work out.

But that’s for Tuesday. Tonight, I’m off to bed, probably to dream about more taxis and wake up at some silly time in the morning.

But seeing as we have been talking about cleaning clothes and porridge … "well, one of us has" – ed … after a late working session in the White House, Monica Lewinsky went into the local dry cleaner’s to pick up a dress she had left behind for cleaning.
As the cashier handed her the dress, she said "Thank you Miss Lewinsky. Come again!"
"No" replied Monica. "Porridge this time."

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Friday 19th December 2025 – HERE WE GO …

… again!

Yet again, I awoke at some totally ridiculous hour – to wit, 02:55 – this morning. That’s four consecutive days, if I remember correctly … "not that there’s much hope of that" – ed …

It’s hard to believe that I’m awake so early in the morning after the nights that I’ve been having, when I’ve been so tired that I’ve fallen asleep while typing my notes.

Last night was another night when I fell asleep mid-type. And by the time that I’d awoken, finished everything and gone to bed, what might have been an early start was now something like 23:30.

As usual, I fell asleep quite quickly, which was no surprise seeing how tired I was. What was a surprise was how quickly I awoke.

So there I was, tossing and turning and trying to go back to sleep, but to absolutely no avail. In the end, round about 04:50, I abandoned all attempts at sleeping and rose from the Dead.

Taking advantage of the early start, I dictated the text for the joining track for one of the radio programmes and then all of the notes for another one that I’d written earlier in the week. That was a huge slice of work to do, so I’m glad that I had this early start.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I went into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up and then into the kitchen for the medication and the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with Nerina last night, and we were in Shavington. For some reason, we had two girls living with us. They were in their early 20s, I imagine, but I had to take them to primary school in the morning. I’ve no idea why. Then Nerina, who turned out then to be another friend instead of Nerina, was signing up for a university course on the internet. I had as well, and there was another woman too. We were given all of the books and all of the paperwork and given a machine that related in some way to the exam. However, we couldn’t work out how this machine worked. I thought that it would be something that we would learn as we worked our way through the course, but apparently, there was an exam on the very first day, or this was the impression that we had from the paperwork, and none of us were able to do it. This woman was rather upset by it and we felt really sorry for her being upset. The other two of us thought that we’d be able to puzzle it out as time went on and work out about this exam. In the meantime, we needed it to be confirmed about when the date of this exam was. I suggested that my friend sign up for the university’s intranet group to see who else was online whom we could ask. She said that she needed to have a dozen names but didn’t know anyone. I suggested that she sign up anyway and trawl through the names to see if there was anyone whom she recognised from when she was there on a previous occasion. This was turning into a difficult problem so in the end, she said that if I were going to take the two girls to school tomorrow morning, why don’t we go early? She’d come with me and we’d go for a coffee, and then she could find a few footpaths to walk round while she cleared her head. I asked her “where could you find a cup of coffee in Shavington anywhere?”. She agreed that there really wasn’t anywhere. Not even the bakery had a place where you could sit and drink coffee.

Back in those days, and probably still today, there was nowhere in Shavington to go for a coffee. There wasn’t even a bakery. And these two adult girls going to primary school is an interesting subject.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day, we discussed in brief the university’s intranet system and the utter chaos that reigned on there. It’s probably much more focused and managed there these days, which is a shame because the chaotic nature of the intranet was quite enjoyable from a bystander’s point of view.

The nurse put in an appearance as usual. I’m worried about his cheerful state of mind these days. He’s been like this for several months now and it’s not normal. I don’t know what he puts in his morning cuppa but I wish that he’d bring some of it round here.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

He’s still all at sea with his forts in South Wales. He’s tracing Iter XV from Gloucester into Wales but, according to him, "there is little evidence of a Roman road either from Gloucester or on to Monmouth, where no Roman remains are known.".

Today, we know that Monmouth is the Roman town of Blestium and considerable Roman remains have been uncovered there. And, being more confused, he puts Ariconium near Littledean, whereas modern research places it twenty or so miles north near Ross-on-Wye.

After breakfast, I came in here and edited the first lot of notes that I’d dictated. And then, assembling the programme, I was thirteen seconds over so that called for some editing to bring it down to the one-hour time limit

Next task was the second, long batch of notes. And by the time that I finished work, they were all edited and the programme assembled into its two halves. I chose the joining track and then wrote out the notes for it, ready for dictation the next early morning.

Everything should have been finished much earlier than it was but we had a few interruptions. Firstly, the postie came with a couple of packets, and then the cleaner turned up to do her stuff. Thirdly, and regrettably, I crashed out on the chair here, not that that’s any surprise.

Tea tonight was air-fried chips, a small salad and some vegan nuggets, followed by a slice of fruitcake and soya dessert. And now, I’m off to bed to try again to have a decent sleep.

But seeing as we have been talking about university … "well, one of us has" – ed … an Oxbridge graduate went into the office for his first day at work. The manager handed him a mop and bucket and told him to clean the floor.
"I’ll have you know that I’m an Oxbridge graduate!" roared the new starter.
"Oh right" said the manager. "In that case, come over here and I’ll show you how to use them."

0

Monday 15th December 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S NICE …

… lie-in, it was back to the daily grind and an 06:29 start this morning. And that’s what I call disappointing because I enjoyed myself yesterday, even if Isabelle the Nurse didn’t bring me coffee in bed.

To make matters worse, it wasn’t an early night last night either. I’m still stuck in this dilatory, time-wasting mood where I just can’t seem to advance at all. By the time that I’d finished everything that needed finishing, it was 23:30 and I still wasn’t in bed.

Once in bed, though, I slept flat-out until the alarm went off and I could have gone back to bed to do it all again afterwards. It took me a good few minutes to summon up the energy to leave the bed and toddle off into the bathroom, where I even had a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant.

In the kitchen, I made myself a hot ginger, lemon and honey drink to take with my medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was back on the taxis again and I was trying to make myself better organized, so I began to do some kind of tidying up of the yard. We had a crashed Ford Cortina down there and I wanted that brought round to somewhere else so that it would be easier for me to take parts from it. For some reason, no-one was particularly interested in helping me. We had a couple of other newer vehicles, one of which was a Cavalier diesel. The carpets in the front were rather worn, so I ordered a new front half section. I wanted to fit that in at some time but the car was out working, so it wasn’t possible right at that particular moment, so I decided to go back outside again. Nerina was there and she said that she’d come with me. She was working for me, but she was making it quite clear without any subtlety at all that she was interested in entering a relationship with me. I was rather cautious because this was the kind of thing that could lead to a disaster at some point, so I was very noncommittal. We went outside, and I said to Nerina “I’ll tell you something – that if we do ever get together, I’ve decided something extremely important” but she took no notice. I must have said it four times as we walked down to the bottom of the garden but she took no notice at all. Down at the bottom of the garden, the crashed Cortina had gone. I asked Nerina about it, and she said that she’d lent it to another taxi driver who was just starting up in business. I wasn’t really pleased about that because I didn’t want my crashed cars to be going around on the road, least of all with someone else not associated with me. I asked her how much she’d agreed for a rental. She replied “nothing at all”. I thought that that was an absurd situation, with one of my crashed cars being driven around by another taxi operator, and at the same time, we’re not taking anything out of it except the hassle of losing whatever good reputation we would otherwise have.

This taxi-driving is rapidly becoming an obsession with me, isn’t it? But it’s true to say that there were one or two crashed Cortinas around where I was. We’d pick them up for peanuts, some for even nothing at all, and then I’d break them for the spare parts. I still have a few bits and pieces lying around on the farm, including an engine that I rebuilt but which threw a con-rod on its first time out. There’s also a matching 2000cc engine and auto gearbox for a Cortina 2000E. The big ends have gone in the engine, and so the car (also down on the farm) has a 1600cc manual set-up in it right now. But the car, the engine and the auto box, all with matching numbers, are probably worth a fortune these days – but not as much as the 2000E estate that’s in my barn down there.

Isabelle the Nurse came along as usual, and I told her how disappointed I was about the lack of coffee yesterday morning. In reply, she told me to clear off.

After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Our author seems to have become sidetracked just now. We’ve been having an exploration of the Iron Age hillforts in Dorset, such as Maiden Castle and the Badbury Ring. Interestingly, though, he makes reference to an Iron Age barrow and how the Roman road-builders put their road right through it. So much for respecting the culture of the original inhabitants, hey?

After breakfast, I had a few things to do and then I began to work on my Welsh homework. And this batch is difficult because it concerns the part of the course that I missed when I was at Rennes the other week. I won’t be doing much celebrating when this lot comes back.

My cleaner was late arriving to apply my anaesthetic but it didn’t matter too much, because the taxi was late arriving. And then we had to go back to the Centre Normandy because the driver had forgotten his telephone. As a result, we were late arriving at dialysis and, as usual, I was last to be coupled up

The doctor came to see how I was, and I took the opportunity to talk to him as to why the latest medication isn’t on the list of long-term medication. He assured me that it was, and he even showed me a duplicate where it was clearly so labelled. So, what are they playing at in the pharmacy?

After that, everyone left me alone, except Julie the Cook, who showed me some photos of her latest creations. I shall miss her when she’s gone.

Having had on the outward trip the guy who thinks that he runs the show, on the way back, I had my favourite Belgian taxi driver. She wasn’t very happy, as she had just witnessed a serious accident on the motorway and she needed to talk. And so we talked all the way home, but you could tell that this was preying on her mind.

My faithful cleaner was waiting to escort me into the building, and I noticed that there were now lights on in my old apartment. Someone has finally moved in.

Tea was the other half of last night’s pizza, and once it had been warmed up, it tasted even nicer than yesterday. The fruitcake and the last of the chocolate soya dessert were nice too.

Right now though, falling asleep at my desk, I’m going to bed. It’s the last Welsh course of the year tomorrow so I want to be on form for it, although it’s a hopeless task, I reckon.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the pharmacy … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time when I came home from work and found Nerina in tears.
"Whatever is the matter, dear?" I asked
"It’s the pharmacist " she said. "You’ve no idea how rude he has been to me today."
So off I went to have a few words with him about it.
"Don’t blame me!" he said. "Your wife asked me how a rectal thermometer worked, and all I did was to tell her! "

0

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s pointless going to bed early, because all that it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

Actually, you have no idea just how tired I was last night. I fell asleep twice … "or was it three times?" – ed … while I was typing out my notes, and in the end I gave up. I left undone a lot of things that I shouldn’t have left undone, and round about 22:20 I crawled into bed.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, and there I stayed until about … errr … 04:20 when I awoke. I was able at that point to go back to sleep, but when I awoke the next time at 05:13, that was that. By 06:00, I was in the bathroom having a wash.

After the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink and my medication, I came back in here to finish off what I should have finished off last night, like take the stats and back up the computer.

Then it was time to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back in my office again and it was the final day so I was preparing to retire. I was slowly going through my things, slowly tidying up. But at one point, I was actually in somewhere else trying to clear the floor of all kinds of papers and everything. It was all little notes and stuff that I’d written years ago and it all went into the bin. I couldn’t believe how tidy I’d made the place. I even found an assignment from one of my University courses and when I had a look at it, I found that although it had received a good mark, the page layout and format of the document that I’d sent was awful, and I wondered how on earth I’d managed to miss this when I’d been preparing it. Then I was back in my office and going through my desk. There were tons of stuff, and I couldn’t work out what I needed to take and what I needed to leave behind. People were asking me what I intended to do. I replied that I had a deckchair, a nice garden and two nice cats. I’ll just sit out and enjoy the summer. Two of us, right at that moment, said that I’d picked the best time of the year to leave. Then the boss came round and asked me if I was nearly ready to go. I replied that I was still sorting out my stuff. She said something like “don’t take the toaster” which was the office toaster that was on my desk. I replied “it’s still on my desk, isn’t it?” because I thought that it was a really offensive thing to say. Then I suddenly realised that it was Friday so I rang up Nerina at her place and asked “shouldn’t we be going swimming tonight after work? I haven’t brought anything to wear”. She replied “I’ll get something off one of my brothers, some shorts or something” but I wasn’t too keen on the idea. Then she told me about this plastic underwear that you could buy. I turned up my nose at that. She tried to persuade me but I wasn’t in the mood to be persuaded. In the end, I thought that I’d probably just go home and make some tea for when Nerina comes home. That’s going to be the best solution but she was still trying to persuade me to wear either her brother’s shorts or some of this plastic underwear.

So having spent all those years during the night reaching the final few days at work but never actually finishing, here I am finally about to cross the threshold. That’s twice in a week or two that I’ve done that, after all of these years.

But whatever this is about plastic underwear? I really don’t know. And as if I really would pinch the office toaster … "perish the thought" – ed …

The nurse turned up, his usual cheerful self (at least, these days) and we had a little chat as he sorted out my legs. He’s all inclined not to come on Sundays to give me even more of a rest and relax, but I’m not quite at that stage yet – although if I fall asleep once more while I’m typing these notes, as I just did five minutes ago, I’ll think again.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Not that I managed to go very far today, though. I was side-tracked … "again" – ed … looking for the one of the many towns named Manton that contains some significant Roman remains, and ended up going on a guided tour of Roman villas in England – abandoned, or burnt, or destroyed, or buried.

You’ve no idea just how many there are altogether. They even came across one when they were digging a driveway into the Council offices in Bromley.

After breakfast, I came in here to revise my Welsh and then I went to the lesson. It started off quite well, but it all went pear-shaped when we had a spontaneous test on a subject that had been covered by the class while I was at chemotherapy. That was an embarrassment.

However, I bravely stuck it out until the end of the lesson, but I was glad that it was over.

My faithful cleaner came around later, as usual, and organised the shower for me. And so now, I’m a nice, clean boy again. I can’t wait, though, to have the time to order the handrails for the shower so that I can shower on my own and have more than one per week.

After the shower and I’d dried myself off, the next task was to install the strings of Christmas lights in the windows.

Last year, I was the only person in this whole area who had some pretty coloured lights in the window. And even though I’m not a believer in Christmas or anything like that, it’s still nice to bring some joy and gaiety into a depressing period of the year and it’s a shame that other people don’t make any kind of effort at all.

Consequently, my faithful cleaner (under my supervision) put up my lights in both the windows, and now it looks as if at least one person in the area is celebrating Christmas instead of the whole area being so miserable about it. At some point, I’ll even organise my Christmas tree.

After my cleaner left, I sorted out the rest of the music that I need for my next radio programme, and I’ll organise that over the rest of the week. And won’t it be nice to have a couple of days when I’m going nowhere, so that I can press on.

Tea tonight was mashed potatoes, veg and vegan sausage, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. Only small portions, but I managed to eat it all tonight. It’s a meal with foods that are full of carbohydrates and fats so while it’s not a particularly healthy meal, it’s full of energy and proteins so that should help to keep me going while this lack of appetite persists.

And so, on that point, I’m going to be and see how I’ll get on tonight. I could do with another good sleep but, as usual, that’s not particularly likely. We shall see.

But seeing as we have been talking about sticking it out … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a story that I heard when I was in the High Arctic about two nudists who went on a camping holiday in the north of Greenland.
Freezing and shivering to death inside their tent, they were wondering how long they could stick it out before they ended up being frost-bitten.

0

Wednesday 26th November 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I crashed out in the chair in my office during the late afternoon.

That’s something that I really must stop because it’s really driving me insane, all of this. I’m not managing to complete anything that I set out to do.

Part of it is probably due to the late night that I had. I can’t keep these early nights going for any consistent length of time. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do at the end of the evening and crawled into my nice, clean bed, it was well after 23:30.

Add to that, the fact that for a couple of hours, I was totally unable to go to sleep might also have had something to do with it. I lay there tossing and turning and trying to make myself comfortable, but to no avail.

Eventually though, I must have gone to sleep because I remember waking up. I lay there, half-awake, for a little while and then checked the time. It was 06:28, one minute before the alarm but not before it enough to be able to be sitting upright with my feet on the floor when the alarm went off and claim an early start.

Instead, I just lay there waiting.

Eventually, I managed to force myself out of bed and went off into the bathroom.

Next stop was the kitchen, where I made my hot lemon, honey and ginger drink to wash down my medication. And then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with TOTGA and her daughter, her son and her slightly older daughter. We’d all gone to the seaside. TOTGA was sitting there thinking that maybe she would like an ice-cream so daughter and I went for a walk. We had a chat, and it turned out that her elder sister had had some kind of accident a few months ago and it was something that was recurring. When I asked where she was, her sister replied that she was in hospital again and her mother was off doing something else, she didn’t quite know where. We walked along together down the seafront and it began to be cold and rainy somewhat. She pointed to an ice-cream stall halfway up a set of steps so we climbed up these steps and went into the ice cream stall. There were lots of people milling around and they all recognised the girl. Anyway, we bought three cornets. I noticed that mine didn’t have a flake in it and hers had two and her mother’s had one. Then we walked as if we were heading back home. We came to a place in the street where she wanted to cross the road so we had to worry. She went in and I found that it was a health food shop. She was wondering if they had any of these products – she wanted some breakfast nuts, something like that. We had a look around, still holding these ice-creams and she found what she thought might be fine. She explained that her brother was looking for these and had not been able to find them anywhere else. But at the ice-cream stall, everyone knew the girl and they were all talking about her, whether she was coming back to work there again. However, I was certain that she was far too young to be working in a place like that, even on a Saturday.

So welcome back, TOTGA, even if it was only for a short while. It’s been a while since you’ve featured on these pages. However, instead of two daughters and a son, it’s two sons and a daughter, but let’s not go letting the facts stand in the way of a good dream… "perish the thought" – ed …

The idea of walking around the town with melting ice-creams is a bizarre one, but the conjuring trick with the flakes is the kind of thing that Zero would be more likely to do, rather than TOTGA’s daughter.

Later on, Nerina and I had been driving taxis last night and it had been a slow, slow day. We’d done about three or four jobs, that’s all, and were sitting at the side of the road in a lay-by having a chat. Someone came over with a big parcel and we thought that this might be a fare but it wasn’t. It was just someone chatting to a neighbour. In the end, Nerina decided that she’d go back to the rank. Before she did, someone in a blue uniform came over. He said that he wanted to book a taxi for 04:00, but it was only a short trip. I said to Nerina “ladies first” so she began to note the details. However, she said “we already have this job” when she looked at the paperwork. “It’s down for 03:55”. The guy apologised and then needed some help to be pushed onto the bus that turned up, because the bus was crowded and there wasn’t very much room on there for anyone else.

Strangely enough, the subject of taxis has been something that has featured quite considerably elsewhere in very recent times. But things would help if I stopped trying to remember the things that I did forty years later and how I could improve on them if I were to do it all again, something that I have absolutely no intention of doing.

Isabelle the Nurse drifted in, dressed for an Arctic winter. Apparently, it was minus 2°C when she set out on her rounds this morning and she had to scrape the ice off her windscreen. “Winter is acumen in, lhude singe Rudolph” and all of that.

She gave me my injection, sorted out my feet and then drifted out again to brave the Arctic temperatures. I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

In fact, I didn’t read all that much of it. I ended up being sidetracked into the Iter Britanniarum – the guidebook said to have been prepared for the Emperor Augustus although it’s suggested that it was the Emperor Caracalla who was its sponsor, seeing that it includes much that was not in existence in the time of Augustus.

It’s like the kind of thing that we had in the distant past, a kind of “RAC Handbook” listing Roman roads, wayside stations, inns and the like. I’ve been following Codrington’s book and using the Iter Britanniarum to plot where the wayside stations might be. If one considers that a Roman mile – a mille passum – was actually one thousand double paces, and is equivalent to about 0.92 of a modern mile, the distances given in the Iter Britanniarum are surprisingly accurate.

Back in here, I had things to do and then I began to edit the rest of the radio notes that I’d dictated the other day.

Later on, I knocked off in order to prepare for the Centre de Ré-education. The taxi was late coming to pick me up and I missed the first ten minutes of my session with the occupational therapist.

Not that I missed much, because despite spending a week searching, he couldn’t find anything more practical than the system that we were using. However, he did suggest a liberal usage of anti-slip tape. On the other hand, I prefer four good stainless steel screws myself.

My second session was with my physiotherapist and she worked me quite hard today, forcing my legs into all kinds of impossible positions. I was so exhausted after this session that I couldn’t lift myself up off the bench.

And that was all today. They had cancelled my next two sessions! But let’s not be carried away by this because there are stil four, and sometimes five sessions for the next couple of visits.

One of these visits though is to see my doctor, when I shall tell her how I’m feeling.

It was another desperate struggle to the taxi to bring me home, and another desperate struggle to come into the apartment. I really don’t know how I would manage if my faithful cleaner were not there to help me.

Back in the apartment, I collapsed into a chair for half an hour, trying to summon up the energy to move, and then I moved into the office where, regrettably, I fell asleep.

Once I’d awoken, I completed the radio programme but I’m a few seconds short. I shall have to re-dictate something to include a few more notes in order to make the commentary rather longer.

Tea tonight was rice with vegetables and a vegan burger, followed by ginger cake and a mandarine … "PERSONdarine" – ed … and lemon soya dessert. It really is nice too.

So now, I’m off to bed. I’ve done enough for today and I have the delights of dialysis tomorrow. Let’s see what my water retention is like, then I hope that they won’t want me to come in on Saturday.

But seeing as we have been talking about ice-cream … "well, one of us has" – ed … Crewe was very famous for its ice-cream vans, made by SC Cummins and Co. They were exported all around the World, but even so, there were always plenty plying the streets of the town.
One day, out at Queen’s Park, a girl from Crewe went up to an ice-cream van there and asked for a chocolate ice-cream cornet
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman. "I’m out of chocolate ice-cream"
"But I want chocolate" she insisted.
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman.
"But sorry is no good! I want chocolate!"
"Look" said the salesman, exasperated. "If you took the ‘s’ out of ‘strawberry’, what would you have?"
"trawberry" replied the girl
"And if you took the ‘p’ out of ‘pistachio’? "
"Istachio " she replied.
"And if you took the ‘f’ out of chocolate?"
"But there’s no ‘f’ in chocolate!"
"And isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last ten minutes?"

0

Tuesday 28th October 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I was asleep when the alarm went off at 06:29 this morning. I don’t know what’s happening to me. A few weeks ago, I’d have been up and about for several hours by then.

It’s not as if I had had a late night either. Although it wasn’t as early as I would have liked, 23:20 isn’t all that late by current standards. It could have been earlier too, but I can’t seem to find the motivation these days to push on and complete even the most simple tasks.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly, and there I stayed, flat out, until about 04:15. Having checked the time, I rolled over and went back to sleep, and that was that. I wish that I could do that more often.

As usual, it took me a good while for me to find the motivation to raise myself to my feet and stagger off to the bathroom, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here; I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was something about a ships’ convoy sailing down the coast of Normandy out here in the bay. They were keeping to shallow waters so that a submarine wouldn’t creep up on them and sink them

Yesterday, I was reading a report on the convoy codes from World War II and what they meant, such as SC, representing “Sydney, Cape Breton” – the slow convoys from the Gulf of St Lawrence to Liverpool, and the reverse route from Liverpool to the Gulf, ONS, meaning “Outbound, Northwards, Slow”. There were hundreds of convoy routes, each one with its own identity. What a convoy would be doing, hugging the coast to keep clear of submarines, is anyone’s guess.

There was also something about shopping and someone going to buy some food, and having to buy something else like a bread bun that was loose in one of these dispenser things.

This one, however, is totally meaningless.

But the one that I remember was someone being awoken in the morning and having to dress. He put on a suit but the suit was soaking wet; It had been on the floor when there had been a flood or something like that, but it was the only suit that he had so he put it on and tried his best to make himself tidy. He went into the living room where there were a few other people waiting. They began to talk about leaving. There was something about breakfast – whether they should have breakfast before leaving because all along the way, all of the shops were forbidden to serve Jews so they wouldn’t have anything to eat until they boarded their ship that was taking them to immigrate to the New World.

This one doesn’t seem to relate to too much either. Many Jews did flee Europe in the late 19th and early 20th Century, in order to escape persecution. Many more tried in the late 1930s but of those who did manage to escape on board a ship, many were refused entry at the destinations of their choice

A young Zero put in an appearance last night. She was coming to stay with Nerina and me for a couple of days, so we went to pick her up and brought her home. We all settled down on the settee and we let her choose a film. She chose CROCODILE DUNDEE and put the DVD on. But the film wasn’t anything at all about that. It was more of a cartoon type of ASTERIX THE GAUL and his friends, who were invaded by the Romans and the misadventures that befell them. All of the woman in this film had fallen in love with Caesar and so they wanted to assassinate Caesar but they couldn’t agree on a method of doing it. In the end, the plot was exposed, and they were all fastened to this huge plank of wood that was hinged on the floor. When they were fastened there, they were raised up – the plank of wood was raised up almost vertically so that the sun was shining directly onto them all. It was a form of medieval torture.

So welcome back, Zero! It’s nice to see her during the night, and it’s a shame that she couldn’t stay around for longer. However, I didn’t think much of the ending to this dream. It’s been quite a while since there has been a violent dream. At one time, I was having these bloodthirsty dreams on a regular basis.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in this morning, full of good humour and bonhomie. She gave me the first of this series of injections and then tended to my feet, chatting all the time. It seems that her son is off on holiday to Scotland at some point and she was asking after some hints.

My favourite part of Scotland is the West Coast, all around the lochs and islands, but I’m also a big fan of Galloway, where I’ve spent many a happy day or three.

After Isabelle the Nurse left, I made breakfast and then came back in here.

There was plenty to do at first and it took an age. It still doesn’t seem as if I’ve actually done anything. But once I’d finished as far as I could, I made a start on the radio programme.

By the time that I’d finished, I’d chosen all of the music, edited and remixed it, paired and segued it, and written half of the notes. Tomorrow, I shall have to crack on and finish.

There was an interruption today, when my faithful cleaner came in to do her stuff. That included organising a shower for me, and I did something that I haven’t done for several years – which was to climb unaided into the shower.

That was a real feather in my cap, I can tell you. And I enjoyed the climb too. The shower was even nicer, and now, I’m a nice, clean boy.

For tea tonight, I had a taco roll with rice and veg. But not the usual taco roll – I made it with soya mince and kidney beans just for a change. It was a change too, but I’m not going to say that it was any better.

So now, I’m off to bed ready for tomorrow. And as well as a nice, clean me, there’s a nice, clean bed. My cleaner changed the bedding this afternoon while I was showering. I’m really going to be in the lap of luxury tonight and I can’t wait to climb into it.

But seeing as we have been talking about showers … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was once in a motel when I heard a woman in another room shout "it’s disgusting. It shouldn’t be allowed!"
Of course, I wandered over there to see what was going on.
"It’s the man in the room next door" she said. "He’s in the shower, doing rude things to himself!"
So I had a look in the shower and couldn’t see anything at all.
"Of course you can’t" she said. "But if you put the bedside chair on top of the chest of drawers and climb up, you can see him through the air brick if you squint."

0

Friday 24th October 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I’ve left the table, leaving a pile of food on my plate. This is something that is beginning to worry me. It seems that these days, I’m living on a few mouthfuls of food and a pile of protein drinks, and that can’t be good for me.

And neither is going to bed late either, but here we are. last night, it was just after 23:30 when I finally made it into bed. I really don’t know where the time goes these days. It’s not as if there’s a great deal to do when I have finished my tea.

So after writing my notes, checking the statistics and backing up the computer, I went and sorted myself out in the bathroom and then a very weary me headed off to crawl underneath the covers.

For a change, I had a decent sleep. I remember tossing and turning a few times during the night, but that was about everything. At least – until about 06:20 when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings.

Only nine minutes to go for the alarm so I hauled myself quickly out from underneath the covers and switched off the alarms. The storm seemed to have died down somewhat, which was good news. One of the ideas going through my head was that if the wind was blowing anything at all like yesterday, I was going to cancel my trip to the Centre de Ré-education.

Being out of bed at 06:20 is one thing. Actually standing up and heading to the bathroom is something else completely, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

After a good wash and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. And it was rather disappointing. Nerina and I had had a friend come round to visit us. We went for a drive into Crewe – the town centre. As we turned into Flag Lane, there was the Workingmen’s Club place on the right-hand side in the old temporary buildings so we stopped and went in. The person with us was extremely impressed. He’d never seen a place like this before – hundreds of people lounging around, playing darts or snooker, carpet bowls etc. I said that I’d been here a couple of times to give talks on different things. It’s the kind of place where you would come where there was a big football match on the TV and it’s a place where you would have plenty of atmosphere in here with the crowds watching it.

In Crewe, there were plenty of Workingmen’s Clubs and Family Social Clubs, although a lot less these days than there used to be. In my mis-spent youth I used to go to play snooker and table tennis (and have the occasional drink) in one or two of them, and I’ve even played in groups that have played in them. The buildings to which I’m referring though are the old Catholic primary school which, according to one of these street view things, has now been demolished and replaced by a flock of bats.

There’s an interesting story about the communal TV though. When I was very young, in the late 1950s or early 1960s, there was a cup game featuring Crewe Alexandra being televised. The parish council hired a television for the night and there were probably a couple of hundreds of us crammed into Shavington Village Hall watching the game on this tiny 405-line TV screen.

“The Good Old Days”, anyone?.

The nurse was early today. Apparently another one of his clients has been hospitalised … "what’s he doing to them all?" – ed … so his round is rather shorter. We talked about dialysis and the blood clot. He was formerly a dialysis nurse, and he told me that had it happened when he was working there, they would have cleaned the needle and re-inserted it, rather than abandon the procedure.

After he left, I made breakfast, even though I wasn’t all that hungry, and then came back in here to work.

There were a few things that needed doing, and the rest of the morning was spent sorting out some more music for a couple of radio programmes.

There were a few interruptions. Firstly, my cleaner came in with the injections for next week, and then Rosemary ‘phoned up for a chat. Just a brief one, because I needed to prepare my things for going out.

My cleaner came back a little later to do her stuff, and when the taxi arrived, she helped me out to the car although the wind was nothing at all as bad as yesterday.

At the Centre de Ré-education they put me through my paces.

Firstly, they had me working on a kind of press, sitting down and pushing weights with my feet.

Secondly, they attached a length of strong elastic to a pillar and I had to pull on it, keeping my upper arms parallel to my torso.

Those exercises were for fifteen minutes each

Thirdly, I was worked over by the physiotherapist who had me doing all kinds of things, even walking on my hands and knees. Thirty minutes of all of that was more than enough, thank you.

After a rest, during which I was drifting in and out of semi-sleep, I was given twelve minutes on the exercise bike. That was really tough, given the state of my knees and lower legs, but I managed to travel 1.3 theoretical kilometres. At one stage, I was developing as much as eleven watts of power.

It wasn’t just the exercises either. For many of the exercises, they had me sitting in low seats, from which it is almost impossible for me to haul myself up. It was a real gymnastic effort to do that, but, as they say, if it’s not hurting, it’s not doing you any good. I reckon that if that’s the case, then today I must have done a lot of good.

Just like chemotherapy, you don’t have a minute to recover before you are turfed out. It’s a labyrinth in there and you have to walk miles to where the taxis wait. Being disabled and in an exhausted state, it’s no picnic. When I arrived back here, I fell straight into a chair for an hour to recover.

Once I’d caught my breath, I came in here to sort out some more music and then went to make tea.

Tonight, I had a stir-fry of noodles, vegetables, bean sprouts and chick peas in soy sauce, but as I said just now, half of it went into the bin. I’m really not doing too well with my food and I can foresee serious problems ahead if I can’t find my appetite from somewhere.

But since chemotherapy, everything tastes of salt, I have the most incredible wind and I feel full all the time. What on earth is going on with my body?

Anyway, I’ll worry about that tomorrow because right now, I’m off to bed, hoping for a better day tomorrow. It’s dialysis, though, and we’ll see how the events of the last few days have affected that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about having the wind … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned to a doctor at dialysis the fact that I have wind.
"Can you give me anything for this wind that I have?" I asked.
He went away, and came back five minutes later with a kite.

0

Tuesday 21st October 2025 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since an old car featured on these pages?

Coming back from Rennes this late afternoon, I encountered a Panhard 24 CT two-door coupé coming the other way

Being driven by someone else, I couldn’t stop to photograph it, and as it was approaching us at some kind of ridiculous combined speed, it would have been an interesting challenge to say the least, so I had to let it go. But as it’s been almost a year since our last old car, I thought it worthy of note.

What else that was also worthy of note was that despite the alarm being set for 06:00 this morning, I was still early leaving the bed.

Having rushed through the usual procedure of notes, statistics, back-up and bathroom last night, I managed to be in bed early last night – round about 22:50. And although I fell asleep quite early, it wasn’t for long. I had a very turbulent night last night.

It was 05:10 when I awoke definitively, and after trying for about half an hour, I left the bed and went to the bathroom.

On the basis that “what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out”, I didn’t have anything to eat or drink this morning. Not even my medication. It’s going to be a long day.

At 07:00, my taxi arrived, driven by my favourite taxi driver. We had a lovely chat all the way down to the hospital at Rennes.

There were a couple of diversions too. Firstly, we had to go back to my driver’s house to pick up her ‘phone that she had forgotten. Then there was someone else to pick up on a housing estate outside Avranches. This passenger offered to show us the short-cut to the motorway, but ended up losing us in the maze of roadworks.

What with one thing and another … "and once you’ve made a start, you’ll be surprised at how many other things there are" – ed … we were twenty minutes late arriving.

It was a young intern doctor who saw me today, and he put me through the mill. He asked me to stand on the weighing machine, which was much more difficult than it ought to have been, and I’m convinced that he arranged it in order to see just if I managed to climb on.

He wasn’t very happy when he had to ring up Avranches to ask about my blood test results, because I’d somehow brought an out-of-date set.

In the end, he said that I was well enough to proceed with chemotherapy, finishing by saying "it’s all not so bad". I replied that as far as I was concerned, everything was an absolute disaster. "It was just a figure of speech" he said, hurriedly, but I still wasn’t impressed.

They took me straight in to chemotherapy, and then they all had some kind of discussion about what treatment I was supposed to have. I was there cringing, because there’s only one treatment of the (many) that I can tolerate with any kind of comfort, and I hoped that they weren’t going to mess it up.

Eventually, about an hour and a half later than advertised, they connected me up. I fell almost immediately asleep, and that’s how most of the day went. Me falling asleep, they waking me up with questions, blood pressure tests etc. At one stage I began to shiver so they gave me a sheet in which to wrap myself.

“This is very significant” I thought. “I wonder if it means anything”. It was certainly enough to put the dampers on everything.

The meal for me was boiled potatoes and fruit. I think that the vegan burger last time was beginner’s luck. And although fruit is banned from my menu, according to the dieticians, the orange and the banana looked so appetising that I couldn’t resist.

They unplugged me at about 15:15 and my taxi was waiting. I had to send for a wheelchair because I was in no state to walk. They don’t allow you even five minutes there to recover before you’re on your way. It’s very industrial there.

Before I left, they gave me a summons to come back tomorrow for part II of the treatment – again at 08:30! So another 07:00 start!

There was someone else to drop off at Avranches, and I finally made it home at 17:00 exactly.

To my embarrassment, I couldn’t exit the car, I was that weak. And once I did manage to raise myself to my feet, it was a real struggle to reach my front door.

After a good hour or so’s recovery, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. During World War I, several captured merchant ships were renamed and handed out to British companies who had already lost ships at sea because of the war. One of these ships became the SS Rhosllanerchrugog or a similar kind of name. When people heard of the name and saw the name written on the back of the jackets of the sailors, they were astonished because they didn’t understand how there would possibly be a name that long for a merchant ship. But she took the name and she took the crew and she sailed quite happily for the rest of the war.

This relates to what I read a couple of weeks ago about merchant raiding ships, disguised German warships capturing merchant ships, siphoning off their oil for fuel, and then either sending the ship to Germany if it had a valuable cargo, or scuttling it if it was valueless.

Interestingly, I pronounced the first syllable of the ship’s name as “ros” which, although is the “official” way of pronouncing the word, I’ve always pronounced it as “hrowse”. That is how it’s pronounced in a small area south of Wrexham and north of Rhiwabon, including in the town of Rhosllanerchrugog itself.

Why I pronounce it like that, I’ve no idea because my grandmother comes from South Wales and lived, apparently, north of Wrexham. When she married, they moved east to near the English border so I’ve no connection at all with the area of Rhosllanerchrugog.

We were camping somewhere in the Canadian Mountains. I’d not long arrived, and I decided that I would go to buy a loaf of bread so that I could buy something to eat. I walked round to the nearest shop, but all that they had left were two sandwiches, but someone immediately bought those. It wasn’t a shop, it was a petrol station. I tried to look around for a shop but the only shop that they had didn’t have any bread. We saw a mobile home thing drive off the campsite and shoot off somewhere. We’d heard that he was looking for bread too so we decided to follow him. About twenty miles into the mountains, we came across another small shop and there were several people hanging around there. So we went and asked if they had any bread. While we were doing that, I wandered around and found some loaves on the shelf. I went to pick one up but the woman told me not to pick that up because it was out of date0 I had a look, and it was about twenty years out of date. The guy in charge of the shop said that he had some bread in the back but he’s trying to find the keys for the storeroom. We waited and waited, and he searched and searched. After a couple of hours, he said that he was unable to find them. So we began to search to help him, but we couldn’t even find the lights to the storeroom, never mind the keys. We were there, searching for hours. I had to nip to the bathroom so I disappeared. I came back ten minutes later and found everyone gone. The place was shuttered. It seemed that he had not been able to find it at all. There was some rumour that the shop back in town had had sixteen hundred loaves delivered so we climbed back into our vehicles to head back. But there was someone, an old man, sitting on a bench outside the shop, and after we’d gone, the proprietor came out. It turned out that the little old man was Louis Roblès, the footballer from Bala. Those two greeted each other like long-lost brothers.

There’s a small town – a village really – on the “Forgotten Coast” of Québec called Godbout where I WENT TO STAY FOR A WEEK when they let me out of hospital in 2016. To find bread around there quite often involved a 20 km drive, and more besides at times.

However, although I met the solicitor from my neighbouring village in the Auvergne … "it’s a small world" – ed … I didn’t meet Louis Roblès, who, incidentally, plays for Colwyn Bay this season.

There was also something about me trying on hats. I found a nice, fur-lined olive green hat that I tried on. That seemed to fit quite nicely and it was warm, so I decided to take it. As I was doing that, a friend from school, who lived in Shavington from school walked past. He was surprised to see me and said “hello”. I said “hello” back. Once I had this hat on, two American soldiers walked past. One of them said “you are breaking the law wearing that hat”. I asked him if we were in the USA. He replied “no” so I told him that he could quickly go away, using a rather vulgar, vernacular term.

This dream doesn’t relate to anything at all, as far as I’m aware. And I bet that the boy was surprised to see me too! Considering that I haven’t given him a moment’s thought since we left school, I was surprised to see him in a dream!

Nerina and I had been working in a foreign country. We were sitting on a couple of chairs waiting to go home. We were on a cliff, and there was a real storm raging. The sea was really choppy and we could see trawlers and ships in the sea, struggling to make any headway. Then the currency exchange window opened. I went to the window but no-one would serve me for ten or fifteen minutes. When they finally did, after I’d made some remark, I had all of this money, and it was all in small change. I asked this woman if she would change it. She made some kind of grimace, but said that she would. I hauled out all of these pennies and ha’pennies. Nerina and I had counted them but we weren’t convinced that it was right, so she weighed them and worked out the price. I found some more, but she moaned at that and said that she didn’t think that she was going to add them into the total and give us anything for them. I told her that we could always find another currency exchange place if she wasn’t happy but she moaned even more. She said “your friend who was here last time took me out for a meal”, to which I replied “I’m not interested in going for a meal. I’m interested in changing my money”. I had noticed that on the counter, they had some really competitive prices for gold coin collections. I was wondering whether I had enough money to buy some gold and bring it home with me. But while this had started, Nerina was not in a particularly good mood so I went over and gave her a kiss. Someone sitting next to Nerina made some kind of comment but I ignored it.

There would have been no chance whatever of enticing Nerina to come to work abroad. Her feet were rooted firmly in Crewe, as close as possible to her mother. We had many a discussion about “abroad” but I realised quite quickly that nothing was going to persuade her otherwise, despite how many good arguments I might have been able to use.

And maybe if I’d kissed Nerina rather more when she had been in a bad mood, things might indeed have been different. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I can’t turn the clock back.

There was also something about changing my trousers into a pair of red trousers with a Welsh dragon on it, but they were about ten sizes too large for me. I had to draw the drawstrings really tight to keep them on.

This is completely strange too.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice. And I did manage to finish it all. That’s no surprise because that and the boiled potatoes are all that I’ve had to eat today. As for drinks, I’ve had 2×200ml disgusting drinks and two mouthsful of water, and that’s it.

So tomorrow, I’m off to chemotherapy again, so I’m off to bed, hoping to be in better shape than I am right now

But seeing as we have been talking about queueing for bread … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of when I was in Poland in 1979, and saw all these people queueing for hours for bread, which didn’t arrive.
One man began to make a fuss, shouting and waving his arms and denouncing the Communists. Subsequently, an armed patrol pulled up and surrounded the protestors.
"Now look what you’ve done, you old fool!" said one of the others. "We’re all going to be shot now!"
"There’s nothing to worry about" replied the old man. "If we’ve run out of bread, I bet that they’ve run out of bullets too!"

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Wednesday 15th October 2025 – I AM FEELING …

… a little more like it today.

Well, let’s just say that I have managed to go from about 05:30 or so until right now without falling asleep anywhere. That is of course not to say that I’m not tired or that I’ve done a lot of work today, but almost anything is an improvement on how I have been on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

That very long afternoon in bed asleep must have done me the world of good, I reckon, even if I did fall asleep on the porcelain horse once more when I should have been preparing for bed.

It was just after 23:30 when I fell into bed, far later than I would have liked, but I was asleep quite quickly. However, at about 05:30 (or probably a little before because I didn’t look at the time for a while when I awoke) I awoke and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Round about 06:00 I left the bed and was still sitting on the edge thereof, trying to summon up the courage and energy, when the alarm went off at 06:29. It wasn’t exactly one of my quickest starts to the day.

After a good wash, I went for my medication and that was another leisurely “somewhat-more-than-a-moment” too.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see what had gone on during the night. Nerina and I were living apart, although in the same house. After being out one night, she brought her boyfriend home with her. I was in bed, and had two of the cats cuddled up around me. When she came in, she made quite a bit of noise that awoke me, and couldn’t go back to sleep. In the end, she came into my bedroom looking for something. At that moment, I awoke completely and asked her what was going on. She just mumbled a few things and wandered off. At that point, I left the bed and walked into the kitchen, still carrying one of my cats, and went to find a drink; However the fridge was just full of bits and pieces of plastic and paper. I asked her if the rubbish in the fridge was anything to do with her. She said that it was hers but I wasn’t to touch it. I said that I wasn’t even going to take it out, never mind throw it away. I couldn’t find a drink, but in the end I found some kind of strawberry yoghurt that I ate. Then I couldn’t find the cat so I went to the door and shouted for her. It was pouring down with rain, and two of the other cats came in, but she didn’t. Nerina said that she would go outside to look for her. Seeing as it was raining, I thought that that was a good idea. She took two paces outside, abandoned the search and came back in. After another couple of minutes calling the cat and she still didn’t arrive, I closed the door and went back to bed again, relying on the cat flap for her to come in, and then left Nerina and her boyfriend to it.

Nothing at all that would appear in a dream involving Nerina would surprise me. Our life together was quite lively and interesting and, as there are no Statutory Limitations for some of the things that went on, it’s probably not a good idea to discuss them anywhere.

It’s nice, though, to see the cats appear in my dream. I had my old black cat of course, but when Nerina and I began to make a home together, we ended up with a total of four. We were, in fact, quite a big happy family. I wish, of course, that I had a cat here with me now and one day, maybe I will.

There was something at one point though about her stripping all the plasterboard off the wall in the kitchen and talking about a few things that needed replacing. I told her that I wasn’t going to bother about that because I was planning to sell the place and move on, and let the new owner of the house worry about things like that.

This sounds like something that was going on in the Spring of this year and which, even now, isn’t completely finished.

Later on, I was in Stoke-on-Trent, but before that, I’d been talking over the internet with my German friend. He was saying that his water heater had to be switched off at 06:00 exactly. Not knowing exactly how to do it, I told him to call me up on the radio at 06:00 from wherever he is and talk me through it. When he did, there was some confusion but we managed to work out how to do it and we were able to switch it off. From there, I had a load of things to take round to Stoke-on-Trent on a trailer. When I turned up, I was at my brother’s house. We had then to go to somewhere else where the rest of my family was waiting and meet up with them. We reached this place and began to unload the trailer. I ended up being totally dirty, both me and my clothes. I suddenly realised that I had a white shirt on. I’d noticed one of my tee shirts before and I wondered how I’d still had that, but this was the answer. I should have changed into that tee-shirt before I’d unloaded. We both had to have a quick change and a quick wash, and our meeting-up with the family was going to be hours late. As we were ready to leave, there was an album playing a live concert. We had just reached a suitable break so I went to switch off the CD. But it wasn’t a CD playing, for the music carried on. It was an LP. In the end, we decided to leave it playing and we would go. Just outside his place was a Football League ground of one of these small clubs that was at the bottom of the old Fourth Division somewhere. I said “there’s a shortcut around the back”. He didn’t remember it but I told him that I’d reminded him of this when he came to live here. We took this shortcut around the back, and found that the football club had gone. It was now some kind of kiddies’ park with playground and adventure equipment etc. I was completely surprised by this because I’d heard nothing about this football club moving. We began to walk across the park and met a couple of girls who were about 10 or 11. They were eyeing us suspiciously for some reason but I couldn’t understand why because it was not as if we were doing anything that would attract any kind of attention at all.

There’s a feeling going around my head that I know where this football ground is, but I can’t think of it right now. I can actually see it still in my mind – situated on the angle of a couple of streets such as Catherine Street and Frances Street where the old Security Printers used to be before it burned down.

At the back of the park that they had built over where the football ground used to be, there was a run-down semi-derelict grassy park with a lake, and I’ve a feeling that I ought to know where that is too.

However, you can tell that this is a dream. In real life, I wouldn’t be in any kind of rush at all to go for a meal with my family. "Old sins" as they say "cast long shadows."

Isabelle the Nurse turned up at her usual time. I told her the good news that her partner will have to be here before 06:45 next Tuesday to sort me out before I go to Rennes. "I don’t think he’ll come" she said.

Somehow, neither do I.

After breakfast, I came back in here. There were plenty of things to do, of which I managed to do a couple, and then I began to concentrate (as best as I could) on the radio programme.

It wasn’t a rush, just a slow, steady amble and I managed to finish it with plenty of time to spare, which is always nice.

There were the usual interruptions, such as my faithful cleaner coming to do her stuff and trying to persuade me to have a shower, but I’m not that well as yet.

There were also a couple of disgusting drinks breaks, but, as I mentioned earlier, there wasn’t a sleep break, and that can only be good news.

Tea was a frozen curry from the fridge with rice and veg, and it was a struggle to eat it. Once more, I left food on my plate, so obviously I’m not feeling that much better.

But now, I’m going to capitalise on my apparent good fortune so far by going to bed ready for dialysis (I don’t think) tomorrow, and to see what the doctors think about my state of health

But seeing as we have been talking about cats … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me when we were learning addition at Primary School.
"If I gave you two cats" said my teacher "and the headmaster gave you two cats, how many cats would you have?"
"Five!" I replied.
The teacher was aghast. She thought for a moment and asked "so if I gave you two cakes and the headmaster gave you two cakes, how many cakes would you have?"
"Four!" I replied.
So she asked again "if I gave you two cats and the headmaster gave you two cats, why do you say that you would have five cats?"
"Because we’ve already got one at home, miss."

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Thursday 2nd October 2025 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… one of these miserable sessions at dialysis today, where nothing whatever seems to have gone my way.

The only bright spark of the afternoon there was the interaction with some of the nurses. We had a good laugh at times, although I imagine that if the doctor in charge of the service were to overhear it, he would put a stop to it in an instant.

But after the events of yesterday, I needed a good cheering-up. My depression went on and on, culminating in forgetting to switch on the water AGAIN last night, meaning that I had no hot water today.

It was probably due to the fact that I had yet another late night when I failed to concentrate on anything, and finished hours later than I would have liked. I crawled into bed at about 23:30, and at least, I was asleep quite quickly.

The night though was another one of these turbulent ones where I’m tossing and turning, trying to make myself comfortable. And although I had had some amount of sleep, at about 05:50 I gave up the struggle. By 06:00 I was up and about.

After a wash and shave (in lukewarm water) I went for breakfast. And then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. And what a task that was!

There was a group of prisoners in a prisoner-of-war camp who decided that they were going to escape. They had thought of a foolproof plan and were making their preparations before leaving. The first thing that they had done was that they had arranged to have six cups of coffee each to take with them. They were busy sorting out these cups onto some kind of trolley that they could pull along behind them. They were discussing their route. The obvious route was to head for Switzerland, but one of the people planned to head for the interior first – the interior of Germany, and make his way round in some kind of arc. They were discussing various towns that they would pass through on the way. There was some guy there with his wife, and they were planning on escaping. When they were out of the prison, the wife fell into the River Rhine or one of the rivers that pass into Switzerland. It was ice-cold and she was in danger of freezing. A barge was going past so she put out her hand and caught hold of a trailing rope from the barge and allowed herself to be pulled on down the river. That way, she managed to cross into Switzerland, although her husband was miles behind, trying to make his way down to the Swiss border on foot.

Part of this relates to the story of Edouard Izac, a lieutenant in the American Navy in World War I. He was captured when his ship was torpedoed and was taken to Germany. He escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp and although he was only eighteen miles from the Swiss border, he took a circuitous route of almost ten times that in order to throw his pursuers off the scent.

As for the rest of it, I’ve no idea at all.

Then there were two athletes, male athletes, who were caught in a wave of a German advance. Rather than be taken prisoner, they linked their arms between each other’s elbow joints and, hanging on to their necks, they counted to three and suddenly wound and moved their bodies, thus breaking their necks.

We discussed the “Fetterman massacre” a few weeks ago. The opinion of the fort’s medical officer was that the two officers had linked arms and shot each other, presumably to avoid capture and torture by the Native Americans.

There was then a story about a guy and an associate of his who were tramping miles across the country accompanied by two cats. They came to a big girder bridge across a river. They had to toss these cats onto the bridge and then leap onto the bridge themselves in order to cross. Instead of crossing, they went to the bridge-keeper’s office. The bridge-keeper was discussing various criminal matters with various different people, about robberies and crimes and everything that was due to take place, as if he was some kind of organiser. The guy in this dream went over to him and was talking about his plan to kill some businessman by looping two chains around his door. When the guy opened the door and subsequently closed it, the chains would pull in really tightly and break his spine. The bridge-keeper warned him about doing this and didn’t recommend it at all. But early next morning at the house of this wealthy guy, he came out of his door and then went and slammed it, and you could hear the groan from outside. A couple of hours later, his wife awoke and went downstairs. She couldn’t find her husband so she called the police. The police found the guy who had climbed onto the bridge. He was sitting in his car, naked. The Police Inspector interrogated him but extracted no particular information so he had a Constable sit behind him in the car, armed with a shotgun. The guy in the front seat said that he was nervous about the shotgun, but the Inspector told him that he could be even more nervous if he knows that it’s loaded.

What I shall do with this dream is to leave you lot to interpret it.

From there, it went on back to my house. I was in my bedroom, somehow confined there and wasn’t allowed out. I heard the front door open and it was the nurse apparently who came in. When I was finally allowed out of my bedroom, he was giving Nerina an injection for something or other and a series of tablets. I wondered why this had taken place. Then he gave me my injection. Nerina was there with some kind of machine that had a recoil starter. She was pulling on this starter, but it was very, very difficult to start. She had to cut part of the cowling away to reach the choke, which was one of these flip-chokes that you work with your thumb. Eventually she managed to cut the piece away and it was quite a neat job. I could see these thousands of tiny, tiny LED lights around this machine so I asked her what they were for. She told me that they were for Carnaval. I asked her if we were going to have a float at Carnaval then.

It won’t be long before we shall be preparing for Carnaval, assuming that the current mayor doesn’t ban it and he doesn’t want to redevelop the funfair site or the workshop where they build the floats. Anything is possible around here at the moment. And it’s nice to see Nerina back, although why she would confine me to my room I have no idea at all.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up and sorted me out, and then I could press on with breakfast and BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

The British, having captured Philadelphia, have now abandoned it and are retreating to New York. That was a mystifying decision, because the only way to defeat an army is to bring it to battle. Retreating like this and abandoning posts that the enemy would like to occupy is a pointless exercise. They may just as well have stayed in New York in the first place.

After breakfast, I came back in here and carried on sorting out the hard drive, making sure that the directories run how they should and linking files to programmes. But I was interrupted by the charity shop that took away the unwanted furniture. They were only here ten minutes yet in that time they must have worked like heroes.

My faithful cleaner came along as usual to deal with the anaesthetic cream, and then I had to wait (and wait and wait) for the taxi. If that wasn’t enough, there was someone else to pick up so we were hours late arriving.

One thing that they had asked me to do on Monday was to conserve one day’s output of … errr … liquid waste and take it in a plastic bottle so that the laboratory could examine the contents. That was embarrassing.

And I also have to say that I was surprised about how little there was. And that’s probably why my weight had almost gone off the scale today and why they said that I had to stay for four hours. What with being so late arriving, that was horrendous news.

“Never mind” said one of the nurses. “You can sleep here with us tonight.”

“You know what” I replied. “That’s the best proposition that I’ve had for quite some considerable time.”

There were cramps, low blood pressure ringing the alarm, all kinds of things. A patient had a funny turn in her bed, and another one collapsed when he stood up. It was all go this afternoon.

The dietician came to see me too and had another little moan about my diet. It’s not doing her much good though because I’m not changing, even if my appetite has plummeted dramatically.

The taxi was waiting when I finished, but even so, I was hours late coming home. Especially as we had to go via his office to pick up some papers.

Tea was late tonight – bangers and mash with cheese sauce and veg – and no washing-up as I have no hot water. That’s a horrible task awaiting me in the morning, assuming that I switch the water on again tonight. I hate waking up to washing-up in the sink waiting to be done.

But now I’m off to bed, ready for the Centre de Ré-education tomorrow. But not looking forward to it. I have a pain in the neck and in the shoulders and I’m not feeling too well at all. I wish that I could have a good night’s sleep.

But before I go, seeing as I have been talking about my … errr … liquid output … “well, one of us has” – ed … my cleaner saw me pick up the bottle and put it in a plastic bag
“What are you doing with that?” she asked.
“Nothing really” I replied. “I’m just taking the p***.”

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