Category Archives: dream

Thursday 25th April 2024 – I HAVE ACHES …

… and pains in places that I didn’t even know that I had places. I’m not as young as I used to be and this travelling is really taking its toll of me. I wish it didn’t.

After I’d finished my notes last night I didn’t have what it takes to go to bed. It took an age to find the energy and morale to raise myself from my chair and stagger off on this marathon trek of several inches that seems as if it’s several hundred miles.

As I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it wouldn’t be so bad if I could find the energy to do something productive while I’m waiting but I can’t seem to do that either.

But eventually I fell into bed and that was that. It took an age to go off to sleep, being wound up as I was, but once I’d gone off I don’t recall moving again until just a few minutes before the alarm went off

It goes without saying that I took full advantage of every minute under the covers that I could because right now it’s freezing around here. You’d never believe that it’s the end of April with temperatures like we’re having. I know many people who have relit their heating and if this cold spell carries on much longer I shan’t be far behind.

So off I staggered into the dining area to sort out the medication and then to prepare everything for Isabelle the nurse so that she has everything that she needs and it’s set out how she likes.

So she came and organised me and told me that tomorrow I have a blood test to undergo. I’m not looking forward to that one bit. My arms look and feel as if I’ve been wrestling with a hedgehog as it is.

After she left, I came in here, sat down on my chair and that’s how I stayed for several hours. I couldn’t even be bothered to go to make breakfast – that’s the kind of state in which I was this morning.

The cleaner came round later and snapped me out of my reverie, bringing me all of the medication from my new prescription.

And there are piles of it too. It’s starting to become ridiculous, all of this and I really don’t know where it’s going to end. There are two more now added to the pile of nonsense after these latest visits and next time I go, there will doubtless be a couple of others to counter the side-effects that those two have caused.

Once she’d gone I managed to transcribe the dictaphone notes from yesterday at the hospital and add them into the notes, all of them and it really was “all” of them because it must have been a very mobile night that night with a lot going on.

In the middle of all of that I was out like a light for an hour or so. I really can’t keep on going these days and it’s driving me to distraction.

Rosemary rang up for a chat this afternoon, just a short one today. Only 1 hour and 10 minutes today – we’re losing our touch. She was telling me about her forthcoming trip to Italy which should make a nice trip out for her. She has all of the luck. It was Vietnam last year.

After we finished our chat I transcribed last night’s dictaphone notes. The Government was talking about some big, bold plans for railway modernisation to bring the railways right into the 21st Century. All of the particular regions were asked to submit their plans. We were working on a series of cross-country lines from east to west. Everywhere where we went where we saw the proposals from other areas, it was all about going north-south from London into the different regions. It seemed that the whole of the cross-country system would be squeezed out. Of course there was very little that we could do because we didn’t have the weight or influence. It was very frustrating to everyone concerned. All of the people were so concerned and frustrated that we couldn’t seem to make any headway at all with our plans. Naturally we were doing everything we could but we were being squeezed at every turn by everyone else. It was impossible to put forward any coherent plans because nothing that we were doing would conform to whatever it was that the Government really wanted. There was a grave danger that the whole of our east-west railway would be squeezed out. I had girls from the office coming to see me in tears about the prospects of failure that all of our lobbying and arguments were bringing but we we were doing everything we could. There was nothing more that we could do but we didn’t seem to be making any kind of progress. Everyone was just so frustrated.

Anyone who knows anything about the British railway network will know just how true that is too. Going cross-country in the UK by rail is really difficult and time-consuming. Government policies haven’t helped either. A cross-country railway line closed in the 1960s was approved for reopening as far back as 1992 and we’re still waiting. Brunel would have had it up and running in 6 months.

They run all kinds of feasibility studies and passenger surveys, file the results and then go back to re-run the exercise 5 years later by which time costs have doubled.

And after Zero a few nights ago and Castor the other night, TOTGA came round too during the night. I’d been in France with Nerina and we’d just come back. Early on Sunday morning she came round. She had an apple. I made a remark something like “that’ll be the last apple that I’ll see for several weeks” so she left it for me which I thought was really nice of her. Then I had a ‘phone call from where she was working. Could I go to see her? She was working in some kind of merchant banking office. I arrived and it was one of these self-service receptionist places where you had to root around to try to find your contact’s ‘phone n°. I couldn’t find hers at all. In the end she happened to turn up at the counter by pure chance. I asked her for her telephone n° in her office but she made some kind of cryptic remark so I asked her whether she wasn’t allowed to leave her ‘phone n° or not. She said no, she wasn’t. I said “that’s strange. Anyone can have mine any time of the day even at 04:00 and get me out of bed as long as they say the magic words”. She asked “what are those?”. I replied “do you want to earn some money, Eric?”. She asked “was that really the last apple that you’re likely to see for several weeks?” I explained that we weren’t exactly that broke but we’d just come back from the Continent and we didn’t have any in the house. Nevertheless some kind of additional income would come in handy and I was intrigued to hear what kind of proposition she was going to make to me from her work that would be of interest to me in a financial sense

So that was a very special treat for me last night to follow my vegan pesto.

Tonight, I finished off the vegan pesto with more pasta, veg and a vegan burger. I need to order some more of those as the European Burger Mountain in the fridge has shrunk dramatically just recently. But not right now as despite it being really early, I really am going to try to go to bed and sleep the Sleep of a Thousand Dreams and see who comes with me.

After all, I’ve had all three of my favourite females over the past week or so coming to see me. And wouldn’t it be nice if they came more often, or, at least, more regularly? Life is much more interesting when they are around. It’s the only interesting company that I seem to have these days.

My life at the moment is, after all, hardly interesting. It reminds me of a story I heard when one person asked another one sitting next to him at a dinner "do you ever think that life is really boring?"
To which the other one replied "Quite often. Especially when one is sitting next to you"

Wednesday 24th April 2024 – THAT WAS AN …

… adventure!

Right now I’m back home sitting in my favourite chair and you’ve no idea just how grateful I am. It was the last thing that I expected today but as Paul Peña wrote and Steve Miller sang, YOU KNOW YOU GOTTA GO THROUGH HELL BEFORE YOU GET TO HEAVEN

Last night though, after I’d finished my notes etc I went straight to bed and spent a very pleasant hour or so listening to “Alquin” on the computer. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, THE MOUNTAIN QUEEN is one of my favourite albums of all time, especially since I met the group, a band from Delft in the Netherlands, in a dingy damp cellar underneath an old hotel in Crewe in 1975.

It was something of a disturbed, turbulent night. I can’t recall too many interruptions from the staff but there’s a huge pile of stuff on the dictaphone that you will discover as you read on.

By 08:00 I was wide awake and as no-one had come past by 08:30 to awaken me, bring me breakfast, take a blood sample etc, I left the bed, did what I had to do and then washed my clothes.

Just as I was hanging up the sodden rags to dry out, the doctor came in and handed me my leaving pouch.
"Am I leaving then?" I asked
"Ohh" she replied. "Hasn’t anyone told you? Anyway, your taxi will be here at 13:00"
What a shame she hadn’t come 5 minutes earlier when my clothes were still dry

She went through the documents with me and made sure that I understood everything.

And then I went through my requirements, including the fact that she needs to apply to the Securité Sociale. for another series of authorisations, but I don’t think that she understood. That’s important of course, so I’ll ring up the taxi company and have them involved in the proceedings.

"By the way" she added "You have a consultation at ‘Imagerie’ at 10:30" so bang goes my idea of a shower. It’s a good job though that I had a good wash and changed my clothes.

At 10:00 the driver turned up to take me to “Imagerie” and off we set.

When we arrived I was told that they wanted to take a few scans of my heart so I had to strip off, clad myself in some paper overalls and then lie flat out on a bed while they clamped all kinds of strange devices to me and pumped me full of some kind of fluid.

Once I was ready they passed me through one of these Stargate time-tunnel things, back and forth for half an hour or more, taking all kinds of strange photos while the machine made all kinds of strange noises and I had to do all kinds of breathing exercises

Eventually they dragged me out and with my head spinning and body shaking (and it still is, even now) I went and dressed ready for the ride back.

And whose stupid idea was it to take my blood pressure as soon as I’d come back from all of that?

Batman and Robin weren’t on duty today – I must have scared them off – so another young nurse came in to ask me "we need to have your room ready for another arrival at 13:00. Would you mind waiting in the waiting room?"

So that’s why they want me gone. "Well, if it’s a nice young lady, I don’t mind sharing the room" I replied but she told me to clear off.

They brought me my lunch to the waiting room – bulghour with chicken followed by pork and courgettes. The peaches with almonds for dessert were nice though.

The taxi was booked for 13:00 so of course he turned up at 14:40. With the A13 being closed it’s total chaos in the outskirts of Paris right now.

Once in the car we had to go on a TRAVERSÉE DE PARIS, with no Bourvil to carry my suitcase, to another hospital to pick up another passenger. The trip across the city was a nightmare and finding the correct entrance was something else too.

And then there were “parking issues” while the driver went in search of his passenger.

Eventually we set off for home, going a very tortuous way via Rungis and Versailles to avoid the queues on a journey that seemed to take for ever and after a pitstop near Caen, we had first to go to Bréhal to drop off passenger number 2. We eventually arrived back here at 19:45.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me which was lovely. She helped me up the stairs (and I needed it too) and into my room, where she went through the papers and took what she needed for the chemist. I had an energy drink – and I needed that too.

There was one jar of vegan pesto remaining and I’d saved it for some special occasion or other. “Now” seemed like a special occasion so I made a big dish of pasta with assorted vegetables and smothered it all with half the jar.

And it was delicious too.

So this is all that I’m doing. I’m totally wasted and I’m going to bed. With luck I’ll have a really good sleep ready to face Isabelle the nurse tomorrow morning

As for the dictaphone notes, there are quite a few of these. I was with my brother (so I was right) and we were having to go to Shavington. We set out to walk but it was really late at night. Our parents had gone to Sandbach but we wondered why. They were supposed to be doing something but we reckoned that it was really an excuse for a party and a drink. As we walked it was the biggest moon that we had ever seen. There was only probably about a tenth of it that was bright but we could make out the shape of the rest of it above the horizon. It was absolutely enormous. As we walked we looked at the houses and the Christmas lights. We wondered whether one of them was actually on fire because of the way the lights were working. Then we cut off to Shavington down that track that I take frequently in my dreams, a long, narrow track, but I’ve not been down it for a while but at one time I’d go down it once per week. As we started to go down there – we’d gone maybe a quarter of a mile – we noticed someone leading some horses. My brother made some offensive remark about me being unwilling to spend any money. It seemed that his idea would be to hire a couple of these horses and go to Shavington on horseback to save having to walk. I thought that there’s nowhere to leave the horses, you can’t just tie them up in the street like in a Western. You’re going to need someone to hold them while we were at the doctor’s. It’s all going to be just far too complicated to even think about hiring a couple of horses to go there and come back.

That’s a track down which I’ve walked, or skied, or climbed on many occasions during the night and I’ve no idea why it keeps on cropping up like this. I’ve no idea if it exists in real life and I’ve certainly never encountered it for real as far as I’m aware.

Later on I was with a girl and her sister. There was some kind of event going on in the village but it was really poorly attended. There were very few people there. There were two beer tents and most of the people with me, because we were a large group, preferred one tent but I thought that the beer in the second was much better. I tended to patronise that one. In the end I managed to persuade people that that one was best and they came over. They were wondering how everything worked so I explained that I bet that he was really disappointed with the attendance. I explained that when I used to put on rock concerts I’d hire a complete bar and just buy the beer etc but I needed about 80 or 90 people to make a profit at the bar and that rarely happened. They were surprised by that. In the end we set out to walk home. I’d sold everything that I had in rural France except for one plot of land where I had four Cortinas parked. My friend’s sister was planning on moving too. I had my old J4 so she told me that when we reached her house, to back it into the drive and do something useful but I’d no idea what she meant by that and what her plans were. There was a big house for sale with lovely gardens that had been empty for years. We were admiring that on the way back. My friend said that she’d enquired about buying it but it needed more money than she had. We carried on walking and talking back to my friend’s sister’s house but I’d still no idea about what was going on and there were only a few more hours left before the end of the day. if she was planning on moving today she was leaving it extremely late because we’re never going to fit everything of hers into my J4 van.

Cortinas as usual, and my old J4 van has started to make regular appearances just recently too which is bizarre. But it’s true about the bar. We could rent the bar and staff for free if the turnover was over a certain amount but the owner needed a guaranteed minimum to cover his expenses and that had to be made up by the hirer if there was a shortfall

And then I was watching two girls, one of them a ward of mine, fighting over a boyfriend using broadswords. It was an extremely tame affair with the two of them jabbing at each other. Most of the wounds with broadswords according to modern autopsy were like overarm slashes down onto the head yet these were just poking at each other. The ward of mine asked permission to go out with this boy. I gave it because I didn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t but the other girl was extremely upset. This led to the fight.

And overarm slashes being the common cause of death in medieval fights with broadswords. I was impressed that I could remember anatomical details like that during a dream.

There had been some dispute between two men over something too. One had gone into a second-hand shop, changed his clothes and hid in the shop in the hope of escape of his pursuer but that didn’t work. They had a fight too. Somewhere in the middle of all of this I was walking through Crewe planning on going for an ice cream with my brother’s wife (as if that would ever be likely to happen) when I bumped into a guy who told me that he was going to Birmingham for the best ice cream in the UK. I knew this guy from somewhere but I couldn’t think where so I decided to go with him. We dashed to pick up my brother’s wife but she wasn’t in so we headed for the railway station. I boarded the train with this guy and went to see the conductor about buying a seat but my friend told me that there were no seats available on this train. It was completely full. I had to reluctantly disembark and go back to my original plans.

There was something else but I only remember a small part of this. I was with a guy who was going across the Channel on a ferry so I thought that I’d go with him. We went in his car, drove to the ferry terminal and joined the queue but we couldn’t understand why all these people were standing around so strangely. We suddenly realised that each person was about twelve feet apart from the one in front and behind. That was how their cars were going to be parked on the ferry. There were no cars there though, just the people standing in position. We had to go to the back of the queue then walk twelve paces behind the person who was there and then stand and wait around. God knows what was happening to the vehicles because there were none about at all. Everyone else kept on turning up, people having fun in the ferns and bracken that were all around this car park. It really was the strangest thing that I’ve ever encountered, all of us just standing there twelve feet apart in our own little family groups etc and not a car in sight.

So after transcribing all of that I’ll probably go back to sleep again.

While I’m doing that, I can reflect on my conversation with the photographer as I left the Stargate
"Did you manage to find my heart?" I asked
"Yes I did" she replied
"Thank heavens for that" I replied. "I’m not turning into a Conservative after all"

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 – OUCH! THAT HURT!

And if you read on, you’ll find out what and why. I’ve not had a very good day.

Anyway, last night after everything had finished I sat down and READ A BOOK about an American sailor and his family, including his 6 year old daughter, captured in the South Pacific in 1917 by a German sea-going raider and who spent 10 months as prisoner on board before being shipwrecked off the coast of Denmark.

After that I settled down, fully dressed because I was freezing, under the covers and that was that.

A few times during the night I was awoken by a few comings and goings but for some reason or other I was so tired that I was back asleep almost immediately and ended up not awakening until they came to take my blood sample at about 09:15.

Actually it was the little student nurse who came on her own so I told her that if I leave here alive she’ll have earned her diploma. Anyway, she managed to find some blood. I still have some left, apparently.

Once she’d gone I went for a wash and brush up as best as I could and then a driver came to collect me. It was the rock music fan who has taken me before so we had a good chat before he dropped me off at Neurology.

While I was waiting for my appointment I had a good chat with the receptionist and another patient and saw several photos of cats and dogs before being ushered into the room where the examination was due to take place.

It was the doctor who had seen me before on two occasions. He and his sidekick gave me the electric shock tests to my arms and legs and I was right – there is a further deterioration. So no surprise there. We had a good chat and now he’s gone away to think about a Plan B.

The same driver came to pick me up for my next appointment but that’s not until tomorrow so he brought me back here.

While I was eating lunch a doctor came to slap a freezing patch on my lower back and we all know what that means. She took an age to find the correct position so I asked her "can’t you see the scars from the previous attempts?"

When she told me that she could, I told her that they ought to paint an “X marks the spot” or even a target in the correct place.

A short while later, Batman and Robin, the young ward nurse and her little student who follows her around like a shadow, came to prepare me.

It was the little student who drew the short straw and had to hold me down and I bet she wished that she hadn’t when the doctor missed her aim with the lumbar puncture and found the central nerve.

Eventually, but not soon enough by any means, the torment was over and I could go to lie down. “You’ll just need to be flat out for an hour” but she was joking. After an hour or so a nurse came round to make sure that I was still alive and to take my blood pressure, with predictable results. But in fact it was several hours before I crawled out of bed, and then only for a particular reason too.

Once I’d settled down in my chair I transcribed the dictaphone notes. Yesterday’s are now on line and then I started on today’s. I was going to start at a new school but the morning that I was due to go I had a ‘phone call that began speaking in Welsh. It was a young girl saying that she was glad to go back to live in Easingwold. I couldn’t understand who it was but the conversation became more and more intimate until in the end, I had to go, I said plenty of encouraging words and finished with “I love you” but I had no idea who this person was at all. Absolutely none. I arrived at the new school but couldn’t find out how anything worked, the system of how lessons were organised etc. In the end I stumbled across a lesson from one of my class so I asked the teacher where all the other lessons for our year were being held. He gave some kind of nebulous speech abut how I should have looked at the newspaper. Of course I knew nothing about this. I found a copy of the newspaper but didn’t understand it. In the end I found some kind of paper print-out with the details on it. It was headed with the most extraordinary offensive message that had nothing whatever to do with the subject matter. I thought it totally astonishing that they’d pin this on the wall. I couldn’t find any paper then. Every piece of paper on which I tried to write, I was making no impression with a ball-point pen. The writing was just not sticking as if it had one of these shiny surfaces. I kept on coming across paper that had already been used, carbon copies of the ‘phone call that I’d had earlier in the day from that girl etc, but nothing that I could do would be able to reproduce anything on any kind of piece of paper. It was just so frustrating because I wanted to crack on and organise myself as this was just not working at all.

Then this conversation that I’d had in the morning had completely shaken me. I didn’t have a clue who on earth it was to whom I was speaking and I really wish that I knew because it had all the air of being something really interesting. The only Welsh-speaking girl I knew at school was only in passing and it certainly wasn’t her so who on earth was it?

Then we had a boisterous kind of office party where everything was going out of control. The sad part about it was that these were all middle-aged people. The boss there had picked on someone else’s wife and was making life really uncomfortable for them. They were trying to work out a moment in which to disappear such as when the boss went to the toilet but they’d brought the PA with them so putting that into the car in the space of a couple of minutes was going to be complicated. There were all kinds of things like this. Some woman was making some very plain and clear hints that she wanted to dance etc with me but of course I was having absolutely none of this and sat stoically at my seat in the dining room watching the events unfold, taking absolutely no notice of any of the extremely broad hints that she was dropping. All in all it was an extremely sad evening watching these people behaving like this

There have been more than a few parties like this where everyone makes a fool of themselves and I note that I even made a remark about it while I was asleep, which shows you just what I think about it all.

Then I was going through the videotapes looking for a blank one but came across a football match that took place years ago that I hadn’t seen. It involved one of these obscure South American republics playing in similar colours to Portugal and who had qualified unexpectedly for the World Cup after beating a selection of prize teams from other parts of the World to make it to the finals. I’d obviously taped their opening match but I couldn’t remember how it went or what the score was so instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing I put on this videotape and settled down to watch them. I got as far as watching them come out onto the pitch before I awoke. I’d no idea who their opponents were in this particular game.

And despite what I said the other night, Castor put in a very brief appearance last night. And wasn’t it nice to see her? We were on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR rearranging the dining arrangements. I was passing the cutlery and crockery and glassware from one table to the next. There was the final piece that I picked up to take round to the other table and who should be sitting there but Castor? She was talking to someone else about their life, I suppose. She was saying that she was born into a policeman’s family. I’ll tell you that that didn’t ‘arf ring a few alarm bells with me finding out that she was the progeny of a policeman’s couple.

But even if it were true and I had known, nothing of what happened back then would have changed for a minute. As I said at the time, I would have accepted any consequence. And as Joni Mitchell sang, YOU KNOW I’D GO BACK THERE TOMORROW BUT FOR THE WORK THAT I’VE TAKEN ON

And fancy the dream stopping there! I suppose that it was the shock that awoke me.

While I was asleep in the afternoon I was going for a walk. I had all of the four cats coming with me, following in my footsteps, climbing and jumping over each other as they used to do etc. There were a few members of my family with me. I had to take some money out to pay for something or other, housekeeping or whatever. I needed €60:00. I walked as far as the cash machine but when I went to look through my wallet I couldn’t find the bank card that I usually used. In the end, looking through everything I found a selection of other bank cards but I wasn’t sure which ones would work and which ones wouldn’t. There was one from the bank in Belgium so I put that in the cash machine. It seemed to read the card because it asked for the PIN. I typed in the usual number and that seemed to accept it but that was as far as I reached in the dream.

Tea tonight was salmon lasagne with creamed spinach so some horse trading was undertaken but I’m not doing too well for food which is a shame, but not unexpected.

So right now I’m off to bed to try to recapture Castor and to hope that they try to check my blood pressure at calmer moments.

But while the little student was preparing me for my lumbar puncture I asked her why doctors always wear masks
"Is it to do with infection?" she asked.
"Not at all" I replied. "It’s in case the procedure goes all wrong. Then they can’t identify the guilty party"

Monday 22nd April 2024 – MEANWHILE, HERE IN …

… The Land Of Grey And Pink, or Ice-Station Zebra as it ought to be called, I’m tucked up in bed in the cold awaiting my doom.

And also awaiting my evening meal, but that’s another story.

Last night after everything finished I hauled myself off to bed quite early and tried my best to settle down to sleep but as usual these days it didn’t quite work out like that. However later on I must have managed to drop off because there’s some stuff on the dictaphone. I was with a girl. She had a big box of something or other. It was a case of having to pass it through a hatch. Going up and down this hatch with this box was extremely complicated. One day I happened to find it in the way so I asked how come I found it in the way. It suddenly occurred to me afterwards that I must have pushed it in behind me then moved it round, then somehow managed to work my way round past it as I passed through the hatchway. Once I’d worked out exactly how I’d done it, it became a lot easier to go up and down past. It was less of an inconvenience. What actually happened was by leaving it at the bottom of this hatch I couldn’t actually close off the draught-proofing. I had to sit and think to try to work out exactly how I was going to do that. Then she told me that it was a packet that the Post needed to collect and send away, in which case it’ll be out of the way. I couldn’t thus understand the problem but she explained that if she left it outside it was raining and the package would be wet. I hoped that the Post Office would come quickly because this is proving to be so complicated. It doesn’t need to be this complicated at all. The quicker we can resolve this issue the better it would be for everyone.

I was at one of these Alternative Technology meetings last night too. It was a big meeting discussing the manufacture of some kind of alcohol for fuel. I had to go along to add the oats to it but of course I had no idea how to do it. There was a huge retort stand with everything being heated by a bunsen burner. It all looked quite complicated. They said “add the oats” so I had to ask the meeting how to do it. The answer was quite simply “just stuff it down one of the holes into the test tube”, no preparation, no cleaning, no nothing. I thought “if that’s how they want it doing, that’s how I’m going to do it. If they want it doing before the full meeting I’d simply do it the best that I could”.

As seems to be usual when I’m keyed up for something important like this I was awake and out of bed before the alarm went off and I took the opportunity to wash my puttees and my nightclothes so that everything will be nice and clean and ready for me when I come back home, if I ever do.

And that’s not like me either, is it?

What else isn’t like me is that I had MY BAGS ARE PACKED AND READY TO GO, as Peter, Paul and Mary would have sung, so I just had to wait around for the driver to come to collect me.

Bang on 07:00 she turned up as well, my favourite taxi driver, so we were going to be in for an exciting trip. Anything to relieve the boredom.

She had a couple of errands to perform around the town on the way and then we hit the highway.

The journey was quiet to start with but being stuck behind a dithering driver at the péage seemed to switch her on and the running commentary began for the rest of the trip.

That was just as well – I couldn’t stand the quiet.

The autoroute that we usually take into Paris is closed at the moment so we had to go another way.

That led to all kinds of confusion but luckily she was rather more restrained than last time and when we ended up in the wrong lane we simply went with the flow this time instead of performing some kind of dramatic U-turn as you might see on American “cops and robbers” TV.

We were ages late in arriving which is no surprise given the conditions, and once I was registered in I was shown up to my deep-freeze on the second floor where I dived fully-clothed under the bedclothes. And where I still am.

The nurse threw a bottle of water at me which was just as well after my marathon fast, and then we had the pantomime about fitting a catheter in my arm.

They offered to let the little student nurse do it, poor thing. I did admire their optimism. And we gradually went up and up the respective grades. At one time there were no fewer than 6 nurses of different ranks in the hierarchy standing around my bed until in the end someone let out a cry of joy.

My lunch (an omelette) that had been growing cold on a side table was then brought over to me and no sooner did I have my fork stuck into the accompanying salad when the doctor appeared. It’s all just one more distraction.

While I was trying to doze off after lunch the whole world and his wife came in to interrupt me just as I was starting on some kind of dream of something to do with wartime. No sooner had it started under way when everyone came in and it immediately disappeared which was a shame.

The nurses did a few more things before clearing off and I crashed out yet again.

The funny thing about all of this was that no sooner had I set foot in my room that they went to check my blood pressure.
"Blimey! That’s high!" said the nurse.
Well, of course it is. I’ve just come 360 kms with my favourite taxi driver
"I’ll come back in an hour to check it again"
So she came back to do it again immediately after 6 nurses had just finished poking and prodding me – with predictable results.

So now that I’ve had my meal I’m going to try to go to sleep again, this time until morning. And hope that I have some better results than of late.

They’ve offered me a sleeping pill but I’ve turned it down. It’s like the young girl who, on her wedding night, propped herself on a chair by the window
"Aren’t you … errr … coming to bed?" asked her husband
"Ohh no" she replied. "My mummy told me that this would be the most exciting night of my life and I’m not going to miss a minute of it"

Sunday 21st April 2024 – AND SO TOMORROW …

… or today, if you are reading this posting on Monday, I go for my appointment with Destiny

This is when we’ll find out of this three months of medication cocktail has done any good.

Mind you, I can tell you that without having to go all the way to Paris at great expense to find out. There has certainly been a change in the situation, but it isn’t for the better.

Not that it’s any surprise really. With a illness that’s so rare that there are no records and no approved treatment everyone is just groping blindly in the dark and the last time that I tried that I had a thick ear off Percy Penguin

What is going to be interesting though is to find out what their Plan B is. They’ve had three months to think of one so I’m sure that there will be something simmering away in the background. At least, there better had be and I’ll be disappointed if there isn’t.

There was a change last night as well from the previous night, in that I actually managed some sleep.

For a change I actually managed to be in bed early but even so I couldn’t go to sleep. There was far too much on my mind, and on other places too.

However, to my surprise, there was something on the dictaphone and that was unexpected. There was something going on about toothpaste last night. Each person was given their own little cardboard box with their own little tube in it that was for them and them only. I’ve no idea why that would be the case or what it was all about.

No explanations were forthcoming either as it doesn’t seem to relate to anything at all. Just one of those mysterious things, I suspect.

After a stroll down the corridor I came back to bed and that was that until the alarm went off. I finally managed a deep, satisfying sleep and the only thing wrong with that is that there wasn’t enough of it.

No blood pressure – as I said yesterday, there’s not really much point. Instead I went into the living room for my medication with, instead of my usual half-litre of flavoured water, just enough water to swallow my tablets.

And that’s all that I’ve had to eat or drink today. Honestly. I’m working on the principle that the less stuff that goes in, the less stuff will want to come out, and that’s an advantage on a 4-hour car drive tomorrow morning when I’m not feeling too well.

The nurse came round and saw to my foot and my puttees. He thinks that the wound on my foot is ready to face the fresh air but if I’m off to Paris in shoes and socks on Monday I’d rather leave the plaster on so that there’s no friction rubbing it away.

After he left I came back in here and vegetated for quite a while. These 08:00 starts on a Sunday are killing me when I’m used to a long lie-in and a start that’s considerably later than that.

But eventually I managed to summon up enough energy to make a start on sorting out the European Paper Mountain and looking for what I need to take with me

And having found what I can (because there’s still plenty of stuff missing) I packed my backpack. I’ll take what I’ve found and we’ll have to invent the rest as we go along.

There was football on the internet this afternoon – the last weekend of matches of the regular season.

We were treated to Aberystwyth v Pontypridd United. Pontypridd are already relegated due to certain off-the-field issues, but Aberystwyth had to do better than Colwyn Bay would do against Barry Town in order to stay up and sent the Bay back down.

To everyone’s surprise, and probably theirs too, Colwyn Bay beat Barry 1-0 with a goal scored near the end of the game, but by then it was too late. Aberystwyth had already put three past Pontypridd and never looked in any difficulty.

We had the same scenario last season with a dramatic great escape on the final day and as I said then, if Aber had played for the rest of the season with the panache that they showed today they wouldn’t have been in this trouble to start with

It’s tough on Colwyn Bay on their first season in the Premier League but they were miles off the pace even on Day One when Caernarfon put 4 past them and the Bay were lucky to get nil, but the gulf between the Premier League and the second tier is immense.

Rosemary rang me for a chat at the end of the afternoon so while I was preparing a back-up memory stick to take with me, we put the world to rights. Just a short conversation today, only 57 minutes.

So now my puttees are washed and hanging up to dry, my bag is packed and my back-up is prepared, that’s my lot. I’m off to bed.

The alarm is set for 06:00 and the car should be here at 07:00 and then we’ll see.

And I hope that the taxi is on time. He was late on one of the other times that we had to go early like this
"You should have been here at 07:00" I told him
"Why?" he asked. "What happened?"

Friday 19th April 2024 – YOU HAVE NO IDEA …

… – or maybe you do, I dunno. I know very little of your personal habits – just how absolutely wonderful it is to be standing underneath a constant stream of hot water out of a shower outlet after all these months of being without.

Now that my emergency backpack has arrived, complete with wash kit, spare pair of undies and the like, I closed the door to my room, put something to stop the bathroom door being opened, and away I went underneath the little shower tucked away in the corner of the bathroom.

Of course, it stopped my little student nurse from coming in to scrub my back and massage my clavicles, but it also stopped the retired Bulgarian female weightlifter from doing the same, and also stopped the nurse from coming in to remind me to tell her when I’ve been to the bathroom

And I’ll tell you now that it was heaven.

While we’re on the subject of the massaging of clavicles … "well, one of us is" – ed … I had a visitor during the night.

Actually, I had several because it was quite a mobile night but the most important of them all was Zero. It’s been a while since she’s put in an appearance, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but there she was last night and wasn’t it nice to see her?

All I need now is for TOTGA and Castor to come back to see me but I have a rather depressing feeling, at least about Castor. As for TOTGA, it’s not quite two years ago that … well, never mind.

So last night after I’d finished the notes and put them on line I had a pause and then attacked the notes for Monday, which are NOW ON LINE in a basic form. I’ll add the dictaphone notes in due course, whenever that might be.

It was after midnight when I went to bed and what with 05:00 diabetes checks and the like I was expecting a turbulent night.

And I was right too, but for totally unexpected reasons. As I mentioned, Zero came to see me. We’d been going to the local pub, a group of us of all ages of people. I’d made a few enquiries along the way and I’d worked out which was everyone’s favourite biscuit. There was a young girl, probably about 9 or 10 or so who loved chocolate, there was Zero who loved a certain type of biscuit etc so what I’d done ready for when we’d be going that Saturday was that I’d been to the pub on the way home from the shops and dropped off the biscuits. We rounded up everyone and prepared to go down to the pub at lunchtime. The first thing about which we talked was “a drink for the little one” – of course, she wasn’t that little. She wanted something or other. I asked her what she wanted to eat so she mentioned “biscuits”. I pulled out a pile from under the counter and had a chocolate in my other hand. I said “right, which biscuit do you want to swap for this chocolate?”. I wasn’t given any choice because the chocolate disappeared immediately. It was the same with Zero. She chose her favourite biscuit and had that as well as the other ones that were there and wolfed it down. I began to talk to her then after everyone else had had their biscuits. Zero and I began to have a really good chat. There was some paperwork involving her that needed doing so I thought that I may as well sit down there and do that while everyone is busy and maybe persuade Zero to come over and help me fill it all in.

Then another girl who has appeared once or twice in this rubbish previously puts in an appearance. It’s as we thought, with all this turmoil going on during a school dance or something we’d all been separated because we can’t behave ourselves. I’ve been put over one side and ended up dancing with this girl but I’m busy fighting her for a little more than she’s prepared to give me, like most teenage boys back in those days. There was something else going on with one of the other girls etc so in the end the teacher called a halt to the proceedings and dragged the lot of us, the entire group, down to see the headmaster and began to recount all of the problems that she was having with us and who’s been doing what wrong. Of course he picks on me and begins to give me a really good lecture as if it’s all my fault but it’s probably only some of it and everyone else was probably to blame for a lot.

And there’s nothing new in any of that either. Whatever was going on wherever it was always seemed to be my fault, even though it was nothing to do with me.

It reminded me of a tale of woe that a friend’s daughter in the USA once told me. She was 11 and had a 7 year old brother.
"Whenever I do anything wrong, my brother tells my mom on me and she yells at me" she said once. "But if he does anything wrong and I tell my mom on him, then she says it’s my fault for not watching him properly and yells at me"
That story has a very, very familiar ring as far as I’m concerned.

But there’s a funny story about a similar situation with the children of my friend Erika in Georgia. Her two kids were about 6 and 2 and the time.
"Mom!" shouted the 6 year old. "… (the two year old) … has a choking hazard in her mouth!"
So mom dashes to the rescue and removes the offending article
"Mom!" said the 6 year old in a tone of admonishment "I think you really MUST watch us better!"

Anyway we we were back in that dream again. The teacher was giving her report. One of the younger girls was up to some kind of mischief. That girl from just now was still there. It was obvious to the teacher that there was some kind of … errr … inappropriate behaviour (especially as she was a couple of years younger than me) between the girl and me that was beginning to get out of hand in the middle of one of the songs. There was a third thing happening so in the end she decided to call it all to a halt and drag us all before the headmaster who hopefully would lay down the law and even more hopefully we might all listen to what is being said and take note.

I have to admit that I admired the optimism of some of these new teachers who came to our school straight from University

It was as I said. I was messing around with this girl. There was someone else there messing around and Zero put in another appearance doing something – I think that it was she who was singing falsely at the end. Anyway we were all passing through a group of china and the Headmistress was annoyed in case we fell over and broke it all so she read The Riot Act to us all. Generally, it was the kind of place where we wished that we’d all gone home because we’d really all been getting out of hand just then and making the teacher’s life difficult.
(…And if I’ve been fooling around with another girl – no matter who it is – when Zero is there I ought to be ashamed of myself and go home in disgrace…)

But there was no sense of shame or guilt about any kind of interaction that took place between the teachers and the pupils. It was the Law of the Jungle, them or us even when it came to a group of a dozen boys bodily picking up a teacher’s car and wedging it between two brick walls. “That’ll teach her! Get out of that one!”

My own preference was a War of Nerves, but the less said about that the better in an open forum.

They awoke me for the blood test at 05:00 and also for the diabetes test, which I passed, and so I could go back to sleep.

But not for long because I soon had the morning chorus of people around doing all kinds of things and stopping me doing anything else for a while.

Breakfast then came, complete with jam, so I was left alone to transcribe the dictaphone notes for a while.

My faithful cleaner asked me if they had told me whether I could go so I told her “no news” and 30 seconds after I sent it, they came to tell me that they’d ordered my taxi for 15:00. That was when I hit the bathroom.

Doctor n°1 came to see me when I was packing and told me that I could go, seeing as my results had improved. So I told her goodbye and thanks, that I was sorry to leave and that I hoped that I’d see her again. She blushed again and I kid you not, she skipped – really skipped – out of the door as if she was about 7.

As usual, the taxi was late coming but the driver was someone who had taken me to Paris once so I knew him. We were back quite quickly and my faithful cleaner was waiting to help me up the stairs. I really don’t know what I’d do without her.

Once inside I had a hot chocolate and apart from the banana-flavoured soya drink that I’m currently drinking, that’s it. I’ve not moved from my chair, not even to make any food. I just can’t.

Liz was on line so we had a good chat and now I’m off to bed in my nice clean bedroom – my cleaner has been busy while I’ve been away. It’s probably taken her all week to do what she’s done.

So after Zero’s dramatic reappearance last night, who’ll be coming to see me tonight? My money is of course where it usually is – on one of my family coming along uninvited.

It’s hard to believe though that Zero turned up a second time and I was …. errr …. busy elsewhere. I’m clearly losing my grip. But at least I noticed her. Just imagine if I hadn’t.

Still, I’m not alone there. A friend in the Army was once selected for camouflage training. He simply didn’t go and was later commended for his disguise and attention to detail. It fooled everyone apparently

Monday 15th April 2024 = I’M IN HOSPITAL

The emergency department of our local hospital in Granville. I made a brave face of it just long enough for the nurse to take one look at me as she came into the apartment.

After she’d dealt with my puttees and the plaster on my foot she sent me to bed and sent for the doctor.

The rest is, as they say, history.

What’s disappointing about all of this, from my point of view is that I’d made a special effort to be in bed really early and so at 22:00I was tucked up in bed with STRAWBERRY MOOSE to keep me warm hoping for a really good sleep.

As it happens, I can’t remember very much at all about last night. I was totally out of everything. There is some stuff on the dictaphone too and it’s certainly one of the strangest things that I’ve ever dictated. One of my failures was a failure of politeness and whoever was in charge of issuing the politeness had failed to endorse me so I’d fallen down on that, which meant that the Controle Technique on the van had failed as well and I didn’t know what I was going to do about it. I pretended to ignore it and went out anyway one day. I was in the van looking for this Minister of Politeness and went past the Police Station. A police car pulled out from the side of the road to perform a U-turn but stopped to let me go past. I stopped to let him pull out because I thought that I’d rather have him where I could see him in front of me and know what he’s up to. He drifted off with his superior and they went off to look for something else. A few other people had gone to look for this Minister of Politeness which left me there without my certificate and I was going to be in quite a few problems

When the alarm went off I staggered off for the medication and then for a wash and brush up to look pretty for when she arrives. Not to mention setting out the room as she likes
… "setting out the room as she likes?" – ed …
Didn’t I just tell you not to mention that?

So she came, she saw and she complained. Off I went to bed like a rather naughty child and tucked myself in.

One thing that I did do was to tell my cleaner that I was tucked up in bed. I sent her a message. She pops in every now and again to drop off something and I didn’t want to frighten her.

Actually, she stuck her head into the bedroom later on to see how I was doing and if I needed anything, which was nice of her. She told me later that the sight of me frightened her to death – by which of course she means about how ill I looked. I usually frighten people to death every day for other reasons.

The nurse rang me and told me that she’d seen the doctor’s secretary and he’d be here after his morning surgery closed, which was fair enough.

Sure enough, at about 13:00 he turned up, and he was horrified by my sight too. He gave me a good going-over and then recommended the hospital.

Once I’d agreed (there’s no point having his advice and not taking it) he called the taxi company that handles my affairs and they said that they’d be here in an hour.

Just enough time to sort out my papers and pack a bag (which I didn’t take because I didn’t know if I’d be staying) and then Antoine from the taxi company took me to the Hospital’s Emergency Department.

Having been categorised by an Emergency doctor as “non-urgent” by which they mean “not about to die” judging by the state of some of the others, and having been given a blood test I was put on a bed in the corridor to wait my turn.

There was soup and coffee being passed down the line (not like at Riom where Liz had to run out and purchase supplies) but it didn’t reach me and I was in no mood to ask. And when I’m off my food, you know that here’s something wrong.

There was plenty of time to observe the goings-on and I was glad that I’ve not been arrested. The French Gendarmes don’t mess about asking people to “come quietly”. There were at least two detenus brought into Emergency in handcuffs for a check-over after helping the Gendarmes with their enquiries.

They didn’t actually get round to me that night and I was pushed, bed and all, into an empty office where I was left alone in the dark with the occasional visitor to check on me.

As for me, I felt like death and I could feel that I was going to be worse.

But my faithful cleaner sent me a lovely message – "Courage! The whole building chez nous is with you!"
To which I thought "Blimey! It must be a pretty big bed"

Sunday 14th April 2024 – AND IF YOU …

… think that the last few days have been bad, you should have been here today.

Today, it was just like being back in the olden days when I was living in Leuven. All my energy and enthusiasm, which has been giving signs for a quite a while of wanting to go, finally departed today and there was a washed-out hulk of me sitting on a chair in my bedroom totally unable to move

Back in the days of Leuven I’d have crawled off to bed and stayed there until I don’t know when and hoped that everything would slowly improve. And for two pins I would have done that today too except that I’m not convinced that there will ever be any improvement.

What’s so sad about all of this is that I made a special effort to be in bed early last night and with an extra hour’s sleep before the alarm at 08:00 instead of 07:00 I was really looking forward to some improvement.

Last night before going to bed I’d had a good run around and done everything early which meant that for once I was ahead of myself and could crawl into bed quite content. But ohhhh! Cruel fate!

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed as usual and went to check the blood pressure. 15.7/9.8 this morning, compared to 15.5/10.1 last night. So roughly about the same.

Next task was to set out the room for the nurse so that she’d be happy. I have to look after people like that if I want a comfortable life. It’s not a good idea to upset a nurse who has to tear a plaster every morning off an open wound on your foot.

After she’d left I had some corn flakes and coffee and then came to check the dictaphone notes. of which there are more than just a few. There was a girl – I’m sure that I’ve not dreamed her before. She was about 14 and used to belong to this group of runners. We’d go running at lunchtime at school. Something had happened to her computer and they had to go right back to the days of old DOS 5.0 and DOS 6.0 and ancient computers and files to restart things. This was becoming really complicated but she was sticking it out, which impressed me more than anything. In the end there were only the two of us. As time advanced it became clear that the two of us had become a couple for once which is a rare occasion during a dream, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

She had very short hair and a nice little shape, a little on the muscular side, her thighs and so on. All in all I considered her to be quite a catch and thought myself extremely lucky.

It’s a shame that there was no such girl in our group of runners at school. Every lunchtime a few of us would assemble and run all the way down to Acton, perform a few exercises to warm and loosen us up, and then run back to school.

Those of us in the Sixth Form, whose common room was the old cookery lab, would then tuck in like animals to a catering-size tin of baked beans and sliced loaf of bread.

That went on for a while like that until we found that one of our “runners” was the nephew of the landlord of the Double-Necked Swan down the road. Then our lunchtime habits changed.

And then I had a small force of men including a couple of tanks and had to attack an enemy stronghold with it. What I did was to surround the stronghold with my troops. Then I sent in the tanks and used them to roll up the flanks. As the tanks passed the waiting infantry, the infantry closed in behind the tanks to keep the pressure on the bubble of enemy and to stop them trying to break out to join up with other units so that we could consequently crush them

So in this expedition from school which I’d mentioned earlier … "when?" – ed … we’d begun to build up the tanks but they pushed in to hold the unit together and the tanks did well to roll up the outposts that they had. We were pretty well-impressed. The only difficulty was wondering what they were going to do for our next trick because this wasn’t a trick that you could repeat more than once on the battle field. You need good weather, good legs and good transport to take yourself to the next point of attack and we didn’t actually have anything like that at all at the moment. It was all a very ad-hoc structure.

And I’m not sure about you but I’m impressed that I can plan a military campaign in my sleep. Like the other day when I was planning an advertising campaign, I clearly have some hidden talents, hidden so well that not even I am sure of where to go to find them.

And I wish that I did because I could do with something to liven up my life.

“The cameras say that I’m beautiful” said Julie. “Well, you’re far too young to be beautiful” said Amy. “You have to be pretty, you have to be sweet, you have to be charming and you have to be delightful first, and then someone might find you beautiful, but not when you’re 12 years old. The cameras are lying to you and are obviously seducing you into their magic without you being aware of what is happening. You need to think about this because soon it will be too late for you to resist the magic that they are pulling on you. You need to learn to resist”.

As it happens, I vaguely remember something about this dream. It was similar to a scenario in “The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe” about children who suddenly become the decisive instruments in a power-struggle that is beyond their comprehension

Of course that’s the kind of thing to make anyone question their surroundings and what is going on.

But I definitely can’t remember anything of the following dream. This was when all the objects were arranged neatly in the rear window of the car that was taking them away. It was all in a position of just inviting a burglary if they were going to be left overnight like this

It was round about this point that I fell asleep for the first time; so dramatically and deeply that I was off on another travel. I was working for Shearings and had been called in to do a feeder. It was running to some hotel and venue in the south of England. But when I reached the depot there ere all kinds of a strange green coloured service double decker with pointed roofs like the old Beverley Arch buses. One or two of our coaches arrived and parked down at the bottom end of the yard so I went to see. There were some old World War I type of lorries there and someone was negotiating with their drivers to take our passengers in their old stinky canvas-topped lorries that had a strange kind of crash-reverse gear fitted

There was no danger of missing my food. I awoke in time for lunch but not even two cups of coffee could save me as I crashed out at the kitchen table.

Later on I recovered enough to take myself off to my comfy chair in the bedroom and that’s where I stayed, feeling, tired, exhausted and sorry for myself. I really was in quite a state.

Later on I managed to summon up enough energy, from I don’t know where, to go to make a flapjack and my Sunday evening pizza. But I really didn’t want to. I was in no mood to do anything

What I’m hoping for is enough courage and energy to hang on for a week and my trip to hospital, when I can tell all to people who might be able to do something about it.

But right now that’s my lot. I’ve had about four mouthfuls of pizza and that’s all that I can manage. And anyone who knows anything a tall about me will know that if I’m off my food I really am ill.

Those bad attacks of wind are back again but I’m not going to say anything about them to the hospital because, knowing them, they’ll just prescribe a kite.

Saturday 13th April 2024 – I’VE NOT BEEN …

… feeling too much better today.

Hardly at all, in fact. It’s probably a very good example of the old “same stuff, different day” with just a few of the times being changed around to suit different circumstances.

What’s surprising about this – or maybe it isn’t, I dunno – is that I raced around last night doing things as quickly as possible and actually ended up in bed at 22:40 and anyone would have thought that that extra 20 minutes asleep would have made a difference, but apparently not.

Nevertheless there I was in bed and ready for sleep quite quickly. There was still the occasional stabbing pain in my right foot going right the way up my right leg – in fact, there still is even now, but I suppose that I shall just have to learn to live with it.

There were a few times during the night when I awoke but it wasn’t until the alarm went off (correctly at 07:00) that I managed to drag my reluctant self out of bed and take the blood pressure. 16.8/9.4, compared with a figure of 14.2/9.8 last night.

So what had upset me and raised my blood pressure during the night then? We’ll have to find out.

Having checked the blood pressure I dragged myself off to take the usual morning pile of medication and then set out the dining room as the nurse likes it to be.

While she was here I told her that she has to give a decent amount of notice about stuff that she needs. This is only a small pharmacy here and some of the stuff is quite specialised so it needs to be ordered if we run out. There’s usually a rupture de stock for the more complicated items.

After she left I came back in here and that’s the last thing that I remember until about 11:00. Crashed out completely, like a light, I was.

In the kitchen I slowly began to assemble the stuff for my coffee ad cheese on toast but a crowd of Auvergnats interrupted me. They had come to the market for some local stuff to take back and had at the same time come to say “goodbye”. Their week is over – already! Doesn’t time fly? and tomorrow they’ll be heading home.

It really was nice to see them all and I hope that they come back again at some point. I can’t have enough visitors..

After they left there was football on the internet. Hwlffordd, pushing for the Europa League playoffs, against Colwyn Bay, fighting to avoid relegation.

But when your luck is down, it’s really down. And you can’t be 2-0 down after just 9 minutes and hope to fight until the end.

But seriously, Colwyn Bay have been down and out for a few months now. I thought that being managed by veteran Welsh International defender Steve Evans and having made a few marquee signings, they would have had enough to stay up. But their marquee signings disappeared a long time ago and the rest of the team has been playing like they disappeared a long time ago too.

The final score WAS 3-1 TO HWLFFORDD which means that only a mathematical miracle can save Colwyn Bay now. They must win their final match and hope that both Pontypridd and Aberystwyth are defeated.

After that I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I had two dreams quite quickly, one after the other, about a group of people who were quite well-placed something like Rosemary and her friends, but were going down a place where one could gamble, the kind of place where I was. You needed invitations to go in there and of course you needed a machine to work. There, you could gamble as much as you liked. There were certain limits on normal play but they could be negotiated away with the consent of all the parties playing. It was very much like a typical place about which you’d hear in the Auvergne. But in the third part the person who suggested that it was the Auvergne was correct and the machine had guested itself into there which meant that everyone could spend more time travelling to it and spend much more time sorting themselves out while they were there to have a play on it and to try to defeat the … fell asleep here …

Wherever this might be, I’ve no idea. The only place that comes to my mind is the Casino in Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic where I was a few years ago, but Rosemary and her friends have certainly never been there. However it’s a shame that I fell asleep in the middle of it as I would have liked to have found out so much more about it.

Then, the girls had all gone off to play one of these casino games involving pirates and pirate ships and they’d left me behind. What they hadn’t realised was that one of the alarms was still set and that awoke me for a short while. They were talking about this pirate game and an old German guy overheard them. He went immediately to have his hair cut. While he was having it cut he talked to the people in the hairdresser’s about the game, where you had to go to etc. so that he could make up a party too. I was in bed and, as I said, the alarm went off all of a sudden but it was a different alarm to the usual. Nevertheless it awoke me and made me quite disappointed that I’d not had a good lie-in, but had to make myself ready for the day

And that sounds like an interesting moment too, and I don’t have a clue what was going on here.

Il y a le musicien Eric Bell qui jouait pendant un certain moment avec Thin Lizzy et qui a accompagné Rosemary et ses amis avec son expedition. Il a en réalité chanté son chanson controversée dans la Halle des Bouddhistes sans être interpellé. Pour lui c’est son travail “bien fait, bien fini” et qu’il va avancer sur les autres choses

So I’m dreaming in French again. And about Eric Bell. I remember going to see him in London one night just after he’d left Thin Lizzy and was playing in his own band. But his PA had broken down and there were no vocals to accompany his music and it was something of a washout.

That night I remember sleeping on Hampstead Heath in the back of BILL BADGER, my old Austin A60 van. But I’ve no idea why I was actually in London in the first place.

He’s not however the kind of person to accompany Rosemary on any expedition but since when did reality have anything to do with what goes on at night?

After this I fell asleep again and awoke just in time for tea – another one of my delicious breaded quorn fillets with baked potato and salad.

So now I’m off to bed, with an extra hour to sleep (I hope) before the alarm goes off seeing as it’s a Sunday. But I really can’t do with all of this disruption to my routine. Staying in bed until 11:00 on a Sunday was much more like my line.

It beats me though why it(‘s of any interest My psychiatrist once asked me "what do you dream of in bed?"
I replied "I dreamed that I was in bed with Kate Bush"
"What happened?" he asked.
"Nothing" I replied. "She was dreaming that she was in bed with Roger Moore so I had to get out."

Friday 12th April 2024 – TODAY I HAVE HAD …

… probably the worst day that I have ever had in my whole life.

Most of the day has been spent in a state of semi-consciousness curled up on my chair, hunched over the computer in a fit of total and absolute fatigue.

It goes without saying that I have never felt so tired in my whole life.

Last night I was quicker than normal running through the jobs that needed to be done and I was actually in bed for 23:20.

And when U awoke, at 06:20, for some reason I was convinced that it was Sunday – really convinced – and looked forward to the extra hour in bed. So when alarm calls started going off at 07:00 my initial response was to reset all of the alarms to 08:00, and I was well on my way to doing that when it clicked.

So somewhat later than usual I raised myself from the Dead and went to check the blood pressure machine. 15.9/10.0, compared to last night’s 14.1/10.4. The heartbeats were interesting too – 80 this morning compared to 72 last night. The heart has beaten as low as 61 before though, and that’s interesting.

After I’d had the medication I started to make the bread before the nurse arrived so that it would be proofing while she was here.

She was impressed with it and that’s no surprise because it was another good batch. She managed not to put her finger in it anyway But regrettably I had the first of many crashings out and it was 12:15 when I could get to it again. That really was a crashing out.

Having prepared my bread for baking I crashed out again and as a result breakfast ended up being well after lunchtime.

And then I crashed out again

While the cleaner was here later on I managed to do half of the Welsh homework for this week. I’ll have to dinf some more time and enthusiasm to do the rest one of these days.

And than I started the dictaaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. I was changing a cylinder head on a Cortina mkIV or mkIII or mk V. One of the things that was useful was lining up a few bolt holes in the back of the exhaust. I was lying there trying to line up these three bolt holes and it seemed to be taking for ever. I hadn’t realised at fist that one of the bolt shad been body-fillered over so I had to chisel that free. Then we were encountering all kinds of other difficulties like that. It was becoming really dark and it had never taken me so long to do it. In the end we stopped for a cup of tea but I was determined to go back outside, crawl underneath and carry on. One of the guys there said that he didn’t think that it was necessary to do what I was doing. I reminded him that I’d met him the very first time few years ago and we’d had an interesting discussion about changing heads on Cortinas in those days and I’d remembered almost everything that he’d said, word for word so I was perfectly sure that I had to line up these boltways perfectly before I could finish off the job of changing this head. It was just becoming really so complicated and awkward. There was no need for this. It was just that everything on these vehicles was so old and rotten. Nothing was lining up at all in the way that it ought to because of rust and rot etc

Anyone care to guess how many cylinder heads I’ve changed on a Pinto-engined Ford? And I’ve never had any cause to play about with the rear end of an exhaust. However it’s true to say that rust and rot were responsible for a great many difficulties that were encountered when working on old Fords. You’ve no idea how much more comfortable it is working on modern cars, assuming that you actually can work on them

And then we had a dream completely in French Il y a l’histoire d’un jeune adolescent qui est mort. Il a été grand fan des groupes de rock et que sa copine ecoutait tooutes des émissions de rock pour des nouvraux groupes à coté de son temps pour reaconter l’histoire et jouer comme l’hiver et expliquer comment va aux festivals et théatres de sa parte pour continuer le rock mais son père n’est pas du tout content qu’elle continue le schedule

And then the next dream is the story of a young boy who is confined to his room etc. His father has died and his mother had collected up all of his music and things like that and is giving into a charity shop. The boy thinks that it’s terrible that all this history is being lost like that. He wants to have it and wants to continue the tradition of his father but his mother is dead-set against it and it’s causing an enormous amount of conflict within their house, who’s going to do what and how.

That’s my big nightmare too. All of the stuff that I’ve collected and created, all of which is of real importance and it will all br discarded and forgotten after all the time that I’ve spent assembling it all together. I really need to appoint as my literary editor someone who knows what I’m trying to do and realises the value of it all.

But that’s going to be next to impossible. No-one will care half as much about my work as me myself

This is a story about someone called Fileul ere was a passenger, Amy with her Uncle Peter who ended up at the airport. Peter arranged to be dropped off at the main building, said “excuse me” and disappeared. Amy was waiting for quite a long time, holding up the traffic like that, making people outraged. In the end she decided to move her vehicle somewhere else and went to look for a piece of paper on which she could write a note. Instead she found, crumpled up on the floor, for “Peter Fileul, flying to Amsterdam” that very afternoon. She parked up the vehicle and went inside the airport where she actually found a friendly policeman and the two of them caught Fileul just as he was about to pass through the departure gates,

And there was a rock musician called Peter Fileul too. He played keyboards in The Climax Blues Band, East of Eden and The Parlour Band. I’ve featured quite a few pieces of music by his groups in the past

Finally I was running a class of creative writing, consisting mainly of girls wanting to write chicklit. It was a very full class and the students could be identified by the colour coding of their machinery in order to work out which speciality they would be following during the course. But it was all a very high-intensity course with a lot of screaming adolescents who would go berserk at the drop of a hat.

Could you imagine me running a class like that? I’d be deafened within a week with all of these over-enthusiastic adolescents all trying to be the next millionaire But it’s an interesting idea.

Fighting off yet more waves of sleep I struggled on until teatime when I had a baked potato, salad and vegan burger. I wasn’t feeling like much.

But now I’m going to bed. It was a horrible day so here’s hoping for a better one tomorrow, a Saturday, starting at 07:00.

It’s necessary to tell myself these things just so that I know. But at least all those people who keep saying that I don’t even know what date of the week it is can be proved right.

It’s like the guy with a heart issues who was told not to make love to his wife when the day of the week ends in …DAY.
To put temptation behind him, he sleeps in a separate room from his wife
After about a week he’s awoken by his wife shaking him
"What day is it?" he asks, disorientated
"Tuesdray" replied his wife
"Nonsense" retorted the husband. "You’ve come in here to kill me, haven’t you?"
"Not at all" replied the wife
"Good" said the husband. "In that case I’m coming into your room to die"

Thursday 11th April 2024 – I’VE NO IDEA …

… what happened to this morning.

There I was, sitting down at my desk typing out a few notes and the next thing that I knew was that I was flat out asleep the ‘phone was ringing and it was midday already.

A whole morning had passed and I’d been totally out of it. It was just as if someone had flicked a switch at some point earlier in the morning and I’d just switched off completely with no warning.

You’ve no idea whatever just how strange it feels to be in a circumstance like that. All that I can say is that it’s a good job that I can no longer drive.

This morning I knew that things were going to be difficult. I’d been awake since about 06:00 and was actually up early before the alarm went off. It was actually quite a struggle to leave the bed, no matter how it sounds, because I didn’t feel in the least like it.

It had been a late night too. This idea about trying my best to finish everything early isn’t really working and despite the best intentions, and the road to Hell is paved with those, I’m not doing aby good with the plan.

It was probably about 23:30 when I slipped under the covers and so awakening at 06:00 is simply not enough sleep. Heaven alone knows how I managed 30-odd years ago when if I thought I was having half that time in bed I was doing well.

So first thing was to check the blood pressure this morning. It was showing 16.9/11.2, which compares quite miserably with last night’s figure of 14.9/9.3. Something had gone on during the night to upset me, by the looks of things, but we’ll have to wait to find out what.

Instead of worrying about that I went to take my medication, the typical European Medicine Mountain of stuff, and then to rearrange the living room ready for her and also to have a good wash

While she was here she gave me a list of stuff that she needed and then wandered off, and I began to sort myself out. However it was at some point round about here that I disappeared off the face of the earth.

awakening was the thing, because I was totally out of it and it took me a good couple of hours (seriously) to come back onto this planet. It was certainly well after 14:00 when I restarted work.

First thing was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night – and from the morning too because there were some of them. But during the night I was back in Outer Space again assembling a rock programme. What I was actually doing was cutting an audio track from an obscure German rock group called Dreadnought, copying out the segments. There were dozens of them, all extremely long so it was a complicated business to do it. I was chatting to one or two people while I was doing it. They were apparently quite impressed and spent some time watching. I found that one of the women there, she knew exactly how to do it. She had a Welsh programme there and she was going through telling me how she did it, in Welsh, which I understood, saying “it wasn’t done in this way – it wasn’t done in this way and it wasn’t done in this way and it wasn’t done in this way but it was done in a way like this”, said in Welsh all the time and I could follow the conversation, I could follow exactly what she’d done. She made it sound really, really interesting. I thought to myself “maybe I ought to investigate things from that point of view and see how they fit with what I’m doing”

Funnily enough, just recently I have been editing a concert sound track by a German space-rock group called Dreadnought, another one of my contacts from one of the various Hawkfests, and it’s really quite interesting. But I wish that I knew in real life which method this woman was using. I’m completely self-taught in respect of my use of a sound-editing programme and can conjure up some surprisingly good results. But there are tons of facilities that I have never used, and some expert advice would really not go amiss

Later on I was back in a dream in Welsh. Our Welsh class had to translate an ancient song. There were two ways to do it, one was a translation after the fashion of Morgannwg … "presumably the poet Lewys Morgannwg" – ed … and the other after the fashion on Cadwaladwr … "presumably Cadwaladr ap Rhys Trefnant" – ed …. The problem was that both translations are rather inflammatory and as a result its use has fallen out of favour but nevertheless that was our task. One girl was already receiving some grief because her translation had come to the notice of the authorities and we were wondering all the way through the rest of this dream how long it will be before our version of the translation comes to the attention of the authorities, and what action they’ll take against us

And that’s the problem with much of Welsh literature of that period. It’s a tale of lament about the oppression of the native people by the wicked English and like many other things, it’s not very appetising to the English palette today.

While many countries have tried hard to come to terms with their past, in England there has never been any kind of attempt at reconciliation. There are a great many scars that have never ever healed.

While I was asleep during the morning there was also a complicated discussion going on about the use of personal pronouns, something else that seems to be quite a touchy subject these days.

As we said the other day, there are a lot of people with nothing better to do so they trawl the internet and places like that trying to find ways in which they might be offended. If you’re born with a certain gender and you don’t like it, then that’s your problem, not everyone else’s

Whoever it was on the phone who awoke me, I have no idea I was in no fit state to answer.

Instead I lowly (as in the next couple of hours) came back round into the Land of the Living and then made a start on the notes for the next radio programme.

Not that I went far because firstly the cleaner descended upon me with some supplies for the nurse, and then the Auvergnats came round to fill me in on their exciting day. Tomorrow they are off down the road to Mont St Michel so I’m being allowed a day of freedom myself. I’ll see them on Saturday for the last time.

But it was nice to chat about all of our old stamping grounds down in the Combrailles and to discuss all of our former partners in crime, most of whom have moved on to pastures new.

And that’s a shame because I really loved my life in the Auvergne. It was just how I imagined rural France to be and I’m glad that I managed to grab hold of one of the last vestiges of it before it disappeared completely

There was definitely something to be said for life down there, but it’s no life for anyone who is not 100% fit.

After they left there wasn’t much time left until teatime – some pasta and veg in a vegan cheese sauce with a couple of the falafel balls that I made the other day. Totally delicious.

So when I’ve finished everything again, my throbbing leg and I are going to bed and if the pain subsides I might even sleep. But it would be nice to have a regular sleep.

And by that I mean one with lots of dreams. Lee Jackson sang "YOU WOULD GIVE A SMALL FORTUNE
TO BE BACK IN YOUR DREAMS"
and he’s not at all wrong, not on my account anyway

It does remind me of the time that Nerina and I chatted about our dreams
Nerina said "I dreamed last night that I’d gone shopping in Asda"
"Really?" I asked. "I dreamed that I was making love to three beautiful, naked women in the park under a glorious warm sun"
"Was I there?" she asked
"Actually no" I replied. "You’d gone shopping in Asda"

Wednesday 10th April 2024 – TODAY HASN’T BEEN …

… any easier today than it was yesterday. I fact it was probably a darn sight worse.*

And that’s a shame because I was actually in bed earlier than I usually am and earlier than I would like to be For a change it didn’t take long to finish off what I need to do, and I was wracking my brains thinking of things that I might have forgotten to do.

But one thing about it was that I was doped up to the eyebrows with painkillers.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I usually eschew painkillers but I really was in so much agony that I just couldn’t carry on any longer.

It’s not my style, I agree. I think that painkillers do more harm than good, but in bed, I’m not likely to find myself in any mischief, especially as TOTGA, Castor and Zero have stopped coming to visit me during the night.

So doped up to the eyebrows … "you’ve said that once" – ed … I went to bed. And that probably explains why I went to sleep, didn’t awaken until 06:15 and left nothing on the dictaphone except a rambling account of how grateful I was.

It really was for once a good night’s sleep because I felt absolutely nothing at all. When the alarm went off I staggered out of bed, dressed myself and checked my blood pressure – 16.3/10.5, which compares with last night’s figure of 17.4/10.2. I’m not surprised that the pressure has gone down after last night’s chemically-induced sleep.

Next thing was to take the medication, the usual piles of it too. My friendly neighbourhood cleaner will be along at some point to verify the medication that I have.

Having arranged the room, the nurse came along to give me my rabies shot, or whatever it is. And then to bandage me up with the putties so that I look like something out of Ancient Egypt

On Sunday I shall have to make another one as nice as that. It will be really nice if that one is so good.

Don’t let anyone tell you that strong black coffee keeps you awake by the way because back in here I really was gone with the fairies. I had the guitar out for a short while to have a play but didn’t go far with it.

It was 13:35 when I finally awoke and then I had lunch and a good wash with change of clothes to make myself look pretty.

To my surprise I’d been away with the fairies during the morning. I was involved in some kind of crazy science fiction dream involving some mad scientists and a chemical. But there were two of me and one of them was dishonest and ready to fall in with the plans of the scientist and the other one of me was more honest and was intent on thwarting his plans

And that4s a story with a little history behind it that deserves to be told one of these days but will have to wait until the expiry of certain periods of Statute of Limitations in the UK.

There was also something else about the Welsh Premier League and attendances. I was actually out on my way to a ground to watch a game and was driving through Whitchurch although it was no Whitchurch that I ever knew and a discussion on attendances began. Someone had seen a paper with a figure given of 4,000 and whoever it was couldn’t believe it but I replied that until their current problems Aberystwyth could easily have that kind of figure as their support.

Not that that’s ever likely to happen either. The record crowd in the Welsh Premier League is 3250 at Porthmadog who came to see them play Bangor City, but where are those clubs now?

Mind you, at a second-tier match at Old Road in Llansawel there were 1201 spectators who packed into the ground to watch them beat Rhydaman, lift the Championship and prepare for their first season in the top flight for almost 30 years.

Wouldn’t it be nice though if 4,000 could pack into Park Avenue to watch Aberystwyth? However, with a League with no money, no real publicity, no real budget and operating under a mainstream media blackout thanks to the rugby clubs who pull all the media strings in Wales, It’s no surprise.

While my cleaner was here I carried on with yet more radio notes and then after she left my favourite Auvergnats turned up again for more cake and chat. This is becoming a habit. I don’t like sharing my cake, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Tea tonight was another delicious leftover curry with naan bread, rive and vegetables. I’m really spoiling myself these days

So having done all of that, I’m off to bed. The pains have come back to some extent but I’ll try without painkillers tonight and hope that I’ll be OK

But talking about mummies and my puttees reminds me of the tomb that archaeologists discovered next to the Dead Sea in the Middle East.
"I wonder what it was for" asked one of the archaeologists
"That’s easy" replied another. "Being next to the Dead Sea, it’s probably a deceased Pharaoh’s weekend retreat"
"What do you mean by that?#34; asked the first
"It’s easy" said the second one. "This is where they’d all come to unwind after a busy week in the pyramid"

Tuesday 9th April 2024 – I’M NOT HAVING …

… a very good day today.

It seems that all of the fates have conspired against me. In particular, the stabbing pain in the sole of my right foot. I thought that it had disappeared after it was conspicuous by its absence during the night and during this morning.

But now it’s back, and in spades too. It’s like an electric shock all the way up my right leg that starts in the sole of the foot, and it occurs every 15 minutes or so. The pain at times is unbearable.

As well as that, there’s a continual tingling coming from the sole of the foot now as if there’s a low-voltage electric shock going on. I hate to think what might happen if it increases in intensity.

It had all died down towards the end of last night and for once in my life I was actually in bed at a realistic hour last night too so that I was able to take full advantage.

Not that I did though because not long after going to bed I pulled a muscle in one of my legs and it took an age to untangle myself

Somehow in all of the confusion the plaster over this weeping oedema on my right foot became detached and that was causing me all kinds of agony too. That really was painful.

And so I limped through to about 07:00 when the alarm went off this morning. And when the alarm went off I was editing two tracks of a girl who had been singing two songs belonging to Yes. I was doing them, preparing them for broadcast but I can’t remember their names now but I certainly did while I was doing it.

That’s just typical, isn’t it? Those names are on the tip of my tongue and I’ve been trying all day to recall them, but with no success.

First job of course was to take the blood pressure – 16.3/9.5, which doesn’t compare very well with last night’s 15.4/9.8. I wonder what went on to wind me up during the night. I suppose that we’ll find out very soon.

Next job however was to to and take my medication. Shovel all of that lot down and see how I get on.

Then to organise the room how the nurse likes it, ready for her visit. It’s Isabelle starting from today for the next seven days. She was impressed that the room was nicely laid out and that we had all the supplies we needed, but she was not so impressed with this weeping oedema.

It’s blistered over and so she “popped” the blister, and you can imagine just how that felt, and that was before she put some disinfectant on it

Once she’d gone I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was going to bed last night and I still had to think about who I was going to be dreaming about when I stretched and pulled a muscle in my left calf. It took ages for me to calm it down and put it back to how it ought to be, and by that time I was wide-awake and had completely forgotten all of how this dream had started off. It was to do with me going to bed anyway and making plans to dream but that’s everything that I can remember.

And that certainly was painful too. And what with every other pain in my body right now it was really something that I didn’t need.

Later on I was doing my Welsh homework and came to a frightful tangle and mess about it because the “copy and paste” seemed to be pasting the answers in in all kinds of strange positions. One of the things that I had to say was that the station of Y Pobl and another station were the two least-used stations of the railway network but I just couldn’t get the words out of my head. I was surprised that I remembered the word for “least” – leiaf but I just couldn’t seem to get the rest to come out in the correct order and was being really confused by it all.

And then I was making my breakfast at work. I had my little toaster there toasting my bread and my little gas stove that I was using to heat a kettle of water for my coffee. When I turned my back to fetch my margarine from the fridge someone else took my kettle off and put his saucepan on top to boil his water. Of course I was absolutely furious but this guy thought that it was quite a normal thing to do, to just use anyone else’s gas to make himself a coffee rather than buy a little stove of his own. He was extremely indignant when I told him off. And I was still being all confused with my Welsh homework too even then.

But it’s interesting about this recurring dream. Slipping back into the same dream after I’ve already dictated some notes is not something that happens very often. And it’s really a shame that I can’t choose the dreams into which I want to slip back.

And that reminds me – TOTGA, Castor and Zero haven’t been around for a while. I could do with them making a dramatic reappearance.

After the dictaphone notes I began to prepare for the Welsh lesson and was so enthralled by what I was doing that I lost track of time.

And it’s a shame that my enthusiasm didn’t carry over into the lesson. The lesson ended up being rather like the curate’s egg – “good and bad in parts”.

After the lesson I had the lunchtime fruit, collected the shopping that my cleaner had found for me in LeClerc, and then … errr … crashed out. And that’s no surprise as I had been fighting off wave after wave of sleep during my lesson.

The hospital awoke me with a phone call, but I don’t know what they wanted to say as I missed the call, and then the Auvergnats arrived. They’d been spying out the lie of the land and had been for lunch, followed by a walk and a coffee before coming here.

We put the world to rights for ages, and then they wandered off and I … errr … crashed out again.

Tea was a delicious taco roll again, with enough stuffing left over to make a start on a decent vegan curry tomorrow, but now I’m going to go to bed early if I can, and if these pains will let me.

They are hurting so much, and I have no idea why but I really am fed up of all of this. Maybe lying horizontally will stop the stabbing pain, but then I have all of the others including the likelihood of a pulled muscle, with which to contend

It’s like the man who went to the hospital for a consultation
"What’s the matter with you then?" asked the doctor
"I have this severe pain in my right leg" replied the man
After having given him a thorough examination the doctor replied "I’m going to amputate your left foot, your left arm and remove your left kidney"
"Will that stop my right leg hurting then?" asked the patient
"Not at all" replied the doctor "but you’ll be in that much pain from the other things that you just won’t notice it any more"

Monday 8th April 2024 – MY APARTMENT HAS …

… passed muster by a group of Auvergnats who descended upon the place this afternoon on their way along the coast.

Rosemary, Ingrid and their friend Clotilde have come to spend the week here on the coast to blow away the cobwebs in the corner of their minds. They found a nice house to rent and are intending to make the most of it, despite what the weather can throw at them.

This also means that my 200-watt Genz-Benz bass amp combo has finally made it home after all these years too. These are expensive pieces of kit and I found one languishing in a pawn shop in Ottawa for peanuts in 2019 when I was visiting my cousin Sandra.

It’s been a long tortuous journey for it to come to Europe. Some empty space in a shipping container meant that it could make it as far as Rosemary’s house in 2022 but it didn’t arrive there until after it left there

And aren’t I glad to see it?

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a decent bass amp and speaker close to hand. Probably since I blew the cone out of my 18″ reflex cabinet in the late 1970s, and since then I’ve been making do with whatever I could find.

Just recently – well, for the last 12 years – I’ve been using a Carlsbro 45 watt combo which probably would have continued to do the job for all the playing bass that I do in public these days but this was a deal that was far too good to turn down.

It’s not as if I actually needed it in Canada either because I had a Fender combo amp in the back of Strider through which I could plug the Jaguar bass guitar.

And those are other things that I need to arrange sometime to bring over here now that Strider has gone the Way of the West.

The Jaguar certainly, when I see the prices of those, for that was something else that I picked up for une bouchée de pain as they say around here and also in Montreal, where I found it in another pawn shop. I always seemed to have good luck in Canadian pawn shops.

However much luck it was, it was certainly more than I had last night in trying to go to bed.

By the time that I’d finished doing everything that I had to, it was much later than I intended and I thought “here we go again”. I’d had a miserable day, there was this stabbing pain in the sole of my foot and I was hours late going to bed. I really could do without all of this.

But eventually I fell into bed and that was all that I remember for all of a couple of hours, before I awoke quite dramatically again at some ridiculous hour of the night.

There was the impression that I stayed awake after that but when the alarm went off I was checking a postal delivery, looking at the form where it said “van driver – her signature” and then “client signature ” and one or two other things on it, otherwise making sure that the form complied with all of the relevant legislation before actually putting my signature on it. But I don’t know what parcel I’d received because I thought that I’d received everything. This must have been something completely different and unexpected that had come in the post like this.

It certainly wasn’t the amp – that didn’t arrive until much later.

First thing that I did when the alarm went off was to fall out of bed to look for the blood pressure machine, and then take the measurement. 14.4/11.5 it was this morning, compared to 15.4/7.7, the latter figure of which looks suspiciously incorrect.

After the medication I had to arrange the dining area so that it’s as the nurse likes it, and then make sure that everything is present. It’s his last day today for a week so let’s hope that he’s calmed down by the time that he comes back.

And let’s hope that my right foot has too, because there’s a weeping oedema on the foot that has reared its ugly head overnight.

Anyway, he cleaned it off and applied a plaster before he wound on my puttees. And he doesn’t like this pair. He thinks that the elastic has gone and I should throw them out but I should think so! They are only about four weeks old!

After he’d gone I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was watching a football match last night. There were two teams, one playing in all red and the other in all blue. They were amalgamations of a couple of smaller 5-a-side teams and playing in some kind of tournament but there was this one game that I was watching but that was really by accident because it was on in the background at a house that I was visiting a girl for some reason connected to the Air Force but my eye fell upon the game that was being broadcast on the TV. I became less and les concerned about the Air Force and more and more concerned about the game and what was happening on the screen.

And it wouldn’t be the first time that this has happened either. I’m easily distracted by interesting things that are much more interesting than what I’m actually supposed to be doing.

Next task was to do a final round of tidying up in the apartment before having a really good wash and brush up to make myself look pretty.

While I was waiting for them to appear, I had a little snooze (no surprise there) and carried on with the radio notes. I actually managed to finish off the programme that I started so many moons ago.

My visitors turned up with my amp and I made a pot of tea. Clotilde had bought one of her vegan cakes so we all had a little party as we recalled old times and life down there on the margins of civilisation.

It’s strange but, primitive though the life was up there in the mountains, it was a very pleasant place to be with lots of exciting things happening. It’s a place that I miss more and more with each day that passes but there’s no point having regrets. I can’t turn the clock back to more healthy times.

So after my visitors had met my cleaner, who brought around the next load of medication, they all left me to my own devices.

Once more I crashed out yet again and I was off on my travels. I had the start of a dream about an elderly but thin guy rather like Putin in an all-white football kit, but I had no idea what was going on there

And then later on I was planning on digging some trenches with a backhoe but there was some debate as to whether the ground was solid enough. I thought that it worked out at at least 55lb per sq inch but some others disagreed and thought that it was less solid.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … what goes on in my head while I’m asleep is much more exciting than whatever happens in real life.

Tea tonight was a delicious stuffed pepper with plenty of stuffing left over to see me through the next few days too, and now I’m off to bed.

Tomorrow I have a Welsh lesson, but I must also write out a shopping list for my cleaner if she goes to visit the LeClerc.

It reminds me of the time that I went shopping with Hannah, my niece’s middle daughter, when we were loading up with supplies to go to a tractor pull in New Hampshire (what an exciting life I used to lead).
"How much water do you think we ought to buy?" asked Hannah
"How much beer do we have?" I asked
"Three crates full" she replied
"So why do we need water then?" I asked. I have never felt more like a redneck in my life

Sunday 7th April 2024 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… horrible, gruesome, miserable day today again.

And if you thought that the one the other day was bad, this beats is easily. In fact it beats any day that I have ever had and I wish that I were dead.

It was at about 05:30 when I awoke this morning which, considering that once more I didn’t go to bed until long after midnight, is simply not enough.

Whatever it was that awoke me I really have no idea but I do know why I couldn’t go back to sleep, and that is this nerve ending in the sole of my right foot that is absolutely killing me.

It was doing its best to unsettle me last night, not without success. I’m getting to the stage where I’m simply afraid to move or to do anything in case it flares up again. And then after a while it flares up again all of its own accord anyway.

What would be nice would be in I knew what was causing it so that I didn’t do it again, but that’s far too easy a solution.

So when the alarm went off first thing that I did was to check the blood pressure. Maybe because of the stabbing pain in the sole of my foot it was 17.1/10.1 whereas last night, despite the stabbing pain then, it was 16.2/10.1

The nurse was early again today and I hadn’t finished my toilet so it was a very dishevelled me who went to meet him. And he’s given me instructions to wash the puttees for next time, but not to worry as I have the spare set which are already clean.

After he left I made myself some coffee and corn flakes, and went to carry on reading THE DAWN OF ASTRONOMY for a while.

Considering that the book is over 100 years old, it’s absolutely fascinating. It’s interesting to read his speculation about a lot of the ancient Egyptian temples, and then read subsequent modern research into the sites that proves his theories

The amount of old, interesting out-of-copyright books that I’ve found on these archiving sites is phenomenal and I’ve enjoyed every one.

Back in here I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night last night. There was a group of girls being used as entertainers. I had a woman who wasn’t all that much older than me supervising them and making sure that they were well-behaved. While they were eating the supervisor was hanging around the girls so I wondered what was going on. I went over to find out. I found out that she had a series of plates, cups and saucers etc that were made in bright green plastic. She was trying to have her whole network to buy these products and use them so that she could identify them whenever she went away or was on some foreign soil etc but one or two of her members I suppose were quite keen on the idea but the rest weren’t so she was having a really difficult job trying to explain this to them.

When we were up in the High Arctic we were all given bright blue jackets. Firstly, they stood out really well against the snow and ice so that we could be seen quite easily in case we lost the way
Secondly many of our landings were dependent upon winds, currents, tides, polar bears and ice flow. All that could change in an instant and if we had to be called back to a zodiac or to THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR we could be distinguished quite easily from a local.

Not for nothing was our party always known as “The Smurfs”.

My jacket from 2018 is hanging up in my cupboard here, but the one from 2019 was last seen hanging from a coat hook in a hotel in Calgary with my notebook and a few other bits and pieces in its pockets.

The whole of my progress around the Northern Hemisphere is marked by the objects that I’ve left behind, scattered to the four winds like that

By now I’d crashed out, for the first (but not the last) time today and was gone on this occasion until 12:00.

But even though I was feeling so bad, worse than you will ever know, I pressed on as well as I could with my radio notes to try to make some kind of progress.

After lunch I crashed out again but managed to awaken in time to make a start on the biscuits. And nice as they are, they would have been even nicer had I remembered the desiccated coconut to go with the coconut oil that I put in there.

It’s just a basic 10/8/4 mix of flour, butter/oil and sugar with nutmeg, cinnamon, ground ginger and cocoa powder.

While the mixture was firming up in the fridge I was crashing out again and then while it was baking I was dealing with tonight’s pizza. Not that I wanted to because I wasn’t hungry but I forced myself. And you can tell that I’m ill when I’m off my food

To everyone’s surprise, especially my own, I’ve brushed up in here and washed the floor. I’m likely to have a visit tomorrow afternoon. A party of Auvergnats has now arrived in the immediate vicinity and I’m likely to be called forward for inspection.

So I’ll need to pretty myself up too – an impossible task these days, I know. But if I have a better night’s sleep that will be a start.

But talking about polar bears just now reminds me of the time that they decided to have some cycles available for the more intrepid tourist on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR
Two polar bears were admiring the advert and one of them said to the other one "high time someone started a ‘meals on wheels’ service around the Arctic"

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: dream

Thursday 25th April 2024 – I HAVE ACHES …

Wednesday 24th April 2024 – THAT WAS AN …

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 – OUCH! THAT HURT!

Monday 22nd April 2024 – MEANWHILE, HERE IN …

Sunday 21st April 2024 – AND SO TOMORROW …

Friday 19th April 2024 – YOU HAVE NO IDEA …

Monday 15th April 2024 = I’M IN HOSPITAL

Sunday 14th April 2024 – AND IF YOU …

Saturday 13th April 2024 – I’VE NOT BEEN …

Friday 12th April 2024 – TODAY I HAVE HAD …

Thursday 11th April 2024 – I’VE NO IDEA …

Wednesday 10th April 2024 – TODAY HASN’T BEEN …

Tuesday 9th April 2024 – I’M NOT HAVING …

Monday 8th April 2024 – MY APARTMENT HAS …

Sunday 7th April 2024 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

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