Category Archives: dream

LIVE: 26th October 2026 – JUST FOR ONCE …

… at dialysis, I had a session where nothing seemed to go wrong, and it passed this afternoon without the slightest of worries.

On top of that, the médécin de garde this afternoon was Emilie the Cute Consultant, and what could any man want more than that?

In fact, I had an idea that it was going to be a good day today. Although it wasn’t early when I went to bed last night, it wasn’t as late as many have been just recently. And once I was in bed, I went pretty much straight to sleep.

Although I have a couple of vague memories of waking up during the night, I must have gone more or less straight back to sleep because I don’t really remember very much at all until the alarm going off at 06:29.

As usual, it took me a while to rise to my feet, and the first task was, like it always is these days, to go to unlock the front door ready for Isabelle the Nurse when she arrives.

The second task was different today. It was to go to stir the chilli mix. It had been in the slow cooker all night, and it still hadn’t boiled at that point, I noticed. Consequently, I put it on “high” to give it a kick start and went into the bathroom to organise myself for the day, including having a shave ready for Emilie the Cute Consultant in case she examines me.

When I’d finished in there, I went back into the kitchen to check the chilli. By now, it was bubbling away, so I gave it a really good stir and turned the temperature down to “medium” and left it for a while.

Back in here, the first job was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

We were at some kind of meeting, and there were hordes and hordes of people there. We were sitting in seats and we were all crammed in. It was a really tight fit to have everyone in there and seated. There was virtually no leg room at all. I was sitting right near the back with a group of people around me and we were getting on really well. The final day of this meeting, they were taking everyone off into the city nearby for a sightseeing tour, but it had started to rain, and quite a lot of people had decided that they weren’t going to go, including a couple of our little group, so we were debating what we were going to do. I was interested in one of these girls, so I was wondering if she was going to stay here too or if she was going to go back to her room or whatever, but anyway, I got up and went for a walk around to stretch my legs, and despite the huge meal that we had had earlier, there was some kind of small running buffet where people could make sandwiches and so on. I noticed my Welsh teacher from last year sitting on the front row talking. So I had a quick glance at this food, and they had bourbon biscuits, so despite the meal, I helped myself to a couple of those and walked back to my seat to see what the other people in our group had decided.

Here I am once more with another little group of friends. But apart from that, there’s nothing in this dream that I can readily identify. However, it does have a very familiar ring to it and I’m sure that there’s been something like this happening before, but I just can’t place it.

The presence of my previous Welsh teacher is interesting too, although I’ve no idea why she’s there.

As for the bourbon biscuits, the cheap Tesco ones are in fact vegan, and on several occasions when I was over in the UK, I’d bring back several packets to keep me going. And that gives me an idea – why don’t I ask my chatbot if he can work out a good recipe for me? I may as well try.

… "And as a matter of fact, he did ask, and his chatbot came up with an excellent recipe" – ed …

There was also something else. My friend from the USA rang me and was talking about going to some kind of wholesale shop for things. But first, the story was about his vehicle that had been stolen. I said that it was probably in Canada or somewhere like that, being used by someone else, although I knew where it was, I knew who had stolen it, and I knew the reason why, so I wasn’t going to say anything. This person who had had it had inadvertently put the vehicle’s registration number on line in a blog entry. My friend said that he had looked for the vehicle on line and he hadn’t been able to see it, except for something in Canada, so that gave me a little relief. In the meantime, he said – he asked me if I could look up in a USA directory the way to get from his place to somewhere else in the area. I had to hunt down three or four maps and they were all the wrong ones. In the end, I found the correct one just as he was returning to the ‘phone. He told me that he was going to go to this wholesale shop using the card of someone else. She turned out to be a girl at this meeting with whom I was talking. I asked him how he had met her, and he said that he was at the meeting last year and that was where they hooked up for a while.

It looks as if I stepped back into that first dream later on, but this is another dream that means nothing at all to me. I’m not sure why the car would be involved, why I’d be expected over here in France to look at a map and why a girl in the UK would have a trade card for the USA that she would let someone else use.

I was in the USA last night with my van. I was driving down these roads towards Texas and there was a heavy fog approaching, so I didn’t want to be on the road when there was this heavy fog, so I pulled off by the side of the road, right by a cemetery. I went to have a look in the cemetery, and one of the things that I noticed was a huge monument on a grave, and I read it. It was by some guy who had died in Texas, and on his tombstone was written a quote that he had made, which was “don’t ever go to Texas because all you ever see are headstones and monuments in graveyards”. I walked back and climbed back on board the coach, and there were only two or three people there, so I asked them where everyone had gone. They replied that everyone else had gone to walk up and down a hill. I waited for them all to come back, and I asked the guy in charge where they’d been, and he said that they’d been for a walk along a canal. So I set off and carried on driving, and we were passing through all these small villages that looked very much like English villages. We ended up in a square in one of these places, which was magnificent, with a couple of archways in and a couple of archways out, and a pseudo black and white shop. I suggested to the guy in charge that we stop here and let people photograph for five minutes, so he gave everyone a fifteen minute break for a coffee, and I went to park up my motorbike outside a shop. The guy inside the shop came along and helped me padlock it too with another padlock on another hook. I asked him for a key, and he gave me twenty cents. I wandered off and took a few photos, and when it was time to go back, I went back to the shop. I unpadlocked one end and the guy unpadlocked the other. A third guy came over and asked me about Audis. I told him that they were expensive cars. He wanted to go over and have a look at my van, so he went over and had a look at it, then he went inside and told the passengers that I hadn’t given him a tip for holding the motorbike and that I was probably going to beg them for a tip at the end of the holiday. I threw him off and we set off again in the coach. We ended up by the sea. Someone had said that they could see the sea from where we’d stopped. But here, we came to a very narrow entry and pulled out onto a main road. The guy in charge asked me which way, but I said that I didn’t know because no-one had told me which hotel or even which town I was supposed to be going to. I drove the coach along a bit of the way and the road disintegrated into a kind of woodland. We climbed out of the coach and walked through the woods, and the coach followed us. We ended up at this big hotel that looked more like a hospital. This, apparently, was where we were supposed to be.

This one is the most weird of them all.

If I were to point out every inconsistency in this dream, we’d be here forever trying to explain them. But the most important is how my mode of transport changed from being a van, a coach and a motorbike and then back again, and then there was the image of a self-driving coach taking itself through the woods.

It’s probably best if I were to say nothing and let you try to work the rest of them out for yourselves. Perhaps someone can identify if this relates to anything else that has happened in the past.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, but a little late today. With her oppo taking over tomorrow, I imagine that there has been a rush for last-minute injections and blood samples. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … she has “the touch”, whereas her oppo doesn’t.

While she was working on my legs and feet, she told me of her plans for her week off. At St Malo over the weekend there’s the start of a single-handed yacht race – the Route du Rhum – between Brittany and the Antilles, finishing at Guadeloupe. She’s off to witness the start and to wish everyone bonne route. It’s a race that takes place every four years, and the record time is well under seven days.

After she left, I made my breakfast and while I was eating, I read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

And those of you who were perturbed by all of this mass slaughter of disappearing wildlife that I mentioned yesterday will be pleased to know that the fish had their revenge. Our author tells us that, on the train along the Wye valley near to Llangoed Castle, "you see from the railway the very pool where poor Mr. Holmes was drowned while fishing, in sight of his newly married wife."

When I’d finished breakfast, I went round into the kitchen and tipped a couple of handfuls of peas and a tin of sweetcorn into the chilli mix, gave it a really good stir, and then began to tidy away the breakfast things. While I was in the fridge, I pulled out two small tubs of soya yoghurt, and when the tidying was done, I switched off the slow cooker and tipped the yoghurt in, giving it a really good stir. Now I’ll let it cool down.

Back in the bedroom, I reviewed the radio programme for this week and sent it off to be added into the stream for the coming weekend, and then I set about reconverting into a format that I can use, the music that my chatbot found for me yesterday. And I hadn’t finished it all when my alarm clock sounded to remind me that it’s time to stop work.

So I sorted out my midday medication and a disgusting drink and then began to pack away the travelling laptop, ready to take with me to dialysis.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and I’m glad that she was here because one moment, I was sitting on a chair at the dining table and the next moment, I was lying on the floor with a pain in my head where it had apparently collided with the electronic drum kit.

Between the two of us, I managed to sit back into the chair so that I could finish off putting on my shoes.

After my cleaner had left, I did my usual “collapse in a semi-recumbent position over the table” until the taxi arrived. And it was my favourite Belgian taxi driver too, so we had a good chat. We had to go off into the sticks to find another passenger and then into Sartilly for our usual Monday passenger.

And going off into the sticks is no problem for me. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m going to parts of Normandy that I never knew existed until I started travelling with this taxi company.

As a result of everything, we were late arriving at dialysis, but it didn’t matter too much because I was seen more or less straight away and I was up and running by 14:25. It’s been later than that a few times even when I’ve been on time, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

To my surprise, especially after the last couple of weeks, there wasn’t much to be extracted, so I persuaded the nurse to wind it up by three hundred millilitres so as to give me a head start for Thursday.

I spent the afternoon watching football. The first game was the rest of Cambrian United v Airbus UK Broughton. From 2-0 down, Airbus won 3-2. This was a Cambian United-sponsored stream, so they had one of their fans commenting, and even he was forced to admit that once Airbus began to play with the wind in the second half, they were by far the better team. Cambrian’s “kick and rush” style of play into a headwind was taking them nowhere.

When that match was over, I watched the whole of Colwyn Bay v Cardiff Metropolitan. Very much against the run of play, the Met took the lead, and when the Seagulls had a player sent off in the thirty-first minute, we thought that it was “game over”.

However, then we had two of the most extraordinary goals that I’ve seen for a while. Defending a corner kick in a swirling wind, a Met player went to head the ball out of danger. The wind, however, swirled the ball round to the back of his head and another gust of wind took it into his own net.

Even worse, a few minutes later, the Seagulls had another corner. Kicking an inswinging ball into the penalty area in the same swirling wind, the ball beat everyone and went straight into the net. So from being 1-0 down, Colwyn Bay had gone to 2-1 even with being a man down.

However, in the second half, the Met had the wind in their favour and they managed to find an equalising goal, although it wasn’t as bizarre as those of Colwyn Bay.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me. She wanted to know how I was getting on with the immunotherapy, so I explained that I seemed to be doing OK. She said too that she would see what she could arrange about this COVID vaccination, which was nice of her.

While she was there, I took advantage of asking her about the nighttime sessions of dialysis. She explained that it probably wasn’t for me, which is a shame. Firstly, you need to be autonomous, which I’m not. You need to be in good health and not require medical supervision, which rules me out too, and then you need to be able to compress your own wounds, and that definitely rules me out.

When it was time to be unplugged, I didn’t have to wait long, and the nurse came over to me with a nursing student just starting her second year. She’d come on a work placement to dialysis for a few weeks and it was her first day.

However, there was all kinds of chaos going on around me, with ill patients, rebellious patients, and machines sounding alarms all over the place, so I let my experienced nurse clear off once she’d unplugged me and I taught the nursing student how to do a compression … "is there no end to this man’s talents?" – ed …

My driver was waiting for me when I was ready, and I was home by 18:40. My cleaner helped me inside and then stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt.

After she left, I made some rice and veg and then heated up a couple of serving spoons full of my chilli in the microwave. That was tea tonight and it was delicious, but I’ll know all about it tomorrow, that’s for sure.

Pudding was more apricot halves with home made chocolate and coconut ice cream, and that was as delicious as usual too.

After the washing up, I portioned out the rest of the chilli into individual servings, and then I had to tidy the freezer to be able to fit them in there. But now, they are quite happily freezing away, ready for use another time.

So now that my notes are written, there are just a couple of other things to do and then I’m off to bed. No Welsh course tomorrow, so I can relax a little.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about nursing students … "well, one of us has" – ed … a student nurse from Crewe went to do her first work placement.
Amongst the things that she had to check that she had brought with her was a red crayon.
"Why have you brought that?" asked her placement supervisor.
"Well" replied the student. "I’m not sure how else I’m expected to draw blood while I’m on this ward."

LIVE: Sunday 25th October 2026 – THIS WAS HOW …

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… a proper Sunday should be organised, and I enjoyed every minute of it, for a change.

Despite not finishing my notes and going to bed instead, it was by no means early when I hit the hay. It might not have been after midnight, but I bet that it wasn’t far off.

But never mind. Sunday is my Day of Rest and my aim was to sleep for as long as I could and be awoken by Isabelle the Nurse when she arrived, especially as today we were all treated to an extra hour in bed.

Although I awoke a couple of times during the night, I was soon asleep again, and it was indeed Isabelle the Nurse who awoke me when she came into my bedroom. I didn’t hear her ring the doorbell or open the front door to come in. Considering that I’m supposed to be a light sleeper, what use would I be if someone broke into my apartment overnight?

She gave me my anti-flu injection and then dealt with my legs and feet. Once they had been oiled and massaged, she had to hang around because there was a wait time of fifteen minutes to see that there were no unpleasant side-effects with this injection, so we had a cosy little chat about dialysis.

After she left, I raised myself from the Dead and went into the bathroom to sort myself out. Then, into the kitchen for breakfast – porridge, black coffee, juice for the morning medication and the last of my delicious home made apricot jam croissants. I’ll make some more like that next Sunday too.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

Today’s topic concerns a visit of the group to Llandrindod Wells, and the first item is that of salmon fishing. Apparently a bunch of salmon poachers had been arrested in the river there, and the leader of the group was lamenting the fact that these days, salmon in the upper reaches of the Wye and its tributaries were few and far between.

However, he tells us that "as we have lately seen new and wise fishery laws passed, giving a much better chance to the upper proprietors than they ever had before, by the removal of fixed engines, a weekly close time for nets, and the prohibition of all fishing by nets after the first of September—all which regulations are very much in their favour—we may hope now for a better spirit to prevail. We have heard from more than one member of the Board of Conservators that there is every disposition on their part to act in the fairest and most liberal manner to the upper proprietors, and on the other hand it is fair to expect that they, the upper proprietors, will assist all they can in protecting the breeding fish"

On the following page, he records with pleasure of "Sir J. Bailey’s fishing cottage, then by the Nydd and its far-famed salmon catch of Cavan Shwn Lewis, where it is said Mr Charles Stretton killed twelve fish in one day".

With equal pride, he adds that "A salmon was taken as high up as Newbridge by angling, 39.5 lbs., and several over 20 lbs., and at Holm Lacey, four miles below the city of Hereford, the monster fish of 56 lbs. was caught by the nets …. Two other salmon were caught at the same draught, one 11 lbs. and the other 12 lbs. Numbers of others, varying from 35 lbs to 15 lbs, have been taken, and this season the capture of a 25 lb fish has been an ordinary occurrence."

It seems very much to me that his supposed admiration of the “new and wise fishery laws” and his crocodile tears over the salmon being “few and far between” were really nothing more than window-dressing.

Back in here later, I attacked the outstanding notes, and they are now on line. They took quite a while to do because there was so much of them. I don’t know how, out of a boring day like yesterday, I could have written so much.

One thing that I noticed, though, was that it was warm in here. In fact, the thermometer was showing 23°C. Consequently, I turned all the heating off to let things cool down a little.

After the outstanding notes were on line, it was time for the disgusting drink and the midday medication, and then I was back in here transcribing the dictaphone notes.

I was mixed up with a group of people who were in all kinds of different things, like actors and so on. One or two of my friends had arranged for a weekend in Dublin. I thought that that would make a pleasant surprise for Nerina because it’s her birthday very soon. We all got down to making plans about it, and during the week, we ended up with about eighty-odd people. I mentioned to Nerina that we were going away for the weekend. When she asked where, and I replied “Dublin”, she went berserk and, for some totally unknown reason, completely lost her head about this idea. We had a huge row, which was complicated by the fact that I just couldn’t understand her reaction. Anyway, I went back to sort things out with my friends to see what they were doing and how they were going on, hoping that Nerina would cool down. However, she ended up taking a room in a really posh hotel in the immediate vicinity of where we were. Once we’d finalised all these details about Dublin, I went over to the hotel to see if she’d woken up yet, and the receptionist pointed outside, and Nerina was waiting by a set of traffic lights in Earle Street. I thought that from the position that she was in, she was not going to Dublin. I said “I suppose that you have finally decided not to go”. That triggered another huge argument. She said something like “I hope you have fun there”. I said “if you’re not going, then I’m not going, and we’ll go home”. “Right,” she said. “In that case, I’m not going home”, and stormed off. I was busy trying to scratch my head about all of this because I didn’t understand her totally unreasonable attitude about this.

.
This is not an unreasonable dream because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we did have a travel club, a little group of us … "certainly nothing like eighty though" – ed … but it’s not been as active as it used to be since I lost the use of my legs and began dialysis.

Actually, in real life, the “traffic lights” were the zebra crossing in Earle Street between Tiko’s café and the Cheese Hall pub. However, there’s certainly no luxury hotel across the road from there. There’s a very cheap building with what used to be the old Victor Value supermarket and with government offices on top.

As for Nerina, it really was her in the dream. Her mother was Italian, and Nerina had inherited not only her mother’s cooking but also her mother’s Italian character. It took me a while to come to terms with her somewhat flamboyant emotional side, but once I’d understood the psychology behind it, I found that married life was refreshing and exciting, and, to be frank, since I’ve met other women afterwards, I really wish that things between Nerina and me had worked out better. Anyway, this dream went way, way beyond anything that I had ever experienced with her.

It’s hard to explain what was going on in this dream, but this was one of those rare dreams that seemed to be completely real when I was asleep. And although there is nothing in the dictated notes about this, I can still remember going with Nerina up a set of stairs over a shop to a small, candlelit restaurant with red furnishings and heavy dark oak furniture in the Victorian style, and also getting on board a train made up of individual carriages, although I was with just one other person on that train, who wasn’t Nerina.

And the bit about “busy trying to scratch my head about all of this” – this afternoon, I noticed a scab of some sort on the back of my head as if I had been scratching it so much that it had bled. That wasn’t there yesterday.

Later on, we had more football – this time it was the Scottish Cup between Stranraer and non-league Tayport, played in a monsoon at the bottom of a waterfall in a tornado.

Tayport played with the wind in the first half and made the most of it, going in 1-0 up at half-time.

But class will out in the long run, and in the second half, Stranraer scored three, with this site’s favourite forward, Robbie Foster, scoring one of them.

Greenock Morton’s game against Ayr United was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch.

While all of this was going on, my chatbot was busy researching music for me, and he came up with piles of interesting stuff. He’s done about two days worth of my research for me while I’ve been doing other things, and that’s one of the benefits of artificial intelligence. And based on what he’s found, this programme is going to be a really interesting one, I reckon.

Later on, it was time to go a-baking, and a sunflower-seed loaf was first on the agenda.

While the was proofing, I began to prepare the ingredients for the recipe for the aubergine and chilli whatsit that my chatbot found for me the other day. And after I’d added the sunflower seeds into the bread and left it to prove for a second time, I fried the onions, aubergine and garlic lightly and then tipped them and everything else into the slow cooker on “low”, where they will be festering all night.

The loaf was magnificent. It had risen the highest that I have ever had a loaf of bread rise, and it’s cooked to perfection. As for the stuff in the slow cooker, it tastes wonderful, although before I have a helping of it, I shall have to remember to put the toilet paper in the fridge first. It seems that the measurements for the chilli powder are somewhat exaggerated.

While the bread was cooking, I had a bite to eat – the first food on a Sunday night for ages. It was a small helping of this vegan chilli meal that was on special offer at Leclerc, with a generous helping of steamed vegetables tossed in butter. It was nice, but if it had been sold at full price, it would have been expensive for what it was.

So with the notes now written, there are just one or two more things to do, and then I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed … with the heating still switched off and the thermometer showing 18°C.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about playing football in heavy rain … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember discussing a football match at (thinks) Llanberis several years ago which was postponed because there was three feet of water covering the pitch.
Whoever the opponents were, I can’t remember now, but they were keen to play the game.
When I asked their manager why, he replied "Llanberis can switch on the floodlights, and we’ve brought a full complement of subs."

LIVE: Friday 23rd October 2026 – THIS BLASTED HURRICANE …

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… or whatever you would like to call it, is still going on and showing no sign of abating. That’s about twenty-six hours that we’ve been battered, and the damage in the town and especially up here in the old town is “significant”. At least it was when my faithful cleaner went into town this morning. It must be much worse now.

At about 05:00 a gust of wind of 143 km/h was reported, and there have been others at 120 km/h, so I see from the site of the weather station down at the end of the rock. And in Finisterre, they’ve had gusts of over 150 km/h.

The prevailing wind all day has been from the north-west, and there’s nothing between us and the eastern coast of North America in that direction except the Atlantic Ocean, so there’s nothing to slow down the wind.

As I mentioned yesterday, the wind was getting up as I was coming home last night, but it really began to blow at about 20:30, and by the time that I went to bed, at about 23:30, it was really giving it a good go. I’m surprised that I managed to go to sleep. I was down the bed under the quilt, and I could still hear it howling.

But go to sleep. I did, although it wasn’t for long. At about 02:40 I had another phantom alarm call, and although it awoke me, it didn’t entice me out of bed. However, I couldn’t go back to sleep as the wind continued to roar with an intensity that I haven’t heard for a good few months.

When I looked at the time later on, I saw that it was 06:10, and I was tempted to make an early start but I thought better of it. However, at 06:25 I swung my feet out of bed and onto the floor, thus claiming an early start.

After both the alarms had gone off, I went into the living room and unlocked the door to let Isabelle the Nurse in when she arrived, and then I went to sort myself out in the bathroom.

Back in here, I attacked the rest of the notes left over from last night and they went on line when they were finished. At that moment, Isabelle the Nurse put in her appearance. She was supposed to give me my anti-flu injection this morning, but when she saw the state that I was in, with a streaming head cold that won’t go away, she wanted me to check with the doctor at dialysis that it’s OK to give it to me right now or whether we should wait a while.

She was soon on her way out to continue to fight the good fight with the hurricane outside, and I could go and make breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

We’ve finished the story of the Herefordshire Beacon, and now we have another expert waxing lyrical about the primrose and its various developments. “Well, in a cowslip’s bell I lie!” I thought to myself.

Once breakfast was over, I went back into the bedroom to send off my Leclerc order, but to my dismay, all deliveries are cancelled today because of the storm. I shall have to wait until tomorrow for my delivery to arrive. I hope that it’s before I go to dialysis.

My faithful cleaner sent me a video of the storm in the port this morning, the waves crashing over the harbour wall and causing nothing but mayhem in the outer harbour. It really was impressive, so I sent it on to a few friends for their perusal.

There were a few more things to do, as well as being engaged in several animated chats as a result of the video that I sent, and then it was time to start work on the notes for the radio programme.

It wasn’t long, though, before I had to stop for my midday medication and disgusting drink, and I was caught in flagrante delicto by my cleaner, who had come in to do her thing. We chatted for quite a while as she was working, and after she left, I carried on with work.

By about 18;00 I had finished the notes and they are ready to dictate, but I could have finished a lot earlier had I not crashed out at some point. And it seems that it’s not just Rosemary who has installed a camera in here, because as soon as I awoke, a friend sent me a message on the computer, and I ended up chatting to him for a while.

It’s a shame, though, because while I was asleep, I was away with the fairies, although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine.

While I was asleep this afternoon, I was doing something with a group – something like Grand Funk Railroad. Then the group split up and I immediately joined another group but my former colleagues had not and this was confusing the authorities who did not understand that I was not out of work. There was plenty of other stuff too, such as being in a house and being in a department store, something like Woolworths, but as soon as I awoke, someone sent me a message on the computer and that completely destroyed my thought pattern and the dream disappeared.

That’s always a problem when dreaming during the day. At night, I’m usually uninterrupted … "chance would be a fine thing" – ed … but in the day, there are all sorts of things going on.

When I’d finished work, I summoned up my friendly neighbourhood chatbot, and between the two of us, we worked out some music for the next radio programme after the one that I finished today. This will be yet another one that will overflow my hour with more than enough artists and albums. My chatbot is becoming more and more efficient at tracking down what I would like.

Teatime was next – my regular Friday night tea of vegan sausage, baked beans with cheese and pepper and air-fried chips. For some reason, the chips were even better today – as perfect as they could ever be. This method that my friend showed me, of par-boiling the chips before putting them in the air fryer, is making some delicious chips and I’d wished that I’d known about this before.

No pudding tonight – just a handful of biscuits because we had football. The match that I’d chosen was newly promoted Trefelin, near the bottom of the table, and an established Y Fflint, struggling likewise near the foot of the table.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Y Fflint play some really nice football and it beats me why they are so low in the table, but tonight, for the first half-hour, it was a kick-and-rush game. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m a big fan of this “long ball over the top”, and Y Fflint certainly have the goalkeeper in Jack Flint who can do it, but firstly, you need to be accurate with the ball, and secondly, you need a couple of quick forwards. Most of Jack Flint’s balls out of defence were going nowhere and to nobody.

Trefelin had by far the upper hand at first, but by the half-hour mark, Y Fflint had found their composure, settled down and began to play proper football.

Early in the second half, Y Fflint won a penalty and Trefelin’s keeper was sent off after he brought down an opposition attacker. The penalty was no trouble for Y Fflint’s centre-forward against the young substitute keeper, and the centre forward scored a second goal shortly afterwards when, unmarked at the far post, he turned in a cross from across the goal.

After that, it was all one-way traffic towards the Trefelin goal, but Y Fflint couldn’t increase the score.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that the idea of increasing the size of the league has just been to add some cannon fodder and to provide some easy relegation candidates to save the established clubs. And sure enough, the result in one of the matches tonight, an established club against a struggling new promotee, would have made a useful rugby score.

Now that my notes are finished, I’m off to bed before I turn into a pumpkin, and go to sleep, if the high winds let me.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the high winds … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends from the USA asked me if anyone had ended up today like Lottie Michelle Belk of Chester, Virginia.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"She was walking along the promenade at Virginia City in a wind of 40 km/h when she died, stabbed to death by the pointed end of a beach umbrella that had broken free from its mounting."

LIVE: Wednesday 21st October 2026 – I HAVE JUST …

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… woken up after having fallen asleep once more on the porcelain horse.

Well, not exactly “just” – it was a couple of hours ago, actually, but never mind. You see what I mean, though.

Not that it’s any surprise, though. Last night was another one of these crazy nights. Bedtime was nothing like as early as it might have been and as I would have liked, but I was soon asleep regardless.

Not for long, however. I had another one of these phantom alarm calls last night that almost had me sitting on the edge of the bed. But as the second alarm didn’t sound as it usually does, I checked the time, and it was 01:42.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m really puzzled by these phantom alarms. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that for an alarm call, I have BILLY COTTON and his raucous rattle waking me up, and the chances of anyone else in the vicinity using that as their alarm call will be about nil, I reckon.

So what’s going on?

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, once the false alarm had sounded, I couldn’t really go back to sleep. It was another night where I was drifting in and out of sleep, not being sure which period was awake and which period was asleep.

At one stage, I looked at the time, and it was 06:06 – just twenty-odd minutes before the alarm. I was actually contemplating leaving the bed at that time to claim an early start, but then I told myself not to be silly.

The alarm did go off soon enough (and it was a real alarm call too), and surprisingly, I was soon sitting on the side of the bed, and it didn’t take me as long as usual to raise myself from the Dead.

The first stop was to unlock the front door ready for when Isabelle the Nurse arrives, and then I went into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day.

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

There was some kind of party going on at school, like an end-of-year dance or something. I was there with Nerina and we were having quite a good time and enjoying ourselves, but for some reason, we left and ended up deep in the countryside. We’d seen a lot of people whom we knew while we were out there, and as we walked past, a group of boys came out of a house. They were from school and they’d been to the school dance too, so I was wondering what they were doing now out here in the countryside. We walked on a bit and came to some kind of hut, the white huts that they used for schools, and we saw three boys coming out. They had been to the party and had decided to leave and go home, and we were trying to convince them to go back, but in the end, Nerina and I went back on our own. We hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards from this place when a girl appeared. It was ****, except that it wasn’t, because instead of having black hair, she had blonde hair, so it can’t have been her, but I was sure in my dreams that it was. I tried to encourage her to go back to the party. I asked her how she’d been because I hadn’t seen her for ages. She said that she was OK, she had a boyfriend and so on. Then she said something about after her boyfriend left two weeks ago but I didn’t understand what it was, so I asked her a second time but I still didn’t understand it.

In the dream, I did actually mention the girl’s name. She was a certain girl who played a short but dramatic role in my life a few years later, long after I had finished school. However, I’ll keep her name to myself. Lots of people from my past have figured in my dreams ever since I’ve been recording them … "in 1997" – ed … and it’s bad enough that they know me, without being named and shamed because of it.

However, I do have to say that in a dream, it’s impressive that I can work out the difference between the girl I know and a girl I don’t know.

The story of the school dance is another story which the World is not yet ready to hear. We need to turn the clock back to 1971 and Nerina wouldn’t have been around then – she was still in primary school in Crewe. But there was certainly someone else with me and there was certainly something about leaving the school in mid-dance, but that was in connection with two bags of chips from Ted’s fish and chip shop in Welsh Row.

And we’ve talked about these white huts before, designed and assembled at schools that became overcrowded when the school-leaving age was raised from fourteen to fifteen in 1947. We had several at our grammar school in Nantwich too. They were called HORSA huts – HORSA being an acronym for the “Hutting Operation for the Raising of the School-leaving Age”.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up shorty after I’d finished, and as she was dealing with my legs and feet, we discussed injections. She’ll give me my anti-‘flu injection on Friday, but it’s unlikely that she’ll be able to give me my COVID injection. The packs of injections are only sold in multiples of five, and it’s doubtful that she’ll have another four patients who require the injection.

She tells me to ask at the dialysis centre, or else at the hospital when I go there on 23rd November. What I will do, though, is to talk to Emilie the Cute Consultant about it. She’s the one who’s insisting on me having it, so it’s up to her to find a solution.

My faithful cleaner said that they could do it at the chemists in the town centre, but while in principle, I could just about go there on the bus, I can’t come back.

You would think that it wouldn’t take many brains to work out that the bus stop by the big medical centre, where hundreds after hundreds of people suffering with ill-health would visit and where I would catch the bus home, would have been the first place to have had its pavement raised to bus floor height so that people could board the bus, but not only has it not yet been raised despite numerous petitions, but the pavement is horrendously low there and the bus doesn’t even stop at the pavement but out in the roadway where there are even more difficulties.

Never mind running a bus company, there are some people on the council who couldn’t even run a bath.

After Isabelle the Nurse left, I went and made breakfast and started to read THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.

Before I’ve even gone very far into the book, I’m appalled at the lack of sensitivity of the “upper classes” of Herefordshire. In 1866, a few weeks before the period that this book covers, there was a devastating accident at the Oaks Colliery near Barnsley in which three hundred and sixty-one miners and rescuers were killed. That was the highest ever total of lives lost in a colliery in the UK until 1913, when the Senghenydd disaster cost four hundred and forty lives.

And while the recovery of the bodies was still taking place and rescuers were still dying from the effects of the methane in the “afterdamp”, our author tells us that "if this gas can be so bitted and bridled to its proper use, instead of venting itself in wild mischief, its value would be enormous." and "it appears that since the closing of the pit after the explosion, the whole mine has become one huge gasometer, giving off at times 50,000 cubic feet of gas per hour, a quantity sufficient to light up every thoroughfare in the neighbourhood."

After I’d finished eating, I came back in here to do a few more things that needed doing, and then I started work.

However, I was interrupted by my cleaner, who had been down to the chemist to bring back the rest of my medication for the month. She also told me the same as Isabelle the Nurse had told me about the chemist and the COVID injection. She reckons that if they won’t do it at the dialysis centre or at the hospital, we can work out a cunning plan.

The work that I’ve been doing today is hunting down the remaining music that I need … "he didn’t have it all yesterday after all" – ed … and then reformatting it and re-editing it, and then selecting the tracks that I need – and that wasn’t easy either because I’d never heard one or two of these albums before.

It might have been somewhat easier nevertheless if I hadn’t crashed out for forty-five minutes or so this morning.

Once I’d chosen my tracks, I had to remix them, pair them and then segue them, and that took a while to do too.

When all of that was done, I began to write out the notes, but I’d hardly started when I needed to go to ride the porcelain horse. I’ve no idea what time it was when I went, but the last time that I’d glanced at the clock on the computer, it was 18:03, and it can’t have been much later than that.

And to give you some kind of idea of how long I must have been asleep, when I went into the kitchen after washing my hands, it was 19:45.

As you might expect, I remember nothing whatever about going to sleep. I didn’t even remember going in there. When I awoke, I really thought that it was morning, but I couldn’t remember the alarm clock going off. And then I noticed that I was still in my day clothes, so I wondered if I’d gone to bed fully clothed, or was it the previous evening and I was on the point of going to bed?

This just shows you how confused I am when I awaken from these sudden, spontaneous crashings out.

Slowly, it dawned on me that it was still the early part of the evening and that I’d been working. And I was disappointed that I hadn’t continued to work and made more inroads into these radio notes that I’m writing.

When I stood up, the room was still spinning round and round, and I fell over into the shelving unit in the bathroom. I ended up falling back into a sitting position, covered in stuff that had fallen off the shelves that I had crashed into. Eventually, the room stopped spinning and I could stand up and put everything back where it belonged.

From the freezer I took half a loaf for my toast for the next few days and a slice of frozen lasagne for tonight’s tea. While the lasagne was in the microwave defrosting and warming up, I cooked some vegetables and made some cheese sauce, and when the lasagne was ready, I had that with the veg and cheese sauce.

For pudding, I had some more tinned apricots with home made chocolate and coconut ice cream, and it was just as delicious as yesterday. I’ll have to make some more vegan ice cream. I wonder if these drinking syrups would go with, say, almond milk and freeze properly to give the ice cream some flavour. There’s one way to find out, I suppose.

So having finished my notes, there are just a couple more things to do and then I’m going to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about chemists … "well, one of us has" – ed … my cleaner told me that while she was there at the end of the morning, a woman from Crewe came in.
She asked "could I have a packet of nothing, please?"
The chemist stopped in her tracks. "What do you mean? A packet of nothing?"
"Yes" replied the woman from Crewe; "A packet of nothing. You see, I have this headache."
"And what does a ‘packet of nothing’ have to do with your headache?" asked the chemist.
"I’ve seen the advertisement outside the shop" she explained. "The one that says ‘Headache? Nothing acts faster than Anadin’"

LIVE: Sunday 18th October 2026 – I HAVE JUST …

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… seen a most extraordinary incident in a football match – the kind that will be played back on these “blooper” videos on social networking channels for years and years to come. And it won’t be any surprise because I had to look at it twice and still find it hard to believe, and so did the commentator and everyone in the crowd too.

But more of that anon. Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

Last night, by the time that I’d finished everything that needed doing and was about to crawl into bed, it was long after midnight, and I’d been letting it all hang out until 00:30, I suppose. And that kind of time for going to bed is doing me no favours at all.

However, with no alarm clock and being awoken in bed by the nurse, at whatever time he comes on a Sunday, that’s much more positive.

Always assuming that I sleep right the way through, which in these days is highly unlikely, of course. And so it proved last night. It was about 04:30 or so when I awoke, and after that, it was one of those early mornings when I’m drifting in and out of sleep without anything being definitive. I was awake at 06:20, which I know because I looked at the time, and the next thing I remember was the nurse coming into the apartment round about 08:30.

He sorted out my legs and feet while I was still in bed, and then he cleared off until tomorrow. But I couldn’t go back to sleep, so a short time later, I threw off the covers, and when I eventually summoned up the courage and energy to stand up, I headed into the bathroom to sort myself out for the morning.

When I’d finished dressing, I went into the kitchen to make breakfast. It was only 09:15 too, so it wasn’t actually all that late compared to a weekday.

Breakfast was quite good today. There was the usual porridge, juice and cafe, and two more of my home-made croissants filled with apricot jam. Yes, they were really delicious. There was no book today, though. The travelling laptop is still in my bag, as it will be going with me tomorrow to the day hospital before dialysis. The time has come round for the second instalment of this product that stimulates my white blood cells. And if it gives me the same kind of boost as the first one did four weeks ago, it will be pretty good.

And when it’s all over, across the road I go, off to the dialysis centre without a break and, more importantly, without breakfast. And that will hurt the most. That is, unless, once more, the nurse who looks after me goes for lunch, forgetting that she has to put the anaesthetic on my arm. That will hurt much more when I go to dialysis and they come to plug me in.

After breakfast, I came back in here to carry on with yesterday’s notes, and you may well have noticed that they are now on line, almost two thousand four hundred words of them. That meant that I could now transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was round at my niece’s house last night, and it was the usual chaotic place with all of their families and friends there. I was having to leave that evening as I was somewhere near Stranraer. My niece’s husband was talking to me about an oak that he’d been growing since it was an acorn, and now it was ready to be cut down, and he told me that I could have it. He explained that he’d been curing it with mushrooms and everything like that. I kept on asking for him to tell me where it was, but for some reason, he was very reticent. Then they all decided to go to someone’s party up in town, but I was planning to leave that night and I had a lot of things to do. One of the things that I’d promised to do was to take all the scaffolding and piping that was by the front door and put it somewhere, so I’d already put it in my van. My elder sister, she should have been helping me as she promised, but she went to this party too. Now that the van was all ready, apart from the piping that I’d put in it – this tubing that I’d put into it – and I didn’t have the address of this tree and had stuck all these tubes in my van, so in the end, I went down to where this party was and took hold of my sister. I said “are you still going to help me move these things?” She replied “oh yes, I’ll help you tomorrow”. I answered “you know I’m leaving tonight” so she reluctantly came out of the party. I asked my niece’s husband if he had the keys to these two garages that he had across the yard at the bottom under the trees, and he gave them to me. They were two half-keys that you had to fit together in order to open the door. So I picked those up and then went outside. I saw my sister walking around the street, so I drove over to pick her up. She came over extremely reluctantly as if she had no interest whatsoever in giving me a hand to move these tubes and piping in the van, even though they were for her daughter’s husband.

There have been quite a few dreams in the comparatively recent past about being at my niece’s house, all of which have put the house in an unreal situation, somewhere a long way from its actual position in real life, and all of them recounting stories that have absolutely no basis in fact.

But the significance of Stranraer is easy to explain, seeing as I watch Stranraer FC’s matches almost every weekend and sometimes when they are playing in midweek too. We’ve also been going to parties on a regular basis through the night just recently too.

The oak tree is significant too, seeing as I’m reading a chapter on special trees in Herefordshire in my morning book right now, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. However, I bet that the oak in this dream wasn’t ready to be cut down quite yet either. They need a few hundred years to mature first. And the mushrooms relate to that chapter on parasitic mushrooms that we read too.

The scaffolding and tubing is interesting as well. Regular readers of this rubbish in a previous version will recall, I own quite a bit of scaffolding that I bought from that huge painting project in Liverpool City Centre when I was in the UK once, and I also bought some heavy duty tubing from Stoke on Trent to use as wind turbine masts and so on. My van was full of the stuff when I came back from the UK that time.

And, of course, there’s the usual visit of someone from the rest of my family. They always seem to pop up when they aren’t required

This took me up to today’s football – Afan Lido, tenth in the second tier v Penybont, third in the first tier.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen Afan Lido’s ground. They haven’t been in the first tier and televised matches since they were relegated at the end of season 2013/2014, and although it’s a fairly new ground, it was looking rather tired and neglected back in those days. However, it looks as if it’s had a refurbishment and a few good coats of paint and looks much nicer.

As for the match, I don’t think that there was ever a doubt about who was going to win it. Penybont was by far the better team and had, I reckon, about two thirds of the play. At times, Afan Lido were struggling to get out of their own penalty area. However, they held on for a good forty-odd minutes before Penybont scored their first goal, a header by a Penybont defender from a corner.

And then we had a calamity!

The very same defender who had scored the goal, about thirty seconds later intercepted a loose ball down by his own goal line. His keeper was up near the penalty spot, so we all expected a pass to the keeper. Instead, the defender, calmly and nonchalantly, kicked the ball into his own net to give Afan Lido an equaliser, and no-one watching the game could believe what they had just seen.

Whatever Penybont’s manager, Rhys Griffiths, had put in his team’s half-time cuppa, I’d like a drink of that myself because within three minutes into the second half, Penybont had scored two more goals to go 3-1 up. However, Afan Lido woke up quite quickly and managed to keep the Penybont attackers out for the rest of the game, albeit with some desperate defending at times.

Afan Lido had some good moments of their own too, and with a few minutes to go, they won a corner. The ball pinged around inside Penybont’s six yard area for a few seconds, then hit a Lido player and went into the net. I don’t think that he knew anything about it – he was just in the way – but it was a goal for his team and they were now just one goal behind.

As the game came up to the final whistle, the Lido won yet another corner. This led to a game of head tennis, and the same player as just now put the ball in the net. But while he and his team were dancing around to celebrate, the linesman had his flag up for offside.

So Penybont won the game 3-2, meaning that Afan Lido were just so close, but on the balance of play, the result did rather flatter Afan Lido.

There was yet more football after that. The first match was Stranraer away at Spartans. And the Stranraer juggernaut rolls on with yet another win, this time 2-0. Still top of the table, on goal difference from Clyde, and those two have opened up a five-point gap to third place. The next few months will be interesting.

There was another 2-0 scoreline too, this time in the game between Greenock Morton and Queen’s Park. And since having sacked their manager a couple of weeks ago, Morton have become a different team. The players have finally gained some confidence and are looking as if they are enjoying themselves, and they had more shots on target in this match than they had in all of the matches under Ian Murray. They fully deserved their victory this afternoon. Here’s hoping that they can keep it up.

Two other important tasks remained to be done. The first one was to freeze the remains of my shepherd’s pie. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that several days ago I had invited comments from my readers. Most of the suggestions that I received had nothing to do with the shepherd’s pie, and they were physically impossible anyway, but Seàn sent me a couple of ideas, for which I was grateful.

However, in the end, I found some small ice cream containers that Marianne had had. They were 900 mg instead of 1 litre, and the portions of shepherd’s pie were just about the right size to fit in. They are now in the freezer, freezing away.

The final job was my Welsh homework, seeing as I’m not here tomorrow morning. That’s all done now, and I’ll review it on Tuesday morning before I send it off to be marked.

So now my notes are also finished, so I’ll just finish off everything else before I go to bed. Hospital tomorrow morning, and I don’t really want to go. Here’s hoping that the effects of the perfusion make it worthwhile.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pies … "well, one of us has" – ed … a well-known cook from one of these celebrity TV programmes went to Australia, and while he was there, in front of an invited audience, he made a lemon meringue pie, and all of the audience cheered.
He stood there, scratching his head in bewilderment.
"What’s the matter?" asked the producer.
"Everyone cheered" he replied. "I don’t understand it."
"Why’s that?"
"Because back in the UK, I was told that Australians like to boo meringue."

LIVE: Saturday 17th October 2026 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

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… we had yet more problems at dialysis. And just to prove how polyvalent everyone is at dialysis, they were a completely different set of problems than the usual ones. It seems that my whole life is going to be spent encountering these dialysis issues, and when one is solved, we can simply pass on to the next one.

But I don’t understand at all why I seem to have so many problems at places like that. It’s almost as if someone thinks that I don’t have enough of my own at home, like sleeping, for example. It seems that I can sleep perfectly well when I don’t want to, like in the middle of the day, but when I want to, like at night, I don’t seem to be able to manage it.

Last night was a perfect example of that. I was writing my notes up after the football, admittedly at some kind of very late hour, and suddenly, I could feel myself starting to drop off. That was the cue to abandon the notes, post online what I’d done, and go to bed. And then, not be able to go to sleep for ages.

Eventually, I managed to drop off and go to sleep, but it wasn’t for long. I’ve no idea what time it was when I awoke, but it was definitely in the small hours. I know that I was still awake at 04:59 because I checked the time and debated with myself whether I should get up at that point, but the next thing that I remember was the ‘phone going off at 06:29.

Once more, it took a real effort to haul myself out of bed and off into the living room to unlock the front door ready for when the nurse comes, and then go into the bathroom to sort myself out for the morning. I even had a good scrub up and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

Back in here, I attacked the notes from last night, and I’d almost finished when the early arrival of the nurse confounded me.

While he was sorting out my legs and feet, we chatted about the weather. Apparently the temperature is going to drop dramatically over the next few days, and a proper autumn will be upon us quite rapidly.

After he left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Our author is still waxing lyrical about some of these trees, and I don’t suppose that he’ll ever stop. But interestingly, he talks about some fine young chestnut trees in the grounds of one of these stately homes in Herefordshire, and when I went to look it up on the internet to see how things are today, the hall is now in possession of the National Trust, who make some very favourable comments about the chestnut trees that are now one hundred and seventy years old.

Back in here after breakfast, I finished off the notes from yesterday and they are now on line, as you have probably noticed. And then I went to transcribe the dictaphone notes.

I was at a football match last night when the two teams playing, each one having a substitute who played in a reserve league who had never come into the first team. So the first team had their new player in defence and the other team had their player in attack, and the attack players and the defence players of the different teams had to be involved in finding space and waiting to be passed the ball and so on, and then be taught how to control it once they had already received it, because far too many balls were bouncing off them and going out of play and that sort of thing.

This dream about players finding space relates to a certain training session for a certain hockey team somewhere, but that’s yet another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.

In fact, the part about the reserve players coming into the team also relates to the same story. But as that story is something reasonably current, it’s no surprise that it’s coming up now in a dream.

There was some Eastern European guy whom I knew – he might have been Polish or something like that – and he worked as a bacon slicer in a meat factory somewhere or other in the area. He was telling me about his aim to become a motor mechanic. He had this yellow Mk IV Cortina which looked fairly nice but there were a few things that needed doing to it, and he told me that he’d done them. He took the car for its MOT. There was also someone who was going to fetch my injections for me. I was supposed to have two injections, one on a Monday and one on a Friday. I’d had the first two, but for some reason I’d forgotten to collect the next two, so some woman or other, an elderly woman, she had a bottle of the stuff that the first injection used, and she filled the syringe with it and injected me with that. Then I had to take the prescription down to the doctor to explain what had happened and get him to write a new one for the product on the Friday and for subsequent ones. I put them in a brown envelope and gave them to this Polish guy. I went down to the MoT station afterwards, and his yellow Cortina was there, and it had failed on four or five things, nothing very complicated, but I heard that this guy had handed in his notice at work and was going to start being a motor mechanic, working underneath cars in the street, that kind of thing. But seeing the work that he’d done on this Mk IV Cortina and it hadn’t worked, I could see his next adventure ending in tears at some point.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I used to have a fleet of yellow MkIII and MkIV Cortinas in the past, although I didn’t know anyone Polish like that at the time. And the garage certainly didn’t resemble the garage at the salt mine where my father used to work, so where it was, I don’t know.

The story about the injections is interesting too because regular readers of this rubbish will recall that quite a few years ago, I had to have a series of injections a couple of times each week and had to fetch them from the chemists regularly. That’s how I first encountered these nurses who come to visit me every morning.

I forgot to mention the confusion when I went down to that garage. I’d given all the paperwork for these injections to this Polish guy and put them in a brown envelope. I walked into the garage where his car was being MoTd – at the back of Bedford Street near the old police station. I pulled out and told someone “here’s the envelope”. They picked it up, and it was the wrong one. The second one was the wrong one. The third one was hanging up by a magnetic attachment thing on the workplace by where this Polish guy was working. He brought it over to me and this other guy. We had a look at the paperwork together.

If this is confusing you, don’t worry. It’s confusing me too.

That was all that I had time to do this morning, although I might have had more time had I not crashed out between 10:20 and 11:00.

When the alarm went off, I headed into the kitchen to have my midday medication and my disgusting drink, and then to start to pack the travelling laptop ready for dialysis. My faithful cleaner came down to apply the anaesthetic on my arm too.

After she left, I adopted the usual position of slumping across the table with my head resting on my arms so that I could have a little doze, but that wasn’t for long either as the taxi turned up at, would you believe, 12:40. Not that I’m complaining, of course, because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the earlier I arrive at dialysis, the earlier I’ll be home, and that suits me just fine.

However, the best-laid plans of mice and men and all that, we first had to go to Champeaux to pick up someone there to take to dialysis, and then at the autoroute interchange at Marcey-les-Grèves, we ran into a barrage of gilets jaunes. And what annoyed me about that was that there was a warning sign in the centre of the village, just by where there’s a turning that goes through a village called Saint-Jean-de-la-Haize, and from there via a couple of narrow lanes, you end up just four hundred yards from the hospital.

Now if I know that, why didn’t our driver, who has been working for the taxi company for thirty years?

So after using all our powers of persuasion, we eventually arrived at dialysis ten minutes early. And this is where the fun began.

If you want to know whether I had a new nurse or an experienced one today, you only need to look at the plasters that she put on my arm when she took out the needles at the end of the session, and that will tell you all that you need to know. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen such a dog’s dinner in all my life.

But the fun began when she was trying to plug me in. The first needle, in the lower part of my forearm, went in fine. The second needle, in the upper part of my arm, well, not so fine. She ended up having two tries at it and they both failed. In the end, she had to call for the senior nurse and it was a case of “third time lucky” when she did it. But I now know exactly how a dartboard feels.

Further bad news is that my internet subscription at the dialysis centre has expired. It’s only good for a year and then I have to renew it. And of course, with it being Saturday, there’s no-one on duty at the tech department of the hospital. So, without the internet, I read a paper on Lack of Moral Fibre in the Royal Air Force in World War II.

Apart from that, there were no other interruptions. Not even from Emilie the Cute Consultant, who came into the ward and went to chat to almost every other patient in here, except me, of course. She clearly doesn’t love me any more.

But seeing as we have been talking about the other patients … "well, one of us has" – ed … my favourite patient who is usually in the bed beside mine was brought in this afternoon on a stretcher. Apparently she had developed a breathing problem and, even with a cylinder of oxygen, was having difficulty breathing. I do hope that she’s going to be OK.

Today, the nurse let the session run to the full time, which makes a change, but when the session finally finished, she spent ten minutes cleaning the machine first before she dealt with me, and that was disappointing too. I wanted to be away.

When I was finally free and the wounds compressed and sealed (with the plasters stuck on any old how), I went to weigh myself. And I was actually bang on my dry weight, which is where I should have been those three times before. And the driver was waiting for me – the same one who had brought me – and I was the only person in the taxi too, so I was home at about 18:30.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me, and she helped me into the apartment where she stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt. And after she left, I made some food – a baked potato, peas and carrots and a burger on a bap. It’s been quite a while since I’d had that for a Saturday tea, and it shows that, bit by bit, my appetite is returning.

Football was next, another match in the Welsh Cup, this time between Y Fflint and Caernarfon, a repeat of the cup final a couple of months ago.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Y Fflint play some nice, tidy football and don’t deserve to be as low down the table as they are, so it was no surprise to anyone when they scored the opening goal after just five minutes.

However, Caernarfon scored an equaliser almost straight from the restart and gradually went on to impose themselves on the game. By the final whistle, it was all on-way traffic towards the Y Fflint goal, with Caernarfon winning 3-1.

So tomorrow early afternoon, we have the final match of our Welsh Cup trilogy when Penybont, third in the Cymru Premier League, leave Bridgend to travel down to the beach at Port Talbot to take on Afan Lido, tenth in the second tier.

When the football was over, I attacked the dictaphone notes, but I really didn’t realise just how late it was. When the waves of fatigue began to sweep over me, it was almost midnight and I didn’t want to be letting it all hang out much later, so I posted on line what I’d written so far, added a “to be continued” sticker and went to bed. I’ll finish off the rest of my magnum opus tomorrow morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about bacon slicers … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends told me about the woman from Crewe who went into her local butcher’s and sat on the bacon slicer.
"What happened?" I asked.
"The butcher was most annoyed" she said. "he ended up getting behind in his orders."

LIVE: Thursday 15th October 2026 – TODAY WAS THE …

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… first time at this end of the year that I arrived home in the dark after dialysis.

To tell the truth, it wasn’t really dark, but you could see the headlights of our car shining on the road, all of the streetlights were on, and the moon, a very nice, slender crescent, was shining beautifully.

And not only that, but I was running much later than usual, but that’s because, once again, we had yet more excitement at the dialysis centre this afternoon. However, more of that anon.

First, though, we have last night to discuss – or, rather, this morning – because, once again, it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out. It was more like 00:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

That’s not so bad in itself, I suppose, especially when you are asleep quite quickly, as I was, but when you awaken at 04:25 and can’t go back to sleep, then it isn’t. I was tossing and turning around all night, and still tossing and turning when the alarm went off at 06:29.

As you might expect, it took me a while to be able to gather up my wits, not that I have many to gather up these days, and stand up ready to move, but once I was up, I went to unlock the door ready for the nurse when he arrives a little later, and then I went to the bathroom to sort myself out ready for dialysis, even to the extent of having a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is on duty this afternoon.

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

I was back working in an office yet again. I was going to be transferred to a different office, so I put in a great, enormous pile of effort to clear all of the outstanding files lying around my desk, and I left it quite tidy. In the new office, I had a room to myself and I was determined that I was going to start from Day One to keep up to date and do everything on the day that it arrived, but there were plenty of distractions in this office – people had these little catapults, and they were sending messages to each other by catapult and so on. I thought that this was going to be a challenging working environment. Someone asked me for a piece of post, so I went back into my room to fetch it. In the meantime, the post had been delivered. There was an enormous amount of files and post and everything all over my desk. I had to sit and think about how I was going to deal with it all. But one thing out of this was that this was in Rotherham, and I can’t remember what I was going to say now.

Apart from the fact that I have no idea what I would be doing in Rotherham, here I am at work yet again. And I’m on the point of leaving – not retiring, but being transferred to a new office. That certainly puts a new twist on things.

However, the “distractions” in the office are nothing new. And as you can see, my best plans about dealing with work on the day that it’s been received and so on appear to count for nothing at all. Things just happen like that so thay they can spite me. I shall have to employ someone to keep my place tidy.

The nurse was early today, which was good news. I wanted to be in advance. The bad news that he brought was that the big data centre place in Africa somewhere where they are experimenting with robots had crashed, so has the internet in a couple of cycle races. I hope that it will be back on for this afternoon.

And I’ve no idea what that sentence above was all about. When I reviewed it in the morning, the only thing that I could suggest was that it was another load of rubbish that I had written when I fell asleep, and later on, I forgot to edit it out, as I usually do with stuff like this.

Anyway, after he left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

However, it made for rather disappointing reading, rather like Stanley Holloway’s recital of Marriott Edgar’s famous –

"NO SHIPWRECKS AND NOBODY DROWNDED.
IN FACT, NOTHING TO LAUGH AT AT ALL."

The kitchen was something of a mess after all of the washing up that I’d done over the last couple of days, so I had an exciting ten or fifteen minutes finding a home for everything that was lying about, and then I came in here to start work.

There was the radio programme to deal with. It’s going to be late this week after the chaos of the first couple of days, si I can’t afford to be idle. Some more music needed to be chosen, and that’s all done now. It’s now all been reformatted, re-edited, remixed, paired and segued. I even began to write the notes for it, but the alarm intervened before I’d gone too far.

The alarm is the signal for me to go into the kitchen and begin to prepare for going to dialysis. You might think that it’s rather sad or silly to have an alarm to remind me, but seeing how often I’ve drifted away into sleep sitting in my chair, with no warning at all, it’s something of a necessity.

So I had my midday medication and my disgusting drink and then began to pack away the travelling laptop to take with me. My faithful cleaner came along and sorted out the anaesthetic for my arm as well.

After she left, there were still one or two things to do in the kitchen, and then I assumed my usual position of being slumped over the dining table, head resting on my arms.

And there I was, miles away with the fairies, although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine, when the doorbell rang, and I awoke with a terrific start.

As I suspected, it was the chauffeur to take me to dialysis. She was a few minutes late today, but as well as that, we had to go to Kairon-Plage to pick up someone else and then to the aqua-gym at St Pair sur Mer to pick up my usual Thursday passenger.

However, my chauffeur today was another candidate to replace my favourite chauffeur when she retires next year. This one drove like the wind and I actually arrived just one minute late. And she was the second driver to take me on the diversion via St Pierre Langers and not the usual way by Lezeaux le Carrière.

Here, we had a disaster. Today, according to the scales, my body contained the most liquid that I have ever had, and that depressed me enormously. I really don’t know what’s going on with my body right now or where all of this liquid is coming from.

The nurse calculated that I had to stay for four hours – four hours at maximum force – so my response was “well, the sooner we start, the sooner we finish”.

It was 14:35 when I was finally up and running and I could settle down and watch the football.

The first game was the rest of Penybont v Y Barri. It was 1-1 when I left it, but as the game progressed, Penybont took control and it finished 3-1. Y Barri had none of their recognised strikers playing in this game, and the players whom they had on the field were unable to break down Penybont’s resolute defence.

In any case, Penybont’s play was technically much better. I really don’t know what has happened to Y Barri since they were top of the league for several weeks at the start of the season.

The following game was Llansawel against Connah’s Quay Nomads. And let’s be honest, no-one can play technical or skilled football on the Old Road pitch.

The game was pretty much a lottery. Llansawel missed a penalty early in the game but managed to score later in the first half. The Nomads came back into the game and scored two goals, but the match finished with Llansawel laying siege to the Nomads’ goal, throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at it, but with no success.

The doctor interrupted me in mid-game – the new doctor who has only just started there. And we had an interesting conversation –
Our Hero – "I’m surprised that you never came back to ask me how the antibiotics that you prescribed for me a couple of months ago – the ones that I told you that they had tried before and didn’t work – worked to cure my cough."
Doctor – "was it me who prescribed them to you?" – that’s the kind of remark that inspires confidence in a new doctor.
Our Hero – "yes, it was."
Doctor – "so how did they go?"
Our Hero – "just as I told you that they would before you prescribed them. They didn’t work."

And then we had the usual disaster. My nurse today, the same one whom I had last Saturday, the one who does just enough work to get by – came along and said “I’m going to cut short the session today …”
“No you aren’t” I replied. “There’s an order from Doctor X saying that I have to stay until I’m down to my dry weight, even if I have to stay all night”.

This led to an argument that even involved the above doctor, but in the end, my persistence and stubbornness won the day. However, I’m convinced that between them, the doctor and the nurse hatched a cunning plan because when I weighed myself later, I was two hundred grammes above my dry weight, so somewhere along the line, the intensity of the machine had been turned down.

You might wonder why I’m so insistent about this, but the simple answer is that if I leave here “overweight”, the amount of overweight will accumulate, session by session, until the amount is unmanageable and then they’ll have to resort to drastic measures. And I’ve had enough drastic measures at a hospital to last me a lifetime, and plenty more besides, thank you.

So we were hours late when it was all over, but luckily, my taxi was waiting so I could go straight home, and it was 19:40, the latest that I have ever been, when I arrived back here, hence the streetlights and the moon.

My cleaner helped me back into the apartment as she usually does, and when I was sitting comfortably, stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt.

There was no posibility of me making tea at this time of evening, so I grabbed some crackers, some of that nice vegan cheese spread and an orange and took them into my room while I checked the computer for messages, etc.

When I was finished, I began to attack the notes for today, but as I said earlier, I fell asleep before I finished them. And for a while too. When I awoke, I was fit for nothing … "nothing new there" – ed … and so I went to bed. I’ll finish my notes off in the morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about doctors and prescriptions … "well, one of us has" – ed … it was this new doctor, fresh out of medical school, who had this confrontation with one of the hospital’s patients.
He came in and said "doctor, when I came in here two days ago and you examined me, you wrote out a prescription to say that I had to take one of those pills every day for the rest of my life."
"That’s right" said the doctor. "Is there a problem?"
"I’ll say!" he said. "The chemist has only given me six!"

LIVE: Wednesday 14th October 2026 – I HAVE JUST …

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… woken up after finding myself asleep on the porcelain horse.

And judging by the time, I’d been asleep for almost an hour too. And had it not been for a phantom doorbell ringing at what I thought was the front door but was probably somewhere in the back of my head, I’d probably still be asleep now.

What was worse was that I didn’t remember anything at all about feeling tired, and so waking up like that took me completely by surprise. I had no idea where I was … "nothing new there" – ed … and for a moment I thought that I was in bed and it was time to get up. And then I didn’t remember hearing the alarm to wake me up, so I wondered what time it was. That’s how much I was disorientated by everything.

So now, I’m going to start to type up my notes, and we’ll see how far we get before I crash out again.

All I can say is that it’s a good job that I’m no longer driving. Imagine the outcome if I’d been behind a steering wheel.

Anyway, retournons à mos moutons as they say around here.

For a start, I’m in a much better humour than I was after my outburst last night, which is good news, even if today has been a disappointment as far as work and everything else goes. It wasn’t helped, what with one thing and another, by going to bed at 00:30 this morning, and even less so by being awake at 02:19 (I checked the time).

Whether I went back to sleep afterwards or not, I really don’t know, but it can’t have been for long and I was definitely awake when the alarm went off at 06:29.

As you might expect, it took even longer for me to find my way to my feet this morning, and it really was a weary me who dragged himself to the front door to unlock it ready for the nurse when he comes. But then I realised that he wasn’t going to come this morning because I had my early morning appointment at the hospital and the taxi will be here before he will.

And so I dragged myself into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There had been some kind of party and we had been to it with the children from our family and a few of our friends. We managed to have some kind of CD player working for the songs. When it came to pack up, there was an awful mess everywhere. We had so many things out, and all wires, cables and cassettes, CDs and all kinds of stuff that was lying around. I looked at it and I was in despair when I saw how much there was to do, but we made a start anyway. The first thing was to separate people’s belongings from other people’s belongings. We did that, and then there was this huge pile of stuff that was from Stoke-on-Trent somewhere, and we didn’t know where to begin with this. In the end, a couple of the girls brought it out, and I was surprised to see that they had brought almost all of it out. The first thing was to sort through the documents, paperwork, the dominos and things like that, and throw away what we didn’t want and keep what we wanted. We began to do that. This enabled us to separate a lot of the stuff that was all tangled up and knotted up. Having seen what this place was like before we tackled this pile of stuff, I was feeling a little bit more optimistic, although there were still several other piles of stuff to go through as well.

Whatever was going on in that dream, I can’t see any relevance to anything that has happened just recently. The reference to the two girls could be a reference to Alison and Jackie, who helped me move down here last August, and the huge tangle of wires would easily relate to the pile of wires and cables that I have lying around here.

And for some reason, when I recall this dream, an image of that apartment over the shop in Nantwich Road where an old schoolfriend and I lodged for a short while in the mid-seventies springs immediately to view in the back of my mind, but that’s about it.

Round about 08:00 I went to sit in the kitchen while I waited for the taxi, and it turned up bang on time at 08:15. The driver drove me to the hospital, and when we arrived, she went to find a wheelchair for me. I know that I said that I won’t ever go in a wheelchair and that my autonomy is important to me, but the scanners are miles down the corridor and at that time of the morning, the drivers are usually very busy and don’t have the time to wait for me to walk there.

When I arrived at the scan department, I had to wait a few minutes, and then they put me through the machine. It was one of those Austin Powers time tunnel things made by one of my former employers, General Electric, and you have to breathe in, hold your breath and breathe out in accordance with the voice in the machine. And what they did seemed to be exactly the same as they had done a couple of months ago, so I’m not sure why they did it this time.

When it was finished, I had to wait fifteen minutes for the taxi. I suppose that I’ll have the results in due course. It was the same girl who had driven me. Back here, my faithful cleaner was out on her rounds dealing with some of her other elderly and infirm clients, so the driver helped me back to the apartment, which was nice of her.

Back in here, I could at last make my breakfast, albeit about an hour later than usual, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Today, our author is talking about the Pulpit Oak at Upton, and he refers to the collection of poems known as “Hesperides”, written by Robert Herrick and published in 1648. He quotes a line from one of Herrick’s … gulp … 1200 or so poems which says –
"—Dearest, bury me
Under that holy oke, or Gospel tree;
Where, though thou see’st not, thou may’st think upon
Me, when thou yeerly go’st Procession."
And reminds us that "But surely such a request could only have been properly asked of some gay young member of that office which has descended from remote antiquity—the parish beadle."

All of the author’s recent writing makes me wonder what on earth is going on in Herefordshire in 1870 and 1871.

No sooner had I finished breakfast when there was a knock on the door. One of my neighbours had come along for a chat. We spent about an hour chatting about nothing specific – just the events in the building and in the locality over the summer. It’s not like me to be sociable, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I do have to make an effort, especially as everyone in this building is so friendly.

After he left, it was the turn of my faithful cleaner to stick her head in the door to make sure that I was back safely, so I reassured her.

Round about now, it was the time for my disgusting drink and midday medication, so I sorted that out and then came back in here to start work – at long last.

However, there was football on the internet. Last night, Stranraer had been playing Kilmarnock’s B team in the Scottish League Cup.

The result was 3-3, which meant, when the results of the previous rounds were taken into consideration, Stranraer were eliminated.

My interest was, however, in Kilmarnock’s centre forward, Ieuan Owen. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that last season, he was playing for Y Barri in the Welsh Premier League where he and Ollie Hulbert were tearing the opposition defences to shreds with their lightning pace. I was interested to see how he was getting on at Kilmarnock, and there he was, still producing these devastating runs that outpace just about everyone, and he scored Killie’s first goal last night.

With all of that out of the way, I could now get on with work, but by the end of the afternoon, I hadn’t done anything like as much as I had wanted. I was hoping to have all of the music chosen, reformatted, re-edited, paired and segued by this evening so I could start to write up the notes tomorrow, but to date, there are only about nine out of the ten chosen as yet, and none of them are paired and segued.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … these last few days have just been one big disappointment.

So eventually, the clock came round to 19:00 and I stopped to make tea. Tonight, it was a taco roll filled with the other pack of that spicy tomato and kidney bean sauce stuff that I found in the freezer a week or two back. And it was just as delightful as the other pack was when I tried that. I wish that I could remember what was in it, or maybe it was something that my friend made when he was here just now.

And afterwards, I had some pineapple chunks with some home-made chocolate ice cream that I’d made a few months back and had forgotten about. That was nice too.

Tomorrow, I might try one of the curries that I made a couple of weeks ago. That should be nice too.

What else that seems to be nice is that I’m back eating regularly again, at long last. Still no lunch, though, but a cooked meal at night is as important as my breakfast, even if I can’t find much to tempt me.

But all of that is tomorrow. After tea, that was when I seem to think that I went for a ride on the porcelain horse and fell asleep. But honestly, I really can’t remember. But now, late as it is, I’m off to bed when I’ve finished what needs to be done. It’s dialysis tomorrow, so don’t expect much sense out of me tomorrow night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about curry … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone walked through the doorway of a building and asked "can I have a chicken tikka masala with rice, please?"
The woman behind the counter replies "but this is a library, sir."
"I’m terribly sorry. Can I have a chicken tikka masala with rice, please?" he whispers.

LIVE: Tuesday 13th October 2026 – I HAVE JUST …

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… had one of the worst days of my life.

But I’m not talking medically, because I’m actually feeling quite good right now … "makes a change" – ed … but I mean as far as work goes. I’ve done nothing, finished nothing, accomplished nothing, and all in all I have totally wasted a complete day.

To give you some idea of what I mean, I was still writing up the dictaphone notes (something that I usually do before breakfast) at 21:05 tonight. That’s how far I am behind. I really am going to have to stop being so nice to people in the hope that they stop taking advantage of my good nature.

Nature seemed to take advantage of my good nature last night. I was in bed round about 22:45, not too much later than my ideal curfew time of 22:30, and I was looking for a really good sleep so that I’d be refreshed for my Welsh class later this morning, but it was not to be … "no surprise there" – ed …

Even though I’d gone to sleep quite quickly, thanks to that little mantra that I used to recite a few years ago, round about 03:50 or something, I awoke, and that was the end of any ideas of sleep that I might have had. I tried my best to go back to sleep but that was impossible.

When the alarm went off, it took a few minutes for me to pull myself up and sit on the edge of the bed, and then about ten minutes for me to rise to my feet. Once I was up and about, I went to unlock the front door, ready for the nurse when he arrives later this morning, and then I went to the bathroom to sort myself out.

Once I was looking and feeling a little more reasonable, I came back in here, where my first job would be to finish off the notes from last night that I had abandoned when sleep overwhelmed me rather dramatically.

Whatever it was that held me up, I really don’t know because I hadn’t made much progress when the nurse arrived. While he was dealing with my legs and my feet, we were chatting about his week off, and he was asking me questions about what I’d been up to, not that any of it really mattered.

After he left, I made my breakfast of porridge, coffee, toast and juice, and the morning medication that I need to take, which is probably enough for a meal on its own. I should have been reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870 except that I was hopelessly side-tracked.

The party of Woolhope Naturalists are descending from Croft Ambrey camp to Croft Castle, lower down below the camp. I read about the history of the castle, and that started off on an adventure that led me, for some weird twist of fate, as far as the German “Albatros C1”, to which I’ve just arrived. I shall have to try to get back to the book tomorrow.

Back in here after breakfast, I had to prepare for my Welsh lesson and send off this week’s homework. I’d done the homework yesterday so it simply involved checking it over, converting it to a *.pdf and then sending it off.

The revision passed really well today. It was comparatively straightforward without any complications, so I attended the lesson in an air of optimism. And the preparation had done its job because for the questions that we had to do in the middle of the lesson, I got almost all of them right.

There was a stop in midstream for a paned, or “cuppa”, when I had my disgusting drink and midday medication, and by the time the lesson was over later, I was feeling that I’d actually made a useful contribution to the lesson rather than being a passenger.

Then there were the blog notes to finish off and bring that entry to a conclusion, however, I didn’t get far – not that I was expecting to – because my faithful cleaner turned up to do her stuff and to chase me under the shower. And a really nice shower it was too. I really feel like a nice, clean boy now, although where I’m going to find a nice, clean boy at this time of night, I really don’t know.

That led to finishing off … "yet another attempt" – ed … the notes from last night. That, however, was a task that took much longer than it ought to have done, and in the end, when it was finished, I rejoiced somewhat, and as the waves of fatigue were already washing over me, I called for an energy drink instead of another disgusting drink.

Right now, I could turn my attention to the dictaphone notes at last.

There had been some kind of festival taking place, and as the crowds were leaving, my brother and I were cleaning everything up. We had a pile of it and set it on fire. The more things we found, the more we added to the flames, and at one stage it was burning quite well. But there was something happening with my health, and I reached the point where I wasn’t able to really do much more. My brother was teasing me about that kind of thing but I noticed that he had stopped adding things to the fire too, so we had to shovel the fire around to make sure that it burnt everything that was in the fire and didn’t leave anything unburnt or simply charred. But that was another big, difficult thing to do as well for me and I wasn’t quite sure what was happening.

This actually sounds like the very first Glastonbury Festival. At Woodstock, they simply dug a big hole and bulldozed all the waste into the hole, whereas at the first Glastonbury Festival, they did go along and pick it all up to burn. Rumour has it that three or four festival-goers, still asleep in their sleeping bags, were thrown into the fire, but then again, they said that at Woodstock with them being bulldozed into the hole.

But the story about my health giving out has a very sound base to it. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in 2015, I was with a friend and we were cutting down a big tree. Or, rather, he was cutting down a big tree and I was removing the wood in a wheelbarrow. When I was halfway through, I began to lose my breath, and later on, it all went completely. I could no longer work and no longer breathe, and I didn’t have the breath to climb the stairs at home. That was when I went to see the local doctor, and that was when they discovered that I was seriously ill and all of this lot began.

The next interruption was from someone who wanted a chat, so I was there until 18:30, thinking as the discussion came to a close that I’d have thirty minutes to finish the dictaphone notes and then I could go for tea.

But that didn’t work out because Rosemary wanted to talk to me. She was having problems doing a scan, and she’d also lost a Word file that she’d just saved. Could I help as it was urgent?

So how long do you think that I spent helping her? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Not a bit of it. I was there on line with her for one hour and fifty minutes, we didn’t find the files and I’m still at a loss as to what she’s doing and where her files are going. We tried everything to find them, even down to creating some more and savng them into a known directory, but when you are trying remotely to help someone four hundred and fifty kilometres away and you can’t see their screen, you’re relying completely on what they are telling you. And what she was telling me made no sense at all.

In the end, I’m glad that her ‘phone rang, otherwise I’d still be there now, I suppose.

But the answer to all of this is simple. I’m going to have to stop being so nice to people and somehow stop them bothering me like this. I can’t do anything, I can’t get anything started, never mind finished. I have so much to do and I’m living on borrowed time. Dialysis is taking up far too much of my time and I need everything that’s left so that I can push on with my own life, but all of this is driving me up the wall.

And that includes the food. For once in my life, I was actually feeling hungry, but look what happened to my mealtime. Instead, there I was at 20:30, when I should have been doing other things, putting half a dozen falafel balls into the air fryer, a diced potato in the microwave and adding them all to the rest of that nice potato salad that I made last week. What a meal that wasn’t.

Once I’d finished eating, there was the rest of the dictaphone notes.

There were three guys who were having a lesson in my apartment with a particular woman teacher. This lesson turned out somehow to be a rather nasty lesson and this woman left in quite a bad temper. Anyway, these three guys decided to set out and go after her. I tried to dissuade them but they just went out anyway. I made sure that the house was tidy and went out a little later on. saw these three boys going back, but they were each somehow sitting at a table and chair with wheels on it. They had a coffee or something, and they were pushing themselves along with their feet to go back to my place, so I avoided them and headed to the corner where my friends were due to meet me. They were all there, even the kids, and even this woman was there and she was most upset. There had been some kind of confrontation. Anyway, we all agreed to go back to my house, and when we arrived, there were these three tables and chair things parked in a car parking space in the street. It was the day of a strike or something, and someone was trying to pay for a parking fee without success, so we told him that there was no parking fee today. Anyway, we went into my apartment and I could hear music coming from one of the bedrooms, so I went, and these three guys were in there. One of them was in my bed and the other two were lounging around on it, so I told them that they would have to go now as I was having company, so they simply packed up, went downstairs and left. Then the people began to come in. One woman was smoking, so I told her that smoking was not allowed in my apartment but she made some kind of gesture and carried on, so I thought that I would deal with her in a minute. Everyone came in, including one actor-type guy. He was being his usual expansive self and he asked “what’s going to happen now?”. I said “you can always help in the kitchen making us some food”. He looked at me and said “no”. Then he went to find this woman and said “do you know what that man said to me? He said that I had to work in the kitchen, so I told him ‘no I’m not'”. She said something like “it’s OK” and then she said to me “well, don’t worry. He never helps anywhere”. I thought “well, if he doesn’t help anywhere, I can’t see him being allowed back to my apartment again”.

Believe it or not, I do actually know a thespian (or who thinks that he’s a thespian, anyway) who thinks like this. “I’m exceptional” and “I’m special”. And, in fact, he won’t be coming around here any time soon (not that he would anyway because he doesn’t live around here). My friend are lovely people, and we all chip in to do the work that’s necessary wherever we are.

It’s the same with the cigarette smoker. I know people like that too, and they won’t be coming to visit me either. There’s this thing called “respect”.

As for the rest of the dream, it doesn’t mean much to me, although the woman teacher could be my old friend Marianne who died in 2013. And I’ve been in an apartment like this before in a dream too, where there were loads of children hanging about. But that’s about it, I suppose.

There was something in that dream about a girl who had a Chrysler V8 sewn onto her jeans. I said that if I wanted to do that, I’d get one off my niece’s husband’s truck. She asked what he had and I replied that it was a big Dodge 5.8 diesel pickup and so we were talking for a while about these big American pick-ups after that.

My niece’s husband in Canada does have a V8 diesel, but it’s in a Chevrolet lorry, the one that I drove down to New Hampshire in the USA to drop off that racing engine that had shot a con-rod through the side during a tractor-pulling event. And I don’t recall it having a badge like the one on this girl’s jeans, but what does that matter.

Anyway, now that I’m starting to calm down and cool down after my outburst just now, and my notes are finished, I’ll finish off whatever needs fnishing and then go to bed. I have a hospital appointment in the morning and I have never felt less like going to it, but I supose that I must, although I’m not sure why.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about thespians … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of the famous pathologist Dr Keith Simpson, performing an autopsy in front of a class of university students.
"In real life," he said "this man was an actor …"
And someone shouted up from the back of the class "well, if he’s acting now, he’s bloody good!"

LIVE: Sunday 11th October 2026 – AT LONG LAST …

… Microsoft has enabled the toolbar at the bottom of your screen in Windows 11 to be moved, as was the case with most other previous versions of Windows. Now I can move mine to the right of the screen where it belongs, and I can press on and work properly.

And having done that, I can push on … "and push off too" – ed … and deal with today’s notes, which I hope that I can complete before fatigue overwhelms me.

But the latter is the most likely, because although Sunday is supposed to be a Day of Rest, I haven’t stopped all day today, not even for a minute, despite this “Day of Rest” thing.

Last night, I was in bed at some silly time of night. As I said yesterday, although I intended to be in bed early, I ended up crashing out while riding the porcelain horse, and that set me back quite a while.

However, once in bed, I managed to go to sleep fairly quickly, and although I awoke a couple of times during the night, it wasn’t for very long.

It was Isabelle the Nurse who awoke me, steaming into the bedroom to deal with my feet and legs. She admired my “space” quilt and pillow covers and asked me if I was celebrating the return of the French female astronaut to earth the other day.

After she left, I tried to go back to sleep, but it was quite pointless, so by 09:30 I was fully dressed and in the kitchen. The first task was to make some croissants, so I set to work. And I found some apricot jam, so before I folded the pastry over, I put a spoonful of apricot jam in each.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Our author is still talking about the famous trees of Herefordshire, and he quotes a letter written by Sir Edward Harley, owner of Brampton Bryan Park in Herefordshire, written on 3rd September 1658, in the middle of one of the strongest storms to ever ravage the country, and round about the time that Oliver Cromwell died.

He tells us that "I wish the devil had taken him any other way than through my Park, for, not content with doing me all the mischief he could while alive, he has knocked over some of my finest trees in his progress downwards."

As well as that, in the book this unnamed “commissioner” writes about the hillfort called Croft Ambrey near Aymestrey. He credits it as being the site built by “King Ambrosius”, but if “King Ambrosius really did exist at all, apart from in the imagination of Gildas, he existed round about 450 – 550 AD, which was the crucial period of the defence of the Marcher areas of Cymru against the Anglo-Saxons.

However, later excavations on Croft Ambrey show that the hillfort was built about 1000 years earlier, round about 600 BC. It was quite a common Victorian misconception to think that hillforts date from the time of the Anglo-Saxon versus Britons period, and we have encountered this idea before in one of the other books that we read a while back.

Back in here later, I carried on with the notes from yesterday, and it was long after 13:00 when they finally went on line. Where on earth has the time gone? Things weren’t helped, I have to say, by my falling asleep for a while as I was typing.

The next job was to transcribe the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was with a girl last night. I don’t know who she was, but we’d been going out with each other for a short while. We’d heard some news about a friend of ours who worked in some kind of block of flats who was falling behind on his course because he wasn’t being given the ability to study where he was living. There was too much noise and too many people, and someone who already lived in that building was removed from the university not so long ago. We were being a bit careful about what we did, obviously, but we were trying to think of a way to solve this guy’s problems. Then there came the news at midday that a well-known college in Jersey, where many people go to study, had closed its doors, which was quite a surprise. There were all these students stranded on the island with no money and no way to go home. I, for one, started a fund, raising money on the internet to bring these people home, but we were having great fun imagining the situation in Jersey at the moment – all these people just having come would just have to go again, the roads would quieten down and the towns would quieten down. Someone had taken a few photos of the area, including my apartment, so that in due course, they could do some computer mock-ups and seats, and some kind of superimposed figures to make jokes. I tried to give my girlfriend a hug, but she was not in the hug-giving mood because her friends, who were in danger of losing their position to study, and I could understand exactly what they meant. It meant everyone calming down and diffusing to these kinds of organisations to make a start themselves.

Well, we start off with having a girlfriend, and that’s a novelty, to be sure. However, she won’t let me hug her at the end, and that’s much more like how things end up with me. Interestingly, my family doesn’t turn up to drop a spanner into the works, as they usually do at times like this. That’s some kind of good news, at least.

As for the rest of the dream, when we were at university, we had many people write to us and complain about the inability to study due to too many other distractions, and we proposed a raft of different solutions – working in the public library, going to bed early and then getting up early to work, before everyone else in the house gets up.

And the college collapsing, leaving hundreds if not thousands of people stranded a long way from home, reminds me of something, but I can’t think what it is.

I’ve just dreamt that the alarm went off and I got out of bed and went for a good wash and dressed myself. When I was sitting at the desk with the computer wondering what to do I found that I’d just woken up in bed, still in my nightclothes, so I don’t know what happened there.

This second dream was really so realistic that it did actually feel as if I had woken up and gone to change my clothes, etc. I really didn’t understand at first how come I was still in bed with my night attire. It certainly wasn’t a “phantom alarm” because whatever alarm it was didn’t manage to awaken the real “me”.

After that, we had football. And what a day it must have been for my two Scottish clubs.

Firstly, Greenock Morton were away at Arbroath. And being at the bottom of the table with just one draw and no wins, no-one expected very much. Nevertheless, Morton actually scored two goals, the first time that they’ve scored more than one this season. And although the Red Lichties pulled one back later in the game, Morton hung on to record their first win this season, and away from home too.

Then to Annan, where Stranraer were away to Annan Athletic. And for everyone who is claiming that Stranraer’s position at the top of the table is false, they were silenced when the score of this game was flashed up on the screen – Annan Athletic 1, Stranraer 6. And Stranraer were worth it too because they played some really good attacking football, something that has been missing from the club for the last few seasons. It really was a good match.

Later on, I had the homemade bread to make, but earlier, my chatbot had found a really good vegan cottage pie recipe, made with real cottages, so while I was waiting for the dough to rise and all of that, I made the cottage pie, and it went into the oven after the bread had cooked.

But latterly, I had Rosemary on the internet. She was stuck with her computer and wanted me to help her. So in between dealing with stuff in the oven, I was helping her. But I was running back and to between the kitchen and here, and I was absolutely exhausted.

As well as that, I was also talking to two of my friends on line.

But now that all of that is finished, I can turn my attention to my notes, and they are now finished too. With just a few more things to check, and then I’m going to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

One of my friends above is a retired doctor, and so, before I go, seeing as we have been talking about doctors … "well, one of us has" – ed … he was telling me that he had one of his patients come into his surgery with a lovely “shiner”, or black eye.
"How did this happen?" my friend asked.
"My wife had given me a slice of shepherd’s pie for tea last night."
"But how did this black eye happen?"
"Well, when the shepherd came in and saw me eating a slice of his pie, he wasn’t very happy."

LIVE: Friday 9th October 2026 – YET ANOTHER DAY …

… where time seems to have flown by and I’ve hardly accomplished anything of what I wanted to do. I seem to be wasting far more time than is good for me right now.

Last night was rather unfortunate when I fell asleep in the comfy chair and ended up going to bed rather later than intended, with the notes for the day being well-unfinished.

And seeing as we have been talking about unfinished notes before bedtime … "well, one of us has" – ed … these notes will probably be unfinished too, but that’s because there’s a football match on – Cambrian United v Rhydaman – and it doesn’t finish until late.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … err … office, I was in bed later than I wanted to be. and I awoke earlier than I intended. However, there was a good reason for that. I must have been lying on my right shoulder in the wrong place, and I had the most horrible ache in my upper arm. It was really painful.

The pain was such that I couldn’t go back to sleep, and so I lay there, tossing and turning and suffering. After a few hours of that, I reckoned that I may as well rise up and do some work. However, the alarm at 06:29 beat me to it.

When I awoke, I was absolutely exhausted, and it took me even longer to raise myself from the bed than normal. And somehow, when I was trying to stand up, I must have stubbed my toe on the comfy office chair that I use as an aid to getting up, because when I came back in here later, there was a trail of blood leading out to the front door where I had gone to unlock it and a trail back into the bathroom where I’d gone to sort myself out afterwards.

However, now that I was back in here, the first thing that I did was to attack the notes that I’d left unfinished last night. And I’d almost finished when Isabelle the Nurse came along.

While she sorted out my legs and feet, I talked about the mess at dialysis yesterday, but she didn’t seem to be interested, which was a shame.

After she left, I made my breakfast, and as I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

We’ve now moved on to the interesting trees of Herefordshire, and the speaker, described as “A Commissioner From The Woolhope Club”, talks about the outstanding trees to be found in the county.

He talks about two very large oak trees, known as “Adam” and “Eve” at Moreton-on-Lugg. “Adam” blew down on 7th January 1839, and “Eve”, although she was still standing, lost all of her branches. All that remained was her trunk, completely rotten and hollow inside. And when the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway was built in 1853, they put a thatched roof on her and a stove inside her, and she was used as a lodging and office for a while by the stationmaster of Moreton-on-Lugg Railway Station.

Back in here, I finished off the notes for yesterday and posted them on line. However, that took much longer than it ought to have done because I kept on drifting off to sleep while I was writing. And not only that but I was back to having these hallucinations again, and when I “came round” and looked at what I’d been writing, I had to wipe it out and start again.

These hallucinations are really interesting, though. They are so real that when I do “come round”, I’m actually looking for whatever it was that was going on. It’s something so weird that it’s difficult to explain.

In the end, I finally managed to finish, and then I attacked the dictaphone notes from the night.

We had some new neighbours – Mr and Mre Murphy they were – and we were at Gainsborough Road. And the first thing – through their letters – we noticed that they were “Mr and Mrs Murphy” and underneath, they put “Religion – In The Coming of Christ”. I thought “what kind of people are these going to be?”. So we didn’t really have a great deal to do with them, but the guy came round once or twice and asked for a little bit of advice about this and that, and I used to give him a thing about it. Then one day, another one of our friends turned up … fell asleep here … but this guy Murphy used to go on about how he was a well-respected member of the community and there was no-one chasing him for debts or anything. Then another one of my friends, who works in the same kind of business, came and told us that he was being chased by several video companies for the quality of the work that he had done and returning the deposits that they had given him, that kind of thing. And then we had a bit of evidence about that because he was doing some electrical work at his house and there was an explosion. He ended up with wires sticking in his heel.

Nothing in this dream seems to relate to anything in real life … "except the falling asleep" – ed … but I did have a chat yesterday with the friend who figured in this dream… "who is not an electrician" – ed … and part of our discussion did concern Gainsborough Road.

Nothing else fits anywhere.

There was also something as well about a friend and me. We were in the underground garage at my place in Belgium. There was a car in there that had been in there for years, covered up in a tarpaulin, but the tarpaulin had come off, and it was an “X” registered Volkswagen Passat underneath there, dark red and all covered in dust. But we’d gone down there to see my latest car, which was some kind of sports car like a Porsche, but not as good as that. It was bright yellow, and I’d paid €350:00 for it. But he was talking to me about parking in Brussels, saying that it’s becoming more and more difficult. Now you need to have an app where you book your parking place ten minutes before you arrive, and then, automatically, it’s paid. I thought that that’s going to be complicated because someone could be taking your place in that time. He told me that you’re better off buying a card to do this outside the city, but once you have it, you can do your shopping inside the city.

This is the same friend from earlier, and he does have a thing about interesting and old cars.

But parking in Brussels has always been impossible, even before apps and all of that. When I was coming in to Brussels after I’d stopped living there, I’d park at one of the shopping centres on the edge of town and take the tram, metro or train (depending upon where I was) into the city.

There was certainly no car, wrapped in a tarpaulin or not, that had been parked in our underground car park for any length of time. But interestingly, I can still see it now, and it had British plates on it.

By now, believe it or not, it was after my disgusting drink and midday medication time, so I went off to fetch them. Then, after a little break, I carried on.

This afternoon, I’ve been researching the music for the radio programme that I’ll be preparing next week. My chatbot has been helping me as usual because, once more, there will be loads of obscure groups and artists featuring, and asking my chatbot to do the research saves me hours of work.

We now have a good collection of music, much of which I’ve already downloaded and reformatted. And while I was at it, I asked the chatbot to review what I’ve written for the one that I’d prepared yesterday, and he made loads of suggestions and corrections.

In the middle of all of this, Rosemary telephoned me for a chat. I’ve no idea how long the chat was because, shame as it is to say it, I fell asleep while I was talking to her and I didn’t awaken until 17:30, by which time she’d become fed up of waiting and had ended the call. And I can’t say that I blame her.

Back in the Land of the Living, I carried on working until teatime, when I went into the kitchen to make my usual sausage, beans with cheese and black pepper with air-fried chips. And, as usual, it was totally delicious, especially when followed by a peach soya yoghurt and a plum.

The time was such that I had to hurry, but I made it back into here just in time for the kick-off of tonight’s football.

The match that I’d chosen was another one between two newly promoted teams, Cambrian United and Rhydaman. The Cam Army are doing reasonably well for a newly promoted team and are currently in lower mid-table, But Rhydaman have been struggling, and we had to wait until they played Trefynnon just now for their first win.

Rhydaman opened the scoring in dramatic fashion. I’ve been urging teams to stop this nonsense of “playing it out from the back” and go for the direct route, causing chaos in the opposition defence, and tonight, Rhydaman’s keeper launched a long kick downfield, the centre-half missed it, his mate in the centre of defence couldn’t quite get his foot on it, and a Rhydaman player ran on to the loose ball and beat the Cambrian keeper.

After that, the game settled down. Rhydaman opted for the “kick and run” tactics, but Cambrian played some really nice, technical football. Nevertheless, they could still be playing this time next year, and they would never break down Rhydaman’s defence, which was outstanding, even after they had their centre-half sent off. Nothing on earth would ever get past that defence, which is surprising seeing how low Rhydaman are in the table.

Anyway, Rhydaman hung on for their second victory, and with that three points, they are catching up with the pack in the lower mid table, something that was looking most unlikely three weeks ago.

When the football finished, I sat down to write out today’s notes, and I was halfway through when I was suddenly overwhelmed by fatigue. I couldn’t go on from there, so I posted on line what I had written so far, but a “to be continued” sticker on it and prepared for bed.

However, when I was sorting myself out for bed, I fell asleep while … errr. riding the porcelain horse, and how embarrassed is that? That will explain how come I was so late going to bed. But here I am, hoping for a good, really long sleep like the other night … "ha ha" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Belgium … "well, one of us has" – ed … a Belgian policemen once stopped a car with five Dutch men in it.
"What kind of car is that?" asks the policeman.
"It’s a Renault Four" replied one of the Dutchmen.
"Exactly" replied the policeman. "One of you will have to get out."
"But the ‘Four’ is the model, not the carrying capacity" says one of the Dutchmen. "Check with your boss!"
The policeman calls up his boss and receives a reply
"Don’t bother me now. I have these three Italians in this Fiat Uno …"

LIVE: Thursday 8th October 2026 – WE HAVE HAD …

… another day of disputes down at the dialysis centre, as some people totally fail to understand exactly what “stay connected up until he’s down to the dry weight” really means, and want to shut down the procedure with ten minutes and one hundred and fifty grammes still to go.

“Is it me?” I wonder, or are there really some people who just can’t understand a plain and simple instruction?

My body is a bit like that sometimes. It can’t understand a plain and simple instruction either. All I wanted it to do was to act like the previous night and let me have a really good sleep until the alarm goes off, but no such luck. I was in bed quite late last night and it took me an age to go to sleep as well, but I awoke, probably with the wind, as we had a gale blowing outside, at whatever time it was – I don’t know, but whenever it was, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I just lay there, tossing and turning, until the alarm went off at 06:29.

For once in my life, I was actually up and about quite quickly because I had a lot of things to do. I went to the front door and unlocked it, and then I went into the bathroom to organise myself and have a good scrub up. I even had a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d gone to during the night. Unfortunately, I hadn’t gone very far.

Last night, we were doing something with a couple of teams in the Cymru Premier League or the Cymru North League. I remember that Drenewydd was one of them. What we were doing was trying to work out some kind of either a handicap for the scores or some kind of adjustment in respect of their league positions. But Drenewydd, who were currently third in the table, were not very happy about this, and their manager had all kinds of things to say to us about the situation while we were doing it.

As it happens, Drenewydd are lying third in the Cymru North table. But this dream is, I reckon, all about the forthcoming match on Friday night between Trefynnon, adrift at the foot of the table with the unenviable record of just one point and conceding the most goals so far this season, and TNS, way out front at the top and who have been scoring goals for fun just recently. Their 9-0 thrashing of mid-table Cambrian United the other week must make gruesome reading for Trefynnon.

We’ve had a 9-1 result just recently too, and then there’s this campaign by a “journalist” who wants to open up all of the results that have been censored by some of the leagues due to the extremely heavy defeats that some clubs lower down the pyramid have suffered, despite his “article” six months or so ago deploring the heavy thrashings that some clubs have had and how demoralising and embarrassing it must be, etc., etc.

Isabelle the Nurse worked her way in later and dealt with my legs and feet. I told her about my bad night again and she wasn’t all that much help in helping me find a solution. Maybe there isn’t one. I dunno.

After she left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Today, we’re still carrying on with all of the papers that have been read before the club in the year 1870. There have been all sorts of subjects addressed, but right now, we’re reading a speech by an eminent mushroom expert called Elias Magnus Fries from Sweden, one of the people who were mainly responsible for the differentiation and classification of mushroom types.

None of it is controversial, however, and in any case, I don’t know enough about mushrooms to argue.

When I’d finished breakfast, I stayed sitting at the table because I had some important work to do. My chatbot and I started work on a brand new project the other day, but when I tried to open the relevant file yesterday, I couldn’t find it, despite looking and looking.

It turned out that I’d downloaded an upgrade of ChatGPT onto the big desktop machine, and the installation had installed without deleting or overwriting the old installation, and yesterday, I was trying to open the older version. And files made with the new version are not, surprisingly, backwards compatible with the old version, so the old version won’t show them.

So to cut a long story short, when I opened the new version, the file was sitting there as it should be, and so are the old files too, which are forward-compatible with the new version.

Thus yesterday, feeling full of confidence and reassurance … "the fool" – ed … I went to upgrade ChatGPT on the travelling laptop. That was no problem. I made sure that my Windows shortcut was pointing at the new version, which it was, and then clicked to open it.

And guess what? That’s right. The file wasn’t there. And copying the URL link from the chat that was open on the desktop computer into the laptop’s chat window address bar simply produced an error message.

Consequently, Chatbot and I spent two hours trying different things to make it appear, but nothing worked. Not even rubbing this brass lamp that I have in here.

When the alarm went off, I had to stop and prepare myself for dialysis, sort out a disgusting drink and my midday medication. Once I’d done that, I had to prepare the travelling laptop to take with me. My faithful cleaner came along too in order to deal with putting the anaesthetic on my arm.

After she left, I took up my usual position of “slumped over the table with my head resting on my arms” and slowly drifted away into a nice peaceful sleep for what seemed like all of thirty seconds when the doorbell awoke me.

“It can’t be the taxi already, surely?” I thought, but it was. And when I checked the time with the clock on the microwave, it was 12:58. I’d been asleep for over half an hour.

At first, I was the only passenger, but we stopped to pick up our usual Thursday voyager from the Aqua Gym at St. Pair to take to the other side of Avranches. We had a nice drive in the lovely weather … "it’s still summer here" – ed … down to Avranches, where I arrived five minutes early. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until 14:20 that I was plugged in.

When I weighed myself on entry, there was another huge spike in my weight. My calculations were that if I were to stay for four hours with the machine on maximum, it would clear it. The nurses tried to dissuade me, even though they had the doctor’s authority to do it, and in any case I insisted. So we had the “on your own head be it” and they eventually did as I instructed.

There was an injection that I had to have today to boost my immunity system, so my cleaner had fetched it from the chemist the other day, and I took it to the clinic with me. When I saw the doctor (not, unfortunately, Emilie the Cute Consultant), I told her “here’s a little present for you, doctor”. She wasn’t sure whether or not I was being serious, but when she saw the injection, she took it and put it in the fridge.

Once everything was up and running, I settled down to watch a football match from the weekend – Hwlffordd v Y Fflint.

Even though these teams are near the bottom of the table, they usually play some classy, stylish football. However, that certainly wasn’t the case in this match. Y Fflint certainly tried, but their midfield was overrun by the Hwlfforth midfield. Hwlffordd certainly had the better of the play, and even though they had a player sent off three quarters through the game, they still appeared to have too much in the tank for Y Fflint.

That’s how it seemed, anyway, until the ninetieth minute when Y Fflint’s Joe Malkin glanced a header into the Hwlffordd net. Y Fflint hung on until the end of the game to give them a most unexpected victory.

With staying on for four hours, I could see most of a second match, so I chose Llansawel v Colwyn Bay.

This should have been an “away banker”, but it didn’t turn out like that at all. However, I’ll tell you about the game after I’ve finished watching it.

With about ten minutes and one hundred and fifty grammes to go, the nurse came to unplug me. “Why?” I asked.

“We can see that this black line, which shows us how much fluid there is to collect, has grounded out. So now, all we’ll be doing is taking out your normal body fluids”.

“You heard what the doctor said,” I replied. “I can’t leave until I’m down to my dry weight”.

And then we had a big argument about it all. In the end, they telephoned a doctor who basically said “let him do what he wants,” so I stayed.

Even so, I was still 200 grammes over my dry weight when I left, and that was so disappointing because I’ll just have to take it off on Saturday along with everything else that has accumulated. But it really is bad news when I have to fight with these people.

What made things worse was that there were two nurses around my bed while I was being unplugged, and they were talking about me as if I wasn’t there. It was hardly polite, as were some of the comments. Not that I was upset by it, just bewildered as to why it was happening.

The taxi was waiting for me as I came out of the building, and as I was the only passenger, we could go straight home.

When I arrived at … gulp … 19:20, my cleaner was waiting for me to help me into the apartment. That was just as well because as the evening drew on, it was quite cold. And it’s soon going to be jacket-wearing weather in the morning and evening, I reckon.

Once I’d sat down, my faithful cleaner bunged a disgusting drink in my hands so that I didn’t forget, and then went up to her apartment.

After she’d left and I’d drunk my disgusting drink, I went to make my tea – some more of that potato salad that I made the other day with some ordinary salad and a spicy burger. It was a strange meal, but there were bags of protein in it, and that’s what I need.

In here later, I began to write out the notes for the day, but once again, found myself asleep on my cjair later on with my notes only half written. I posted them on-line with a “to be continued” stamp and I’ll finish the rest tomorrow morning.

Before going to bed, I went for a ride on the porcelain horse and at one point, I almost fell off. Then in the bathroom and trying to stand up after sitting on the chair, my hand slipped off the freezer and I smashed my head really hard on the fridge door as I almost fell. I really was in no fit state to be around, so I was glad that I had decided to go to bed. I wasn’t safe anywhere else.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my cleaner … "well, one of us has" – ed … she told me when I arrived home "there was a report on the TV about a 75 year old guy who was stopped by the police for going at 157 kilometres per hour (about 95 mph) in an area with a 90 kilometre per hour (about 55 mph) limit."
"Really?" I asked. "He was probably afraid that he would be late for his own funeral."

LIVE: Tuesday 6th October 2026 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… one of those days where I’ve not been able to accomplish much, much to my regret, of course, but I seem to have gone from one interruption to another.

Those interruptions started last night, as I’m sure that you will remember – typing out the notes quite efficiently until I crashed out at the desk, and the worst thing about it was not knowing that I’d crashed out until I awoke.

As I mentioned yesterday, when I awoke, I went more-or-less straight to bed, hoping for a good sleep.

And so I thought, but I had not one, but two phantom alarm calls during the night. The first one was sometime round about 02:30 and I managed to ignore that one pretty much. The second one, round about 04:30, I took much more seriously. I found myself sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for the second alarm. And after a while, when it didn’t come, I checked the time and it was 04:38, so I climbed back into bed.

However, the damage had been done with the call at 02:30. From then on, I was just drifting in and out of sleep. I was definitely asleep at 04:30 or so, but I was awake before the alarm went off at 06:29.

Once again, we had the same old struggle to rise up from the bed and to unlock the front door, but I managed it eventually. And then back into the bathroom to sort myself out, ready for Isabelle the Nurse.

Back in here, I had last night’s notes to finish, so I buckled down and bashed them out, but just before I could put them on line, Isabelle the Nurse arrived. She asked me about my week while she was on her break, so I told her, but that didn’t leave much time for her to tell me about her week.

And she gave me a lecture about dialysis too, saying that I was expecting too much if I wanted things to go as normal every time. There could have been a hundred reasons why it all went wrong and she told me some of them. However, that’s not really the point. The point is that they didn’t tell me about them, so I couldn’t argue about the situation then and there.

After Isabelle the Nurse had left, I made my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Today, they are still discussing the safety concerns relating to the local weather, but something they mentioned caused me to go off on a tangent again and begin to search for the sinking of the Dublin Packet Boat in 1770, with the loss of all hands, without very much success.

Back in here, I finished off the notes and posted them on line, then I began to revise for my Welsh lesson. The revision went really well and I managed to finish the first unit, so I was looking forward to the lesson.

And the lesson went really well too. I did quite well, except for a couple of mistakes that I made, and I was quite happy with my progress. Sad as it is to say it, much as I loved my previous teacher and wished that she was still teaching our year, the current teacher, apart from being really scatty, seems to be more efficient, and I’m learning more with her than I did with her predecessor.

When the lesson was over, I wrote up the notes from the dictaphone last night – and about time too.

We were in a big city that might even have been London. In fact, it probably was, and we were walking down that street that we walk along quite often in a dream but this time, going the other way, from the city centre out to the suburbs. There were three of us, and we were fooling around a little. One of them wanted to go to use the toilet, but there was nowhere, so in the end we found a pub that was open early in the morning, and he allowed them to go to the bathroom there. I was much more interested in an old car across the road. Eventually, my friends came out and we carried on walking and chatting until, in the end, we came to a café where we thought that we’d go and have a coffee. We went in and sat down at a table and we noticed a couple of kids watching us. Suddenly, one of the kids blurted out something in English, so I mentioned it to Nerina and said that you can’t go anywhere, can you? Anyway, these people came over. She looked at my camera and asked if I was me. I said that I was, and she told me that I’d commented on a photo of hers ages ago, and she said that she was very pleased to see me. We chatted for quite a while, and then they invited us to come on their boat in the river. We began to get ready, but this couple was really strange. She insisted on appeal because, being polite and very well-dressed, but not on her own children. Eventually, we sat on this boat. We thought that we’d been on this boat before, so we wanted to know what else was going to happen. Then they began to put a few films on, and these films were dubious, to say the least, and … fell asleep here …

What a dream that was!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall a dream a week or two back about Nerina and me being in New York for something to do with her work. This boat was moored on the Hudson River in New York, roughly where we were in the previous dream, although the crew of the British freighter were all for buying the boat and doing some privateering on the way home.

Apart from that, there’s the street in London that we know so well, although not this end. We know much more about the far end, which is presumably in Edmonton somewhere and where we buy our chips and pastries.

But, as usual, the dream is just an example of the kind of nonsense that I can conjure up when I try.

The cleaner turned up next to do her stuff, but she sorted out the bathroom first and then chased me under the shower for my weekly scrub.

Back in here, I did some work on my radio programme, and the music is really taking shape. For the last two or three weeks, I’ve had to search for loads of music that I don’t have to hand, and this week is no different. But as of tomorrow, I’m going to have to crack on if I want to finish it before the weekend.

When teatime came round, I went into the kitchen and made myself some mashed potato with onion, peas and carrots and the last slice of my vegan pie. That was delicious, and I’m going to have to make another one at some point. A slice of that makes a nice, traditional meal.

It was followed by a raspberry soya dessert, and they are quite nice too. I’ll have to order some more of these when they next come round on special offer.

Back in here, Rosemary ‘phoned me. Her external hard drive had arrived, but she wasn’t sure how to use it. We ended up just having a quick chat – a mere 00:53:48 today – and helped her install the external drive and perform her first complete backup. With a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby, she won’t lose any more files.

Once I’d finished with Rosemary, I could crack on and do the notes for the day, and now, they are finished. There are just the stats and my back-up to perform, and then I can go to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about alarms … "well, one of us has" – ed … I heard a story that one of my friends had bought a new alarm clock earlier that day.
It had come by post from the Tourettes Society, and we were having a good discussion about it.
At least, we were, until one of my friends said "well, he’s going to be in for a rude awakening tomorrow morning then"

LIVE: Sunday 4th October 2026 – YET ANOTHER SUNDAY …

… where a late breakfast seems to be the order of the day. Some of these lie ins are really good, especially a few that I’ve had just recently.

And I need a lie-in after the events of last night. For example, it was about 00:30 when I went to bed, and if that’s not late, I don’t know what is. Mind you, it’s a very far cry from the good old days when I’d still be up working at 02:30 and later, and sometimes not going to bed at all.

During the night, as you might expect, I awoke at some point. I’ve no idea what time it was because I didn’t look. It took quite a while, but I managed to go to sleep later, only to wake up again at 07:40. I definitely went back to sleep at that point because the nurse awoke me when he came in.

He sorted out my legs and feet while I was still in bed, and then I went back to sleep again. When I awoke again, it was 10:35, so I decided that I’d better wake up. As usual, it took me a while to be able to get to my feet, and then I went to sort myself out in the bathroom.

It was 10:55 when I began to prepare my breakfast. I couldn’t be bothered to make croissants but there was some bread left, so I just had some ordinary, normal toast with my porridge, coffee and juice.

While I was eating, I was reading THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Today, our discussion on fungi is continuing. We’re discussing the edible fungi found in the woods and fields, but it’s not much use because they are using all these scientific terms which many people, including me, don’t know, so we don’t really have much of a chance of understanding them.

One interesting fact that I learnt was that the poor rural folk, such as farm labourers in the depths of darkest rural Herefordshire are so poorly paid that they only ever eat bacon. One of the guys in the Naturalists Club reckons “how their diet would be greatly improved” by adding a few slices of edible mushrooms to their diet. That’s fair enough, but you need to talk to these people in language that they understand, not in scientific language.

Back in here, there were a few things to check, and then I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe.

This was a weird dream, and I’d forgotten most of it when I reached for the dictaphone, but one thing was that it was someone’s birthday in Crewe. We’d been invited, or, rather, I’d been invited because I knew the person, and Nerina could come too. I had to find a birthday present for that person, so we went for a wander in the town, but, as usual, there were far too many distractions. Nerina wasn’t living with me any more, so she was buying things for her new place where she was living, and she was going round and round in circles with these things, not making up her mind, not buying anything, buying this, thinking that, and it led to some kind of complications in the house where we were staying because of organising this birthday present and organising some shopping, and we found that we were going nowhere and doing nothing. I wanted to crack on, and we could have had a lift to this party too if we’d been ready with a birthday present. And then we started talking about Nerina’s birthday and Christmas present. She said that she didn’t want anything at all, and I couldn’t think of what to buy her either. In the end, there was a train back from Stafford where we were, going back to Creze. I thought that if we went there, we could dump these things and go back to catch the train to where we were going, but Nerina couldn’t even make up her mind about wanting to go on the train to home. She had other plans, and I thought that I didn’t know what these plans were. But there’s more of this dream that’s missing, and I’m certain that it went on all night practically.

Nerina is making more and more of a regular appearance in my dreams these days. Not that I mind, because I did ask her to share my life with me. But it’s not like Nerina to dither around like this. Usually, she’d make up her mind quite quickly and decisively.

And notice that we were at Stafford railway station. I’ve only ever caught a train from there twice – once when I was sixteen or so and I’d been for a walk around Stafford one Friday night, and the second time was coming back from Birmingham after a “certain meeting”, and that’s another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.

Also, we’re flitting about from pillar to post, and so is this birthday bash. Trying to keep synchronised with time and place in a dream seems to be almost impossible.

This dream wasn’t recorded, but it was something else that was going round in my head when I awoke. I was in need of a new laptop for some reason, so a friend and I set out to buy one. We went to a department store that had an electrical department, but the shop was crowded with people and we had to fight our way through into the electrical department at the back. When we were finally served, they didn’t really show me any laptops but a kind of strange machine that was a laptop with some kind of box like a desktop computer. I asked them how they figured that this machine was portable, but they didn’t come up with an answer. They had loads of bits and pieces from dismantled desktop and laptop computers on shelves ready for sale, so I was at a loss as to why they didn’t assemble a few computers themselves and sell them on.

This seems to be pretty relevant, concerning the new Lenovo laptop and desktop that I bought earlier in the year, and the parts on the shelves remind me of the computer shop in Brussels where I used to buy my computer equipment and bits and pieces.

And funnily enough, later on in the day Rosemary telephoned me to tell me that her laptop computer has failed and wanted to know which new laptop I recommended. I told her about this refurbishment company that sells on Amazon and how I was happy with the Lenovo desktop and Lenovo laptop that I’d bought earlier in the year.

In fact, Rosemary phoned me up twice. The first one was only a short chat today – just 01:00:40 – and later on, it was a mere 00:16:10. We are definitely losing our touch.

Later on, I watched the football. The first match was Stranraer vs a strong Edinburgh City. This game seemed to go from one end to the other, but while there were plenty of shots at goal, surprisingly, there wasn’t one on target and neither goalkeeper had a save to make. It finished 0-0, which is no surprise.

However, as Clyde had beaten Elgin City quite comprehensively, Stranraer have found themselves at the top of the table this weekend, and this is quite unexpected considering where they were at this stage last season.

The next game was Greenock Morton v Raith Rovers, and that ended up 2-1 to Raith. Despite having sacked their manager … "and about time, too" – ed … earlier in the week, the first half was as dire as anything A Murray’s team has ever produced.

However, I don’t know what they put in the teapot for the half-time cuppa but I wouldn’t mind a drink of that myself. It was a different team that came out in the second half and they tore Raith to shreds. However, they couldn’t make their domination count for anything.

Nevertheless, if they play like they did in the second half of this game from now on until the end of the season, they’ll be well up the table and out of danger.

There wasn’t much time to do much else, because at 16:30 I went to make my bread for next week.

It went together really well today and has risen up like a lift. It looks wonderful, and I’ll tell you tomorrow how it tastes after I’ve had my toast for breakfast.

While I was waiting, I was rueing the passing of time doing nothing, so I washed and then cut up some potatoes into small cubes. And then with a big helping of peas, some mint and some parsley, I steamed them in my vegetable steamer in the microwave.

They turned out to be really nice, so I covered them with my vegan salad cream and put them in a glass container in the fridge.

When I’d finished making my bread, I made a small salad with lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms, cucumbers, olives and kidney beans (for the protein), then added a couple of spoonsful of the potatoes and peas. That made a really nice, simple meal for tonight, and there’s plenty left for later.

Now back in here, I’ve finished my notes, and there are a couple of things left to do and then I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about mushrooms … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone asked the fungi expert of the Woolhope Naturalists Club which mushrooms were not able to be eaten.
The expert replied "none of them. You can eat every single kind of mushroom that you find"
"Really?"
"Absolutely" replied the expert. "And with some mushrooms, just one on its own will be enough to feed you for the rest of your life."

LIVE: Saturday 3rd October 2026 – ANOTHER MYSTERIOUS AFTERNOON …

… in dialysis today. But I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that I’m going to do my best not to fall asleep in dialysis again so that I can keep my eye on what’s going on behind the scenes.

Another thing on which I wish that I could keep an eye on is what’s going on with my sleeping patterns. Anyone who checked my blog between about 22:00 and midnight and then went to check it later will be bound to be confused by what they read.

Round about 21:30, I fell asleep in the chair here, and when I awoke at about 22:00, I just posted on line what I’d written to date and added a “TO BE CONTINUED” sticker to it.

Before I fell into bed, though, I went for a ride on the porcelain horse, and when I came back in here, I found that I was wide awake somehow, so I finished off the blog, overwrote the “TO BE CONTINUED” sticker and posted the completed entry on line.

And then I fell into bed and went straight to sleep.

At some point during the night, I awoke again and was tossing and turning around for what seemed like an eternity, trying to go to sleep, but without any success. But I must have managed it at some point because I was dead to the World when the alarm went off at 06:29.

We had the usual struggle with ourselves to leave the bed, and then I went into the bathroom to sort myself out. While I was there, I had a good scrub up and a shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

Then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what went on during the night.

There had been something in the news about adoptions. There was a family from Preston who had adopted a boy from a Preston children’s home, and a couple of other people who had done the same thing too. There was even someone who had taken an abandoned child from a children’s home with a view to adopting him, and escaping to Vietnam. That had me thinking about whether, as a single man, I could adopt a child too. So I went away from here and had a think about it and then went back to the office to talk to them. It was only later on that I realised that I was living in a one-bedroomed apartment, so if I did adopt a child, then where would it sleep?

There’s certainly some mileage in this dream. Some “friends of friends” have recently adopted a child from a local children’s home, and that’s what has probably inspired this dream. And then adopted child and Vietnam has a story behind it too, but it’s another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.

As for adopting a child, I’m quite ready, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, to adopting a cat, preferably a female cat. And it’s true that I only have a one-bedroom apartment, so adopting a child would be out of the question, even if I were not ill.

Then I was at work, and it was a Sunday morning and there was plenty of overtime to be done to clear some arrears. I went in and there were quite a few other people in as well. There was a guy sitting next to me, and suddenly, a pile of people’s files turned up on my desk, so I asked him if they were his, and he said that they were, so I put them onto his desk somewhere and began to make myself comfortable. A girl came in extremely late, and everyone cheered her, so she came out with some story about having been locked in somewhere over the weekend, and how would we have liked it? We said that, well, we were certain that we could have rolled up our sleeves, done something and swam to somewhere. I began to look at everything on my desk, and it was a complete and utter shambles, so what I had in mind was to leave quietly on Friday and not go back to the office.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that these dreams of being in work after my retirement date and threatening to walk out without notice used to be a regular occurrence, but they seem to have died off a while back. However, as I said the other day, they are slowly making a comeback.

And the untidiness of mine in the office is nothing new at all. I was always like that, wherever I was and whatever I was doing.

We’d gone skiing somewhere in one of these big resorts. The car that we used was one of these big Transcontinental Vauxhall estates. There were five of us in this car, and the amount of stuff we’d brought with us was astonishing. After we’d packed, for example, I found my old ski boots and all kinds of things like that, so when we arrived in a town near the border to be inspected by the police, we were fully loaded and it took quite a while. I found later that we’d brought all the books with us from home, all that kind of thing. We went skiing, and then we decided to put our chalet up for sale. Someone in the town responded immediately, so we had to do a lot of clearing up and tidying up before we could let him in. When we let him in, he was big and he was active, bouncing around, and we were busy trying to put our ski things away and stack these books somewhere. We ended up stacking them against the wall next to the fireplace. I found a camera that didn’t work because the batteries were flat in it, all kinds of things like that, and getting them into my bag was going to be complicated. Someone came up to my girlfriend and asked me about the car. Before we were leaving, someone else came up to us and asked about the car. My girlfriend didn’t know much about it, so I told him. He said that he was really impressed with the amount of luggage we had in there. He cancelled an order for a new car so that he could buy one of these Transcontinental Vauxhall Estates.

In case you’ve forgotten what a Transcontinental Vauxhall estate looks like, there’s one HERE. It’s the beige one, SPU903M. Strangely enough, of all the cars that I’ve ever owned, I’ve never ever had a Vauxhall. The closest I ever came to one was having a Bedford CA van for a short while.

However, in the past, we never went to any fashionable ski resort, except that I went once with an Italian girl to a ski resort in Italy. Most of the time, we went to the unfashionable ones, although when I was driving coaches and we had no work for a few months after Christmas, I’d go to ski resorts in Eastern Europe such as Romania and Bulgaria. I even took Percy Penguin with me once.

The nurse turned up as usual, and while he was dealing with my legs and feet, he gave me the same warning as my cleaner did yesterday about the festival down in the port and how it was total chaos.

After he left, I made my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.

Today, we had another little chat about geology, and then we returned to fungi, with a discussion about fairy rings. Maybe the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine would have been interested in joining in the discussion. It’s a shame that the subject wasn’t “fairy boots”, otherwise it would have given me a good opportunity to drag Lee “I’m a prostitute” Pottymouth into the discussion. He’s not put in an appearance in these pages in an age.

When breakfast was finished, I had a few things to do, after which I intended to work on reformating the music that I’d downloaded the other day. However, in the end, I ended up having an on line discussion with someone about music that went on for quite a while, discussing mainly folk-rock songs.

And when the chat finished, I was so fired up that for the first time in a couple of years, I picked up the acoustic guitar and played CAREY by Joni Mitchell and MOONAGE DAYDREAM (I don’t know why) by David Bowie. I was surprised how much I’d forgotten, and also how much it hurt afterwards.

At midday, I went into the kitchen for my disgusting drink and midday medication, and then I began to make myself ready for dialysis. My faithful cleaner turned up too to put the anaesthetic on my arm too.

After she left, I hunched up over the table and let myself relax, with my head resting on my forearms. I was once again just about to drift off into a really nice dream when the doorbell rang. I looked at the time and it was 12:58 – I’d been away with the fairies … "although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine" – ed … for just over half an hour.

There was no one else to pick up en route so we arrived at dialysis a few minutes early, despite the chaos around the port today. However, it made no difference because there was a queue of people in front of me, and it took until 14:25 to be plugged in.

Once everything was up and running, I had to wait until 15:30 for the football to kick off so I found one or two other things to do while I was waiting. However, I must have crashed out somewhere along the line because I awoke with a start at 15:27, just three minutes before kick-off.

The match that I’d chosen today was the basement clash between Rhydaman and Trefynnon. This was a real six-pointer, as both sides had yet to record a victory, and they needed to start winning soon, as the rest of the table was cutting them adrift.

As you might expect, this was another game played at a hundred miles per hour with both teams going at it hammer and tongs. And its opening was certainly dramatic – Johnny Evans missed a sitter of a free header when surely it must have been easier to score, and then straight from the goal kick, Trefynnon roared up the field and scored to go in front.

Then we had goals disallowed for offside, balls hitting the post or being cleared off the line, until Johnny Evans, in the fortieth minute, scored with a delightful lob from outside the penalty area, right over the head of the Trefynnon goalkeeper.

It went from bad to worse for Trefynnon when in the fifty-sixth minute, Rhydaman scored a second goal to take the lead. From then on, Trefynnon threw everything they had at the Rhydaman defence, but to no avail and Rhydaman took all of the points.

That was a shame because I thought that Trefynnon had the better of the play, but they are deep in it now after that.

And spare a thought for Cambrian United. For the second away match in succession, they conceded nine goals. And they are one of the better promoted teams too.

This was when I noticed something rather bizarre. When I’d begun to watch the football, there were fourteen minutes after the final whistle before the end of the session. However, despite there being over fourteen minutes of stoppage time in this game, there was still half an hour to go, and I wasn’t finished until 17:55.

From 14:25 to 17:55 is three and a half hours, not the three hours that I’m supposed to have, and when I weighed myself later, I was still four hudred grams over my dry weight. Mind you, I did notice that the chief doctor, he who doesn’t like me chatting up the nurses, was on duty again today. He spoke to several people in the ward, but kept well clear of my bed.

When I was outside, I had to wait a few minutes for the taxi but I was once more the only passenger. Nevertheless, it was 19:15 when I finally arrived home.

My cleaner was waiting for me, sitting on her mushroom outside, and she helped me into the house and gave me another disgusting drink.

After she had left, I made myself a small plate of pasta and veg tossed in olive oil, garlic, black pepper and vegan cheese. And delicious it was too, especially as it was followed by a peach yoghurt.

Back in here, I had things to do, and then write up my notes. Now when I’ve checked the stats and backed up the computer, I’ll be off to bed. It’s horrendously late tonight … "or this morning" – ed … but I don’t care. I’m aiming for a lie in tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about people sitting on mushrooms and other bizarre things … "well, one of us has" – ed … a man walked into a doctor’s surgery and began to speak to another man sitting there.
"Why are you here?" he asked.
"I have the biggest piles the World has ever seen" he replied.
"Is that why you’re sitting on that giant bean cushion?" he asked.
The man replied "look more closely."

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: dream

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