Category Archives: dream

Wednesday 2nd August 2023 – I MANAGED TO KEEP …

… on going this afternoon until about 17:00 before I crashed out. And then it was only for about 10 minutes or so.

That makes a change from how things have been just recently. But there’s no need to crow about it because one swallow doesn’t make a summer, as we all know.

And in any case, even if it were to be the situation, past experience tells us that what goes around comes around and it wouldn’t be too long before we’re back there again.

Mind you, it’s a real surprise that that’s all there was, considering the night that I’d had. Because I’d certainly been around the block, and more than once too. There was some kind of weird dream about cats and football goalkeepers and these wafers that you have on which you spread your food but I can’t remember any of it at all.

Then there was something to do with the town football club that had been playing in Wales. They’d played against three Welsh Premier League clubs and had been beaten comprehensively in each one 4-0. They went on some kind of outing. I was there and took part in it. We had to walk through a really old building. When we reached the far end someone opened the door and there was a very small yard outside. The tour must have stopped at this door but there was no-one about to talk to and we hadn’t actually seen anything. It was one of these dreams where one expects something to happen and you grip the edge of your seat waiting for it yet nothing does. You end up being in some kind of void about it. I was walking without crutches but having some mobility problems.

There was another distressing dream about being in the Southern Hemisphere where the penguins there were being fed live rodents, just tearing these rodents to shreds. The squeals were horrible. In the snow was a strange vehicle that went past. It looked like a tadpole travelling in reverse making a noise as it scrunched past the snow. But it was the squeals of these rodents that were being torn to bits that got me.

We were also talking about these animals that were watching a football match. They somehow managed to escape from the crowd and ran down this narrow footpath through the ice. People chased after them in different cars and machines and so on. One person was on foot and managed to corner them in the kitchen of a house somewhere but they threw some product onto the fire to make an explosion that broke these people’s trains of thought so that they could escape without being noticed

Later on I was back in Crewe. There was a wedding of a membr of our family. I’d no intention of going. My sister was going but there was no-one to do her job. They couldn’t find a replacement at the pub where she worked in Nantwich. I said that I’d go to do it. I prepared myself . That took me much longer than I expected. In the end I set off in this ancient Ford Transit van that was rusting and generally falling to bits. When I reached where I was going to park, an Indian guy came over to ask me what I was doing. I told him. He had a look inside my van and saw tons of stuff lying around. He went round to the passenger side and just with the force of his hands slid down the window from the outside. I shouted at him and told him what I thought. I said “if I come back here and find stuff missing I have a good idea of your face and I’ll call the police about it”. He asked “what would the police do?” as if the police wouldn’t be interested in a case like that. He explained that he owns several properties in the town and rented the rooms out to different people. I replied “God help them!”. Making sure that the van was locked I set out to walk to the pub but bumped into a friend of mine. As we were walking down towards the river bridge in Welsh Row the subject of Charles Hawtrey came up. I explained that I’d once actually met him. He replied “yes he’s a wonderful guy. You’re really lucky. I would really have liked to have met him”. I was thinking that I was already running late . Everything that’s happened since has been to delay me. I’ve no idea what the time is now. I was too afraid to look in case I’d messed the thing up totally and completely.

Finally I was back in Crewe again, this time for the first time in years. I’d gone to help out to work on the taxis. There was a job to pick up at 01:45 from a house. I didn’t recognise the address but someone said that it’s next to a certain pub near Nantwich. I knew where the pub was soo I thought that I could find the house. I set out but the whole entire road layout had changed. New roads had been added. I completely and utterly lost my bearings. In the end I had to retreat to a place that I knew in the centre of Nantwich and walk the way that I would walk 30 years ago. I found out where I’d made a mistake and eventually found my way to this house. I was running ever so late because of all this confusion but it really was bewildering how all of the roads had changed. I didn’t recognise anything.

As you can tell, it took me quite a while to type out all of that. It was quite a voyage last night.

Something else that I had to do was to re-do part of the radio programme that will be broadcast at the weekend.

As you might expect, being so far in advance causes all of its own problems, and we had the usual one that having dictated something along the lines of “and is still performing even now” about a musician, he then duly obliges by shuffling off this mortal coil to go to that Great Gig In The Sky.

It’s all very well being “not frightened of dying – Any time will do, I don’t mind” but I wish they wouldn’t do it a week or so before the programme is to be broadcast.

While the cleaner was here I finished off the notes for the next radio programme and then after she left I turned m attention to the notes for the trip around Canada in 2017.

Right now, I’m coming off the Eagle Plateau and out of the Mealy Mountains down into the valley of the Churchill River where I’ll be heading east and then north to North West River, the furthest north that it’s possible to go by road.

Well in fact, it’s possible to go further north, but not in a continuous drive. Strider and I would have to take a freighter and head north to one of the Mission Stations where the Moravian missionaries attend to the spiritual needs of the Inuit.

That would have been an interesting trip prior to the Influenza epidemic of 1918. There were about a dozen or so Mission Stations but several of them were wiped out and abandoned. There are now just five.

But as for the road, that didn’t go to North West River in the past. Access was by boat and then a cable car across the river.

However, the discovery of a deposit of uranium at Makkovik at the height of the Cold War led to the construction of a road, which reached as far as North West River before the deposit was found to be uneconomic.

The road was thus abandoned and piles of radioactive rock was left lying around causing a health risk to the local inhabitants.

Tea tonight was one of the best that I’ve made. It should have been a leftover curry but I’m saving that for tomorrow because I won’t have much time.

Instead, I had the meal that I promised myself – steamed vegetables in a cheese sauce with a spicy vegan sausage. It really was delicious.

So I’m off to bed, hoping to have a really good sleep. Or if not, a really good voyage. The other night several of my favourite characters came to accompany me and it would be really nice if they were to turn up again.

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Tuesday 1st August 2023 – I’VE HAD AN …

… early tea tonight.

There’s football on the radio (not, unfortunately, on the internet) tonight, the return leg of Swift Hesperange of Luxembourg v TNS and I don’t want to miss it.

But I’m surprised that I was awake enough to listen to it because, once again, I’ve been asleep for much of the day unfortunately. It was another one of those nights about which I promised not to speak.

When the alarm went off I was flat out yet again and struggle to get to my feet before the second alarm went off.

After the medication it took me a while to wake up, and another late coffee again today. And once I was back in the Land of the Living, whenever that might have been, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a whole night spent wandering around in the most bizarre kinds of places with all kinds of strange people. It went on for ever and ever and ever. I was in Canada at one point and all kinds of exciting places. The moment that I picked up the dictaphone everything completely evaporated. I remember nothing whatsoever except the fact of the huge variety of different things that I’d been doing but not exactly what I’d been doing.

And then we were at a football match. The opposition was taking a corner. A TNS defender yelled at everyone to leave the ball as it flew over. A Holywell player complained to all his team-mates about it. Everyone seemed to complain to everyone else about not intercepting this ball that flashed across the defence.

Later on at one point last night 3 or 4 of us were walking on the beach round by Parkgate, Neston, that area looking across to what was going on in Wales but we couldn’t see anything happening over there. Ironically, when I lived in Chester in the early 1970s I walked along the beach at Parkgate and Little Neston on several occasions

Someone posted a photo of a rare S-series Foden lorry with a showman’s body on the back of it, saying that he was going to part it out if anyone needed any spares. Someone took an injunction out in the Court against him doing that on the grounds that it was an extremely rare and historic vehicle and shouldn’t be broken up.

Finallt I’d been to school in Nantwich and met up with my mother and brother (I can’t keep them out of my dreams, can I?). We decided that we’d cycle home. We reached Shavington and went out on the old road towards the Hough. They’d been resurfacing it and there was a lot of loose gravel and stone etc. Cars were sliding everywhere. I made my way through to the other end to near Cobb’s Lane. When I turned round the other two weren’t behind me. I waited there but they didn’t show up. There was a huge car accident, cars and lorries etc sliding on the loose gravel, ending up on the wrong side of the road and shooting through the roundabout there. It was complete mayhem for a while. I was sitting there waiting thinking that if they have a problem they’ll phone me. The bus to Crewe turned up so I went to sit on the bus out of the rain – by now it was raining heavily. Still no-one showed up. Suddenly the bus started and set off. It went in a strange way that I’d travelled before in another dream at some point in the past, past a huge skyscraper-type building at the back of North Staffordshire that was some form of Bible college, past a historic church and a couple of castles. Everyone on this bus was asking the driver about these castles. He said that they’ll see 10 before the bus reaches the end of its run but they’s only counted 4 at this point. I was looking at my watch thinking that considering that I left at 17:00 for what would be a 15-minute run it will be 19:30 before I return home. I’m not going to want to take this trip more than once in my life. There’s still no phone call message from anyone to find out where they were for the last stretch of road that they hadn’t come to join me.

That road, incidentally, reminded me of the road alongside the Sioule from Menat towards St Gervais where Chateau Rocher is, and the road that runs at the back of Audley down towards Keele past where Heighley Castle used to be.

For the rest of the day, when I’ve been awake, I’ve been back in Canada with my trip around Labrador. Right now I’ve started to stumble across the Valard and Nalcor site operations.

All of that is extremely controversial. Having built the huge power station at Churchill Falls in the 50s and 60s and finding that they had no customers for the electricity, they sold the electricity to Québec Hydro for peanuts.

When Labrador developed in the 1980s the region had no other source of electricity to they had to buy their own electricity back from Québec at an extortionate price.

Since then, there has been a variety of projects to generate electricity, of which Muskrat Falls is the most controversial. Tribal areas have been devastated, hunting grounds destroyed, settlements flooded and electricity generated “somehow” ending up at St John’s, the Province’s capital in Newfoundland.

Add to all that the fact that cost and timescales have been dreadfully overrun, and even the conservative Canadian Broadcasting Corporation refers to “years of scandals related to Muskrat Falls”.

Financial and Project management in Newfoundland and Labrador is a history of calamity and disaster. It seems to me that no-one in the Government has the first clue about what they are trying to accomplish and end up lurching from one catastrophe to another.

Tea was a taco roll with rice and veg (and very nice it was too) and now that the football has had its disappointing end I’m going to bed.

Ready to fight another day, I don’t think. I may not be doing so well during the day but you’re certainly having your money’s worth during the night.

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Monday 31st July 2023 – I’M GOING TO STOP …

… discussing my miserable nights because you’re probably just as fed up reading about them as I am having them.

So when the alarm went off I was fast asleep in the bed and it was something of a struggle to crawl out of bed before the second alarm went off.

After the medication I went and had a shower to try to awaken me but that didn’t work very well. After the nurse had been to give me my weekly injection I came back in here.

It took an age for me to come round into the Land of the Living and it was a very late mid-morning coffee. And then I had a listen to the dictaphone.

There were tons of stuff on the dictaphone from the night there too. Someone’s name turned up on my social network, a boy whom I knew from a foreign country when I was at school. We got in touch and agreed to meet. I could recognise him from his photo. He was with some kind of little dog. When they came close to me they suddenly disappeared. I had a walk around this park and couldn’t see them. I walked across the park to the other end and that was when I caught a glimpse of them. I waved and they waved back. Eventually after many attempts we managed to meet up. It turned out this he had stopped to buy a sandwich on his way to meet me and his dog had seen someone with a sandwich and gone haring after it so he’d gone haring after the dog. he wanted to know why I hadn’t written to ask him where he was. I thought “it’s only been like 15 minutes” but something inside told me that it was in fact a couple of years that i’d been wandering around that park. That was a lapse of time that I couldn’t explain

There was something about Zero too last night. My friend from Congleton had had some good luck. She’d had her house up for sale for a considerable amount of time and it had suddenly sold for a much better price than she had anticipated too. She already had another property lined up that she could buy so she didn’t need the money and her doctor was asking her what she planned to do. She could come up with thousands of things. One was to buy a house at Prestatyn where they could go at weekends but would in fact be Zero’s house when she’s a little older. The other doctor thought that a good idea. He also mentioned about her becoming a private patient and having to pay for her medical treatment saying that private patients had so much better treatment than NHS ones etc. He also asked her when she was going to marry again. She made some kind of vague nebulous reply about that.

I can’t remember who I was with in the next one. It wasn’t TOTGA because her name came up in the conversation but it was a girl with whom I used to work who had a good job that involved projects. The thing was that you came up with your own project and this firm would back you and provide you with the resources to do it. She was telling me all about it and how good the other situation was. In fact it might have been someone I used to know quite well, saying how much of a change it was from her previous employment. She said that any kind of project was considered, whether fitting tyres on a car, rock groups practising etc. It’s the sort of thing that had I been able I would have been interested in doing. I had an appointment somewhere else but she was talking away so much about this that I didn’t really want to leave. I wanted to stay to listen to the rest of it even though I was running late. We said that the only way to do a job like this is to go at it 100% give it everything you have and take what opportunities are offered. While this might not suit some people’s mentality it certainly suits others and those are the kind of people who would benefit from some situation like this

Later on we had an old small FIAT saloon, the type that you could load things in through the back window. I was putting some electrical equipment in but knocked the amplifier on the back seat forward into the footwell. As I was locking up the car I told Nerina what I’d done and told her not to let me drive away in the morning like that. She asked why I didn’t do it now. I said that it’s too complicated being in the dark and I can’t see what I’m doing. I might start pulling wires out. She still thought that it would be a good idea to do it now. To be quite honest I was absolutely exhausted. I just really wanted to stop doing it and go to bed but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to explain it as a good reason to Nerina. I was busy finding all kinds of other reasons not to do the job right now.

And finally I was doing some research so I joined an institute. I was in their offices looking through some paperwork. I came across someone’s file. It was a huge front and back piece with hooks on it where you could hang it from a rail with the spine upwards. I took one of these out to have a look at it. It was really just full of notes etc and various items of correspondence, one of which was someone asking around if anyone had an Opel Omega or Corsa that they could take a ride in to see what they were like ready to purchase. Someone scrawled underneath “God, are they asking for a taxi here?”. I had a look through it and went to put it back but I caught my right ankle on a stone on the wall and that caused me to drop to my knees. I don’t know why that happened but I couldn’t stand back up again. And I can’t stand up if I end on my knees either. That’s what’s really stopping me from going very far – the fear of falling over.

So we had Zero, TOTGA, Nerina and a few other regulars out there with us last night. It was nice to see so many of our friends. Still no Castor though, which is a shame. In a couple of weeks time it will be four years since our Brief Encounter in Peel Sound and the Coronation Gulf.

So when I’ve not been asleep I’ve been dealing with the next radio programme. The music is sorted out, paired off and much of the text has been written.

From now on I’m going to try to do things in a slightly different way. Usually I leave the very last track until last but in the programme that I’m preparing, the very last track has already been chosen, and for a very good reason too.

Inserting a track and its relevant text into the middle of a programme is quite complicated and takes much more time but I’ve been giving that a great deal of thought in order to find a work-around.

Tea was a stuffed pepper as usual and it was of course quite nice too. Made with fresh carrots too. There was not enough room in the freezer to buy a bulk lot of carrots to freeze so I just bought a couple to see me through until next weekend.

I’ll need to make some space in the freezer for more veg so I reckon that on Thursday I’ll be having mixed veg in cheese sauce. Now that I can buy vegan cheese in good quantities I can have much more of that, and quite right too.

But that’s for Thursday. There are a few more days in between. I’ll wander off to bed and prepare myself for battle tomorrow. Here’s Hoping that it’s a better day.

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Sunday 30th July 2023 – LOOKING AT THE …

… timestamps on the dictaphone, the time of the first recording was at 07:05 this morning.

And having been in bed at 01:00 this morning, it looks as if I might have actually had 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep. And it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say that.

Of course, it all depends on whether I was asleep quite quickly. And I can’t remember lying awake very long.

What actually made a change was that I actually felt better when I awoke too. I might have actually left my bed at 10:30 this morning but I was awake long before that so I made the most of a nice relax.

Having dictated the radio notes last night before going to bed, I edited them today and assembled the radio programme, found a final track, dictated the notes for that, edited them, and in the end finished with the usual hour-long programme.

It won’t be broadcast for several months yet because I’m a considerable way ahead of where I am right now, but when it’s broadcast it will be more of a folk-rock type of programme. We have all sorts of rock in our broadcasts.

And not just Anglo-Saxon either. Many people believe that rock music is merely an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon but we’ve had rock music from all around the world. The programme that I prepared last week had some African rock musicians, the one this week has a Greek rock group and in the past we’ve had amongst our many trans-continental musicians Maoris from New Zealand, Japanese from Yokohama, Danes from Aarhus and, probably the most surprising, Inuit from Greenland singing rock music in Inuktitut.

You can’t have it more cosmopolitan than that.

A little earlier, I mentioned the dictaphone. I’d been to see my doctor, the nerve specialist. After that i’d gone back to work. My boss was a new boss and didn’t know Brussels very well. he asked me where I’d been so I told him that I’d been to the doctor’s. He asked me which one I’d used. I explained, and he asked me how he could contact him. I gave him a form with the contact details on it. My boss was confused and was going to ring the wrong number so I had to point out to him the correct one. He telephoned. At first it was the case that someone said something about Lisieux on the telephone. He replied “no, it’s not there” so someone connected him and he talked. The subject of his eyes came up. The conversation finished by saying “I’ll send a cheque round for my glasses”. I wondered what that was about. His wife came over and began to talk to me. She said “you know it’s Ramadan, don’t you?”. I replied “it would be, wouldn’t it?”. Then she began to talk about things that people had given up for Lent. This conversation was becoming terribly confusing. I was half-expecting to have to go to take the cheque round to the doctor for these spectacles or whatever it was but by now he’d gone back to his work and he didn’t mention anything about the doctor or the spectacles so I’d no idea about what was happening or what would happen.

And then a whole group of us had been somewhere and were coming back on a ship. The ship got into distress and they had to send a Royal Navy destroyer to rescue us. It turned up and we all clambered aboard. I ended up sitting next to a girl and we began to talk. We found that we had a fair amount in common so the conversation went on for quite some time. When we docked we boarded a bus that took us as far as Gresty and we had to alight and walk from there to Shavington. I began to walk next to this girl. For some reason I held her hand. She didn’t take it away. We carried on walking. Each time we crossed the road I put her on the inside and held her other hand. She didn’t say a thing. We just carried on talking as if it was normal. We ended up walking through a narrow deserted street like a run-down area of a French village. There was some rock music pounding out from someone’s back garden. I said that that’s one thing that I like about areas like this. With all different alternative people who have moved in you’d walk down a place like this and find rock music. You’d never ever find anything like this in the UK. I ended up back at this girl’s house and found out that she had a boyfriend which really upset me. The group conversation went on. We ended up talking about English humour and Carry On films. By now I had one of my cards in my hand. I was going to give it to this girl and make some excuse that she could call me back to continue this chat sometime. But I never came round to that because there wasn’t a break in the conversation. We were all chatting away. It was a really lively evening, but once again I can’t even get the girl when I get the girl.

But it was true what I said about France. The flight to the towns in the 50s and 60s as France industrialised left a deserted and abandoned rural interior where abandoned houses and land could be bought for next to nothing. Consequently loads of people seeking a change of lifestyle, whether early-retired Brits and Dutch or young marginalised people dropping out, could buy a house and land and go back to their roots.

That period in the early years of the 21st Century when I was out there was one of the most exciting times that I’ve ever had and how I miss it. But with the nearest shop being 16kms away, no neighbours around for when I was ill, all of that, it was impossible once my health gave way.

But back to the dictaphone, I was off on another dream that had a connection with the previous one, about Christmas presents and wrapping packages but the church bells began to ring and it awoke me. Everything immediately evaporated from my head.

With having no pizza dough left I made another batch. 2 balls went into the freezer and the third went in the oven and as usual, it ended up being a really nice pizza. That grated vegan cheese is really nice.

So tomorrow, having finished the radio programme I’ll make a start on the next one. I might even have an early night and hope that I can have another good sleep like today. That will do me the world of good.

But I’ll have to have a shower in the morning quite early. The nurse is coming to give me my injection so I need to smell my best.

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Saturday 29th July 2023 – JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT …

… that it was safe to go back into the water, along came Len Fairclough.

And just when I thought that I was slowly pulling myself out of this quite depressing run of bad nights, there I go again

There’s not really much point in going to bed early if I can’t go off to sleep. And even when I do manage to go to sleep, if I’m waking up every five minutes it’s pretty pointless.

There are always sleeping pills of course, and this has been discussed before, but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my little voyages during the night are much more interesting and exciting than anything that ever happens to me during the day.

Life would be much less interesting if I never remembered where I went after dark.

When the alarm went off I was fast asleep and it really was quite an effort for me to haul myself out of bed.

It was even more of an effort to haul myself out of the apartment to go to the shops.

There wasn’t any point going to Noz because they had nothing there that I needed. It’s not all that often that I come away with nothing

LeClerc wasn’t all that much better either. There was nothing there of any interest today. They had one last box of falafel left so I threw that in my trolley to put in the freezer with the others. I don’t really need them but they are only on sale quite rarely so I stock up when I can.

Thinking on though, there are only three meals that I have that aren’t planned in advance. So now I have the falafel, sausages, sausage rolls, some Chinese whatsits, burgers, breaded quorn fillets, curries and once there’s some more room in the freezer there will be some vegan pie.

There’s enough in there to keep me going for a good while. I don’t have to worry too much about food.

Back here I had my cheese on toast and I hadn’t even finished my coffee before I crashed out. I was gone away with the fairies for hours and I felt absolutely dreadful afterwards.

Once I was awake again it took an age to gather up my wits, and then I had a listen to the dictaphone. I had a kind of manservant last night. I was going somewhere so I asked him to prepare some kind of meal that I could take with me. When I went to pick things up I couldn’t exactly tell what it was. It looked as if it was a curry. He said “no, it’s a green bean thing”. I had a look. I could see that it was enormous, what he’d cooked. It was in a vacuum-packed plastic bag thing. There looked enough in there for a couple of meals. It looked really interesting to take with me.

And then I was out on the Labrador coast last night trapping furs and animals. I was doing OK but felt that the agent guy whatever his name was was taking advantage of the power that he had over the people. A TV crew came to interview him and what he was doing there. It turns out that he was leaving after just a couple of years in his post and going somewhere. This was another dream with lots more to it than this but I can’t remember now.

Next I had to go to Manchester for work. As I was passing the railway company offices I thought that I’d call in there to book a ticket on the train. I went in there and they began to look through the timetable and wrote out an itinerary which was to leave Crewe, go to Chester, Chester-Liverpool, Liverpool-Manchester. The return was an express back at about 20:00. I thought “how is this possible? Why aren’t you booking a ticket for me on the local stopping train direct?”. The replied “you can’t buy that ticket from here at the railway offices, only the long-distance tickets you can have”. We had a really lengthy discussion about what were my plans, what I usually did etc. In the end they insisted and gave me this piece of paper with my itinerary on it. I realised that I had to return back to my office to pick up my possessions and return for the train. I only had 15 minutes to do that before the train leaves. I looked at the ticket and it wasn’t actually a ticket but a simple itinerary and told me that I had to call at the ticket office to pick up and pay for the ticket. I thought “I’m never going to be back here on that train in 15 minutes”. Back at my office I then had to enter a lift to go upstairs. There was a queue for the lift and it seemed to take ages. When I left the lift I was nearly knocked over by my boss. That led to some kind of discussion. All the time, time was ticking away. I could see that this was just going to be totally out of the question and absolutely impossible.

Back in that dream again about the railway tickets. We all climbed into the lift to leave the building. The first thing that I noticed was a CA Bedford ice cream van registered in Turkey. As the lift was going down I asked one of the guys if I could take a photo of it. He replied that it was his girlfriend’s so we had a big discussion about caravans. I told him about the two that I had down in the Auvergne and how I’d scrapped them. When I went to take a photo with my telephone it wouldn’t work. The one that I took with the big camera came out blurred and indistinct so I had to run to the car, give my things to someone to pack away and run back to the building to try to take another photo of it again. There was a dog there that I wanted to photograph too. All the while, time was just disappearing and I would never catch this train.

At one moment I was walking down a footpath with someone but as soon as I awoke all of it disappeared and I can’t remember anything more about that other than walking down the footpath with someone.

I was back in that dream about the railway again. We were all cramming into the lift ready to go back down again. I can’t remember now what happened once we were in the lift but again it was something else that went on for quite some time. All the time, time was just ebbing away and it was going to be impossible to pick up this ticket and be on this train at 09:00 or whatever.

What was left of the day was spent out on the Trans Labrador Highway back in 2017 making my way towards Goose Bay

Tea tonight was chips (now that I have some potatoes) and a breaded quorn fillet with salad and quite enjoyable it was too, as usual. Meals are quite nice around here these days.

Having now written my notes I’m going to dictate the radio stuff and then go to bed. If I’m lucky I might even have a decent sleep, but that’s really not all that likely. Tomorrow I have some pizza dough to make as I’ve now run out, but I have the digestive biscuits to keep me going.

So why knows? Maybe I might even find something else to do too, if I can stay awake long enough to do it.

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Friday 28th July 2023 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about what was going to happen this afternoon.

Flat out on my chair, not once but twice, and for quite a while too.

But really that was no surprise the way that things are right now.

As it happens, I’d had a good night’s sleep for a change too. In bed early and I can’t remember very much of anything at all until the alarm went off.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I went and had a shower to clean myself up and make myself look pretty ready for my bus to the town

It was early when I went out too. I decided that the sooner I start the sooner I finish and so I was on the bus at 09:10. I just went to the little Carrefour and then came straight back. I didn’t really want to hand around and I didn’t want to buy very much anyway.

Back here I made myself some coffee and cheese on toast and then came back in here where I crashed out – for the first time.

And in between then and crashing out later on, I was out in Canada back in 2017.

Out on the Trans-Labrador Highway I went to visit my favourite spot on Otter Brook, a tributary of the Eagle River, and then dealt with the knotty problem of the Labrador Border Dispute

The border between Labrador and Québec wasn’t officially delineated until 1927 and while Québec is quite happy to incorporate into its territory a couple of areas of land that it never claimed, it refuses to acknowledge the territory that was awarded to Labrador that Labrador didn’t claim.

Of course, the reason why Labrador never claimed that territory was because it didn’t need to – the border in that area having been decided by a Letter Patent of 1876 – but we mustn’t let facts get in the way of a good Qhébecois rant, of course.

As well as that, I’ve been exploring a couple or peri-Arctic meadows.

When William Munn proposed in 1914 that the Norse voyagers’ settlement was in Newfoundland he was ridiculed by many people. In the Norse sagas they talk about meadows and grassland and taking cattle with them to feed on the grass.

“As if that is ever going to be likely in the region of Newfoundland and Labrador” was the cry.

However the critics failed to take into account a few things – such as

  • There’s plenty of contemporary evidence of cattle in Labrador – the census of 1911 actually counts them
  • When Munn suggested that “maybe the climate in those days was different” he was roundly criticised. “There is no evidence whatever that the climate was different 900 years ago” said various people. That aged well, didn’t it?
  • Any comparison between any two places is merely relative. An agriculturalist from the Temperate Zone might not think much of the peri-Arctic meadows out here in Labrador, but the Norse voyagers came from Greenland and I’ve seen meadows in Greenland, and these meadows here in Labrador are relatively luxurious by comparison

So as well as falling asleep yet again, I had a bash at the dictaphone notes from the night. I was trying to do some tidying up at home (as if that is ever likely to happen). I’d set out to clean the kitchen floor. I’d brushed it and had it ready for the mop. The woman who helped my mother seemed to criticise it so I asked her if it wasn’t good enough. She said it wasn’t so I asked her to point out to me a few things where it was wrong. She pointed to some glue or something on the floor. It turned out that the kids had put sticky labels on the soles of their shoes for some reason. These sticky labels had in time worn off their shoes and stuck to the lino. I had to go through and scrape it all off before I could wash the floor. While I was washing it with the mop I went and rubbed the damp mop over my bedding too thinking that this would clean it and make it really nice. Everyone looked at me strangely but I carried on doing it. On one occasion I didn’t even squeeze the mop after I’d dipped it in the bucket of water before giving the bedclothes a good scrub with the mop. My mother said that my bed would be terribly wet tonight. I told her that it would soon dry. She replied “yes but it will have a strange odour for a while”.

There was another long, rambling dream about being with my niece and her husband, them dealing in cars at night, going up and down into the cellar for things – that was quite complicated and difficult. We were finishing off the erection of a wind turbine at the side of the barn. I was given the job to do that. They had a huge pneumatic drill that had been drilling holes everywhere. It was my job to tighten up the bolts with a big electric impact driver thing. I drove in a couple that I wasn’t very happy with but the final bolt was just spinning round. I eventually managed to fit the proper head on it and drove it straight into the wood. I told my niece’s husband that I wasn’t very happy at all with this mounting. When I stepped back to have a look I could see that it was a really complicated system and there were strains and stresses everywhere there shouldn’t be. The wind turbine itself was actually in the shadow of the house mounted on the wall. I didn’t think that it would be a particularly successful installation. In any case I was thinking that it would come down in the first strong wind. There was lots more to it in this dream. It went on for hours but I can’t remember very much of it now.

At one point we were in Middlewich driving a bus. I’d dropped off a couple of people to go to fetch some chips from somewhere. I went back and parked at the side of a house, just sitting there in a car. 2 people turned up, one waving a pair of drumsticks asking where the others were. I told them that they were in the chip shop. he made some kind of sarcastic comment. There were tons to this dream but I can only remember a fraction of it.

For tea tonight I was planning on having my chips but the potatoes weren’t so good and I hadn’t bought any this morning. So with my salad and quorn nuggets I had a handful of pasta and tomato sauce with some vegan cheese. And that was quite nice as well for a change.

So tonight I’m off to bed. Shopping tomorrow morning so I suppose that that’s going to be another afternoon crashed out on the chair in the bedroom. I hope that there are some interesting things in the shops to make up for the discomfort.

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Thursday 27th July 2023 – THERE WAS ANOTHER …

… football match tonight.

Hwlffordd, after their heroics last week, were away in the Faroe Islands playing B36 Torshavn.

With 6 Albanian, 1 Latvian and 1 Afghan international in their side and a fairly successful history in Europe it was always going to be a struggle for Hwlffordd and when they were 2-0 down with 30 minutes to go, that looked as if it was going to be that.

But late in the game, during what was probably their only serious attack during the entire 90 minutes, to everyone’s surprise they managed to score a goal – being in the right place at the right time with a lucky ricochet in the penalty area.

So all is not lost. They are still within touching distance for the second leg back in Wales next week. And who knows? It’ll be most unlikely if they manage to pull it off but stranger things have happened.

And stranger things have happened too. Like I seem to have had a reasonable night’s sleep. It took me a while to go to sleep, even though I was in bed early, and I don’t recall waking up until about 06:30.

After waking up I somehow managed to go back to sleep again and had to fall out of bed when the alarm went off.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages, it took me quite a while to go wind myself up and start work, and today I’ve spent much of the day in Canada back in 2017.

So far, I’m somewhere down the Trans-Labrador Highway on my way to Goose Bay.

Part of my trip involved having a read of the controversial AP Low’s book written at the end of the 19th Century. He explored the Interior of Labrador on behalf of the Government of Newfoundland and of Canada, missed much of what was important and drew a rather inaccurate map that led several explorers to their deaths.

On the subject of maps, I’ve been having a close look at a hand-drawn map by a Moravian missionary called Reichel who visited the area in 1872.

What’s interesting about his map is that he draws on it the location of all of the isolated cabins, who lived in them and whether they were European, Inuit, Innu or Métis. It’s the closest thing that there is to a Census of Labrador in the 19th Century.

There was also the dictaphone. I was in North America. We’d been to see someone in a Social Security department about some Unemployment Benefit or National Assistance etc because my partner was unable to work and neither was I. We were in this waiting room. Eventually my partner was seen and was told that she’d have to go to Mexico so we set out for there. We ended up in a waiting room in a Government office there that was 10 times worse and 10 times more crowded than anything in the USA. She had a ticket with a number on it. It was all extremely chaotic. We were talking to a couple of people, one girl in particular who kept on being called to the front then having to come back to chat to a couple of her friends who were there. I made a joke to my partner “it seems that the response to when you’re being served is that it’s always going to be next time, you’re the next one”. She didn’t understand what I was trying to say and asked me to explain. Of course it’s very difficult to explain a joke like that. We were sitting there in this crowded, uncomfortable waiting room, waiting to be called to the desk. It looked as if we were going to be there for ever.

Later on there was the dream where I was being tortured by that guy dropping rocks on my head somewhere or other. Every now and again there’s a dream that I don’t write out because of its gruesome nature but this one was so distressing that I couldn’t even bring myself to dictate it. And that’s not happened more than a couple of times in the whole of the 20-odd years that I’ve been doing this.

It makes me wonder if this was the reason why I had one of the worst night-sweats that I’ve ever had.

Some of the time was also spent crashed out on my chair again and I’ve really been doing far too much of that just recently, especially as this was one of the better nights of sleep that I’ve had.

Tea tonight was some of those Chinese whatsits with vegetable fried rice, delicious as usual, and then I had to rush to watch the football.

Now I’m off to bed hoping for a good night’s sleep again. I’m going into town tomorrow, on the bus as it happens, but I reckon that I’ll still be flat out on the chair in the afternoon. I’m rather fed up of all this.

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Wednesday 26th July 2023 – I WAS WELL AWAY …

… with the fairies when the alarm went off this morning.

Mind you, it didn’t seem as if I’d had any sleep at all. I know that it took me a while to go off to sleep again once I finally went to bed and I suppose that that’s the reason.

There was plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too so it must have been a restless night. My parents had gone out for the evening. I was at home with my sister. I was working on the computer and she was doing something. Later in the evening I noticed that it had all gone quiet. There was only me. It seemed that she had gone off to bed and not said anything. I carried on working. All of a sudden the door burst open. It was my parents back. They had brought with them another couple and 6 or 7 children aged from about 9 to about late teenage. I was watching Connah’s Quay play on the internet against another Welsh club. A couple of boys sat down and started to watch it. One of them made a suggestion about who it might be so I said that it was Connah’s Quay. he said “I have a season ticket for them” so we began to watch the football. But I was much more interested in watching the 2 girls who had come with these boys and their parents who I thought were quite nice. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t heard about these girls beforehand

Then I was at the airport waiting to pass through Immigration or Boarding or whatever it is to go down to where the planes are. We all had forms to fill in. I filled in mine and handed it immediately to the guy at the small desk place. So did a few others. We weren’t allowed to pass through yet. Then they called the flight so everyone else formed a queue there. All their documents were read and stamped etc. I was wondering why there were a couple of agents standing round doing nothing and why people were just forming a queue with one guy and not going to the others. Eventually the others began to call people to them and we were all through. I was expecting that he’d give me back all these papers so I’d take them on to the next stage. The first thing that he said was “I’d better go to fetch the ones that are filled in” which for some unknown reason had found themselves back on the table where we started. They were all in envelopes so we had to go through the envelopes again. I was still hanging around there in limbo waiting for something to happen which didn’t happen, thinking that I would have these back but he didn’t seem to want to give them back to me. We were just standing there looking at each other.

We also had a couple of cats. My partner and I went for a walk and the cats came with us. One of them found a potato so it picked up the potato in its mouth and began to carry it around as if it was a kitten. Then it came to another one so it tried to carry both but they were far too heavy. In the end I was carrying these 2 potatoes for the cat. We set out to return home through Nantwich. It was early in the morning so there wasn’t much traffic about so we were lucky that we could do this. I didn’t fancy the cats running around on the side of the road in Hospital Street when there was plenty of traffic. We managed to shepherd them along even through the busy interchange at the roundabout outside Churche’s Mansions. A policeman in an American car gave us some strange looks. At one stage one of these cats was a duck waddling along but then it became a cat again a little later on. It was a really weird situation with these 2 cats that had come with us for a walk and these potatoes that they were trying to nurse.

Later on there was someone with a big van pulling a mobile home which they were using as a caravan. They’d parked at this camp site blocking everyone’s view so that they could see the lake while they had lunch. I was trying to have them move to a more convenient space because this wasn’t very good. In the end they agreed to move but the area to where I wanted them to move, there was no access to vehicles so they were there blocked with this vehicle somewhere. The guy got out to go for a look around on foot. He ended up being stranded somewhere. We were left with this mobile home blocking just about everyone with loads of people wandering around.

Finally I was somewhere else with a group of people, one of whom was my friend from North Wales. We were staying in digs somewhere. I’d had a wash and a shower. They decided that they wanted to go to the pub called “The Great Eastern”. It was quite late at night but we set off to walk. Halfway through it I realised that I didn’t have my watch. I wondered if I’d left it back at my room or whether it had fallen off my hand somewhere. We ended up on a main road. I joked with my friend that the pub she wanted to visit had closed down and was now a night club. I found that on this particular corner there was the pub, some kind of café and a night club too. All the people with me, including my friend waltzed off into the night club. I supposed that I had to follow but I really had no interest at all in going to a night club but that was what everyone wanted to do.

It’s no surprise that after all of that I was flat out at 07:00.

Not that I could do all that much either once I was up and about. It took me an age to get going yet again. Eventually I gave up trying and went for a shower to try to wake myself up and to make myself smell nice for the cleaner when she comes.

And then I transcribed the dictaphone notes that you read just now.

After lunch I did some tidying up and sorted out the clothes that I’d washed last week, and then while the cleaner was here I finished off the notes for the next radio programme.

There was also some time to carry on with my notes from Canada 2017. Not much though because firstly, regrettably, I fell asleep again.

Secondly, I’ve been trying, rather unsuccessfully, to track down the details of the supposed settlements of Salome’s Point and Crooked House Point on Earl Island.

What would really help would be if the Newfoundland Museum Antiquities Department would publish an itemised list of all known or suspected archaeological sites instead of having to pick through the theses of various researchers.

Tea tonight was a chili sin carné with the leftovers in the fridge with a small tin of kidney beans added in. It was delicious as usual, and then regrettably I crashed out again once I came back here to sit down.

But right now even though it’s early I’m going to bed. I really need a decent night’s sleep and I know that I won’t get it, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t make an effort.

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Tuesday 25th July 2023 – TODAY WAS SOMETHING …

… of a better day today, which is just as well because it couldn’t have been any worse than yesterday.

Not that I was expecting it to be because even though I was in bed at something like a reasonable time, once more it took me an age to go off to sleep.

Not as much on the dictaphone as last night either, and when the alarm went off I was flat out asleep. So at least that’s something.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages it took me another age to actually wind myself up to start work. I seem to have a very great difficulty getting going these days.

First thing to do was to check the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. It was wartime. A group of soldiers had been sent to a barracks. They had been given their equipment, including hooks for hanging up their clothes. The sergeant was going through this, interrogating the privates who were already there about certain of the things. He pointed to one of these clothes hooks and asked about it. They came out with some kind of nebulous opinion about what they thought it might be. He dropped it and it was spring-loaded so it sprang right across the road and embedded itself in the front bumper of an old car that was going past in the street.

Later on I came across an obscure reference to some kind of line-of-sight between somewhere in Sinai across to the coast in the Spanish Sahara and then back from French West Africa to the east coast of Africa. It looked quite interesting so I went to the library and borrowed probably a dozen books. I sat there for the whole day reading them. It turned out to be the report of 4 people who’d gone on a cycle trip between these places, what they’d seen and what they’d done. But they didn’t mention the cycles very often. I was busy plotting their route trying to work out the things that they’d seen and cross-reference it with other books. Then the librarian came up to me and asked me for several books back because the library was closing. I was on the point of asking him if I could keep the others somewhere so they aren’t filed away so they’ll be here tomorrow morning for me.

There was also a woman and girl. We were in Ramsgate and had to go somewhere down in the south of Kent so we set out to drive. The woman driving was confused about the way out of Ramsgate so I gave directions. We ended up talking to another couple of women so somehow we began to walk out of the town. We walked for quite a long way. I was saying about where my mother used to live and talking about the evacuation in 1940 etc, saying that I’d show everyone where my mother used to live. I suddenly realised that we didn’t have the car. I asked the woman “where have you left the car?”. She replied “back in Ramsgate”. We carried on walking and came to the main road, Thanet Way. We decided that we’d better go back to fetch the car. There was some talk about some tea in the oven etc. I volunteered to run back with the keys and fetch the car but the girl wanted to go on the bus. I hadn’t a clue what the buses were like, where they ran to and their times etc. It was beginning to go dark now. The first thing was that a tram appeared. They were thinking about boarding the tram but I remembered that there were no tram lines anywhere near where we were with the car so I didn’t think that going on the tram was a good idea. We had a big argument or discussion about going back to pick up the car. This is the kind of thing that would drag on for hours, we won’t resolve anything and we’ll still end up without a car. It could all be resolved in half an hour If I were to run back to fetch it.

Actually, there’s a lot of truth in this story, believe it or not. I’ve been asked several times why I seem to be so concerned with the plight of refugees, and the answer to this is that my mother and her sister were refugees.

They had a very peripatetic childhood and when World War II broke out they were living in Birchington on Sea, not too far from Ramsgate, at the end of the runway at Manston Airfield, an RAF station on the Isle of Thanet.

At the fall of France in June 1940 the Luftwaffe began to drop bombs on all of the airfields in South-East England and Manston was particularly devastated. After one major attack early in the Battle of Britain, all of the children in the area were rounded up, taken to the railway station with just one suitcase, then stuck on a train and sent to live with complete strangers.

For girls who were not yet teenagers it was completely and utterly traumatic and I think in all honesty that it scarred my mother for life. She told us many stories about her life in Somerset and so I have a great deal of sympathy for these people who are fleeing a war zone.

Every time I see some of the hatred and vitriol that’s poured out about refugees, I just reflect that thank God those people weren’t around when my mother and her sister were desperately looking for shelter in 1940

When the alarm went off I was in bed with a girlfriend of mine. The question of motor bikes came up. I was going to buy a new motor bike but for some unknown reason my girlfriend hadn’t ordered a new helmet. That, for some reason, sent me into a fierce temper. I couldn’t understand why I was in such a bad mood about the fact that no helmet had been ordered. Even though I was tired I forced myself out of bed to go to order one myself. I threw a few things across the bedroom. I couldn’t understand why I was in such a bad mood. Had it happened 30 or 40 years ago I could have understood but I’m a different person these days than I used to be.

So having got that out of the way I turned my attention to the radio programme. I listened to the one that will be broadcast this weekend and then sent it off. Once it had gone off, I made a start on preparing another one. The music has been chosen, paired off and I’ve dictated quite a few notes for it.

For much of the rest of the day when I’ve not been asleep on my chair, I’ve been working on my Canada 2017 trip, but not actually doing much in the way of notes but doing some research.

There’s an island off the coast of Cartwright that is known by the locals as “Prisoner’s Island”. The local story was that there was a murder in a fishing gang and as there was no Law Enforcement in Labrador, the alleged perpetrator was cast away on the island and taken back to England at the end of the fishing season.

It occurred to me that if he had been taken back to England, it’s likely that he would have been put ashore at the Port of London and if so, had there been a criminal case, it would have been heard at the Central Criminal Court, otherwise known as “The Old Bailey”.

Consequently I’ve been browsing my way through the records of the Central Criminal Court – and guess what?

On 14th January 1818 “His Majesty’s Special Commission was then put in and read, authorizing the Court to proceed to the Trial of Samuel Harvey Brown who was indicted for feloniously killing and slaying Thomas Pearse , on the 13th of July, at Dumpling Island, in North America, without England “

It just goes to show that many of these very old rumours have a great deal of foundation in fact.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice which was delicious as usual, but I had to eat it quickly because there was football on the internet. Having been eliminated from the Champions League last week, TNS were competing in the Europa League against Swift Hesperange of Luxembourg.

TNS went behind quite quickly and were under the cosh for much of the game, with the Luxembourgers missing a penalty and having several excellent chances. However they rode their luck and played much better than they did against the Swedes of Hacken and pulled a goal back late in the game.

And so it’s all to play for next week.

But that’s next week. Right now, later than usual, I’m off to bed. I won’t have much time for sleep unfortunately but I’ll try to make the best of what I’ve got. The cleaner will be around in the afternoon so I’ll need to do some tidying up before she arrives.

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Monday 24th July 2024 – SO MUCH FOR …

… my plans for today.

Usually there are about 2 or 3 entries on the dictaphone most nights. If I’ve had a particularly restless night there might be as many as 5.

But if you want to know about the kind of night that I had last night, there were actually as many as 10 entries. TEN!

And between 02:18 and 03:50 there were seven of them recorded. That was some night.

On a few occasions too I actually stepped back into dreams where I’d left off. That’s no real surprise I suppose, with a night as mobile as that.

It took me quite an age to go off to sleep too, and then later on I was actually up and about before the alarm went off.

And so, as you can gather, I haven’t been in any kind of condition today to do anything. The only surprise was that I managed to keep awake until 15:30. But once I’d gone, I’d really gone.

However, back to this morning. After the medication I went and had a shower ready for the nurse. She came round later to inject me and then I came back in here and didn’t do very muct at all. It was a real struggle to keep awake and in the end I gave up trying.

later on I had a listen to the dictaphone and that took most of the rest of the day. I went into our kitchen. There was a strange cat in there. All the other cats and kittens were confronting this silver tabby which was doing its best to hide under a piece of cardboard. When I came in it tried to sneak out underneath the cardboard and through a pack of kittens that were trying to fight it. It made its way to the front door but couldn’t work out how to find its way out of the cat flap again so it was cowering in a corner. I couldn’t take a good shot at it because other kittens were around it. In the end I managed to corner it on its own. It hid behind a stuffed giraffe as a gun fighter would do if you tried to draw a gun on him. It looked so interesting and so intelligent this cat so I called my brother to come and see. By the time he arrived the cat had come out from behind the giraffe. I had the door open and was trying to usher it out with my feet. My brother thought that I won’t have many marks for kindness and politeness by doing that. I replied that it’s soon going to go out anyway. After a couple of attempts I managed to put my foot underneath its stomach and heave it out through the open door then close the front door behind it so it couldn’t re-enter. The thought then occurred to me that I hope that the kittens that went outside can work their way through the cat flap to find their way back in otherwise we’ll have problems with that too

TOTGA appeared last night, so hello to TOTGA. She had an audition for a modelling agency so someone was coming round to see her. I spent some time choreographing some dances and had been putting her through them. On the final morning that we were working through them there was so much that still needed to be done that while she was rehearsing I was buzzing around. Someone who was there watching suggested that I was distracting her and getting in her way. My response was first of all that we needed this information and secondly, when she’s taking her exam there will be people getting in her way then. She needs to work out her routine based on the movements of other people anyway. After this discussion I went into the storeroom to try to find something from one of her earlier sessions. She came in, still dancing, saying that she needed to find the heat treatment for a twinge in her muscle. We discussed where that might be, which box it was in. She had to find it but she needed to be quick because the person would b ehere in a minute.

Back on the subject of ballet again. This time I had a couple of groups of young toddlers and small children who were being put through their routines. They were extremely interesting, especially one who could barely walk and had one of her front teeth missing. She did a really nice dance. I told her how now it was but I was thinking that it’s such a shame that she couldn’t have waiting another half-hour for that performance because the examiner would have been here and he would have loved to have seen that dance.

I went straight back to sleep and immediately saw the housekeeper or cleaner of the hall where we dance looking totally aghast. I asked her what was the matter. She replied that she had seen the first ever seal killed by another seal. It was that that had upset her.

After that I stepped back into the previous dream again with my ballet class of toddlers. There was a police inspector who was there. For some unknown reason he was in a bad mood. I asked him whether it was because of the lack of preparation on his behalf that was causing the problem or whether there was something else we needed to know

I bet that you didn’t know that I was an ace at the ballet! But actually I had two younger sisters who needed taking to dance class on a Saturday afternoon and when my elder sister started a Saturday job I drew the short straw and I spent many an hour watching what was going on.

That’s why I used to go to watch Port Vale play football in the late 1960s. Our local team played on a Saturday afternoon so I couldn’t go, but the Vale always played on a Friday night. It was actually a good night out, walking back from Burslem to the railway station at Longport late at night, grabbing a bag of chips on the way.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … bed, there was more trouble later about a kid who wanted someone here to cut off some material for him, a length of dark green and a length of red so that he could wrap them around himself to pretend that he was a school mascot. That way he’d stop being annoyed by these other people at the gate of the school

I was going into Crewe town centre for an interview for a job in a shop. I was having to change my employment because of my illness and needed something less stressful with less travel. I was chatting to a girl when the bus came in. She boarded it. I suddenly realised just as it was about to pull away that it was my bus too so I leapt aboard and just about managed to scramble onto the platform before it took off. I saw the girl so I waved to her. We came into Crewe town centre and I alighted. I thought that I’d go to my brother’s shop for a form for a CV and fill it in to hand in at this other place. It was just after midday so I wondered if he’d be at lunch. I went there and began to climb the steps into his front door

Then I had the first part of that dream again about having to prepare for this meeting or exam whatever it was, finding all my things etc before going out for the bus

I was also giving a lecture on brewing last night. I’d ordered some beer but it hadn’t come so I contacted the brewery. They launched one by catapult. It flew through the air, 8 miles high, this barrel of beer through the sky all the way and dropped to earth in my living room where there was a crowd of people. They denied having received this beer at first but I think that they were teasing me. In the end they gave me a glassful. It had a huge head on it of course. I tasted it and said that it was the most beautiful beer that I’ve ever tasted. I let 1 or 2 other people have a drink. Some girl asked me about the secrets of brewing. I explained that the real secret is in the water. The underlying soils are all on different rocks. The rainfall that percolates through the rocks picks up different minerals depending on the area where it is and what the rocks are. The water that they take to make the beer depends on the area from where it comes, different minerals in the water react in different ways with the yeast and barley and grain etc. That’s why beers are different, because of the minerals in the water. Some ares have really good water for brewing but others don’t. There’s different beers made with different kinds of water. I was impressed that I could give a lecture on brewing and breweries while I was asleep.

Finally, Caliburn and I were on our way back from Virlet to Brussels going the way that we used to go through the mountains. When we left one town heading north it seemed that all the traffic was being diverted over a rough tarmac path through a field. The old road was overgrown with weeds. There were no signs or anything so I carried on down the old road. After about 50 yard all the weeds etc had gone and it was the normal road again. I was travelling down there at a good rate of knots in a rainstorm. It suddenly occurred to me that this isn’t the town that I know where I was entering. There was a steep hill down into the town centre to a T junction where I had to turn left. As I was three quarters of the way down the hill a lorry began to reverse out of a parking space into the road in front of me. I blew the horn and the horn stuck. Eventually the lorry got the message and drove back in so that I could go past. There was a milk float on the corner that was reversing up the hill on my side of the road. He received a horn blast too because I couldn’t go past him because of the road junction. Eventually I had to get out and push the milk float out of the way. He got the message too and drove off the right way this time so that I could reach the bottom of this hill to turn left. There were hordes of people milling around here, so much traffic, the rainstorm. I didn’t recognise anything of this. I didn’t know where I was at all.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper which was really nice but for some reason or other I seem to have lost my appetite again

Anyway, that’s enough for this horrible day. I’m glad that it’s over. I’m going to bed and I’ll start again tomorrow – if I wake up. I really do feel as if I could sleep for a week with no problem whatsoever.

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Sunday 23rd July 2023 – I WAS HOPING …

… to have had a really good night’s sleep last night.

Just by way of a change, I was in bed shortly after midnight and although it took me an age to go to sleep it was about 10:00 or so when I finally awoke.

And I didn’t leave the bed straight away either. It was more like 11:00 when my feet finally saw the light of day.

What was really, really depressing though was that despite all of that, I still couldn’t go beyond 14:00 without crashing out. Not just for 5 minutes either but for quite a considerable while. I could understand it if I’d had a bad night or if I’d actually done something to merit it.

What I have done during the day, when I’ve been awake, is to prepare another radio programme. I’d dictated the text last night before going to bed so this afternoon I edited it and assembled everything. That’s really just about everything.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone as well. Not much, so it must have been a good night from a sleep point of view. I was with a group of people. We were all in a bedroom somewhere in a big country house. We were having a good look round to see what was happening and found that we were actually in bed in a row of cots like small babies would be. Of course we couldn’t work out what was happening. Someone suggested that we wait until everything became clear and people begin to come down to see us and tell us what is happening.

There was also some kind of building project going on. I’d been asked to address people about the history of the area. They found me a place to stand and talk but it was from a window or demolished part of a house on the first floor on the corner with all the workmen working a little further down the street. I had to climb up a scaffolding to stand on the corner to address the crowd but when I stood there the floor gave way underneath me. I fell down to the ground level. I wasn’t hurt so I pretended that it was a joke or something and climbed back up the scaffolding. I began to address them but no-one could hear me over the noise. I had to look around to see if there was another place where I could stand that might possibly be a little better. There was a place on the opposite corner where I’d actually be on the street. We were thinking about maybe I could go to stand there but that wasn’t idea either.

Tea was another vegan pizza – just as good as usual.

So after yet another in a long line of dismal days, I’m going to bed. There are no plans at all for next week so I’m hoping that I can have a good crack at Canada 2017.

That is, if I can manage to stay awake long enough.

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Saturday 22nd July 2023 – AS YOU MIGHT …

… expect, I’ve spent much of the afternoon asleep. Going to the shops this morning was, once again, far too much for me.

It might have helped if I’d had a decent night’s sleep but apart from going to bed later than I would have liked, I had to get up in the middle of the night for a reason that anyone of my age would tell you.

A few years ago that was quite a normal thing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I thought that I’d put it all behind me a long time ago.

When the alarm went off I was deep in the Arms of Morpheus and I had a struggle to leave my stinking pit before the second alarm.

But once I’d organised myself (which takes much longer these days than it ought) Caliburn and I headed out to the shops.

There was a parking space at the front of Noz so I could go there without a struggle. Mind you, I needn’t have bothered because there wasn’t anything interesting. I bought a couple more of those breadcrumbed quorn fillets and a couple more packets of digestives. I think that I have all of those now.

LeClerc didn’t come up with anything out of the ordinary. There was some falafel on offer, 350 grammes for €3:09 so I bought a box of those for the freezer seeing as the stocks are running down.

Back here I had my cheese on toast for brunch and then ended up yet again with another mug of very cold coffee after several hours flat out on the chair in the office.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. There were some people outside a courtroom who had some kind of tube with a candle in it. The idea was that as they took a brick out of the wall of this building and pushed this tube with a candle through the home they could somehow hear the proceedings of what was going on on the inside. They managed to remove the brick by putting 2 screws in it, twisting it round and pulling and then inserted the tube. It went into the room and was disguised by a window shutter on the inside that was folded back. There was me and someone else in there being tried for something or other. In all probability we were going to be found guilty. The penalty for this was death, which we knew very well Many people thought that we might just be transported but we were convinced that we were going to die. The one guy with me had some plans of his own and I also had some plans. I was going to have a way to sneak out of this prison one night before we would be moved away. I ended up at my friend’s in the Bourgogne on New Years Eve. He, his wife and I had a little party. He brought me a few items of food that he’d made himself and we were settling down to have a really nice evening. After everyone went to bed I took the opportunity to take his car and drive off and disappear, hopefully making good my escape.

Later on I had to go into work. As my brother was around I brought him with me. There was a group of us who were going. We reached the Place Madou. I explained to him that it was extremely complicated to manoeuvre around here and it’ll be even worse on the way back because of the one-way system against us. We crossed over the road and I had to look for the side street. Some of the people with me went off down the side street without any problem. For some reason I had a mental blank and couldn’t think where the side street was. I tried 3 or 4 back entries to shops etc. Suddenly I remembered where it was. I shouted at my brother to come but he was too busy looking himself. He wouldn’t come for a minute. In the end I started to go and he began to follow me. We bumped into our friends again who were waiting for us around the corner wondering what on earth had been the matter and what had been going on with us.

I was also on the radio last night. We’d been doing a series of programmes. One of them was about different pet foods. It turned out that the pet food we recommended was being run down. You couldn’t find it any more in the shops. I went to a grocer’s to try to find it. There was also something to do with someone asking why were we advertising events so far away when we don’t tell anyone anything about things in the area. I answered that that’s because people in the area don’t tell us about their events. Someone asked about a special offer for soup that was available at the local supermarket. I was in the supermarket at the time so we had a look around and found the offer but it had expired 2 years ago. There was a woman working in the supermarket who worked for the radio who I asked to do something. I gave her the information to collate but she was just sitting there at her desk not doing anything. She told me that she was waiting for bits and pieces but I couldn’t understand that because she didn’t actually need anything. I’d given her everything that she needed and I was beginning to become extremely frustrated by all of this

Rosemary rang me up too and we had another one of our mega-chats. It’s been a while since we have had a good chat. It’s quite funny really. We can talk for hours on the telephone but we don’t actually say all that much.

There wasn’t much time to spend on my trip to Canada. I managed to write some stuff but once more I was side-tracked. In 1848 Bishop Feild (and that’s not a spelling mistake) of St John’s in Newfoundland decided to go to visit the coasts of Labrador.

There’s no record that I can find of a priest having visited there before and it was really only about 20 years or so after the first settlers had made their home there. He kept a diary of his visit, which is really probably the earliest erudite account of “liveyer” or settler life out on the Labrador coast, and I managed to track down a copy of it.

Consequently I’ve been immersed in its pages. It’s full of all kinds of interesting anecdotes, including reports of the first marriage ceremonies carried out on the Labrador coast.

“Nine couples were married, and one couple rejected, because the man, as it appeared, had lived with another woman, whom he had deserted, or turned off… He is an Englishman from Devonshire—no credit, I fear, to his country or Church.”.

Tea was one of the breaded quorn fillets with chips and salad, delicious as ever and properly cooked too.

So seeing as I’m exhausted I’m going to dictate the radio notes now that it’s quiet, and I’ll sleep until I awaken. There’s nothing to do tomorrow so if necessary I can even catch up with my beauty sleep. And having looked in the mirror just recently, I certainly need it.

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Firday 21st July 2023 – I MADE IT …

… back from town this morning.

Actually, going down into town was the easy bit because I went on the bus.

Mind you, I nearly didn’t because just as I was stepping out of the front door I realised that I’d forgotten half of the paperwork that I needed so I had to come back.

These days I can’t move very quickly at all so I was afraid that I’d miss the bus. But luckily I managed to stagger aboard just before she pulled away.

Something else that might have made me miss it was another miserable night. What with the football and everything it was long after midnight when I went to bed and it took me an absolute age to go off to sleep.

Once again, I was up and on my feet before the alarm went off, and after I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages, I went and had a shower to make myself smell nice.

Before leaving for the bus I put the washing machine on the go so that at least I’d have some clean clothes for when I came back. I’m running out of clothes at the moment.

At the Carrefour I forgot the cherry tomatoes but I remembered everything else, and then wandered off to the Post Office to post a couple of letters, one of which was the demand for a disabled parking badge, and to pick up a registered letter.

At the chemist’s the staff were fighting over serving me and I ended up with the girl who lost the bout. She gave me the Aranesp, which cost an arm and a leg as usual, and then I set off for home.

The walk back was agony. It really was. It took me an age and I was exhausted by the time I returned. I had my cheese on toast but regrettably fell asleep almost immediately.

It’s no fun waking up to a cold mug of coffee. I’ve no idea how long I was asleep but it wasn’t five minutes – I’ll tell you that for nothing. It felt like an eternity and at one point I really was contemplating the idea of going to bed.

Anyway, instead I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I was during the night. I was with a friend of mine. We’d gone to some kind of sports hall place to do a job. As we left Crewe to join the motorway there was a policewoman at the top of the motorway exit watching the drivers join the motorway. She shouted “drive safely, watch your speed limits and don’t speed”, something like that. Of course my friend immediately shouted back some kind of comment as he would about “what do you mean? I’m not going fast. What are you saying? What are you implying?”. Of course I could see exactly where this is going so I said “come on mate, let’s get to work” but he still wanted to pick a fight with this policewoman. In the end I managed to organise him and I apologised to the policewoman. The last thing I wanted was for her to chase us down the motorway. So we did what we were doing and it worked quite well. There was a roulette table and a few one-armed bandit things there. He looked at his watch and said “we can spend an hour here and have a play on that”. I’d put all the money safe so I didn’t want to go bringing it out again. I should have put my possessions into some kind of safe but I didn’t fancy the idea of it because there was no lock. Everyone could go in and take the stuff so I kept them on me. I really wanted to go home but he was dead set on staying here wasting his money so I suppose we’ll have to. But I hope that he really is only going to be here for a short while and not spin it out for the rest of the night. I could see that happening quite easily.

Later on there was another group of us who had been out for a walk. I’d ended up with a man and a woman who might have been some friends of mine, I dunno. We met an American couple. The woman-friend of mine had gone off to do something so we were just wandering around when the American couple appeared. They asked if we knew where a certain café was. My friend thought that it was the one around the corner from where we were standing although I thought that it was the one where we had been earlier in the day. We went round the corner to this one and could see that it was a really expensive place. There was nothing special about it. The guy said “let’s walk up to some place or other at the end of the track”. I asked “what about your wife?”. There didn’t seem to be much of a reply. Off we set. It was slowly going dark. We reached the end which was by the water. There was a girl there. For some reason I was asked to take a photo of her so that she could be put on a poster. I had the little Nikon and went to take a photo but for some reason the camera wouldn’t take the photo. It might possibly have been too dark. I took the big Nikon which doesn’t need the light so much and I positioned this girl in the street light at a table in the café so that the light would fall on her to give the best possible view, went to take the camera but found that the battery was flat. This American couple had a bit of a moan to me about all my things etc.

Later on I spent some time back in Canada. I’ve left Cartwright and I’m heading down the Métis Trail back towards the Trans Labrador Highway.

The area around Cartwright and Sandwich Bay in particular is populated by the Métis.

When the early European traders came out here in the 18th and early 19th Century, those employees who opted to stay usually took a native wife, sometimes an Innu but mainly an Inuit. Their descendants are known as Métis

Almost everyone out on the coast is descended from probably about 20 distinct families and it’s interesting to read the Censuses of 100 or so years ago. Each cove or sheltered bay would have its own “family” who would work the salmon fishing, the cod fishing and then go off into the interior trapping during the winter.

Even more strangely, suddenly you’ll find that in a certain location there might be a different family than in the previous Census. Almost inevitably, one family might just have daughters. When she married, she would stay at home and bring her husband to her, and he would inherit his father-in-law’s cove and trap lines

Every now and again you’ll come across a French name – Michelin being one of the most common. For a while there was a trading firm from Montreal – Revillon Frères – out here on the Labrador coast trying to establish a foothold against the Hudson’s Bay Company.

There were also a few merchants from the Channel Islands who tried to establish themselves here but a big bank crash in Jersey in 1873 wiped them out.

The Métis did not have any rights at all until the 1980s. Being the children of native women they were never recognised as Europeans by Law according to the European settlers, and because they were the children of European men, they never acquired the rights of native indigenous people. It wasn’t until Section 35 of the Constitution Act was amended in 1982 that the Métis became recognized as one of Canada’s three Aboriginal peoples and began to receive their rights.

Tea tonight was falafel, chips and salad. Quite delicious but it’s given me stomach ache and I don’t know why.

But now I’m off to bed for a good night’s sleep ready to fight the good fight around the shops tomorrow. But before I go, I’ll leave you with the HIGHLIGHTS OF LAST NIGHT’S FOOTBALL. I hope that you enjoy them as much as everyone else seems to have done.

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Thursday 20th July 2023 – ZAK JONES DOES IT AGAIN

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago at the end of the football season New Zealand International goalkeeper performed heroics in the Hwlffordd goal to drag his team from 7th place in the league all the way through the playoffs and into European competition.

Last week away in North Macedonia his young, unfancied part-time side lost narrowly, 1-0 to a team, KF Shkendija that contained no fewer than 5 international players

Tonight we had the return leg in Wales and with just a couple of minutes to go and Hwlffordd on the verge of going out, centre-half Lee Jenkins, pushed up into attack got his foot onto the end of a cross and poked the ball into the net.

So we had 22 very tired players playing 30 minutes of inconclusive extra time which led to a penalty shootout to decide who will go through to the second round and a trip to the Faroe islands.

So up stepped Zak Jones.

I forget now how many penalties he saved in the play-off matches during the penalty shootouts (and the one in open play) but however many it was, he can add two more to his list from tonight, one with his hands and another with his feet.

Consequently, the team managed by former Hull City coach Tony Pennock and led on the field by Welsh International Jazz Richards and who were written off by almost everyone before the European matches started now progress to Round Two

Every single one of them played like lions tonight.

As for me, I was more like a lamb this morning. I’ve no idea what it was that awoke me but once again I was up and about (well, sort-of) before the alarm went off.

Once more, I took quite a while to bring myself into the Land of the Living but my reverie was interrupted by a ‘phone call.

And the good news about this is that I have an appointment at this mega-hospital in Paris on 30th August at 14:30 where they are goign to try to sort out the nerves in my leg.

It’s only going to be a consultation – I won’t be staying over or anything like that, but it shows that things are moving rapidly. Much more rapidly than I can ever move, that’s for sure.

What with this Re-education place yesterday, I’m not sure whether they are going to do me any good but I’m certainly going to let them have a try.

How I’m actually going to get to the hospital is another question entirely and I spent a while “making enquiries”. These are rather inconclusive right now but something might happen sometime, I suppose.

For the rest of the day I was in Canada and right now I’m back from my sail out to sea and the abandoned settlements and I’m packing up ready to leave Cartwright in a few hours time for my trip down to North West River and another little boat trip.

There was a pause while I transcribed the dictaphone notes. There was something going on in a house last night. About moving or reorganising this property. We had a couple of security cameras filming everything frame by frame on a time-lapse photography thing. We were sitting there watching it and the changes in the season and changes in the weather during the day and how clear the images were at times and how unclear they were at other times.

Then there was some kind of ceremony taking place in a village hall or something like that. A priest was going to be there to bless us. Because I’m a foreigner I was going to be treated specially so I decided that I was going to wear some kind of Bishop’s robes so that I could bless him back. I mentioned it to one of the organisers who was one of my bosses. I knew that they didn’t take it seriously so I didn’t say anything. On the day when the crowds were beginning to assemble I asked someone official who I knew was nothing to do with our part of the event whether he had brought the Bishop’s cloak with him. He looked bewildered and pointed me in the direction of one of my bosses. I wandered over there and asked him. I could see the vacant look on his face as if he hadn’t realised exactly what I was wanting or what I was expecting of him. He took me over to a coat rail with loads of different sorts of clothes on it, wedding dresses etc but there was nothing on it suitable to be turned into a Bishop’s cloak. I knew that full well. My aim was just at that moment to embarrass him. It didn’t really make much difference whether I wore a Bishop’s robe or not – it was just something that I fancied doing.

Finally, we awoke in this car park on our coach next to this ancient, horrible, disreputable saloon of the 1930s or 40s like a Morris E or something. We were going to say something about it but decided that it probably wasn’t a good idea to brag about our own achievements and draw attention to ourselves like this. We tended to ignore it. As more and more people came to join us for breakfast we didn’t mention this vehicle at all which was quite a surprise really. It’s not the kind of vehicle that you see every day these days.

Tea tonight was a rather rushed chili sin carné with the leftovers lengthened with a small tin of kidney beans. And quite delicious too. I’ve really got the hang of making these.

So now that the football is over I’m off to bed, later – much later – than usual. I haven’t crashed out today but I bet that I will tomorrow, especially as I have to go down into town to pick up the Aranesp that I ordered.

That’ll be me done for the rest of the week, I reckon.

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Wednesday 19th July 2023 – IT’S BEEN ANOTHER …

… day today that’s best forgotten. In fact, I’m actually so surprised that I’ve accomplished as much as I have.

But start as you mean to go on. I was actually up and about (well, sort-of) before the alarm went off. I’d had such a disturbing dream that it actually awoke me and I ended up sitting bolt-upright.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages it took me a while to come to my senses – after all, I have so few left these days that it takes a while to find them, I suppose.

Anyway, once I was there or thereabouts I pushed on with the medical receipts. It was quite a struggle because there were so many, but eventually they were all done and dusted. Just one more lot to send off but I’ll wait until Friday when I’ll have bought this next month’s batch of Aranesp.

The next thing that needed doing was to fill in this form about my disability. That was a whole rainforest of paperwork that I needed to complete, and as well as that, I had to print off some stuff from the computer, like copies of Identity cards and electricity bills and the like.

But going through these forms, I’m surprised at what I’m entitled to claim. There’s no doubt that the elderly and infirm are much better off here than in the UK.

However, it goes without saying that I’m not claiming for much because I don’t really need it. If I can have a parking pass and a public transport ticket that will suit me fine. My medical expenses are taken care of because I’m classed as long-term permanently seriously ill

Ending up with a pile of paperwork like this, that led to some tidying up in here. And that’s not like me at all, is it? I suppose that I ought to be more focused on things like this but it isn’t easy.

A little later I had a shower, and then while the cleaner was here I organised the music for the next radio programme, paired it all off and then actually wrote out all of the notes. And that took me an age because I fell asleep in the middle of doing it. And fell asleep definitively too.

At some point or other I managed to transcribe the dictaphone notes. There were a couple of people who were being besieged, rather like Murdoch and Lamb (I actually mean Murdoch and Guyler) of the Men From The Ministry. When they began to run away from their hiding place they found that their enemy’s ship was anchored no more than a couple of feet away. They tried to dodge into a building just as the ship opened fire. It practically obliterated the building in which they were trying to hide but they managed to go inside what was left of it. another point-blank broadside brought them back out of the building again and they were obliged to surrender.

There was also a film about 2 guys who were playing cricket. Their team wasn’t particularly good but they were doing really well. There was a break and these 2 guys disappeared and no-one knew where they had gone. The people who ran the club were devastated because they were the only 2 who were doing any good. Then it turned out that someone checked the contents of a dustbin lorry. There had been a film that had taken place there about some dwarf warning the population about the dangers of eating when there were seagulls about. One of the guys missing from this group was a dwarf as well. There were 2 people talking about the perils of being in a boat who resembled 2 of the persons from this group who were missing so speculation was that they’d all been caught out doing something that they shouldn’t be doing and were arrested. They were now having part of their punishment which was to talk out loud on the radio about these things that they shouldn’t do

I was in bed last night really hot and felt the urge to spread myself right out to make the greatest surface possible so that I could transpire better but for some unknown reason I was really worried about disturbing whoever it was who was asleep on the other half of the bed. Eventually after quite a while I realised that there wasn’t anyone asleep there and that I’d just imagined there being someone else there in bed with me at the time

Finally, I’d been staying in an Air B&B somewhere and was due to leave. The final account had been e-mailed to me to pay. Someone looked at it and told me “do you know that you have to pay 11,000 (whatever the local currency is) for your stay in that place? That works out at £2,000 per week”. It was only a single room in a small house. I was astonished by that, so much so that I actually awoke

And after last night’s escapades I managed to have some food tonight. Plenty of stuffing left so I had a taco roll, the one that I should have had last night. I know that my meals are all very samey but they are all very nice regardless.

Tomorrow, with all of my work done, I can finally have a day working on Canada 2017. But as usual, something will be bound to crop up to disturb me. I mustn’t forget to order the Aranesp either. When I go into town on Friday to pick it up I can post all of my letters.

There’s enough there to keep me out of mischief for a while.

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