Category Archives: Eric Hall

Wednesday 25th March 2025 – IT HAS BEEN …

… a strange kind of day today — neither one thing nor another. I’m not quite sure why but if ever there was a day of two halves, this was it.

Take last night, for instance. Even though I was late … "yet again" – ed … finishing off everything that needed finishing, I wasn’t in the least bit tired and I ended up sitting around for a while listening to a concert by Renaissance. As a result, I was quite late going to bed, and it was all my fault.

Not being tired, it took me a while to go to sleep but apart from one moment, more of which anon, I slept right through until just a couple of minutes before the alarm — 06:24 if I remember correctly. Not that there was any prospect of me claiming an early start by sliding my feet onto the floor before the alarm went off — that four minutes in bed was valuable.

Even so, when the alarm went off, it took me a good few minutes to raise myself from the Dead and head off into the bathroom. And then into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

There had been a dance at an army camp and plenty of male and female soldiers had attended. During the evening, a couple of males and a couple of females had made themselves into couples. At the end of the dance, when everyone was due to go home, one of the female soldiers remarked that there would be a bed empty in her hut because one of the female soldiers isn’t there this weekend. One of these ad-hoc couples decided that they would take advantage of this so they followed everyone else back to the various dormitories. They worked out which one was their hut, and they went in. But there were a couple of other women in there, including one who looked after the section’s lion, which was their mascot from Ethiopia and looked after by them, so this was a strange sight of a woman and a lion, another lion, another woman, a third woman and then this couple who were in this other woman’s bed. At some point, I was summoned to do something with the hot water firing. I thought that this was a surprise because it’s not really my job. However, it was explained to me that the person whose job it was usually was missing. So I was called out and came down and went to fix it, and then I began to ask about the whereabouts of this other guy, and so a search began. When they opened the door of this women’s dormitory and found him there with this woman and this lion in this room, and all these other women, the service went totally berserk.

This is another dream that has absolutely no connection at all with anything that has happened in the real World just recently, as far as I can tell. What on earth a woman would be doing in a dormitory with a lion is something that totally baffles me.

The army dance is interesting too, but that doesn’t seem to fit in with anything either. As for me being in the army, that would be most unlikely too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that if a war were to break out and conscription came into force, I would be heading for the nearest Merchant Marine office.

Then there was a dream about a group of people who had let themselves go in their lives. The first one was a graphic artist from Italy who had settled into the UK to do some kind of graphic work, but had lost his job and was content to sit around all day on benefits rather than go out to try to find a job to better his position.

As I was starting to dictate this, I was overwhelmed by the most enormous coughing fit, one of the biggest that I’ve had and which awoke me, as I mentioned earlier. When it calmed down, I found that I had forgotten everything else that I needed to know about it and so that was that.

Almost immediately that I had finished transcribing the dictaphone notes, the nurse turned up. He didn’t have a lot to say for himself today and was soon gone on his travels. I could make my breakfast, cutting the bread with my new bread knife that arrived yesterday, and it isn’t ‘arf sharp. I hope that my cleaner can find some of those vegetable knives if they are as sharp as the bread knife is.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re discussing Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I can understand why there is so much fighting over the possession of these territories even today. Their history is so convoluted – at some time in the past, almost every power of any importance in the Balkans and in Italy has had possession of this area at some point. Numerous battles have been fought across the area as other powers have tried to take control.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then an e-mail to write. That actually took longer than it ought.

When I’d dealt with that, I began to write the notes for another radio programme. However, the time seemed to evaporate and what should have taken about three hours at most ended up taking over five, and I’ve no idea why.

My faithful cleaner turned up to interrupt me at one point. She’d brought the rest of the medication that had to be ordered. I mentioned the side effects of the medication that Emilie the Cute Consultant had prescribed, and her response was “serve you right”. It’s nice to know that you have loyal friends.

Something strange happened after all of this. From going along, bright and cheerful, I suddenly became overwhelmed with fatigue and found myself slumped over the desk in one of these trances that I used to have quite regularly.

In fact, had Rosemary not ‘phoned me up for a chat, I would probably still be there now. Even so, over an hour crashed out like that is some going.

Rosemary and I just had a short chat today — a mere one hour and twenty-four minutes. We’re obviously losing our touch these days.

After she’d hung up, I attacked one of the radio notes that i’d dictated a while back. I’d hoped to have had these all edited, the two halves of the programme prepared, the extra track chosen and the notes written , with plenty of time to spare afterwards, but what with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed … I’d barely finished preparing the two halves.

That filled me full of dismay because the time is just melting away between my fingers and I can’t stop it.

Tea tonight was pasta and vegetables in a vegan cheese sauce followed by more delicious trifle. It was quite nice, except for the fact that some of the pasta ended up in the bin as I couldn’t eat it. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … my taste buds are definitely changing.

But right now, I shall be changing, into my night clothes to go to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the woman and the lion … "well, one of us has" – ed … she was walking with the lion down Hoole Lane in Chester not so long ago.
A policeman stopped her and demanded "where do you think you are going with that lion?"
"Where do you think?" she asked. "I’m taking him to Chester Zoo"
A couple of days later, the same policeman stopped the same woman with the same lion in Sealand Road
"I thought you said that you were taking that lion to Chester Zoo?"
"And so I did!" she retorted "but he didn’t think much of it so we’re going to watch Chester City play Scarborough Athletic."

Tuesday 24th March 2026 – MY VEGAN TRIFLE …

… is absolutely delicious! With its base of agar-agar grape jelly with real pears, a mid-layer of vegan custard and the pièce de resistance – the meringue topping that went onto the custard this afternoon, it really was a masterpiece. I shall be making another one of these at some point in the near future.

So what with the vegan cheesecake that I made the other day, my repertoire of puddings seems to be expanding quite quickly. And that can only be a good thing, especially as I have decided to make a chocolate cake for Easter, with real chocolate chips and a chocolate topping. That’s Sunday’s task, with Saturday’s being, of course, to make some hot cross buns.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here. I was so looking forward to my trifle yesterday that last night I dashed right through my notes and everything else that I had to do, and I was actually in bed at something like a reasonable time.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happens when I manage to go to bed early. It was something like 02:00 when I awoke, and failing miserably to go back to sleep, I lay there in a kind of semi-conscious haze as the clock went round and round towards 06:29.

At one point, I was seriously thinking of leaving the bed and doing some dictating, but how do you dictate when you are being constantly wracked by a series of severe coughing fits? I came to the conclusion that I would be of more use if I were to stay in bed, rest and relax and maybe eve fall asleep if I’m lucky.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be, and I was still awake when the alarm finally went off.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, being awake is one thing — being up and about is quite another thing. As usual, it took me a good ten minutes to bring myself round into the Land of the Living. Only then was I able to stagger off into the bathroom to sort myself out.

Into the kitchen next for my hot honey, lemon and ginger drink and medication, and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And to my dismay, it seemed as if I hadn’t been anywhere. Nothing but silence.

Never mind — after such a bad night, it’s hardly a surprise, and there are plenty of other things that I can be doing instead.

The nurse blew in this morning after his week’s break. He had a few things to say, but he kept very quiet about the fact that in the local elections on Sunday he’d been elected to the town council. That’s probably because he knows my opinion on the town council — I’ve expressed it often enough.

After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’ve now come to discuss Albania in medieval times, and this has, as you might expect, led me off on a trail down a side-alley, at a tangent to where I’m supposed to be. But regular readers of this rubbish will recall that that kind of thing is only to be expected when I’m doing something.

Back in here, I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. It was another really good lesson, but I had to keep my microphone on “mute” for most of the time because I didn’t want my classmates to be disturbed by my constant coughing. It’s really out of control, this is.

After the class ended, my faithful cleaner turned up and shooed me under the shower for a good scrub. At least I feel quite clean now, even if I wasn’t very enthusiastic about the affair today.

She’s also bought some of the medicine that Emily the Cute Consultant prescribed for me yesterday. And now I’m more convinced than ever that she doesn’t love me any more. According to the warning notice, "Severe side effects include an increased risk of suicide.". The lesser side effects include "sexual problems". So that would seem to indicate that a bout of indoor alligator-wrestling is off the menu for the foreseeable future, for various reasons.

The good news is that she managed to find some of the expensive kitchen knives that were on offer, ridiculously cheap with my fidelity tickets. Not the ones that were most important, though, but as the offer continues until the 11th of April, she’ll keep on looking.

Mind you, there was a professional knife-sharpening tool that was included as part of the offer. They had a few of those so she brought one home, and I’ll see if I can rekindle some life into some of the old ones, as a kind of stopgap.

After she left, I went to make my meringue topping. I didn’t have enough aquafaba in the freezer, so I opened a tin of chick peas for some more. That made me decide that I would have a noodle stir-fry for tea tonight, using up the chick peas that I had just drained.

Whipping up the meringue topping made it a much greater volume than the unwhipped liquid, so I’m glad that I used my big Pyrex dish. It only just about fitted all in. And it’s heavy too. I can’t carry it one-handed so I’ve been relying on my little trolley to push around.

Back in here, I was really exhausted after all of that and what with the bad night too, so it’s no surprise that I had a little … errr … relax on the chair. Except that there was nothing “little” about it. I was away with the fairies for ninety minutes, although not in any kind of situation that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine.

When I was back in the current World, I finished off one of the radio programmes that I’d started last week. That’s now added to the mountain of stuff that needs to be dictated, and I’ve no idea when I’ll be able to do that.

As I mentioned earlier, tea tonight was a vegan noodle stir-fry — delicious as usual, followed by my wonderful vegan trifle.

So now, suitably refreshed and suitably clean, I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my vegan trifle … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me "what’s made of egg-whites and sugar, and swings from tree to tree?"
"I’ve no idea" I replied. "What is made of egg-whites and sugar, and swings from tree to tree?"
"A meringue-utan of course."

Monday 23rd March 2023 – GUESS WHO …

… at dialysis today spilled a whole beaker of hot coffee all over the keyboard of his nearly-new laptop?

Yes, I’m convinced that I’m going from bad to worse these days and I don’t know why, but everything seems to be taking so long, and I seem to be creating difficulty after difficulty for myself.

Like last night, for example. It could — and should — have been another early night, but when I’d finished my tea, it was already 21:45 and that leaves me very little time to do anything that I want.

Consequently, it was closer to 23:30 when I crawled into bed last night, and this is good for neither man nor beast.

Once in bed, though, it didn’t take long to go to sleep, and apart from one or two awakenings, more of which anon, I stayed asleep until about 06:15.

Not that I felt much like leaving my bed when the alarm went off. It was quite a struggle to drag myself into the bathroom and once again, it was horribly late when I went in for my hot drink and medication.

To make matters worse, the computer in here wouldn’t boot up. In the end, I had to go into the BIOS to check and, sure enough, the bootable disk had fallen to the bottom of the pile, so I had to promote it to the top and we could start again.

Once it was up and running correctly, I uploaded the dictaphone files to see what had gone on during the night.

A friend of mine had reached his 118th birthday. He was living in an old people’s home where it was customary once every couple of months to let them out for a week to go to some kind of rehabilitation and re-education class. What they did with him was that they combined two groups together so that he could have a couple of weeks away from the home doing different things because he’d been a very active man. They had rung us up on a Monday morning to say that he was being released for a week and did we have any calculations that he could do for recipes etc. We said that we’d sort a few out. But ten minutes later, he was at our door with his carer. Firstly, she was concerned about this process that we had of combining the two series, and secondly, there was some kind of delay in this week’s course starting, so could he come to take part in our group activities? We all went out and saw him in the corridor, and we were delighted to see him and began to chat to him — he was called George — and make some plans about some kind of activity. However, his tutor told us to slow down and take it easy rather than him letting all at once, but we weren’t interested in that. We had our own things to do and the race between one of the tenants from Rhyl and Cardiff Met, and their coach Ryan Valentine … fell asleep here …

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m actually asleep when I’m dictating, but what happens at times like this, I slowly drift off into silence and then you can hear me breathing deeply.

So if you want to hear what I’m like during … errr … four hours and a few minutes of deep sleep, don’t hesitate to ask.

But what this dream means, I’ve really no idea because, … "as usual" – ed … it makes no sense at all. And Ryan Jenkins is the manager of Cardiff Metropolitan – Ryan Valentine is the number two at Y Bala.

Did I dictate the dream … "well, sort of" – ed … about the kind of old man who was being looked after somewhere, and they had programmes and things for him. One day, I noticed that the programmes had returned to the shelf where they stay sometimes, so I wondered which ones they had ended up keeping and which ones had returned. However, they were all returned and the old guy had died or something. From there, I headed back to my van, which was where I was living at the time. There was some kind of squat or something like that, and there were quite a few people living there in all kinds of situations, including several people who were living in some kind of tent, I suppose. But instead of being on the ground, it was hanging by a rope from a tree, with the idea that it would keep out the damp in the cold weather. As you walked into this camp, the glow of the open fires make these kind-of tent things look extremely weird and surreal.

Wanting to dictate this dream led to a mad panic-stricken search of the bed for the dictaphone, which had fallen out of my hand when I fell asleep just now. And it was still running, four hours and a bit after I’d lost it. That’s a long time-gap to drop back into a previous dream.

There were some workmen coming into our office to paint and decorate it, so round about 17:30, I went out to buy a couple of things and some tile cement that I needed for home because these workmen were starting at 18:00 and they needed some kind of supervision. I went into Crewe town centre where I found a really cheap set of golf clubs so I bought them so that I could practise playing my golf. I wandered around BHS and Woolies but they didn’t have any tile cement. When I came to Halford’s up the road, that was just closed so I went back to the office, hoping that no-one would notice me because it was now slightly after 18:00. I noticed that the colours that they were using to paint were horrible, a kind of dark blue in the main office. When I went into my office, there was a guy there preparing everything and I noticed that one of the walls was a horrible dark green. I asked him, and he replied that it wasn’t he who had chosen the colours — the colours had been chosen by the Head Office. I went outside to begin to play with a car — an old MkIII Cortina that I’d found in a shed five or so years ago. After playing around with it, I managed to make it start so I crawled underneath it to see what it would need for the MoT. One thing that it would need was a new silencer, and the silencer was routed so that it expelled air through the hollow rear axle rather than the tailpipe. I thought that this is going to be complicated if I were to renew the exhaust. Then a young Chinese guy came along. He was with the workmen. He began to talk to me about the cars, and the subject moved on to girls as it usually did back in those days. He told me a few little secrets about his life and a girl or two. I thought to myself “why is he telling me all of this? This is something that I don’t need to know especially as he worked with this office-renovating firm and not in our business

No chance of going to Wooolies, BHS or Halfords in Crewe Town Centre these days. Those shops have long-gone and the whole town centre has been flattened by the Council to prepare it for the massive investment of cash and facilities once HS2 arrives in Crewe. It looks as if Crewe Town Centre will be a war zone for many years to come.

But much as I try to keep politics off these pages, Crewe’s decision to flatten the town centre probably came about as a result of Louise Haigh, Labour’s spokesperson on transport who “appeared” during a speech in March 2023 to promise to build phase 2 of HS2, sentiments echoed later by shadow Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds, who said in September 2023 that “We will build HS2 in full”.

And a Cortina in a dream? What a surprise! Just as surprising as it would be if I ever decided to play golf.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and, just as quickly, breezed out again. She’s off on her week’s break this evening so I imagine that she wants to finish as quickly as possible.

After she had left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re dealing with the miscellanea — the little remote areas of the southern Balkans that haven’t as yet figured in the main part of the story. This is proving to be interesting as it highlights how several of these areas managed to skate nimbly in between the various major warring parties and preserve some of their independence.

Back in here, I reviewed this week’s radio programme and sent it off, and then once I’d done what else needed to be done, I revised my Welsh until it was time to prepare for dialysis.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic, and then I waited for the taxi. Bang on 13:00 he turned up, and once we’d picked up another passenger in Granville, we headed for Avranches.

For a change, I was early arriving, and in even more of a change, I was seen to quite quickly. And then I could press on and do some work.

That was, until I spilled the coffee all over the laptop. Luckily, I don’t take sugar, but even so, it was a mess. I managed to throw my sheet over it to absorb what it could, and after some love and attention from one of the nurses, it still manages to work, which is just as well. How long it stays working is anyone’s guess. I’ve left it switched on overnight in the hope that the heat generated will dry it out.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me, and she definitely doesn’t love me any more now. I told her what my nurse and my cleaner had said about the cough and the pain in the foot. She confirmed that there is nothing that can be done about the pain. It’s due to the breaking up of my nervous system, but she’ll do her best to put together a cocktail of painkillers that have no side-effects, and we’ll see where we go.

As for the cough, she’ll try to make an appointment for me to have a thoracic scan, followed by an appointment with a lung specialist. And not before time.

The taxi driver was waiting for me when I was unplugged, but the chaos on the roads meant that we weren’t home any earlier, which was a shame.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment, and after she left, I had the other half of my pizza. And I didn’t enjoy it at all. My taste buds really are changing again and it’s not very nice.

But right now, I’m off to bed, ready for my Welsh course tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about that old man … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once met an old man in a Greek cemetery who was there for a funeral.
"How old are you?" I asked
"A hundred and three" he replied
"Where do you know him from?" asked my Greek friend.
"I’ve no idea" I replied. "But I bet that he comes from Ikaria."

Sunday 22nd March 2026 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a busy boy yet again today. You wouldn’t believe that it’s a Sunday, which is supposed to be a Day of Rest for me.

Not that it was much of a rest last night because it was another really late night again. I’ve no idea what time it was when I finally crawled underneath the covers, but it certainly wasn’t 23:30 I’d seen that come and go some time earlier.

It took longer than usual for me to go off to sleep, which appears to be par for the course these days. And although I have a vague recollection of waking up once or twice during the night, the next thing that I remember was the tail-end of the doorbell as Isabelle the Nurse announced her arrival.

She found me in bed, of course, and as well as sorting out my legs and feet, she also had to take some measurements of them too. That was complicated enough, and as much as I wanted just to go back to sleep, her irrepressible good nature meant that she talked all the way through the procedure.

After she left, try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards and so, about half an hour later, I raised myself from the Dead and went off to the bathroom.

In the kitchen later, I remembered to take some of my medication, and then I made breakfast. Porridge, strong coffee and two of my home-made croissants. And there’s no doubt about it — these croissants are some of the best that I have ever made.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re discussing the (brief) Venetian recapture of some of the Greek territory from the Ottomans.

But it’s the same story as usual — disputes among the conquerors, disputes among their subjects, disputes between the conquerors and their subjects. Here, you have all of the ingredients that you need to ensure that, once the Ottomans gather up their strength and their resources, they will simply walk back into their former territories.

Back in here, I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe.

I’d been chatting to a taxi driver around Granville, related to a company that had a lot of Mercedes cars and a few odd, indiscriminate ones. At the end of the shift, I was talking to this taxi driver and looking through the window of the garage where you could see all of the vehicles there. He asked if I would go in to see if he’d been given credit for the final job that he had done. That meant going up and touching the taxi plate, pushing it and the last job would appear in the windscreen of the car. I went in, but I couldn’t find his particular car. There were all sorts of cars in there. The dream then moved on to something about the work in the European Union and an article on the chauffeurs. I was really disappointed to see that my name wasn’t mentioned, but it described some of the work that we had to do. It said that only two of the chauffeurs were authorised to take the luggage down to the south of France. This dream carried on, discussing the work, and then there was an article that the chauffeurs had decided to stop issuing certain visas to certain people. The company that controlled the issue of visas agreed with them, so these visas were stopped being issued

The first part of the dream relates to the taxi company that takes me about to my hospital appointments. I’ve been to their premises a few times late at night, and seen through the window their taxis parked up in the barn until next morning. Pressing the taxi plate wouldn’t do anything, though, because they don’t have plates — they have stickers.

As for the second part, we did have the press round the EU on several occasions and on one of them, I was actually filmed. Not that I ever denied anyone a visa though — I don’t understand that. It was however my responsibility to take one of my boss’s subordinates around for visas when someone from that office was required to travel.

There had been a rise in pilgrims from the Latin, the Frank and the Byzantine communities heading towards Jerusalem, and their habit of lying prostrate on the floor and kissing the soil when they arrived was inciting a lot of comments. It was therefore decided that they would stop the ferries that were bringing the pilgrims over by sea and the Byzantines were delighted by this.

This presumably relates to the book that I’m reading right now.

After that, I had a footfest – the highlights of the games in the JD Cymru League yesterday. However, there was nothing interesting or controversial in there.

Afterwards, there was Stranraer once again losing — this time to Clyde 2-1 in a game that they should have won had it not been for them falling asleep for five minutes shortly after the start of the second half.

We then had Greenock Morton recording a surprising away win against Ayr United. The way that Morton have been playing just recently, I wouldn’t have thought that they would win a raffle, even if they were the only entrants.

After a rather late disgusting drink break, I attacked the new computer. Yesterday, I couldn’t seem to make it read the disks in the array, so I concentrated on that for several hours. In the end, I managed to make it function, and now I have most of what I want in the way of disks connected to the computer.

With what time was left, I was uploading my entire suite of programs to the computer, and now, that’s pretty much how I would like it to be.

At about 17:00 I knocked off for cooking. Firstly, I made the dough for my pizza base and then secondly, I made my really thick custard.

While I was baking my pizza, I poured the cooled custard all over the vegan jelly. Now it’s beginning to look like a trifle. I hope that it actually tastes like one too. I shall find out on Tuesday.

The pizza was delicious, though. I experimented by using sliced cheese that I grated rather than the grated cheese. And indeed, it was much nicer. It’s more time-consuming though, but you can’t win everything.

And now I’m off to bed if this appalling cough will let me. It’s really bad tonight. I just hope that they will be impressed by it at dialysis tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the disk array … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was speaking to one of my friends about it, and I asked her to send her congratulations to the array now that the computer can read it
"Certainly" she replied. "Hip, hip, array!"

Saturday 21st March 2026 — I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone from last night. And, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that’s something that fills me full of dismay. So boring is my life these days, compared to how it used to be, that the only excitement that I seem to have is whatever goes on during the night. And so a night with nowhere to go is really depressing.

Not that it was particularly early. As usual, things seemed to drag on and on, and it was about 23:15 when I was ready to crawl into my stinking pit, having moved all of the rubbish off the bed.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly and there I stayed until a mega-coughing fit awoke me. I’ve no idea what time it was because I was too depressed to check. But there I lay, in that kind of no-man’s land between sleeping, being awake, and dozing off, all the way through until the alarm went off at 06:29.

And once again, I had a real battle with myself to leave the bed at that moment. It’s becoming harder and harder to force myself right out of bed these days.

In the bathroom, I had a wash, and then I washed my undies ready for next time. In the kitchen, I made my hot lemon, ginger and honey drink and took my medication, and then I came back in here.

With no dictaphone notes to transcribe, I had a look at the highlights from last night’s football. Llanelli went down to Cardiff Metro, as expected, but the TNS v Colwyn Bay game had a very unexpected result.

Colwyn Bay have NEVER beaten TNS, and as the match was bing played at TNS’s ground, no-one expected any difference. Colwyn Bay did, however, take the lead, but we all expected it to be just delaying the inevitable.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day, I mentioned TNS’s rather … errr … pedestrian defence and how a quick ball over the top and a couple of rapid wingers rushing on could create havoc. Sure enough, a long clearance out of Colwyn Bay’s defence, right over the top of the TNS defence, saw the ex-Greenock Morton striker Jordan Davies rush on after it.

A panic-stricken TNS ‘keeper rushed right off his line to try to clear, but missed the ball and scythed down Davies. Result — a red card and a free kick.

Later on, Colwyn Bay scored a second, and although TNS hit the woodwork twice, the score finished 0-2 in favour of Colwyn Bay. You can SEE THE HIGHLIGHTS HERE

Isabelle the Nurse turned up, full of good humour as usual. This time, she managed to avoid hurting my foot, which was good news, and she soon left. I reminded her before she went that she might probably find me in bed tomorrow when she calls;

After she had gone, I could make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Having told us yesterday about how well the Greeks were being treated by the Ottomans, he goes on today to tell us about some of the atrocities that they committed. It should be said, however, that most of them were committed after a rebellion or something like that.

There was however the terrible tax on children. Every year, the Ottomans would come to each Greek town or island to select a number of children, and carry them back to their cities. The boys, they would train them as Janissaries, the elite formations of the Ottoman army. The fate of the girls needs no description.

On another subject, he tells us that a convent was opened in Athens by a nun called Philothee Benizelou. Our author informs us that "she has left a most uncomplimentary description of the Athenians of her day, with whom she had some pecuniary difficulties and upon whom she showers a string of abusive epithets in the best classical style"

A woman after my own heart. My next task will be to find a copy of her writings.

Back in here, I had thing to do, and then I made a start on trying to make the new computer work.

First thing was to further dismantle the old computer. I removed the graphics card (complete with HDMI port) and then went to install it in the new one. That was not as easy as it might have been either — it needed some adjustment to the case to make it fit because the face of the graphics card covers two whole bays.

Having done that, I was still no further on, so I carried on my unplugging one by one everything that I’d plugged in yesterday. And it was after I’d removed one bar of additional RAM that the machine suddenly sprung into life. So there’s a short-circuit in one of the bars of RAM then.

So once, the computer was up and running, it now became necessary to install my suite of preferred programs, and as usual, that takes a very long time.

While it was doing its stuff, I was busy tidying up all of the bits and pieces and putting them away. Then, I had endless hours of fun trying to put the box and packaging up onto the top shelf of the unit by the door. And that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either, at least, for me.

Round about 16:00, I knocked off … "for the moment" – ed … and went into the kitchen.

A few weeks ago, I’d talked about making a trifle for a pudding. I’d found a recipe for making vegan jelly, involving agar-agar and fruit juice, so armed with a carton of grape juice, some agar-agar, some sugar, and a pear, I set to work.

And do you know what? It’s set to perfection!

Tomorrow, I’m going to make some really thick custard to pour all over it, and when it’s all cooled, I’ll whip up some vegan topping to pour all over it. It should be wonderful.

We had football on the internet later – Y Bala v Hwlffordd. Y Bala are next-to-bottom and ripe for relegation whilst Hwlffordd are seventh and pushing for the European play-offs. But Hwlffordd were absolutely awful today, the worst that I have ever seen them play. And while Y Bala were very … errr … agricultural, they played with a fire and an enthusiasm that I haven’t seen for ages, and their 1-0 victory, their first home win in 142 days, was well-earned.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with a baked potato and veg in butter, followed by vegan cheesecake. And it was a lovely tea. I enjoyed every mouthful of it. It will set me up nicely for my lie-in tomorrow, I hope.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about writing in the best classical style … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of a family who sent their son to one of the best European schools in Brussels so that he could have a good multicultural and classical education.
One of the family’s neighbours asked them "and how is his education going?"
"It’s wonderful" said the boy’s mother. "In no time at all, he could write home asking for money in seventeen different languages."

Friday 20th March 2026 – WHAT A MESS …

… my bedroom/office is in this evening.

You can’t move in here for computer bits, boxes, packaging, cables and all of that. It’s going to take hours to sort out all of it and make the place tidy enough that I can even crawl into bed.

Consequently, it won’t be anything like as early a night as last night was.

And “early” is certainly the word. Having abandoned tea at some ridiculously early time last night, I came back in here and dashed all the way through what needed to be done, with hardly a pause. That’s why I was in bed at 21:48, and I wish that it was as early as that every night.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happens when I try to have an early night, without me having to explain it in anything like any detail.

Searing pains in the foot, intense fits of coughing – they would be guaranteed to awaken me at any moment without the extra assurance of an early night. And so, from about 04:00 onwards, I was going through phases of sleeping, dozing and awakening all the way through to the alarm going off at 06:29.

And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there have been very, very few times when I have felt less like leaving my stinking pit than this morning.

Eventually, though, I was in the bathroom for a good wash and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication, all the time wondering how long it will be before I’m back in bed. Totally ridiculous, seeing how early I was in bed last night.

Back in here, I managed to avoid the bed and instead, had a listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

There were Royals under attack again last night. This time, it was the turn of Prince Michael to face the music when he asked someone in the crowd what they knew about a certain organisation. They replied that they were the people who sponsored the prize given by the Prince for some kind of good social activity. That took the Prince quite by surprise, as it was as well-known as it seemed to be. But with a lot of attention on the Royal Family in these recent times, it’s hardly surprising that a lot of these little facts are creeping out into the open when they were hidden before.

The Royal Family is still making the headlines these days, even if the Press has moved on from AFKAP – The Andrew Formerly Known As Prince. They now seem to be concentrating on others, and I really do wonder when someone else is suckered into the Epstein web. Not that it’s likely to be Prince Michael, of course. He keeps himself well out of the limelight and out of controversial situations.

I’d joined some kind of club on the internet about something or other, and although there was a list of about seven or eight people who were supposed to be officiating this site, I had my suspicions that it was being done by artificial intelligence, so what I proposed to do was to sit down and draw some 3D models of people that would represent this mysterious committee. I began to draw one, and I was giving some people a few lessons on the anatomical arrangements, the clothing, etc., but it was coming close to midday. I had some cheese with me, but I wanted some bread or something like that to go on it. Seeing as we were at the seaside, I went to a few of the stalls to see if they would sell me a bap or something, but they would only sell me a bap if it had something on it. In the end, I had to settle for a really basic kind of salad bap with just lettuce and tomato on it. It cost me thirty shillings, which I thought was enormously expensive, but I thought then that at least I’d have something to eat with my cheese at the moment.

Yesterday, I had a posting removed from a British newspaper comments section. My comment contained a word that is completely innocuous in British English but means something completely different in American English. It seems that their comments “moderator” is an artificial intelligence program from the USA because it was zapped almost immediately.

And it’s been an age since I’ve done anything with my 3D program, but the story that no-one would sell me an “empty” bread roll is one that occurred on several occasions in the distant past.

I was back in the Auvergne at Cécile’s place. I’d put an advert in the local paper about wanting to form a group. I had a couple of replies, and the first person to turn up was a female keyboard player. The second was a guy with a guitar. We began to talk about what we wanted to do and what we intended to do, and it seemed to gel a little. We didn’t have a drummer, but that can come later, I suppose. The guy explained that he was something of a novice, but that didn’t matter because we’d improve as we went on. When it came to late at night, these other two people decided that they would have to go, but they said that they would be back in the morning. They actually left together, so I thought that at least, those two were going to get on really well. Then, it must have been Cécile who mentioned something about tea. We hadn’t eaten, so she was going to make a great big bean salad, and she wondered if I’d help too. The way that she was giving out the instructions, it looked as if I would be going to be making all of it. Then I remembered that I’d bought some bean salad dressing from Canada and I couldn’t remember where I’d left it, so I thought that I’d run down to the shop on the seafront and see if they had any. But I’d forgotten how late it was, and, of course, all the shops along the seafront were closed, so I had to come back empty-handed. As I was passing the police station, I noticed that there was a woman standing outside with a baby in a pushchair. The woman was smoking a Turkish cigarette right in front of the baby. There were a couple of people remonstrating with her about this, but she didn’t seem to care at all.

Cécile used to play the guitar, and so when we were together, I did actually put an advert in one of these ecological papers to see if there were any drummers about. We did actually have a response too, but Cécile had to go off to the Ile d’Yeu to look after her mother, and so that put an end to that project before it had even started.

All of the shops being closed is another recurring story from the past, but I’m not sure where the cigarette episode fits in all of this.

And back at the seaside again? Hmmmm.

I was trying to organise a football team, so I’d sent out an open invitation for players to come to trials. One guy, who played in the centre of defence, had brought along his wife, who also played in central defence, and asked if she could have a trial too. I put her on the field alongside her husband at the start of the game. Although, like most trial games, it was very bitty and disjointed, she had a really good game and, in fact, performed better than her husband. Anyway, I kept them both on for the next round of trials.

When FC Pionsat St Hilaire was due to play against another team one Saturday night, the opposition turned up with only ten players. There was a girl with their supporters, and she offered to play for them. We couldn’t see why she shouldn’t, so she ended up on the field with them. And she was quite a useful player too.

But the third and fourth dreams recurred all the way through the night, coming back on several occasions. It’s been a good while since I’ve had a dream like that.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and was disappointed that I hadn’t found a doctor whom I could berate. And she made a bad move with her hand, right on the base of my foot exactly where the worst pain can be found. I was in agony after that.

After she left, I went to make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’ve finished the Latin occupation of Greece, and we’re now dealing with the Ottomans. Surprisingly, life for the Greeks under the Ottomans is in some respects easier than under the Latins, so our author tells us. They are allowed freedom of religion, the power to appoint their own governors and all kinds of things like that, things that they were never allowed to do under the Latins.

And surprisingly, there is very little repression of the population.

Back in here, I revised for my Welsh and then went for the lesson. And for a change, it was one of the best lessons that I’ve had, and I wish that they would all go like this one.

After the lesson, my faithful cleaner turned up to do her stuff. She sat me down at the kitchen table, took all of the boxes off the shelf unit by the door and told me to sort them out.

It took an age, as you might expect because tidying up is not my forte, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. However, it’s almost all done now. There’s just one box of stuff that I wouldn’t know how to sort, and there’s a box that I brought in here, full of stuff that should, by rights, belong in the bedroom.

Surprisingly, even though I used more boxes than were there before, not only is the unit much tidier, there seems to be much less stuff on it. I’m not sure how that happened.

After she left, I came back in here and unwrapped my late birthday present.

As you might have guessed, it’s a new computer – or, at least, a reconditioned one.

The first thing that I did was to take the case off and installed the hard drives from the old one and uprated the RAM, but to my surprise, there’s no HDMI socket for the screen.

On the graphics card, there are four ports that look as if they might be USB ports but they are about twice the size. Some kind of HDMI adapter came with the computer and it plugs into the ports on the graphics card, but when I plug in the HDMI cable, there’s no screen display.

The screen is working fine because when I plug it back into the laptop, it works fine. So I’ll have to find a solution, and if not, I shall hope that the graphics card from the old computer will fit into this motherboard.

However, as you might expect, I have boxes, cables and computers all over the place and I can’t go to bed until I tidy them away somehow.

Tea tonight was chips, sausage and beans with cheese, followed by vegan cheesecake. Only a small tea tonight as I’m still off my food. It looks as if it’s going to be another period of semi-starvation right now.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. I’m going to tidy up and at some point, if I’m lucky, I might even be able to find some room on the bed for me.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the pain in my foot … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once told one of the doctors at dialysis about it.
"It hurts so much in several places, doctor" I said."What do you advise?"
"Well" he replied. "My advice is to stop going to those places."

Thursday 19th March 2026 – I AM BACK …

… on this “not eating” lark again. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying over the last few days that I was sure that my taste buds were changing again. Well, tonight, half of my tea (and a big half too) went into the bin before it had even made it onto the plate. I simply couldn’t face it.

Coupled with that, the pain in my foot, which had subsided for a period of about twelve hours, is now back. And back in spades too.

A lot of this might actually have something to do with last night. As usual these days, it was another late night – just after 23:30 when I finally crawled into bed. And once more, it took quite a while to go off to sleep.

It was another turbulent night as well. I can’t remember how many times I awoke, but I do know that when the alarm went off at 06:29, I was wide-awake and had been for about half an hour.

In the bathroom, when I eventually arrived there, I had a good wash and a shave, not that it would do me much good, and then went off to have my hot drink and medication.

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

There was some kind of raid on the Football League headquarters by some group or other. They had managed to kick down the door and swarm in. Several clubs on the ground floor, mainly the lower-league ones, they simply didn’t try to reinforce any more doors and stay safe. Of course, all the big clubs fled upstairs, and some of the smaller ones were overwhelmed by the invaders. Gradually, they came higher up the stairs, picking off others. Someone who was so incensed by the activities of the bigger clubs in sitting there on the top floor, apparently safe, that he would shout up every time a smaller club was overwhelmed. He would shout up the name of the club in the hope that it would embarrass, but gradually, this dream became something like the play-off or something or other for the next round of the cup. There was a ball in defence that was kicked way out of the field halfway across Wales. Two players, one from Crewe Alexandra and one from a minor club in Crewe, set out to chase after it. After a long period, it was the club, the representative or whatever from the minor club in Crewe who came back with the ball, about ten yards ahead of the Crewe Alexandra player. This brought cheers from everyone because it meant that it would be this club that would be playing in the next round of the competition and not Crewe Alexandra.

This is another weird dream that seems to have no significance at all.Mind you, I’ve grown up with Crewe Alexandra being eliminated from the FA Cup by all kinds of part-time or amateur outfits, so nothing in this dream surprises me at all.

The idea of other football leagues raiding the FA headquarters and eliminating some clubs is certainly a novel idea, though. I can think of several candidates for elimination myself.

I was back in Canada. I was living there throughout the winter, and I needed to adapt myself to some Canadian winter clothes. The first thing that I really needed was a really heavy overcoat with a hood on it, so I went to look. I heard of someone part-exchanging one, so I went along to see. They had several in there so I chose the one with the front toggle fastening and hood, so this person proceeded to put it on and to demonstrate to the people who were watching. I had to tell him five or six times that that was the one that I wanted. In the end, even I became confused. He was intent on showing every last feature on this overcoat to the watchers before he’d give this coat to me. Eventually, I was given it, so I tried it on. It was a little too big for me but that was fine because I could wear several layers of clothing underneath.

This is rather wishful thinking, isn’t it? me being back in Canada. I need to resign myself to the fact that I’ll never be there again, with or without a duffel coat.

There had been a series of serious crimes committed in Georgia. The FBI had been on the trail and they’d obtained the identity of someone whom they thought was the perpetrator. One of the things that they knew about him was that he used to eat orange after orange after orange. They made a few enquiries and found that there was an old shack that was some kind of workers’ rest place from many, many years ago in an area of forest which used to be an orange grove in the past. I was sent to keep an eye on this place, which was very difficult because there wasn’t any cover. I saw whom I thought might have been the guy, who came out of and then disappeared back into this forest, so all of the police turned up on a bus. They set out to comb through this forest, piece by piece. Eventually, we found this building and I was one of the ones chosen to go through and search it. Some people were taking this search very casually, and others were being extremely cautious. I was one of those being extremely cautious in that I’d open a door really wide and wait for a minute before going in, and I was continually looking over my shoulder to make sure that somehow he hadn’t come behind me. We combed through the building but found nothing. There was a member of our party who was some kind of senior woman who was actually sitting on a window ledge with her back to the outside, sending messages on her ‘phone. I tried to explain to her that that was not the place to sit because he could come up from the outside and pull her out, but she didn’t seem to take too much attention, so I left her to it. After I was satisfied and everyone else was satisfied that there was no-one in this building, we went outside. Sure enough, he crept up to the building and pulled this woman out and held her as a kind of hostage. However, he was picked off by a sharpshooter who hit him in the shoulder and he was taken away. I headed back to town – I was given a lift by this woman. She was telling me about her work and her position, and everything that she had to do, which sounded extremely complicated. Because her partner, or other shift leader or whatever, was on holiday, she was having to work to be in charge of the two shifts. I thought that that must be extremely tiring.

This is another long, totally meaningless dream that relates to nothing at all that I know of. But can you imagine – a dangerous lunatic prowling around and someone sitting with their back to an open window?

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and reminded me to berate the doctors at dialysis about my state of mind. Not that I need reminding, of course, because it’s preying on my mind, and I wish that someone, somewhere would find a solution.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, the subject was the death of Francisco II of Lesbos, who, we are told, "on a journey through the island, while passing the night in one of the lofty towers then common in the archipelago, was stung by a scorpion. Alarmed at his cries, his attendants and nobles climbed up into his room in such numbers that the floor collapsed and he was killed on the spot"

His father, by the way, was killed when the building in which he was sitting collapsed during an earthquake, and Francesco II was the only survivor.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I attacked the radio programme that I’d started yesterday. By the time that I needed to go to make myself ready for dialysis, all of the songs had been chosen, remixed, re-edited, paired and segued, and I’d even written some of the notes.

One of my favourite taxi drivers came to pick me up and we had a lovely drive down to Avranches in the sun. And not long after I arrived, I was coupled up to a machine, which was nice. They even remembered to adjust the dry weight.

Generally speaking, they left me alone throughout the session – the doctor on duty never even came near me – and I was unplugged at something like a respectable hour.

The taxi driver was waiting to take me home too, but the enormous traffic jam spoiled any chance of being home at a reasonable hour.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment, and then I told you the sorry tale about tonight’s tea. At least my vegan cheesecake was nice.

So right now, I’m off to bed, hoping for a good sleep … "if the pain in his foot will let him" – ed … ready for my postponed Welsh class tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about being held hostage … "well, one of us has" – ed … a certain American president was being held hostage in a house at the side of the highway by a group of Iranians.
The American police were there, stopping all of the traffic.
"It’s the President" said a policeman. "They are holding the President in that house there, and they say that if they don’t receive ten million dollars by tonight, they’ll douse him in gasoline and set him alight. We’re taking a collection"
"How much are people giving?" asked a motorist
"The average so far is about two litres each."

Wednesday 18th March 2026 – GUESS WHO …

… has been a busy boy today? I don’t know where I found all of this energy, but I wish that I could find it more often. A good supply of it would do me some good.

And guess who is going to be a late boy too? Once more, making tea seemed to take forever tonight and it’s set me back quite a long way.

Not like last night, when, although it was after 22:30, my preferred curfew time, it wasn’t far after it … "22:40 in fact" – ed … when I finally crawled into bed, in the hope of having a good, painless sleep to make up for the sleep on which I missed out last night.

Unfortunately, it seemed to take an age for me to go off to sleep, and that’s something quite rare these days, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Once asleep, though, I stayed asleep until all of … errr … 05:00, and that’s good for neither man nor beast. Round about 05:30, I decided that I ought to take advantage of the early start and go to do some work, but while I was debating the issue with myself, I must have fallen asleep again because the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29.

As usual, it took me a good while to summon up the energy and motivation to go into the bathroom, and then I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

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

There were some headlines in some paper somewhere about how the navy and the army had missed a glorious opportunity to catch a German submarine. It seemed that the German submarine, in need of a refit, put into a neutral harbour somewhere and moored itself between two ships that were there so it couldn’t be seen. The refit actually took place on the surface between the two ships, with the submarine between these two ships. And then the submarine was able to sneak out of the harbour again without too many people being aware of what had happened. This was seen as an embarrassment to the US Navy and the US Army.

There were a few stories similar to this during World War II when German submarines would put into ports on small, obscure islands, destroy the island’s radio communication network and then have a rest and a refit before sailing back out again, ready for more action.

If it had been me in charge, though, I would have fitted out a few ships from a friendly neutral fleet, such as the Spanish fleet, and loaded them with torpedoes, fuel, spare parts and fuel and sent them to these obscure islands to repair and refit the submarines so that they could stay out at sea almost indefinitely.

This was another one of these games played by Cymru against some foreign opposition. This time, it was Iran in the Middle East. We were in Deauville talking about this particular game, but unfortunately I can’t remember exactly how the conversation went after that, but I know that there was some kind of discussion about my right foot and leg and my inability to walk correctly these days.

There are a lot of current events in this dream, even the casino at Deauville, which relates to a radio programme that I prepared earlier in the week.

While I was at work, I was reading the file of a trainee stockbroker who had an enormous amount to say on the structure of non-league football, of its faults, and on how it could be improved. As it was a lovely day, I went and took this file outside and stood in the sunlight, in the shade of the trees and read it there. After I’d finished, I thought that I’d go for a little walk to clear my head and digest what I’d read, but I noticed that the time was 06:20 and the alarm would be going off soon, so I turned to head back to the office, which was in a huge, Gothic type of building like the Houses of Parliament. There were several ways to go into my office – a choice of several doors – but one door involved taking a lift so high and then climbing up and walking through the dead space in the false ceiling and climbing out again back down into my office. As I turned to set off back to the office, I found myself carrying a bottle of wine that was half-empty. I thought “what was I doing with this bottle of wine? I don’t drink alcohol”. Just in front of me was one of my colleagues, a one-legged guy who had lost his leg in the war and had an artificial leg fitted. He was walking back to the office, and for some reason, I decided to follow him but to keep a discreet distance and not let him know that I was there. He walked in through the door where it was necessary to take the lift. I’d be intrigued to find out how he managed to climb up into the roofspace, so again, I followed at a discreet distance. When he took one lift, I noticed that he went to floor three instead of floor four, so I took the next lift and came out at floor three. A couple of people loitering around there looked at me and said “oh, another one”. But then I wondered “where do I go next? I couldn’t see my colleague – he’s disappeared”. I didn’t know that there was a way through from floor three into my office. I thought that we still had to go to floor four and climb through the roof. So I was standing there, wondering how on earth he’d managed to disappear from me just like that.

As it happens, I did have, at one place where I worked, a colleague such as I described. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that quite a long time ago, there was a dream when we were clambering through the roof of another building such as this one.

But there is a story that relates to this. Where my office was when I was chauffeuring in Brussels, to go to another part of the office, I had to pass through two security doors. It wasn’t until I’d been there for six months that someone explained to me that if I were to have gone up one floor by the stairs or lift, I could have walked down a corridor and then down another set of stairs at the far end and avoided the security doors completely.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, in a happy, joyful mood as she desperately tried to cheer my up and raise my morale, but without much success.

After she left, I made my breakfast, remembering to put the coffee into the percolator today, which was more than Bane of Britain did yesterday, and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’re still discussing the island of Lesbos and also the island of Tenedos and the colony of Aenos. And once again, we’re seeing different Christian groups and kingdoms arguing amongst themselves as the Ottomans are massing on their frontiers, and some disaffected and disappointed Christian groups are even calling on the Sultan to help them.

There’s no doubt that all the way through the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth century, these various Christian groups and kingdoms were writing out their own death warrants.

Back in here, there was plenty to do, but first, there were the highlights of the Cardiff Metropolitan – Llansawel game from the other night. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day, we discussed this awful new development of “playing it out from the back”. By pure coincidence, we had a lovely example of that during this game, with the oh-so-predictable result.

After I’d sorted out quite a few other things, I began to work on the radio programme that I’d started yesterday. And by the time that I’d knocked off, I’d not only finished that one (bar a little piece that is holding me up for the moment) but also organised and almost completely sorted out and chosen the music for one of the ones that is due to be written next week. I’m really getting ahead of myself at the moment.

There was an interruption too. My late birthday present to me turned up this afternoon. And so for Friday afternoon and all of the weekend, I’ll be a very busy boy organising all of this. And that will at least give me a return to sanity.

Tea tonight was a vegetable curry with rice, followed by a slice of vegan cheesecake. And it really was delicious yet again. And I managed to eat a fair-sized helping of curry, which is good news after the vicissitudes of the last few months.

But now, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my one-legged colleague … "well, one of us has" – ed … he once told me a story about how he went into a barber’s for a shave.
The barber wasn’t, however, very good at shaving, and he nicked him a couple of times.
To try to lighten the situation, the barber began to chat with my coleague.
"I don’t think that I’ve seen you before" he said. "Is this your first time in here?"
"That’s right" replied my colleague. "I lost my leg during the war."

Tuesday 17th March 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… twenty-four hours I have had. It has been without doubt one of the worst twenty-four hours of my life, and I don’t ever want to go through another period quite like it ever again, although I know that I probably shall.

You might think that it all started very well, with actually being in bed … "for once" – ed … at 21:48, and that won’t ever happen again unless I’m ill, but what happened is that I was in such misery with the constant coughing fits and the electric shocks running though the sole of my right foot that I scrambled through everything as quickly as I possibly could.

Once in bed, though, it was a constant battle all the way through the night of falling asleep and then being awoken by either a coughing fit or a stabbing pain. It was absolutely awful.

When the alarm went off, I’d already been awake for about fifteen minutes, but even so, I was in no state to haul myself out of bed, so tired was I. I missed the second alarm and in the end, it was rather late when I finally managed to crawl into the bathroom.

After a wash, I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication, and all the time I was thinking “I wonder how long before I find myself back in bed again” – that is, if the coughing and the pain in the foot would let me.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised to find so much on there.

One of the Greek islands is in danger of being overrun by the Turks, but the Greeks were trying to make some kind of heroic defence out of it. They had a leader who was in charge of their army on his visit to Kyiv in 1903, but I wasn’t particularly impressed by him, every 25th December, I think. He was the person who wore a stained tattoo and was danger, so he had quite a cult following. One day, while there were the two operations going on, the Turks were searching for him, he came to stay at my lodgings in Canterbury for … fell asleep here …

Going back to the dream about the Greek hero, when they were hot on his pursuit, they were marvelling at how small the windows were in his house etc., because it showed that he wasn’t very big himself, yet he managed to lead the Greeks on all kinds of standard adventures in the fourteenth century against the Ottomans, all kinds of hit-and-run adventures until the latter part of the thirteenth century and his name of Letterman or whatever it was, was quite clearly due to his ability in handling his fleet of boats

The Greeks kept up a resistance until the 1450s, when they were finally all overwhelmed by the Ottomans. The Ottomans made some kind of saint out of it, but the Greeks wanted to convert a cave into somewhere holy, called the Twelve something-or-other, but the Ottomans turned down their request to make monuments to any of their soldiers.

These first three need no explanation. They clearly relate to the book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller that I’ve been reading quite recently. It’s obviously getting to me, all of this.

There was some strange dream about someone who had bought a Volkswagen LT flatbed, and on top of the flatbed he’d put a wooden pickup body. There was some complication about the insurance, so he went off to his insurance broker and his broker rang up their office. The guy who was answering was totally surprised and wondered why he hadn’t taken off the flatbed and bolted the pickup body straight to the chassis. That would have been a much easier way of going about it. But he recommended that the guy take the vehicle to a vehicle inspection site, and if they pass it as safe, then there would be no problems with it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I worked for two years in an insurance company in Chester after leaving school. I worked in the section dealing with commercial garage insurance, and so I’m quite used to dealing with strange quotations for unusual vehicles and equipment. However, I can’t recall anything like this.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual after her week’s break, and I’m afraid that I horrified her by talking about suicide. I was serious too, but that was the state in which I was this morning – in total and complete agony – and I couldn’t see a solution. You’ve no idea of the amount of pain in which I was and the discomfort with not having had a decent sleep.

She urged me to talk to them at Avranches and to insist that they do something. I’ve tried all of that, of course, and so I don’t think that doing it again will help all that much, but we can try, I suppose.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re discussing the events on the island of Lesbos, and I do have to say that these Lesbians seem to be everywhere. But Lesbos is another one of these islands where the constant bickering between the Genoese, the Venetians and every other occidental power leave the door wide-open for the Turks to creep in.

Back in here, I had things to do. And then I was able to carry on with the radio programme that I’d started over the weekend. Trying to assemble a concert out of a recording on a fire-damaged and smoke-covered tape is not an easy task, especially when there are holes in it everywhere, but I’ve done the best that I can.

The quality is quite poor, and ordinarily I wouldn’t broadcast anything as bad as this, but its value is in its rarity. It’s never been played on air before, and it’s a recording of a landmark event that led to a very famous rock song being written about it, so it’s worth listening to just for that.

My faithful cleaner turned up as usual to do her stuff, and she shooed me under the shower as usual. And for the first time in a long, long while, I actually felt like a human being afterwards.

After the shower, we had a good chat, as we sometimes do. The good news is that there are some expensive kitchen knives on offer in the local supermarket, with a massive reduction if you have so many vouchers. My kitchen knives are rubbish after nine years of constant use so I need to replace them, and my cleaner has a whole raft of vouchers that she isn’t going to use.

So next time she passes the supermarket … I just hope that they have some left.

After she left, I finished off that radio programme and the notes, which are now ready for dictation. And then, dear reader, I had a little … errr … relax.

While I’d been asleep during the late afternoon, my assistant and I had detained someone for questioning about a pretty innocuous incident, and we’d brought him to my office. I’d asked him several quite simple questions, but to my surprise, he’d refused to answer, even after I’d asked him several times. Consequently, after an hour or so, and as I had better things to do, I decided to leave him. My assistant had plenty of paperwork to do, mostly about other matters, so I left her in my office to supervise him, although not to talk to him, as she did her paperwork. Every now and again, I’d go back into my office for different reasons and also to check up on whether he was willing to answer, but he wasn’t so I ignored him each time. When it came round to 16:00, I typed out a formal order of detention, which was crazy when you consider what a simple matter it was, and took it into my office, where I pinned it up on the wall. I’d explained previously to my assistant to let me know when she wanted to leave to go home so that we could take our interviewee down to the cells for the night. However, she showed no signs of wanting to leave, looking for all kinds of jobs to do, even checking that the recycling system for the bins was working efficiently. Eventually, it came up to my usual time for going home, my assistant still showed no sign of wanting to leave, and so I was obliged to stay on.

This is yet another dream that relates to absolutely nothing at all. I wonder what was going through my head while I was dreaming this.

For almost two hours, I was away with the fairies … "although not in any way that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine" – ed … but when I awoke, I was feeling so much better, which was good news.

Before tea, there was enough time to choose some music, from which I’ll select several for the following radio programme. I edited and remixed it all and even chose four of the tracks to include, which I paired and segued. I’ll do the rest tomorrow and write all the notes.

And no Welsh class today? No, our teacher has gone to a funeral.

Tea tonight was a lasagna from out of the freezer with vegetables in a cheese sauce, followed by another slice of my vegan cheesecake. And I didn’t enjoy the lasagna as much as I was hoping to. I think that my taste buds are changing yet again.

So right now, I’m off to bed, with a busy day ahead of me. I hope that I can have a good night’s sleep tonight, because I need it.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about feeling like a human being … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember fifty or so years ago when I played in a rock band and we were performing in a pub in Runcorn.
The guitarist – singer whom we had began to sing "Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child …"
And a voice from out in front shouted "well, you’re not going to find a motherless child in here tonight, dear!"

Monday 16th March 2026 – LATE HOME AGAIN!

Yes, this is really getting on my wick these days. Nothing that I can seem to do seems to galvanise them into action at the dialysis clinic, and I’m always the last to be plugged in and the last to be thrown out.

Having left the apartment at just after 13:00, it was just after 19:30 when I finally put my sooty foot back inside my apartment

In fact, there are quite a few things that are getting on my wick right now, and if I’m not very careful, I’ll blow a gasket. If only I were to still have a spleen, I could vent it in peace without all of this.

Last night wasn’t much better either. As seems to be the case these days, I was horribly late going to bed. It was getting on for 23:45 when I finally slid underneath the covers, and with an alarm set for 6:29, that is good for neither man nor beast.

Although I went to sleep quite quickly, I awoke a few times during the night but luckily, I was able to go back to sleep quite quickly.

When the alarm finally did go off this morning, it took another one of these Herculean efforts to raise myself from the Dead and stagger off to the bathroom.

Apart from a good wash, I also had a shave. Even though Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more, we have to go through all the motions.

In the kitchen, I had my hot drink and medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see if anything went on during the night.

I was with my brother. We were sitting in some kind of cheap café in a town centre that might have been Chester. We were talking about various different things and it became quite late at night or early in the morning. I fell asleep while I was sitting there and was actually quite comfortable. I awoke after about an hour or so, and my brother was still there looking gloomy and glum, so I asked him if he’d managed to go to sleep. He replied that he hadn’t slept for twelve days. I thought that that was surprising, so I asked him why and whether he had considered taking anything for it, but he hadn’t. So we just carried on the chatting when one of my schoolfriends came in and joined in the conversation. Every hour or so, I had to leave the café to go into some kind of gift shop. There was some reason for this that I can’t remember. I didn’t have to buy anything – I just had to go in, go up to the counter and go back out again. So every hour or so, I’d be doing this. In this gift shop was, presumably, the proprietor, but on a bench in what was probably the waiting area was a homeless man who was apparently sleeping there. He was wearing a white suit, but it was the filthiest piece of clothing that I had ever seen, all stained under the arms etc. So I’d go in, go up to the counter, turn round and go back out again and go back to the café. When I came back to the café on one occasion, my schoolfriend was still there, but by now, he had a cup of tea. I said to them “well, if it looks as if we aren’t going to be going to sleep tonight, does anyone want a coffee?”. My schoolfriend said that he had just bought a cup of tea, which I could see, so I asked my brother if he would like a coffee. He said that he did, so I ordered two coffees from the person behind the counter. However, I ordered them in a different language but I can’t remember now what language it was that I used.

So here we go again – yet more family. And a schoolfriend whom I haven’t seen since 1972 except for a brief glimpse a year or two later when he was waiting at a bus stop as I was driving past the other way.

The significance of going into the gift shop or whatever it was, and the homeless person in the filthy white suit totally defeats me, but falling asleep in a café does have a history to it.

In the past, I’ve spoken about the Windsor Free Festival and our trip down there when some of the people with us nearly came to grief when a tyre on the van blew out going down the motorway. My friend and I, after chatting up two girls who wouldn’t come with us, went down on his motorbike, a Triumph 350.

On the way back, after forty-eight hours with no sleep, my friend who was at the front fell asleep and we almost crashed. He asked me to drive the machine after that, but he fell asleep on the pillion and fell off the seat onto the rear mudguard.

After that, he took over the controls but when we reached Oxford Services, he’d had enough. We went inside and we both fell asleep, sitting on chairs and hunched over a table.

Ohh happy days!

There was something else about being with a group of students. It involved them going rock-climbing. One of them fell and broke his ankle but that’s really all that I remember of that dream.

This doesn’t seem to relate to anything.

The nurse came quite early this morning, full of life and energy, seeing as he’s off on his week’s break this evening. He didn’t stay long and I could make my breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re now discussing the Genoese possessions in the islands of Greece, one of which was the island of Ikaria.

Reading some notes about the island, I found that it’s been said to be one of the healthiest places on the planet, "where the population regularly lives to an advanced age (one in three make it to their 90s and a significant percentage are centenarians and beyond)".

It’s said too that their … errr … inter-couple private activity continues to an advanced age, with "80% of Ikarian males aged between 65 and 100 were found to still be having" … errr … friendly relations " on a regular basis". So when is the next ‘plane to Ikaria?

After breakfast, I reviewed the forthcoming radio programme and then sent it off. After that, I revised my Welsh until it was time for my cleaner to arrive.

After she’d sorted out my anaesthetic, I waited for the taxi to arrive, and then we cleared off to pick up someone else to take to Avranches. Her appointment was at 13:45 and mine was at 14:00 so, even though her rendezvous was right across the other side of Avranches, we went there first.

And Avranches is in total chaos. For the next six weeks, the bridge over the railway line by the station is closed and the diversion adds miles to the route. And then, there was an entrance to the motorway closed, so that we had all of that to deal with, and to make matters worse, there was an accident that had closed off part of the motorway a little further down.

We did actually make it for 14:00, but I wasn’t plugged in until 14:50. And it was quite late when I was unplugged too.

The doctor came to see me, so I discussed my “dry weight” with him. He agreed that it should have been reduced the other week and he’ll note it starting the next session. Emilie the Cute Consultant said “hello” too.

Once I’d been thrown out, we joined the chaos outside and then slowly headed back home, going as quickly as we could, which wasn’t all that fast.

Tea tonight was the rest of the pizza followed by vegan cheesecake, and now I’m ready to go to bed if the stabbing pain in my foot would only stop.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Ikaria … "well, one of us has" – ed … an Ikarian man of 97 went to the doctor to complain that he could no longer make love to his wife.
"It’s not really a surprise" said the doctor. "At your age, you’ll be slowing down."
"But my neighbour, he’s 99 and he says that he makes love to his wife three times per week. What can I do?"
"Well, you could always say the same thing."

Sunday 15th March 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… many requests, most of which are physically impossible, but one of them has been for the recipe for my vegan cheesecake.

So here goes –

235 grammes of biscuits. I used the really cheap “Speculoos” biscuits which are vegan.
100 grammes of vegan butter.
400 grammes of soya yoghurt. I used my last “soya nature” and two pots of fruit yoghurt.
100 grammes of fruit purée. I had some pear purée on hand.
2 ice cubes of aquafaba (chick pea juice).
30 grammes of cornflour.
10 grammes of sugar.

whizz up the biscuits into a powder.
melt the butter gently and then thoroughly mix it with the biscuits.
line a baking dish and then press the biscuit/butter mix firmly onto the bottom and some little way up the sides.
mix all the rest of the ingredients thoroughly and then pour onto the biscuit base.
bake at 160°C for about 35 or so minutes.
when it’s cool enough, put it in the fridge and leave it to set.

It really is as easy as that. Let me know if you made it, if you have any suggestions for improving it, and if you enjoyed it.

As long as you enjoyed it more than I enjoyed last night, because it was another of what you might call a “turbulent night”. I was in bed by 23:30, which was later than I would have liked it to be, of course, and I went to sleep quite quickly, but I was wide awake again at 23:53.

There was a dream that I wanted to dictate but the batteries had gone flat in the dictaphone. Groping around in my sleep for the spare batteries, I managed to knock everything onto the floor, so in the end I had to wake up, look for them and swap them over.

But in my dazed and hazy state, I must have put in the wrong batteries because when I went to dictate a dream at 01:03, the batteries went flat in seconds and I had to wake up again. Luckily, I’d put on charge the batteries from earlier and although they weren’t as yet fully-charged, they would do. And then I could go back to sleep.

Sunday is a Day of Rest and it always starts these days with a lie-in. But a lie-in until … errr … 07:53 is good for neither man nor beast. I was hoping for a much later sleep than that.

When the nurse turned up, I was awake, but I pretended to be asleep because I wasn’t in the mood for any social chit-chat or recriminations about still being in bed.

However, after he left, I did manage to go back to sleep, and there I stayed until 09:30, which is much more like it.

In the kitchen, I made my breakfast. Hot black coffee, porridge and home-made croissants. And there’s no doubt about it— this more expensive flaky pastry is much better than the really cheap stuff. My croissants were superb, just like they ought to be.

While I was at it, I was reading some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’ve left the outlying Greek islands and we’re now discussing the situation in Thessaloniki under its Latin conquerors, and our author makes a very interesting observation, with which I concur wholeheartedly. He tells us about the fate of many of these Crusader States that, in his opinion "should be a warning to those who believe that nations can be partitioned permanently at congresses of diplomatists."

You’ve no idea, no idea at all, how many conflicts in this World have been caused by the way that the Western powers divided up Africa and the Middle East by using geographical lines, splitting up ethnic groups and dividing them between two (or more) different countries, or forcing different ethnic groups who have a historical hatred for each other to share the same country. And these conflicts are still going on today.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night. And I was astonished by the amount of stuff that was on it.

I was with two girls last night. We were talking about my blog and the artificial intelligence program that I run as well. For some reason, we ended up talking about their boss at work. They were talking about some of his particular personal habits, that he never uses a toilet. He just goes outside and does what he has to do and then covers it with soil when he’s finished, and a few other things like that. I asked them basically why they still had him as their boss. They replied that first of all, he has some connections with a really big record company. Secondly, the big advantage that he has is that he never seems to remember everything or anything, so he’s not very demanding from that point of view.

This presumably relates to A SCURRILOUS RUMOUR BEING SPREAD AROUND WALES AT THE MOMENT BY A CERTAIN EXTREME FASCIST RIGHT-WING POLITICAL “PARTY” that a school in Wales is allowing children to self-identify as cats and instead of toilets, has provided litter trays for the pupils.

Not that there’s anything new in kids identifying themselves as cats. I’m sure that untold millions of children have gone through a phase of doing that sort of thing.

While we were dealing with this case of the teacher who had disappeared with this young girl, we’d been sorting out some clothes that related to the affair because part of the clothing was missing. Maybe we’d have a skirt or something but no blouse, or a blouse and no skirt, something like that, and we were trying to assemble all of the clothing so that we knew what we had and what we could list as missing. However, there was some small girl who was hanging around at the foot of the stage, but she didn’t really need to be there – there was somewhere else for her to go but no-one seemed to take any notice of her, so I decided that I would have to do that if no-one else would. I went to the edge of the stage to jump down, but it was probably two hundred feet down to the ground. Without thinking, I swung myself over the edge and spun round so that I was facing the side of the stage and went to climb down like a kind of monkey or something, but I’d totally miscalculated everything. Everyone gasped as I swung out over the stage and tried my best to slide down by digging my hands and fingernails into the wood as I slid down. I’d just miscalculated completely everything.

The first part of this dream presumably relates to the song CHILD BRIDE, a song that had been recorded by Bruce Springsteen for his album NEBRASKA but abandoned.

The part about sorting out the clothes is part of the plot of the Agatha Christie novel SLEEPING MURDER

As for the rest, it’s the usual panic-stricken nightmare that reoccurs every now and again at some point during the night.

Incidentally, throughout these pages, you’ll see links to Amazon products appearing every now and again. Being a Sales Associate of Amazon, I receive a small commission on goods sold via my links. It costs you nothing at all extra, but helps defray … "part of the" – ed … cost of my not-insubstantial web-hosting fees.

There are also links on the sidebar for AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA and, since the recent “troubles”, AMAZON CANADA for the use of my numerous Canadian visitors. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses them to make a purchase

Il y a quelque chose qui se passait avec les Beatles … I’m dictating in French, aren’t I … There was something happening concerning the Beatles as well last night. We were keeping some garrisons equipped and furnished with men in certain places, but with regards to one of them, we began to ask ourselves whether it was cost-effective to keep that particular one on or whether we should disestablish it. Someone mentioned that a couple of years ago, a few people had been injured there when the building had caught fire. Someone asked, rather tongue-in-cheek, although I suspect that there was more to it than this, if the Beatles had actually set the fire in the building themselves.

This presumably has a connection with the book that I’m reading at the moment. Several of the major fortresses had smaller outliers, but dividing a garrison is never a really good idea. The smaller one can be easily surrounded and overrun, and that would be a waste of manpower, supplies and ammunition. Everyone should be manning just one set of defences in order to concentrate the manpower and firepower.

Where the Beatles came into all this, I really have no idea.

We were going off to the university’s annual general meeting, so a large group of us piled into a coach and set off. We went down the autoroute into Paris and eventually came into the centre of the city, then round the périphérique and back out again. Then we all had to leave the coach and walk to the hotel, which was a couple of miles through the open countryside. It must have been midsummer because the hay was really high. We walked down these footpaths by these fields, and someone came across a booth that had all brochures in there, most of which were kiddy-designed. Someone even said that their father had, once many years ago, found one of these leaflets or magazines in there that they had prepared a long time ago when they were small. There was all this talk about the people we were going to meet. Several people mentioned the names of two girls who would be there, whom they were looking forward to meeting. I was feeling a little jealous because I was looking forward to meeting those two as well. There was also talk on the way down about the Americans who were going to be there. They were saying that on no account should we say anything about the war to upset the Americans. My opinion was that if the truth had to be told, it had to be told, and I didn’t care who was upset by it, so I calculated on my stay being a rather short one. There had also been some talk about “benzine” all the way down, and I was going to be drinking “benzine”. That was bewildering. As we walked, I came across a different two girls whom I knew from the university, so I walked with them into the hotel, but they disappeared as soon as we came in. As soon as I walked up to the reception, everyone recognised me – hotel staff etc. The first thing that they did was to pour a drink for me, some kind of fizzy drink with lemon and ice cubes in it. Someone shouted across the room “don’t forget that Mr Hall will have a ‘benzine’ as soon as he arrives”. Someone else replied “well, I’ve already poured it for him”. While we were waiting for everyone else to arrive, I had a chat with the manageress. She was saying that she admired the university and admired the people who were studying at it, such as me, which made me laugh. I replied “well, I admire you and I envy you and this lovely business that you have”. There was something else about an extra night’s accommodation. I seem to think that I’d paid for an extra night’s accommodation, but I wasn’t going to use it. I wondered how the refund would work if I were to leave without actually saying anything about cancelling this extra night.

The covers for the brochures for the Carnaval de Granville are designed by the local kids in some kind of competition, and the winner’s design will adorn the brochure for that year.

But I loved the comment that we must not upset the Americans, and so “I calculated on my stay being a rather short one”.

The “jealousy” part is quite interesting too. After all, there have been a number of times during my various dreams that I have been about to Get The Girl and someone comes along and spikes my guns. It’s no surprise that I’d be affected by people planning on spiking my guns before I’ve come within grasping distance of The Girl.

And once more, we end up with me dithering about this refund.

There was a campaign to put a bypass around Montaigut and St Eloy. They had built one around the eastern side but there was a campaign going on for one around the western side to link up with the other at both ends. I hadn’t been there for a while, but I drove down the road and saw that they had built a viaduct over a valley and had tarmacked it, but that was everything so far. I spoke to my architect friend about it, and he said that he had sent some plans to them about ten months ago and they’d built it, but at an old farm somewhere along the line, they had discovered a major water source, so they couldn’t really build it very far. He quoted some official as saying that the situation was much calmer now, there aren’t quite so many cars on the road, people don’t see the utility and they have become more accustomed to death since last time, and so it seems as if they were cancelling the project. I went along to the meeting about this, and they had several tape recordings of discussions between various people. For some reason or other, they had been recorded on string, not tape. They wanted to play these recordings to the people. I was asked if I’d hold the tape recorders while they did it. They gave me one to hold while the guy on the podium had a discussion with the people in the hall and then to play the string. There was definitely sound on it, but it was muffled and we could hardly hear a single word that people were saying, so after a while, he stopped it. At that point, I noticed that everyone had disappeared from that room, and I was there on my own. I didn’t have a clue what to do with this tape machine or anything. But one thing that I’d noticed when I was driving out that way earlier was that the skyline had changed completely. It was much higher away to the south than it used to be, so I wondered what had been going on there that had caused all of that.

They have in fact built a bypass around the eastern side of Montaigut and St Eloy, and not long before I left the area, they had built a segment around the north-western side of Montaigut, but it hadn’t gone any further than the road to Pionsat.

This part about everyone disappearing from the hall reminds me of a scene in MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL when they had been consulting an ancient sage, when suddenly, he vanished in the fog.

“I didn’t have a clue what to do with this tape machine” – I’m sure that regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few suggestions, and I bet that I’ll receive more than one or two of them in the post overnight.

After all of that, I was quite exhausted, so I had something of a relax by having a footfest.

There were the highlights of the rest of the games in the JD Cymru League and then I went, with some trepidation, to watch the Stranraer v league leaders East Kilbride game.

The wheels had well and truly come off Stranraer’s season after the defeat against Clyde that had ended their long-unbeaten run. But today, they managed to find some of their missing form and they ran out 2-1 winners. And well-deserved too.

After a rather late disgusting drink break, I went through my e-mails and replied to everyone who needed a reply to some earlier correspondence. So if you are waiting for a reply from me and haven’t had one, send me a reminder because I have probably missed your message.

For the rest of what little time remained (apart from the ten minutes or so when I fell asleep … errr …. riding the porcelain horse), I occupied myself with a task that I should have started fifteen years ago. It’s going to take an eternity to do, so I hope that I’ll have enough time to finish it. As to what it might be, well, you’ll have to wait and see.

There was baking to do this afternoon. I didn’t bake a loaf – I simply took a half-loaf from the freezer in the bathroom. But I made myself a lovely pizza.

And it was lovely too – one of the best that I have made, and there’s another half left over for Monday night when I come home from dialysis.

But seeing as we have been talking about dialysis … "well, one of us has" – ed … right now, I’m off to bed ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for dialysis tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about children identifying as cats … "well, one of us has" – ed … there was such a story doing the rounds not so long ago.
And when the child came downstairs to the dining room at teatime, it was surprised to find that no place had been set for it at the table.
"Where’s my tea?" asked the child.
"If you want some tea" said the father "go outside and catch it yourself. There are plenty of mice in the barn. And when you come in, you’ll find some Munchies in a bowl by the door."

Saturday 14th March 2026 – MY VEGAN CHEESECAKE …

… is magnificent!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I posted on here a few days ago about the dessert that I should make once my birthday cake is finished. And while most of the suggestions that I received were totally unprintable in a family-orientated blog, there wasn’t a one that made any suggestions about making a vegan dessert.

Consequently, I had to put on my thinking cap and try to invent something.

It’s a good job that I didn’t have my thinking cap on last night, because I probably would have ended up with even less sleep than I actually had. Despite pushing on as best as I could and trying all I could to avoid distractions, it was 23:30 exactly when I crawled into bed.

As usual, I managed to go off to sleep quite quickly, but once again, it wasn’t for long. At 04:20, I was wide awake again, awoken by a stabbing pain in the foot and a desperate fit of coughing.

An hour later, I was still wide awake, but I must have gone to sleep at some point because the alarm at 06:29 awoke me from a really deep slumber.

When the alarm went off, I was round at my father’s. He had an old Ford Transit van and had completely emptied it. He was going through, scraping all the mud out of the body panels and recesses because he was going to weld a new floor into it. When I had a look, I thought to myself that it’s not before time that he’s doing this. He was finding all sorts of stuff. Then he was talking about a transport company called Fitzgerald’s – apparently, I’d met them once at some kind of party but I didn’t remember. He said that Fitzgerald had told him that the company was going under. My father said that he wasn’t surprised because they were very expensive and, of course, freight has become a cutthroat industry these days. He poured a cup of coffee for me, which I drank, but it tasted weird. Then he asked me if I would make another one, so I went to wash the pan in which he’d boiled the water, and there were all the remains of boiled tomatoes in it. I thought “no wonder the coffee had tasted awful” so I went to wash it in the swimming pool there. There was a girl there who might have been Roxanne so I just picked her up and threw her into the pool and then tried to wash the pan. However, the pan was caught around the tap, and the handle broke off. I thought that this was a catastrophe. I played “peek-a-boo” with this little girl for a minute, she diving her head under the water and me ducking my head down so that I could see her under the water through the glass. Then my father came along and said to the little girl, “Eric must have put a lot of effort into throwing you into that swimming pool. I could see him straining every muscle”.

In the past, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, our family has owned all kinds of disreputable motor vehicles, many of which wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a public highway today and probably shouldn’t have been back in those days either.

However, my father was a motor mechanic by profession and in my earnest desire to out-do him, I learnt quite quickly by experience, and I also took night school courses in welding, paint spraying and lathe operation. Between us, we could keep almost anything on the road and running, although the hydraulic tappets on that Vanden Plas 4.0 with the Rolls-Royce engine had us beat for a long, long time.

When Laurence, Roxanne and I used to go to Spain to visit Roxanne’s grandfather, I used to throw Roxanne into the swimming pool on regular occasions, especially when she wasn’t expecting it. She used to squeal but she loved every minute of it.

As for making coffee with water in a dirty pan, that wouldn’t surprise me at all.

As usual, it took a few minutes for me to struggle to my feet, and then I staggered off to the bathroom for a good wash. There were also the undies to wash. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s important for me to keep on top of the washing of clothes like that.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and then took my medication. And then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was doing something with several sheets of glass last night, picking them up off different piles, each pile that represented a country in the EU. I was washing one of them so that I could build some kind of fortress somewhere on behalf of each of the countries, but that’s all that I remember of this.

A fort made of glass wouldn’t be of much use now, would it? It makes me wish that I could remember the rest of this dream so that I could find out what happened.

Later on, I was watching a football match involving Pionsat. Twice, from corner kicks down in the far left-hand corner, the Pionsat winger kicked the ball far too hard and sent it completely out of play on the full on the other side of the pitch. I thought that Pionsat couldn’t afford to waste all of these little moments that they have, because they aren’t a very good side and they need all the breaks they can get. A high ball into the penalty area can cause enough confusion to enable them to sneak a goal every now and again, particularly when they have all the players running in as the ball is kicked. But no, both of them went way out of play on the full without bouncing.

This is one thing that bugs me in a lot of football matches these days. The quality of freekicks and corners is pretty abysmal. As I said during the dream, a high ball right into the centre of the goalmouth can cause chaos and panic, and every now and again, something will come out of it.

But most clubs these days seem to want to mess about with the ball in all kinds of fancy tricks, most of which usually lead to them losing possession.

However, dear reader, read on ….

The nurse turned up as usual, just as I was in the middle of a really interesting chat with a couple of friends. I had to go off instead to have him see to my feet.

And today, he managed to avoid touching my really bad right foot. Instead, he dropped the heavy stool right onto it, and I was in agony for hours.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re reading about how the Marquisate of Boudonitza held out desperately against the Ottomans for many years until 1414, when the Sultan Mohamed I finally captured it. Now, we’ve moved on to discuss Ithaca, the legendary home of Odysseus, if we are to believe the Ancient Greek authors.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I made a start on editing some radio notes that I’d dictated a while back.

After a while, I had to stop because there was football on the internet – Y Fflint v Y Bala.

This was a game that Y Bala had to win if they were to have any chance whatever of avoiding relegation, and so they went at it hammer and tongs. Y Fflint could also have done with a win to haul themselves further away from the relegation zone, but for some reason, Y Bala’s aggressive start to the game knocked Y Fflint out of its stride.

Y Bala had the ball in the back of the net but it was ruled out for an offside, something that was disputed by many people in Cae y Castell this afternoon. Y Fflint took the lead – from a high ball floated in from a corner – but Y Bala equalised, from a high ball in from the wing.

So we had two poor teams rampaging at each other from one end to the other throughout the whole ninety minutes and playing the game as it ought to be played, in my opinion.

But a 1-1 draw? Leaving aside the “offside” goal, in the immediate build-up to Y Bala’s goal, I saw a handball by Y Bala’s Australian striker Jacob Tarasenko, and I would have awarded a penalty to Y Fflint for a blatant shirt-tugging that prevented a Fflint player from reaching a ball in the penalty area.

However that wasn’t all. Another thing that really gets my goat is this modern fascination of “playing it out from the back”, which has led to more disasters and calamities than games that it has won.

But not Joel Torrance in the Bala goal. The former Salford City keeper just kicked the ball as far upfield as he could, and that caused continual panic and chaos to the Fflint defence throughout the game. Why more teams don’t do this, especially against TNS whose central defence is … errr … somewhat “pedestrian” I really don’t know.

Y Fflint’s manager, Lee Fowler, was very dismissive of the game, but I for one quite enjoyed it.

After the football, I went into the kitchen to make my cheesecake.

This was a recipe that I saw in a magazine, and when I looked at it, I reckoned that I could transform it into a vegan recipe with no problems at all, especially as I now have a regular supply of aquafaba, now that I know that it can be frozen.

And it worked too – and in spades. When I sampled some for pudding later, it was absolutely delicious and I’ll make some more like that too.

One thing that I needed was some soya yoghurt, but my faithful cleaner couldn’t find any yesterday. However, just as I’d put it into the oven, she came in waving a pack of six around.

While I was at it, I made some more croissants too. And these also worked in spades. They didn’t have any of the really cheap flaky pastry, so this is the next price up – and it seems to make all the difference.

There was still an hour or so for tea so I finished off editing the radio programme, preparing the two halves, choosing the joining track and preparing it, and then writing the notes.

Tea tonight was falafel with vegan salad and baked potato with cheese, followed by cheesecake. And I’m still not enjoying the first course as much as I used to just recently. I think that my appetite might be changing again.

But not now, because I’m off to bed, ready for my important Sunday lie-in, if the nurse doesn’t drop anything else on my foot while I’m in bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about cars … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of an American who was in a bar in Ireland doing his usual American stunt of “showing off”.
"Your farms are so small and pathetic" he said. "Why, back in Texas, I could get into my car and at the end of three days’ driving I still wouldn’t have reached the boundary of my land."
"I know exactly how you feel there." replied a local at the end of the bar.
"You do?" exclaimed the American, incredulously.
"Oh yes" replied the local. "I used to have a car like that myself."

Friday 13th March 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was, last night.

And it started off quite well too. Without very much to say about the day, I’d finished the notes by about 21:50, and by 22:10, I was in bed. Well before my curfew time of 22:30, and it’s been a long time since that happened, hasn’t it?

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall what usually happens when I go to bed early, without me having to remind them. And it was at 04:10 too.

This time, though, it was something different that awoke me. First of all, it was a coughing fit of the like that I had not had before, and at the same time, there was the stabbing pain in my foot. Except that this time, it was like an electrical discharge going all the way down from the rear of the instep to the tip of the little toe.

One of those every minute or so, and I was having the worst amount of pain that I’d had since that muscular biopsy. But at least the muscular biopsy pain only endured for a minute or two. This electrical discharge was a sudden, sharp pain that lasted about three or four seconds but was continuous every few minutes.

There was no possibility of going to sleep and no possibility of leaving the bed, so I lay there and festered until 06:29 when the alarm went off. After a minute or two, I managed to haul myself to a sitting position in the bed, and then we had the usual struggle to leave the bed.

When the alarm went off, though, we were in Pionsat. It was 16:00, school chucking-out time. There was quite a lot of traffic coming round a corner and I remember saying to whoever I was with that this really isn’t the time to be in Pionsat right now. But again, that’s all that I remember of that.

This dream reminds me of yesterday, in Carolles, where we went to pick up that other passenger, and then an incident in St Jean le Thomas when we were trying to negotiate the narrow streets of the town.

In the bathroom, I had a good scrub and then went into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication. And guess who forgot that he’s now moved the medication into a drawer in the kitchen?

Back in here, I transcribed the rest of the dictaphone notes from the night.

Last night, it was one of the big battles between the Crusaders and the heathens, but this time it was near Constantinople towards the end of the Byzantine government’s rule. The Franks were badly defeated and their only hope was to send out for young kids to carry on the fight in the hope that they could do something to stop the Muslim hordes advancing and overwhelming the country, but that looked to be a really most unlikely situation.

This, of course, relates to ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT, the book that I’m reading at the moment, of course.

I was at grammar school, and towards the end of the previous year, I’d been talking to a girl who was in the first year – we’d been talking over the internet or over the ‘phone etc. We were back at school for the next year, and I rang her up again to ask her how things were. She told me that she’d finally managed to change her history teacher or geography teacher. She hoped that whoever she had was much nicer, and she told some rather lurid tales about the previous one. So I laughed and said “yes, you’ve certainly changed him. We have him this year, to which she laughed. We carried on chatting on the ‘phone for a while, and then I had to go. Then, there was something happening and everyone found themselves confined to their rooms. I went and had a wash and clean-up, and then rang up this girl and told her what had happened and why didn’t she come along to my room instead of hers and have a chat? I’m sure that the people who share with me wouldn’t object. I came out of the bathroom carrying a dirty dish and was immediately given a lecture about “no dirty dishes allowed in the rooms”, which I thought was rather strange, so I put the dish down and went into the room. There was a girl there whom I didn’t recognise. She was an enormous girl, and it wasn’t until she began to speak that I realised that this was the girl to whom I’d been speaking on the ‘phone so often.

As if we had the internet when I was at school. And mobile ‘phones.

This story about an “oversized” person is interesting too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall from things that I have said in the past that I keep a pretty close eye on my weight, and so should other people, I reckon. I’m not into this “big is beautiful” idea when it comes to people.

And at our school, we didn’t have many lurid tales to tell about the teachers at our grammar school, except for one who ended up with a two-year prison sentence, although there could quite easily have been a few similar. Mind you, we used to make up quite a few, and they quickly gained currency amongst the more gullible pupils.

The nurse turned up as usual, so I told him about my bad night and the agony that I was suffering with my foot. I warned him to be very careful, so didn’t he go and put his hand right on it?

After I’d come back down from the ceiling, he finished sorting out my legs and feet, and then he cleared off on his rounds. I could go about making my breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’re still in the Ionian Islands today, and it seems that, in Corfu at least, the locals did experience some kind of sanity and better judgement and managed to keep themselves out of the hands of the Ottomans. However, for a period, they did fall into the hands of the French, then the British, and later on, the Italians.

Back in here, I was about to start work when I had a visitor. The electrician sent by the estate agency came to inspect my telephone wiring. I sent a message to my faithful cleaner to invite her down to see him in action to find out what’s going on.

He spent ages here searching for the telephone cabling and eventually found it, after much searching, behind the wall in the wardrobe cupboard. He didn’t have with him all of the equipment that he needed, so he promised to return later.

After he left, I finished off the notes for the radio programme that I’d begun the other day, and they are now ready for dictation.

There was a pause next for a disgusting drink, and then my cleaner came down again, this time to do her stuff. We were interrupted by the return of the electrician, who managed to thread a tracing cable through part of the conduit, and now he reckons that there should be no problem for the fibre-optic people to install the cable.

In the middle of all that, there was another interruption. The postie came by with a big parcel for me. I’ve ordered some new waste bins, the sort that slide out like a drawer, because I’m struggling with the ordinary type of waste bin with the swinging top. I really need two hands for that type of bin, but I need one to hold myself upright.

As well as that, there’s a new computer hard drive. That’s for my late birthday present, which arrives next week, with a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby.

After a brief … errr … relax, which is hardly surprising given the bad night that I had, I sorted out the plans for the next two radio programmes that I’ll be preparing next week. And for one of them, I’ve already chosen the music and written the notes, and I’m right now in the throes of editing the music that I need.

For the other programme, I’ve made a list of the songs from which I’ll be choosing those that will be included in the programme.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with chips and salad, followed by the last of the birthday cake and some more home-made ice cream. I didn’t enjoy the salad and chips as much as I would have liked, though. Having only recently recovered my taste buds, I don’t want to start losing them again so soon. It makes me wonder what on earth is going on with my body.

But I’ll worry about all that tomorrow. Right now, I’m off to bed, to sleep if the agonising pain in my foot and these severe coughing fits let me. I honestly can’t take much more of these.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the teachers at my old grammar school … "well, one of us has" – ed … on one occasion, following a series of arguments in our history class, it all came round to the teacher shouting, in an exasperated voice, "if anyone believes or thinks that he or she is stupid, stand up!"
So, of course, I stood up.
"Do you really believe or think that you’re stupid?" she shouted
"Not really, miss" I replied "but I felt really sorry for you, standing there all on your own like that."

Thursday 12th March 2026 – TONIGHT’S TEA …

… wasn’t as nice as some have been just recently. And I’ve no idea why that might be, because it’s a tea to which I’ve been looking forward for over a week.

Something else to which I’ve been looking forward since Monday morning was a good night’s sleep, but one again, I was thwarted in my ambitions.

Last night’s tea, nice as it was, took so long to prepare, eat and clean up that I ended up running hours late. In fact, I didn’t go to bed until about 23:45 and I need much more beauty sleep than that, especially as I’d been awake so early in the morning.

To go from bad to worse, it was another turbulent night and I felt as if I hadn’t gone to sleep at all. When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was dead to the World and it took me an age to summon up the energy and the courage to head for the bathroom.

Even though Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more, I still had a shave. I might as well go through the motions, even if I don’t feel like it and they are of no earthly purpose.

In the kitchen, I made my hot lemon, ginger and honey drink to go with my medication and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night. And that was a disappointment too.

It was round about 03:30 when I definitely heard someone shout “aren’t you getting up yet?”. I wondered what time it was, and looked at the clock. It was 03:30 so I don’t know who it was who had awoken me.

When I looked at the timestamp of the soundfile, it showed 03:31, so this dream obviously had some basis in fact somewhere. But that’s a few times now when I’ve either heard a phantom alarm or heard someone shout out during a dream.

There was also something about the bandage and plasters after dialysis but I can’t remember too much about that. In fact, I can’t remember anything really other than the bandage and the plasters.

And this kind of dream makes me wish that there was much more to it than that which I recorded. Or else, it’s my subconscious stopping me from going too far into “what happened next”.

The nurse came along to sort out my legs and feet, and today he remembered to put the things back into the drawer and to close it. I’m glad about that because I shall rapidly lose patience if he doesn’t tidy up after himself. It’s bad enough that I don’t.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re reviewing the position in the Ionian Islands. At the moment, the Venetians are clinging on to a precarious foothold as the Ottomans slowly surround them and hem them in. We’ve already had a few important raids, and I suspect that there are many more to come.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I turned my attention to the radio programme that I started yesterday. All of the music is now paired and segued, and quite a lot of the notes have been written. I can finish this off tomorrow morning, provided that my visitor doesn’t come too early.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to wait for my taxi to arrive.

And I was in luck. It was my favourite taxi driver and we had a lovely chat all the way down the coast to Carolles to pick up someone else and then another drive down the coast to Avranches.

Once again, I was early. It was 13:40 when I arrived, but it made no difference because I wasn’t connected up until 14:50. And then, they set the dry weight to what it had been two weeks ago and so there was almost nothing to take out. And they forgot the booster for the blood pressure. I don’t know what’s the matter with them these days.

But once I was connected, they left me pretty much alone. Even Emilie the Cute Consultant, who was the duty doctor today, kept to the far end of the room, well away from my clutches.

At least they didn’t hang around too long to unplug me, but it was still 18:50 when I climbed into the taxi to come home.

When I arrived here, I had to be dropped off at the rear of the building as there was a howling gale blowing up outside. My faithful cleaner helped me in, and believe me, I was glad to be home.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and ratatouille, which I didn’t enjoy as much as I thought it might. The birthday cake and home-made ice cream were nice, though, but tomorrow will see the last slice of that disappear.

And right now, I’m going to disappear too because I’m off to bed. And to sleep, if the stabbing pain all down my foot will let me. Right now, it’s the worst that I’ve ever known.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my strange dream … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of an old Tommy Cooper story.
"I once knew a man who dreamed that he was awake" he said.
"And what happened?" asked someone in the audience
"Well, when he woke up, he was!"

Wednesday 11th March 2026 – THAT WAS ANOTHER …

… really nice tea, even though it took me over two hours to prepare it and then to tidy up afterwards. And consequently, I’m running even later than I was last night, and that was late enough.

So much so that, by the time that I’d finished everything that needed finishing and had crawled into bed, it was about 23:20 – so much for any possible idea of having an early night.

And just as the previous night, it was another bad one, and by 05:20, I’d given up all possible hope of going back to sleep. But not to worry – round about 06:00 I raised myself from the Dead and attacked the two lots of radio notes that I’d written last week. They are now dictated and ready for editing, and there’s nothing outstanding in that respect.

However, there are no fewer than six lots of radio notes that need editing, so I am going to have a busy weekend by the looks of things.

When the alarm went off, I staggered into the bathroom for a scrub-up and then into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication. And the medication is much better in the drawer opposite the microwave rather than scattered all over the place.

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

There was something about being back in historical times. There was a young boy who was in bed in this house and having to measure how far away from the nearest plug he was in his bed so that we could put the correct amount of cable on a table lamp. For some reason, instead of calculating it from a plug in his bedroom, we calculated it from a plug in the living room and that seemed to go for metres – maybe there were five, six or seven metres. And if we’d taken it from the plug by the bed, it would have been next-to-nothing in the way of cable. But while we were measuring it, we had a metal ruler that was a metre long and a scribe that we were using to mark everything. Part of this route took us outside, and we were measuring in the snow and ice. We were looking at the ice and thinking of how things were frozen up, thinking that we’d better hurry and take ourselves inside again before we freeze in this weather.

It’s not very likely that they would have had table lamps back in historical times, but it’s certainly possible that there might not have been electrical sockets in every room. I can remember times like that in the dim and distant past. And don’t forget that the farm down in Virlet doesn’t have mains electricity or running water.

It would be interesting to know, though, why our route from one bedroom to another took us outside into the snow and ice.

Did I dictate the dream about being in Germany with my German friend? … "No, you didn’t" – ed … We ended up going around one of the supermarkets in his town looking for things that he needed. I saw some Heinz baked beans on special offer, so I went to look, but they were beans with pork sausages, so that ruled it out for me. So we had a good wander around and we noticed a couple of tins of beans on the shelf which were for sale. He asked me if they would be any good, so I replied that there was only one way to find out, so we put them in the trolley. I went to the check-out and waited for my friend who was still looking. I was chatting to the cashier, and he was saying goodbye and talking politely to everyone who was leaving the shop, but no-one seemed to reply to him. He was very annoyed by this. Eventually, we climbed into our car and drove out of the car park into the main street, but we were in Wandsworth by this time. Seeing as we were here, I asked him to turn to the left, which he did. I pointed out a row of shops, which in the past included an Indian takeaway, which was really nice. Up at the junction ahead, the round swung round to the left and headed down towards Wimbledon. Where the Italian restaurant had been, where I used to work, it had all been demolished and it was modern shopping units, things like these tool supply places and DIY hardware fittings places etc. I couldn’t believe how things had changed since the early 1990s when I was working down there. I was really, really disappointed by this.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my desperate search for decent baked beans, and it would be just my luck to find a huge supply, only to be thwarted by something like several pork sausages.

A while ago, I was looking at one of these online 3-D mapping sites, checking the area where I used to live in Wandsworth for that couple of months, and I didn’t recognise any of it. How it’s all changed since those days. It was really difficult to believe just how different the area is now, compared to how it used to be.

The nurse came extremely early today. He had several blood tests to carry out, including one on me! Unfortunately, he doesn’t have “the touch”, and as my veins are very small and fragile, I suffer enormously.

Not only that, I should have been à jeun – that is, without any food. However, I’d forgotten, so heaven alone knows what they are going to think at the laboratory when they find my blood full of home-made lemon, ginger and honey drink.

After he’d sorted out my feet, which was also agony because the pain in my right foot has returned, he left, and I could make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, having finished the accounts of the downfall of the individual duchies, he’s discussing the situations on the islands. It’s, regrettably, exactly the same as on the mainland, with different groups in conflict with others, internal revolution, external warfare, appeals to various European bodies and even craven submission to the Ottomans in order to seek protection from a different Christian force.

It really is difficult to understand why these people couldn’t see that they were signing their own death warrants.

Back in here, I finished off a few things and then, regrettably, I had a little “doze” in my chair for an hour or so. I can’t say that I was surprised.

Once I’d brought myself back round fully into the Land of the Living, I carried on writing the notes for the radio programme on which I’d been working yesterday. And by lunchtime, I’d finished everything. So this idea of being “up to date” didn’t last any longer than six hours.

After a disgusting drink break, I had a few things to do.

This fibre-optic cable issue is still rumbling on … "and on, and on" – ed … due to the inability of the estate agent’s manager to understand the problem. And now another inhabitant of the building, not exactly known for his patience, has thrown his hat into the ring following the failure of the installation chez lui. It seems that I am shortly to have a visit from a technician nominated by the estate agent, who intends to check the situation.

And not before time, either.

There was also an order to pass to my online retailer, and as a result, my late birthday present to myself should be arriving in about a week or ten days or so. In fact, a part of it should be here within the next couple of days, as it was “en route” about an hour after I’d ordered it.

A third thing was to reply to a letter that I’d received from the Auvergne. A few weeks ago, I wrote about a letter that I’d received from someone sending me his sympathies for my illness. I’d written back with an update as to my condition, and he’d replied. He’s going to carry out a little task or two for me, something that should come as quite a pleasant surprise to whoever inherits my possessions.

And finally, I’ve had my tax demand for my property in Canada. Looking at the increases over the last few years, property values close to the border with the Great Satan (and you can’t be much closer to the border with the Great Satan than my property) are rising dramatically since the orange utan took power down there.

Rosemary rang for a little chat. And it was a “little chat” too – it only lasted one hour. She’s been noticing the lack of worms in her garden these last couple of years, and the compost that she spreads on her vegetable plots doesn’t seem to break down as quickly as it should. Consequently, she’s planning on ordering a couple of hundred worms from a place in France so that she can dig them in with the compost.

With the time that was left, I chose the music for the next radio programme. And some of that took a lot of finding too. But it’s all now present, reformatted, remixed and re-edited. I can pair it and segue it tomorrow and maybe even write a couple of the notes for it.

Tea tonight was a fresh vegetable curry … "well, frozen vegetable curry actually" – ed … with onion, mushrooms, tomato, lentils, broccoli, cauliflower and sprouts in a thick vegan yoghurt sauce with rice, followed by birthday cake and home-made ice cream. And it really was delicious.

However, I might have to smile sweetly at Alison and ask her to take a little trip into Leuven on my behalf because my stock of spices is running rather low right now.

But that’s a job for the weekend because right now, I’m off to bed, hours later than I would like.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my blood test … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told one of my friends from Crewe that I had had a blood test this morning.
And so she asked "did you have to study hard last night, then?"

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: Eric Hall

Wednesday 25th March 2025 – IT HAS BEEN …

Tuesday 24th March 2026 – MY VEGAN TRIFLE …

Monday 23rd March 2023 – GUESS WHO …

Sunday 22nd March 2026 – I HAVE BEEN …

Saturday 21st March 2026 — I HAD NOTHING ON …

Friday 20th March 2026 – WHAT A MESS …

Thursday 19th March 2026 – I AM BACK …

Wednesday 18th March 2026 – GUESS WHO …

Tuesday 17th March 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Monday 16th March 2026 – LATE HOME AGAIN!

Sunday 15th March 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

Saturday 14th March 2026 – MY VEGAN CHEESECAKE …

Friday 13th March 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Thursday 12th March 2026 – TONIGHT’S TEA …

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