Category Archives: granville

Saturday 22nd August 2026 – THERE HAS BEEN …

… a calamity at dialysis today, and it’s as if the World had come to an end. For quite a while, I wondered if I would ever survive the shock.

Yes, that’s right. They forgot to bring the coffee round to the room in which another woman and I were being dealt with. Luckily, we had a very understanding nurse, and once we mentioned the problem to her, she went off and did the necessary. But it wasn’t half worrying.

That’s not been the worst of my worries either, but more of this anon.

Last night, after the football, I spent some time writing my notes, but as it became later and later, I began to think that I’d never finish them at this rate and I’d be here all night. So I called it a day round about 23:30, finished off what needed to be finished off and I was in bed round about midnight.

At some point in the middle of the night, I think that I awoke, but once again, it was the same as has been happening just recently – I wasn’t sure if I was awake or not, if I was still asleep or dreaming or anything like that. It reminded me of that line in THE PRISONER – "by the time we’ve finished with him, he won’t know whether he’s No. 6 or the cube root of infinity".

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 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

However, I was definitely asleep at 06:15 when someone opened the door to my apartment. I shouted “who is it?”, but the response was that whoever it was closed the door and cleared off. I can see that I’m going to have to take “certain steps”, which might include involving a bucket full of whitewash.

And then we had the usual struggle about hauling myself out of bed and going to the bathroom to sort myself out. I managed to have my feet on the floor before the alarm went off, which counts as an “early start”, but the rest isn’t quite as easy. In the end, I managed it, including a good scrub-up and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

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

We went to see some friends who lived in a small seaside port. We noticed that there were three shipping containers sitting on the quayside here waiting to be picked up by some kind of boat. There was a guy there too, and I didn’t like him, but he definitely sounded like some kind of underworld villain, and he was pointed out by my friends as having a place somewhere in Argentina where he’d go to hide every now and again. A few weeks later, there was an article in the local paper about a British guy who lived in Argentina who had been arrested and the police were still looking for three shipping containers. I said to Nerina “I know where they are”. A couple of months later, I was at an auction sale which took place on behalf of the government that was to sell the possessions of this guy, and one of them was his interests in taxis in quite a few councils, so I went along to see what was happening. It started surprisingly cheaply, so much so that I could make an offer and I could bid on it at one time, but the bidding went slowly out of my reach, and eventually some guy had part of it knocked down to him. He wanted an option on the rest, but he needed to have the support of 50% of the people. A lot of people put up their hands but he said that he was one county short. I thought “in for a penny, in for a pound”, and I put my hand up. He said “right, yes, Cheshire! That’s all I need!” and the whole lot was knocked down to him. Then he had a meeting of all of his supporters afterwards, and I went along to see what was on offer. He started to tell us a few things that had nothing whatever to do with taxis, so I wondered what on earth his game was.

This little port, I’ve seen it before on several postcards and photos, but I just can’t put a name to it. It’s a tiny port, and it beats me how they would ever manage to sail a ship into here to take away one container, never mind three.

Argentina doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere, but the story of the crook who had interests in taxi businesses all over the UK rings a familiar bell if you were to turn the clock back thirty or forty years and is probably still continuing today, for all I know. But Arsenal FC supporters will be much more clued in to this than I am.

There had been a whole group of us staying somewhere in Spain in a hotel-kind of place, and some friends of ours in the neighbourhood came to visit too. We stayed there for a couple of days, and when we were on the point of leaving, some Spaniard turned up in a strange kind of van. It had some kind of maker’s name on the side that was in initials and we were trying to identify it. I reckoned that it was a Japanese clone of something. It had no roof and no sides where the driver sat, and he was complaining that the starter motor didn’t work and a couple of other things didn’t work and the quality was rubbish. We were there with a dog, and a policeman came. He had an Alsatian, and this dog of ours took a great deal of interest in the Alsatian, and the Alsatian, which was a female, ran and hid. We thought “our dog’s found a new girlfriend, has he?”. In the end, we all piled into my van and we set off for home and to drop off these people on the way. For the past two or three days when we’d gone down this road, there had been some girl struggling to get on her pushbike, and she was still there today, struggling. When we reached the bottom where I’d normally turn left, I did a U-turn and came back up the hill. Everyone was wondering why. One or two people were complaining, but I said “don’t worry, it’s only going to put a couple of extra seconds on your timetable” and I stopped back outside the gates of this house again. Instead of asking someone to open the gates, I had a strange kind of hook made out of an old garden rake. I put that over the top of the gates, climbed up it and went over the top, then dropped down onto the garden. What I’d come to check was to see whether a friend of mine who was supposed to be coming but never turned up had finally made it, because we could intercept him on the way home, but if we went a different way home, we’d miss him for that five minutes while we were getting back on the correct one, so I wanted to make sure that he hadn’t come before I set off again in the hope of trying to meet up with him.

Strangely enough, this is pretty much the same scenery as in the dream a few days ago when I was living up on the Czech/Austrian border

The van could be any one of a dozen French microvans that are on the road today, or maybe one of those tiny Japanese vans that were common on the roads forty years ago. The dog, of course, needs no explanation.

The rest of it, including the girl struggling on her bicycle and my weird “garden hook”, must have some explanation somewhere, and I wish I knew just what it was.

The nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my legs and feet. He didn’t stay long, and once he’d left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Our hero is now back discussing a few foreign edifices of a religious nature, but concludes with "Certainly when we compare these edifices with our own contemporary ones, we can have but little hesitation in esteeming England to have been, during the fifteenth century at least, the chosen abode of Christian art"

He then goes on to list several marvellous examples of European Gothic work but remarks "Our buildings never run into the same senseless extravagance, where nothing but mere excess of ornament is left to supply the place of real art"

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I was hoping to be reading a book on architecture, not a book on art.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I made a start on the notes from yesterday. And they took much longer than they ought to do, because from about 10:30 to 11:15, I was asleep on my chair. And I remember nothing whatever about falling asleep. No-one was more surprised than me when I awoke.

By the time I’d finished and put them online, there wasn’t much time for anything else. I had to go to prepare myself for dialysis. My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic as usual, and then I had to wait for the taxi.

And not for long either, as it was here for 12:40. We had to go to pick up Mrs Dinosaur and then we set off nice and early for Avranches, only to be stuck in a traffic queue at Marcey-les-Grèves due to the autoroute being blocked in both directions with holiday traffic coming and going.

However, at the dialysis centre, I was seen to pretty quickly, so by 14:05 I was up and running and could watch Rhydaman v Connah’s Quay Nomads.

There’s no doubt that the Nomads were in a class above Rhydaman, but the latter managed to defend heroically for much of the match and even had several good chances themselves. But even so, a 2-0 victory for the Nomads was only to be expected, and Rhydaman could be proud of their performance.

After that, I was going to watch a second game, but there were too many interruptions and disturbances, not to mention the Quest For The Coffee.

As luck would have it, when I was finished, the nurse was doing nothing much so I was unplugged straight away, although she had jammed the catch on my backpack with my laptop inside it. My taxi was waiting too, so I was home by 18:00.

My cleaner was there to stick a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt, and after she left, I came in here to begin my notes and watch this evening’s football match. However, after I’d fallen asleep for an hour on the chair, I booted that idea into touch, wrote a terse note on my blog and went to bed. It was 20:20.

Now, it’s 05:00, I’ve been up for an hour or so, finished my notes, and I’m now going back to bed to await the arrival of the nurse.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about traffic jams … "well, one of us has" – ed … apparently the queues on the autoroute were caused by an accident. A golfer playing on a golf course at the side of the road had sliced a ball which crashed through the window of a coach, hitting the driver, causing him to swerve and have a fatal accident.
Later that same day, the gendarmes were interviewing the golfer "due to your negligence, you caused a road traffic accident which killed the bus driver, fifteen schoolkids and one accompanying adult" they roared. "What are you going to do about it?"
After a minute’s thought, the golfer replied "Perhaps I ought to tighten my grip, take a shorter swing and incline the golf club head more to the right."

Friday 21st August 2026 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… a little better than the relapse yesterday, although the hallucinations are back. It’s amazing how they just appear when I’m doing something and I end up being distracted.

Not that I was distracted last night. It was a very determined me that went to bed at the end of the day, round about 22:30 or thereabouts. I didn’t hang about very long.

It wasn’t very long before I was asleep either. Well away in the Land of Nod, I was. At least for a certain time, that is. However –

The alarm went off this morning, and I awoke and switched it off. I thought that in a couple of minutes, I would have to get up again. But it didn’t feel at all like getting-up time. There was no “tired” situation or anything. So after a few minutes, when I finally agreed that it was darker inside the house than outside, I’d have a look at the bathroom fittings. It turned out that some of them were modular types and others were these “push-on” suction types, so I thought that rather than being some kind of suction type, I’d wait until I could get them all in one go and buy a complete set of pushers.

The alarm really did awaken me back then, and while I didn’t actually get up this time, something strange must have gone on afterwards as the dream descended into all kinds of things that make no sense at all … "no change there then" – ed …

Shortly afterwards, I awoke again – or, at least, I think I did. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m finding myself in these situations where I don’t know if I’m awake or not … "nothing new there either" – ed … if I’m dreaming or having one of these hallucinations.

I must have been asleep at some point because the alarm awoke me at 06:29 – a proper alarm and a proper awakening. We had the usual ten minutes or so while I tried to awaken myself and find the enthusiasm to stand up, and then I went to the bathroom for a good scrub-up, etc.

Back in here, I had a listen to find out what else was on the dictaphone.

It was in the early 1930s, and in the ramshackle car that we had, two friends and I went to Montréal from the USA. While we were in Montréal, there was an announcement of a huge earthquake, so everyone ran for their lives. This led to some kind of indiscriminate looting and pillaging of the town, and we ended up with quite a few things. I carried something heavy with me all the way, and when I came to the car, the two guys there told me to throw it away again. I was surprised after carrying it all that far, but I put it down and watched it roll away, and then we drove off. They told me that it was a barrel of whisky and, obviously, in Prohibition and I’d bought that back to the USA, we’d have been in a lot of trouble. We arrived back in the USA and I went and caught a tram home. There was some young guy on there so we ended up having a long chat with him.

Part of this dream that I can still see and which doesn’t seem to be recorded is that when we were pushing the car through the crowded streets in a column of other vehicles, occasionally, we had to stop because of an obstruction ahead. And all the time, someone was shelling the city and the shells were landing quite close to us. At one point, we stopped and then moved on again, and the car immediately behind us was hit by a shell exactly at the spot where we had been waiting for five minutes, not two seconds before.

This dream could be anything related to any one of the hundreds of old black-and-white films that I own, but the bit about the vehicles in the queue being shelled reminds me of a scene from THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, except that my viewpoint last night would have been diagonally across the road from where Clint Eastwood was watching the queue go through the town where he was.

Later on, Nerina and I came back to Crewe. We had another Mark III Cortina estate this time. We came back to Gainsborough Road and went in. It was all dark and gloomy and hadn’t been lived in for years. We saw what kind of state it was, so we went round to the DIY place with a couple of friends. We bought some things that we needed and I was picking up all the wood offcuts, including some very long ones. I had no idea what I was going to do with them, but they were free. We went back home with all these huge nails, planks of wood, etc., and put them in the house, which was already full of tonnes of building material to start with. I had a look at the house and there was mould everywhere coming up the walls. I thought that I was going to have to do a lot of work on this place. Then it was Christmas and we had a pile of friends round celebrating. We did one of those line dance conga things all the way around the house and back out into the streets. Then, everyone decided that for an hour, they would go to find someone who needed help and give them some help for an hour or so. Nerina knew some kind who needed some help with reading, but I didn’t know of anyone who needed any help. It had been a long time since I’d been here.

This is very similar to a dream that I had a long time ago when I had also come back from years away elsewhere.

But the state of the house could so easily have been the same at Gainsborough Road had luck not gone my way at the most unexpected times. And Mark III Cortina estates all around the place? It does sound like home, doesn’t it?

The nurse came round as usual to sort out my legs and feet. He didn’t have much to say for himself except to tell me to rest today, and then he left.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

He’s still doing his best to keep clear of controversy by not mentioning anything to do with foreign locations, so it’s becoming rather boring. However, I am continuing to add to my knowledge of architectural terms as he introduces more and more strange words into his book, and I’m having to do more and more research. Hammer beams, anyone?

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and once they were out of the way, I could carry on with the radio programme.

That’s now finished, but it took much longer than it ought to, due to the fact that I had to redo part of the music. I did wonder why I had only forty-one minutes of music when I’d calculated forty-six and a half. Now I know.

There were the usual interruptions – the disgusting drink break and then my cleaner turned up to do her stuff and to have a chat too.

After she had left and I’d finally finished the radio notes, I had a relax for half an hour (somehow avoiding falling asleep), and then I started the next – not one, but two – radio programmes.

It’s a bit of a cheat really. The first one will be a concert. It’s one hour and thirty-eight minutes long, so it needs to be cut down to about fifty-seven or fifty-eight minutes to give me time to introduce everything. However, there was no running list with this concert so I had to listen to it all and make my own.

And while I was listening to the concert, I was looking at the next programme, trying to find out what music I’ll need.

At teatime, I knocked off and went to eat. As seems to be usual on these Fridays, tea was air-fried chips, vegan sausages and baked beans in cheese and fresh ground black pepper. And it was beautiful as always.

After tea, we had football – Hwlffordd, usually a challenger for the European spots but struggling right now at the foot of the table with no points and no goals, v Cambrian United, the team from the Rhondda Valley, newly promoted and looking quite impressive so far.

This was another exciting game that roared from one end to the other at a hundred miles and hour, and there was plenty of skilful football being played. It was nothing at all like the midfield mauls that we’ve seen just recently.

Cambrian scored a goal not long after the restart, and as the game went on, Hwlffordd began to throw the kitchen sink at them. However, that left them vulnerable at the back and Cambrian fully exploited it, not just once but twice. The latter being with the penultimate kick of the match from a guy who had only been on the pitch five minutes.

It does have to be said, though, that while Cambrian fully deserved their victory, 3-0 is a rather flattering scoreline for them.

After that, I started to write the notes for today but ran out of steam. Eventually, having fallen asleep twice, I headed for bed. I can finish my notes tomorrow and you can see them in the morning.

But just a little notice – there’s a game tomorrow evening, so you might not have the complete notes until Sunday late morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about drinking … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once walked into a pub and asked "where are the books, please?"
"There are no books here" replied the landlord. "We don’t sell books, we sell alcohol."
"Not a problem" said the customer. "Do you have ‘Tequila Mockingbird’, please?"

Thursday 20th August 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what kind of day it has been today. It certainly wasn’t as good as yesterday, that’s for sure.

Yesterday, I was really feeling fighting fit, that’s for sure. It was after midnight when I stopped letting it all hang out and crawled into bed, although I wasn’t feeling tired in the slightest, as I believe I said. And I didn’t go to sleep very quickly either.

But when I did finally go to sleep, it wasn’t for too long. When I realised that I was awake (we’ve talked about this just recently), there was a howling gale blowing outside, not the kind of noise you want to hear when you are trying to sleep.

There was no possibility of going back to sleep with all of that noise going on so I just lay there, gently relaxing, or, at least, doing the best that I could to relax. I remember at one point checking the time, and it was 04:42.

It was round about that point that I must have gone back to sleep, for I was definitely asleep when the alarm sounded at 06:29, and the wind was howling around like mad.

As usual, it took me a while to leave the bed and go into the bathroom to sort myself out and even to have a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.

Back in here I went to check the window to make sure that everything was in good order, but as soon as I opened it, the howling stopped. When I closed it again, the howling stayed stopped. So I have no idea what was going on. Was I dreaming the noise?

First thing to do was to check the dictaphone and to see where I’d been during the night. However, I needn’t have bothered as the dictaphone was devoid of entries again.

However : –

I’m not sure whether this counts as a dream or not, but I was having another one of those coughing fits that seems to go on for ever, so in the end, when it calmed down, I reached for my emergency supplies. When I was tidying up a while ago, I found a couple of packets of menthol and eucalyptus sweets, and I’ve been taking a couple to bed with me every night for the last few days. Anyway, I reached for one of my sweets, unwrapped it and went to pop it into my mouth. What happened next was that I bit my finger. There was no sweet at all in my hand and no unwrapped paper nearby. If it wasn’t a dream, it was certainly weird

This is a good example of never knowing whether I’m awake, asleep or somewhere in between when I’m lying there in bed. I would have sworn that I really was reaching for a sweet.

My nurse turned up a little later than yesterday. He was talking about not very much and soon left the building, leaving me to go and make breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading yet more about the bombing of England in World War I. And interestingly, at Poelkapelle in Belgium not so long ago, they came across the wreckage of a Staaken, one of Germany’s giant four-engined bombers nearly as big as a B-29 Superfortress, embedded in the ground. It had been shot down on 21st April 1918.

Back in here, there were a few things to do so I set to work, and then I began to write the notes for the radio programme from yesterday. They were about half-done when I had to knock off, but not to worry, I’ll finish them tomorrow.

At midday I went to prepare my things for dialysis, and then my faithful cleaner put in her appearance to apply the anaesthetic to my arm.

She didn’t stay long today, which was just as well because the taxi came early for me. And not just early but at 12:33. Not that it bothered me because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the earlier I start, the earlier I finish.

We had to pick up Mrs Dinosaur and also another woman at the health centre in St Pair, and then we could set off for Avranches.

It was 13:30 when we arrived, and by 14:05, I was up and running. However, it wasn’t easy because, once more, there’s a huge excess of liquid. Consequently, I told them to run it for four hours instead of three, and have you any idea just how tiring it is to have the machine going at max for four hours?

Still, it gave me plenty of opportunity to watch the football from this last weekend. The match between Hwlffordd and Penybont was exciting. It was proper end-to-end football with plenty of skill, not like some of the midfield mauls that we saw earlier. Penybont won 3-0, which was expected, but it was good all the same.

And afterwards, I managed to watch some of Caernarfon v Penybont from the weekend before. There’s still a good bit to go, but even so, it looks like another good, skilful game.

There were problems with the machine, or, rather, with me, and the alarm on the machine was constantly going off. A doctor came to see me too, the new relief doctor, and she gave me a prescription for an antibiotic.

There was also a nurse who came by with a questionnaire for me to answer. Honestly, it was like Euston Station in my little room this afternoon.

When it was time for me to be unplugged, the nurse dealt with me straight away. Even better, the taxi was waiting for me too. We had to drop off Mrs Dinosaur but I was soon back home.

My cleaner was there waiting and she helped me into the apartment, and when I was sitting down, she stuffed a disgusting drink into my hands.

After she left, I grabbed a couple of biscuits and came in here. I didn’t feel like making tea so I wrote my notes instead.

Now, I’m off to bed ready for a nice relaxing day tomorrow, I don’t think. And then on Saturday, it’s dialysis again. I’m getting sick of this.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the World War I bombing of England … "well, one of us has" – ed … a Zeppelin actually flew over Stoke-on-Trent and dropped several bombs on the city.
When I was speaking to a friend, I told him about this.
"What happened?" he asked.
"The bombing was terrible" I replied. "So much so that it caused £140,000,000 worth of improvements."

Wednesday 19th August 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what happened today, but today was just like any ordinary day might have been, say, two or three years ago, and it’s astonishing how quickly things can turn round after the disaster that was yesterday.

By the time that I went to bed last night, things weren’t actually quite as bad as they had seemed to be during the day. Mind you, they couldn’t have been any worse, could they?

It was about 21:30 when I closed everything down in here, and it was about half an hour later, maybe, when I finally crawled into bed. It took a couple of minutes to make myself comfortable, and then I was asleep quite quickly afterwards.

Some time later, I found myself awake again. I’ve no idea what time because I couldn’t be bothered to look and “found myself awake” because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I seem to be doing that quite regularly these days, and it’s a completely different feeling than “waking up”. I’ve no idea what’s happening here at all.

For a while, I was drifting in and out of that twilight world in no-man’s land where I’m neither awake nor asleep, and even if I weren’t, I would still have no clue as to whether I’m awake or whether I’m asleep.

At a certain moment, I looked at the time. 05:55. We had the usual internal discussion about whether I ought to get up, claim an early start and start to work, or whether I ought to simply try to go to sleep for the next half an hour or so.

In the end, I decided that I may as well go back to sleep if I could, so I turned over into my “easy sleep” position in the bed. And I must have gone to sleep because when the alarm went off to awaken me, I remember thinking “that was NEVER half an hour”.

We had the usual ten-minute delay while I worked up the courage, energy and enthusiasm to go to the bathroom to sort myself out, and then, back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

That was pretty much a waste of time, but at least it shows me that I must have been in a really deep sleep last night, much deeper than normal.

There were plenty of other things to be done this morning, so I set to work, but I was interrupted by the nurse who came by at 08:02. Has he ever been that early before?

We talked about dialysis and the weather as he applied the cream and did his stuff to my feet, ankles and calves. After he left, I could make my breakfast.

One thing that I didn’t do was to read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman. Yesterday, I’d been considerably side-tracked by places mentioned in Freeman’s book and ended up roaming all around the countryside, looking at different places.

Just before knocking off, it had led me to, believe it or not, the “Zeppelin”, “Gotha” and “Giant” German bombing raids on the UK in World War I, and today, I carried on reading the articles on this subject while I was eating.

Eventually, back in here, I finished off doing what I had been doing before breakfast. And when that had been done, I turned my attention to this radio programme on which I’d been working.

Firstly, though, round about midday we had the rainstorm to end all rainstorms. It had been a grey day yesterday, but that had nothing on how it was today. At least, all the farmers will be pleased, even if the tourists won’t be.

So returning to the radio programme, I had to download some music, and that takes longer because my favourite supplier of music has … errr … burnt down and a huge number of discs has been lost.

Eventually, I managed to find what I needed, and it’s now all downloaded, the tracks I want have been selected, and the ten that I want for now have all been reformatted, chosen, paired and segued. I’ve even started to write some of the notes for them.

My cleaner put her sooty foot in the apartment too. She came to bring me the medication that she’d bought from the chemists as I seem to be running out of a lot of it right now. We ended up having a chat and then she wandered off on her travels. I noticed that not only had the rain stopped, but it was bright, warm sunshine out there so I opened my window to let some fresh air in.

When I’d finished what I was doing on the radio programme, I went to make tea. Tonight, it was pasta and various vegetables tossed in a cheese sauce with tarragon and chives. And delicious it was too. And the final two slices of the first half of the home-made fruit bread that I’d made ten or so days ago. Now I shall have to fetch the other half out of the freezer.

So back in here, I wrote out my notes for today, and now, once I’ve checked the stats, done the backup, etc., I’ll be off to bed and hope that these gale-force winds will drop and let me sleep. It’s horribly later than usual but yet I’m not even remotely tired. What on earth is going on here?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the chemists … "well, one of us has" – ed … while my cleaner was in the chemist’s just now, a man came in and went up to the other counter and asked "a packet of condoms, please."
The chemist gave him a packet and asked "do you need a bag?"
The man replied "there’s one at home in bed. That’s why I need the condoms"

Tuesday 18th August 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day this has been. If I were to think about it, I would say that this has been one of the worst days so far.

It started off badly yesterday evening when I fell asleep while trying to write up my notes and had to haul myself physically into bed. And during the night it didn’t get any better.

As usual, I was asleep fairly quickly too, but also, as usual, not for long. I was soon awake again thanks to yet another enormous coughing fit and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I kept on seeing a vision of a phantom hand creeping around the open door of the bedroom heading for my throat, and then realising that it was mine!

At some point, I must have gone off to sleep because I awoke with Seren’s alarm going off, and then all three of us had to stay marooned until we were rescued (this is what I mean about hallucinations and everything like that creeping into my dreams).

I was with another group of people, and it was near Christmas, so we had come away to a city for a city break for a few days. We’d had a good walk around and seen everything, but all down the side of one street, under a scaffolding, was a huge, long row of people, probably two thousand people, all queuing there for something. The queue began in the square at the bottom of the hill but went all the way back up. Some guy from Brittany Ferries had rung me, but I wasn’t there to answer it, so he left a message for me to call him again, which I forgot. He rang me eventually, and he wanted to know what we were going to do about this five-thousand-pound bill. I asked, “what five-thousand-pound bill?” It turned out that someone, whose name he gave me, had bought a ticket to go to the Isles of Scilly for five thousand pounds, and that just didn’t sound right at all. I thought that the Scilly Isles weren’t that far away – it’s not going to cost anything like that, so what’s the going on? The guy who came to see me, a nice young lad whose birthday was roughly the same as mine, told me that they don’t know but they want to deal with this matter urgently. So standing in the street leaning against the wall of a shop, we talked about it, and in the end, we all went down the hill to the centre and back up … fell asleep here … so we all went down into town but couldn’t find a Royal Bank of Scotland, so we came back up again and it was there on the left, so we went into it. A woman came to see the three of us, but just then, the alarm went off.

The alarm going off just there wiped our dream completely, and I was really disappointed in that.

There were a few other bits and pieces that I subsequently remembered, such as my chat with that guy taking place over the ‘phone at my place, but the volume on the turntable was such that no one could hear a word, so we met in town, and all those people were queuing, but there was absolutely no indication of what they were queuing for, not like in Poland when I was there with my coach in the days of the Communists and the long queues of people outside the shops.

After sorting myself out in the bathroom, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see if there was anything else on it but there wasn’t. That one dream was it today.

While I was waiting for the nurse, I was sorting out a free kick in my mind, but further play was impossible once the Nurse turned up. He sorted out my legs and feet, and, at the same time, we discussed my spell at dialysis yesterday. He didn’t offer any useful suggestion about how to improve them, which is unfortunate, seeing as before being an itinerant nurse, he was a nurse in the dialysis centre of St Malo.

After he’d left, I turned to making my breakfast of porridge, toast and coffee. Well, it should have been toast, but I’d forgotten to take the bread out of the freezer so I have to toast some rye bread instead.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

We should have been reading more of the book, but I was side-tracked once more by some interesting information that came out in one of his paragraphs, and I was off doing some research into the matter, that is, when I wasn’t falling asleep.

Back in here, there were the usual things to do and then I attacked the rest of the notes from yesterday. Being so tired didn’t help, as I was constantly falling asleep – at one point slamming my face really hard into the desk. A job of maybe forty-five minutes turned into one of well over two hours, and not even the midday disgusting drink and medication could improve matters.

My cleaner came round as usual to do her stuff and she chased me under the shower again. I managed to climb into the shower and climb out unaided too. At least I’m getting better in that respect.

After the shower, we concentrated on the medication, ready to make a new order. Last month’s supply is running out and I’ll be stuck if we don’t order any sometime soon.

When the cleaner left, I started on the next radio programme. This isn’t going to be a complicated one, but I made it so because of all of this tiredness where I was dropping off to sleep all the time. At some point, my wanderings took me to Sandbach and Middlewich before I could shake myself awake again.

Anyway, I’ve done as much as I want to today, even though it’s early. I’m not making myself any food tonight, just going to bed and hoping that I can sleep all of this off by tomorrow, although that’s going to be unlikely.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about sleeping … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember talking to an old colleague of mine once.

"You know" he said. "There’s nothing nicer than falling asleep after a hard day’s work, and then waking up and kissing the lips of the gorgeous person next to you"
"And what happens when you do?" I enquired
"Well, I’m having to find a different way home now. They aren’t going to let me back on my bus again"

Monday 17th August 2026 – THESE UNHAPPY, UNCERTAIN …

… days are continuing, piling up one on top of another, and I’ve no idea when it’s all going to end.

Last night, I actually managed to complete my notes (the first time for ages), although I ended up really late going to bed. And although I went to sleep quickly enough, I was back awake again at some point later.

It was one of those awakenings that I didn’t really feel. I can’t remember my eyes opening, but they just were. I wondered how long they had been open before I realised.

Again, it was an early morning of drifting off to sleep and then being awake again and not recognising which was the waking bit and which was the sleeping bit because I couldn’t tell the difference between the two.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I went off to sort myself out in the bathroom and even to have a shave in case I encounter Emilie the Cute Consultant today at dialysis. Then back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I had been during the night.

I’d been invited to take over the management of a struggling football club in Scotland, so I went up there, and the first thing that I wanted to see was the football club’s accounts, but the accounts were heavily edited, and when I looked at the spreadsheet for the other clubs, it seemed that this was a thing that every club was doing. It was simply editing its accounts, and where there should have been a figure, there was just a yellow blob, so I had no idea exactly of what I was expected to take over and manage and how I was going to do it. There was much more to this, but the alarm went off and it evaporated immediately.

This is reminiscent of what’s happening at Greenock Morton right now. Their major sponsor has “financial issues” right now and, over the last three months, has failed to pay most of the sponsorship money that is due. Consequently, half of the players have left the club, and the club has been obliged to recruit players who, to be honest, aren’t up to the challenge of life in the Scottish Championship.

The nurse turned up as usual and gave me the treatment on my legs and feet. And after he left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Once more, he’s steering clear of controversy today and making sure that he doesn’t provoke anyone into taking an issue with him. Maybe he has had his nose bitten off more times than he cares to remember.

After all that, I came in here to make a start on everything. and there was plenty to do too. When I’d finished the more usual things, I had the radio to deal with.

First task was to review the programme for the coming weekend and make sure that it’s correct. Then I could send it off for inclusion in this week’s stream.

The second task was to carry on with the one that I’d started at the weekend. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that of this almost-two-hour soundtrack, I extracted five particular selections of music that made up over fifty-eight minutes, and this morning, I segued them all together.

The joints are absolutely excellent, and now it sounds just like one continuous performance, which is always what I’m aiming for with these concerts.

After that, there was even time to begin to write the speech for it. And that’s well over half-done now. It won’t take long to finish it now, and I can move on to something more important.

By now, it was midday and time to prepare myself for dialysis. I had to hunt down a few things and then wander off into the kitchen to sort out a disgusting drink and the midday medication.

My cleaner came along soon and helped me apply my anaesthetic, and then she put away the clothes that I’d washed on Saturday. They’d washed really well too.

After she left, I had to wait for the taxi, so I curled up on a kitchen chair and slumped over the dining table and drifted off into some comfortable place somewhere in the surreal. And what made it even more enjoyable was that the taxi was late. It arrived at 13:20, which meant that for a good forty-five minutes, I’d had a nice little snooze.

Today, I was the only passenger, so we arrived in Avranches just before 14:00. I was taken to my little room and installed, and I was dealt with comparatively quickly. By 14:20 I was up and running.

There was football to watch today – Connah’s Quay Nomads v Trefelin BGC, another newly promoted club.

Although the score of 6-0 to the Nomads makes it look like a very one-sided game, Trefelin had several moments of their own. The big difference was that the Nomads were much more clinical in front of goal, with Indonesian international Joe Simatupang Ferguson scoring a hat trick and Egyptian Hussein Mehasseb scoring two.

But credit to Trefelin, who kept on battling away. They never threw in the towel and were still on the attack even at the final whistle.

After that game, there was time to watch the first 35 minutes or so of the Hwlffordd v Penybont game. Hwlffordd have had a dreadful season so far, playing two and losing two, but Penybont have got off to a flyer.

By the time I had to close down the laptop, Hwlffordd were already one goal down.

Once more, no doctor came to see me today, and even worse, the nurse was obliged to finish my session ten minutes early because she had two other patients besides me who needed compressing, and everyone was due to finish at the same time. I wasn’t very happy about leaving here 300 grams overweight, especially as there’s a three-day gap until the next session on Thursday.

My driver was waiting for me when I came out, but we had to wait ten minutes for the lady who lives in Sartilly to finish. She was coming home with us, and only when she was safely on board our vehicle could we depart.

Granville, as usual, was a total mess. Most of the town centre was closed due to the annual braderie when the shops set out everything that they want to move on, sometimes at ridiculously cheap prices.

The Air-Sea Rescue helicopter was on the Pointe du Roc today when we drove past.

Rumour has it that it had rescued a couple of people stranded on one of the Isles de Chausey by the very high tide. It was now unloading them so that it could fly back to its hangar at the airstrip up the coast.

Incidentally, the photo of the helicopter was one that I’d taken IN NOVEMBER 2021 when I’d seen that woman commit suicide.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me, and she helped me back into the apartment, and I was certainly grateful. I’d had an exhausting session today. She stuck a disgusting drink into my hand, and after she left, I made tea – a bowl of cheese salad with rice and veg.

Back in here, I began to write out yesterday’s notes, but I must have crashed out at some point because I suddenly noticed that it was 22:15 and I’d not even written a dozen lines. I was feeling absolutely dreadful at that point so I posted on line what I’d written and crawled into bed. I can finish off those notes tomorrow morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about helicopters … "well, one of us has" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish in a previous existence will remember the day I flew in a helicopter. It was a prize offered in a free draw by the new Intermarché in Pionsat.
There were several of us on board, and the pilot announced "complete and absolute silence on board is essential. Anyone who speaks or even makes a noise will be fined €100."
We flew around for ten minutes and then he started to perform some aerobatics. We were thrown around in the sky, but still, everyone kept silent.
"That was amazing" said the pilot. "You lot are the first to withstand the test."
"Well" said a little old man sitting in the corner "I was going to say something when my wife fell out, But €100 is €100"

Sunday 16th August 2026 – IT HAS NOT …

… been a very auspicious day today. It’s been a day full of tiredness and weariness, and I’ve crashed out I don’t know how many times as yet.

It all started to go wrong last night, as I said yesterday. I was hit with an enormous wave of fatigue and ended up going to bed long before I’d finished what I needed to do. I was asleep quite quickly too.

During the night, I awoke at some point, and I’ve no idea when because I didn’t look. But it was due once more to another one of these mega-coughing fits. The coughing is now back, and back in spades too, unfortunately.

It was another one of these mornings where I was drifting in and out of sleep and not being able to identify which was the real bit and which one was the phantom bit or the sleep bit. That’s happened a few times now, and it’s really unsettling, especially when I’m stuck somewhere in that glorious half-world in between waking up and being asleep.

One thing is certain, though, and that is at some point (maybe the fourth or fifth attempt) I did manage to go to sleep because I awoke properly and correctly. I stayed awake and eventually looked at the time. It was 07:33.

Sunday is, of course, my Day of Rest which usually starts with no alarm and a lie-in, having my feet and legs dealt with by the nurses while I’m still in bed. However, today, I simply couldn’t stay lying in bed. By 08:00 I was up and about, sitting at the computer working.

The nurse was surprised to see me up, which was no surprise really. After his three-week holiday he would probably be expecting to find me in bed. We had a little chat about his holiday, but he wasn’t very forthcoming. He dealt with my legs and feet and then cleared off on his round.

After he left, I made my croissants. I’d used the last of the previous batch last week, so I wanted some more. And while they were a-doing in the oven, I made my porridge and coffee.

The croissants were excellent – the best that I have ever made. They looked wonderful and had puffed up correctly, which made a nice change from the flat ones that I always seemed to have.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

He’s continuing to keep himself out of mischief, although his jingoistic beating of the English drum is becoming rather tiresome. And he’s still hung up on the religious side of the fence. I don’t believe that in four hundred pages so far, there’s been one mention of an English secular building.

And “English” too. He’s not mentioned one building in Wales or Scotland either to date.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, such as to finish off transcribing the dictaphone notes. And they weren’t much use tonight.

I dreamed that I was doing something with this dinosaur exhibition. We were planning to move away from Granville at the end of their period and relocate somewhere else. They had a huge list of places to where they could relocate, and they asked me if I would check out one or two of them in Northern France. This was another one of these long, complicated dreams and it seems to have all evaporated from my mind

This relates to a discussion that we were having with Madame Dinosaur in the taxi on our way to Avranches yesterday about the potential sites that they have all over Europe for their exhibition and the difficulty at times of finding a dialysis centre, especially abroad.

There were a few other things to do, and then I continued writing the notes from yesterday. That took much longer than it ought to have done too, mainly because of the waves of fatigue that were sweeping over me again. At one point, I went to fetch an energy drink, but even drinking that didn’t make things any easier.

When I’d finished it and posted it on line, I started to enjoy my footfest. The first match was Stranraer v Spartans in the fourth tier of Scottish football. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a soft spot for Stranraer FC ever since I caught a game of theirs in the late 1970s when I saw the floodlights on in the ground when I was on a ferry coming back from Larne in Northern Ireland and managed to watch the game.

This was an entertaining game, one that Spartans should have won. But they missed – I don’t know how many sitters they missed – and Stranraer made the most of one of the few chances that came their way, winning 1-0.

The next game was the end of the Cambian United v Y Fflint game that I’d part-watched yesterday. This was a very equal match that Y Fflint didn’t deserve to lose, but when the side from the Rhondda Valley won a penalty in the eighty-fifth minute, then that was that.

After that, it was the turn of Llandudno v Trefynnon. Llandudno, a newly-promoted team this season, were leading the league, mainly because they’d played a couple of teams that were not expected to figure highly in the League’s championship order, and Holywell were one of the newly-promoted teams that were having a wretched time of it right now.

This was one of those games where, again, not much skill was involved. But it was played at a hundred miles per hour from one end to the other, and I was totally exhausted just watching it. Llandudno opened the scoring, and Trefynnon equalised, but as it was coming up to half-time, Trefynnon had a player sent off.

They held out until almost the final whistle, conceding two goals in quick succession, but a 3-1 victory was rather flattering to Llandudno, even if one of the goals was scored by this site’s hero, veteran striker Mark Cadwallader.

There were plenty of other things to do later, but I didn’t feel much like doing them. Not even making bread. I’ll pull half a frozen loaf out of the freezer when I need it. Instead, I did some things that I enjoy doing, which is nice for once.

There was no tea tonight either. I had half a dozen biscuits and the last of those pineapple chunks with a citron sorbet. And how nice was that?

So now that I’ve written my notes, I’m off to bed, hoping for a decent sleep for once and that the decision to deprive myself of two means, tonight and last night, goes towards doing something about this weight.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about dinosaurs … "well, one of us has" – ed … we were outside the exposition when a dinosaur wearing a crown came out.
"Come and visit our prectacle" it said. "It’s wonderful, magnificent, brilliant, superb, excellent, exciting …"
As Madame Dinosaur was stading next to us, I turned to her and asked "What kind of dinosaur is that?"
"That? It’s a Thesaurus rex"

Saturday 15th August 2026 – ANOTHER DESPERATE DAY …

… at dialysis. Once more, the measure was set to go off the scale with excess weight that I seem to have gained since Thursday, but apparently, wiser counsels prevailed. Someone had made an error in the counting.

An error in the counting was the last thing that I needed, to be honest. Especially after the night that I had had. I was in bed later than I hoped, and that’s all that I remember from there. I awoke at some ungodly time – I’ve no idea what time because I couldn’t be bothered to look. But it was as the direct result of yet another extreme coughing fit.

At some point, I must have gone to sleep again because when I awoke, at 04:35, I was actually sitting on the edge of the bed as I usually do when I’m about to get up. So what had happened there? Was it yet another phantom alarm call that had gone off?

Not that it mattered because I was soon back to sleep yet again. And the next time that I awoke, it was 06:20 and quite dark.

When the alarm finally went off, at 06:29, I was already sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor, claiming an early start.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and scrub-up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today at dialysis, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

I was running the taxis again last night. I was sitting at home while the others were out working when the ‘phone rang, so I answered it. It was a guy asking me if we hired out cars by the day. I replied that we did, but only with a driver. He said that that was exactly how he wanted it, and what would be the charge? I wanted to know what kind of car and what work he’d be doing. He told me that it was maybe 350 miles, and an ordinary car like a Sierra would be fine. I told him that I’d have to ring him back, because what I’d do for a trip like that is to actually hire a car myself and go in that. There was a place in Stoke-on-Trent where you could hire second-hand cars. I went back down to the office and asked the girl at the ‘phone if she had put it through to me. She replied that she did. And she was busy trying to prepare another girl ready to go out. She said that she was having to go to some town in the Czech Republic to pick up a woman and bring her back. I said that if I had known that we had this job, I would have hired a car for that too. I went outside to help her prepare the car, and I told her how jealous she was that she was going on this, so she immediately said “do you want to go?”. (I’d missed out a bit here because she didn’t even know where this town was, so I told her that you get to Prague and then you keep on going towards Russia). I’d told her how jealous I was, so she immediately smiled and asked “would you like to do it?”. I thought “why not?”. I prepared one of the older Cortinas for it. I needed the lead for the SatNav and a few other bits and pieces, but no one could find the lead, so I went into my house, and it was on my desk in the office. I kept on having to run back and forth to find different things like the GPS, the telephone holder, all of that kind of thing. I kept on thinking to myself that one day soon, I’ll be able to set off if I’m not careful, because the delay in not finding things and people not being able to find them, and I was having to come back out to the car to look, it was taking forever.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we were in or near the Czech Republic the other day in another dream, the one involving the three white Volvo 144 estates It seems to be starting to become a regular theme with me. I wish that I knew why. It sounds really exciting to me.

But it’s been ages since we’ve had any dreams involving my indecision. They used to be regular, recurring themes at one time, but they seem to have disappeared, except for tonight.

Stoke on Trent was also a long-running theme at one time, but all of that had long gone too. But the taxis, they are always here with whatever weird kind of job they bring.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up today – her last day for three weeks, so no wonder she’s as pleased as punch. I wished her a really good break and holiday in Corsica.

After she left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

He’s been behaving himself again today, which is just as well. But it’s really boring for me when there’s nothing about his book to criticise.

Back in here afterwards, I had my notes from yesterday to type up. That took me longer than I was anticipating because of these attacks of tiredness that I’m having. But once they were finished and on line and everything else that I needed to do this morning had been done, I closed my eyes for a while.

It was 11:40 when I awoke, and that left me with twenty minutes to start a new project, and then I went into the living room to organise myself for dialysis.

As well as that, there was my disgusting drink and my midday medication to sort out too. My cleaner turned up as usual to sort out the anaesthetic on my arm, and once she had gone, I had to wait for the ambulance.

Mind you, I didn’t have to wait for too long. As my cleaner was walking out to the street, the taxi pulled up, fifteen minutes early, so she showed him where to go. He hadn’t been to pick me up for a while, and he was still thinking that I lived upstairs.

He was early because there was Madame Dinosaur to pick up, so I showed him how to get there. It’s complicated if you don’t know, and if you follow your satnav, you’ll certainly end up miles off your route.

Once Madame Dinosaur was safely on board, we set off in the queues of traffic to Avranches. And as we passed through the village of La Havaudière, at the bottom of the steep dip, the car full of tourists in front of us was “flashed” by the secret radar. The radar there must be bringing in a fortune.

We were early arriving in Avranches, which suits me fine because the quicker I start, the quicker I finish and the quicker I come home – that is, if I arrive at 01:30 and they begin the process of connecting me up BEFORE blasted 14:20.

There was football on the internet for me to watch this afternoon thanks to the FAW negotiating with BBC Wales Sport. This week’s Saturday afternoon match was Y Barri v Cardiff Metro, so I settled down in my hospital bed and made myself comfortable while I watched it.

This was an excellent match played with plenty of skill, and I quite enjoyed it. Y Barri were clearly on top, but we had to wait until the eightieth minute for the only goal of the game. And then, it almost didn’t happen.

Y Barri were awarded a penalty which Jack Shaw took. Former Port Vale keeper Aaron Davies saved it but couldn’t hang on. Shaw picked up the loose ball and hammered it towards the net. Again, the keeper got a hand to it but couldn’t hang on, and Daniel Smith, following up, finally headed it home.

After it had finished, I watched some more of the Cambrian United v Flint game from last week’s matches until it was time to unplug me from my machine. My driver was waiting for me when I went outside, and we would have been home quite early had it not been for all of the holidaymakers on the road.

One thing about dialysis, though, is this – can anyone remember the last time a doctor came to see me? I can’t. It must be a good three weeks and more since a doctor has examined me.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me when I returned. She helped me into the apartment, sat me in a chair and bunged a disgusting drink into my hands.

After she left, there was football on the internet yet again, this time Sgorio’s broadcast of the Caernarfon v Colwyn Bay game.

Compared to the earlier game, this one was nothing but a slogging midfield brawl with very few moments of real skill. Caernarfon ended up as winners 3-0, but that was practically by default as Colwyn Bay offered nothing up front. Louid Robles had an excellent header and Matty Hill had a powerful shot at goal, but that’s all that I remember.

Yesterday, regular readers of this rubbish will recall the goal that Rhydaman almost scored when time seemed to stand still for a few moments. This evening, it happened again. The entire Colwyn Bay defence and most of Caernarfon’s attack stood frozen in time as Danny Gosset walked through them and drove a good shot into the net, putting his team 1-0 up.

After that, I made a start on my notes, but the heat, the punishing session at dialysis and the bad night yesterday had taken their toll. Round about 21:30, I called it a night and collapsed into bed, having posted on line what I’d written to date. I’ll finish the rest off tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about time standing still … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember a conversation that I overheard in the USA a few years ago.
"I don’t understand these time zones" said one man. "I’ve just come from Europe and today, it’s today there, but in Australia it’s tomorrow."
"You should worry" said the other. "Over here in the USA it’s still round about 1750"

Friday 14th August 2026 – WHAT A BIZARRE …

… night that was last night!

It was one of those strange nights where nothing seemed real at all, and I don’t have a clue about what was going on.

Although I wasn’t feeling much like it, I actually managed to finish and post on line my notes from yesterday. I don’t know where I found that strength and energy, that’s for sure. And after the notes, I had a few things to do. It can’t have been much short of midnight by the time that I crawled into bed.

Once in bed, I remember nothing at all about going to sleep. Usually, I have some kind of idea as to whether I went to sleep quickly or whether it took a long time, but not last night.

Whatever it was, it can’t have been for long. I awoke because of another mega-coughing fit, but I couldn’t be bothered to check the time, so I’ve no idea what time it was. And then after that, I had no idea what was going on. I know that I coughed a lot, but whether that was in a dream or not, I don’t know

In the past, there have been a few evenings and nights where I was never really sure of when I was awake or when I was asleep, and this one was certainly one of the best examples of that.

One thing that I do know for sure is that I had another one of these dramatic awakenings when I sit bolt upright. Although it was dark, I checked the time and found it to be 06:19. Still dark! How times have changed over the last four weeks. Anyway, I took full advantage of this and had my feet firmly on the floor of my bedroom when the alarm went off at 06:29 so that I could claim an early start.

Having my feet on the floor is one thing, being up and about is something else completely different. It took me quite a while to negotiate my way into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day. But eventually I was washed and dressed, and I came back here to listen to the dictaphone to see what had happened during the night.

I was in the middle of Crewe with a friend of mine, and we were looking around at the shops. I was saying that when you live here all the time, you don’t notice the changes. Gradually, one shop moves, another one closes down, something takes over, and it keeps on going like that. But if, like me, you’ve been away from Crewe for well over thirty years, I immediately notice the difference. We were discussing this, and there were these two men standing nearby us, tall, blond and in raincoats drinking coffee. I happened to mention something about Eastern Europe, so this guy stuck a coffee in my hand, one of these two guys, and a piece of money. I looked at it, and at first I thought that it was Croatia, but when I looked closer, it was Poland. Anyway, these two guys had cleared off. The coffee that he gave me was disgusting, and I don’t know how anyone could drink it. Anyway, we carried on walking and we bumped into these two guys again. They told us that they had heard us talking about Eastern Europe, and one guy seemed to fasten onto me and the other seemed to fasten onto my friend. The one with me said “come with me,” so I followed him and we had a chat about different things and ended up in the police station. We went up several flights of stairs and at the top under the eaves were a few bedrooms. He asked me what I thought about this and I replied “it’s a little more comfortable than a cell, isn’t it?”. He had loads of interesting books and papers, and I was having a read of some of them. Then, he dropped the coffee that he had made all over his most important papers and had to run off downstairs with this paper to try to save it. Then we went back out onto the streets where he met a few people whom he knew and said “hello” to them. We were just walking around and walking around until we were out on the edge of the town. Then he said “come and meet my mother” so we went back into town and met the people to whom we’d been talking just now. He asked one “is she in?” and this woman replied “yes”, so he went into a building and I followed him, and we went up these creaking, rickety stairs, each stair having a huge flight to it. It was more like mountaineering than climbing stairs. He just walked into this dingy room where this little old lady was sitting. I followed in, and this woman had this old black cat. I stroked the cat and picked her up, and I began to talk to the woman about my cats.

The first part of the dream is certainly true. For someone who knew the town intimately after all these years as a taxi driver, every time I see a photograph of the town, I have to look it up to see where it is. Crewe is nothing at all like I remember it.

As for the two guys, even in the dream, they are the type of people who stand out a mile in any crowd and have “Police” written all over them. I wonder what their interest in my friend and me might have been.

And even now, I can see the interior of this dingy building, with all of the notices written by disgruntled tenants talking about the dangers of living in this building, the stairs being just one. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I first came to Granville in 2017, I stayed for a week in a house that had stairs like that.

The British Government was planning on taking some kind of action against another country for some reason and was busy out there trying to drum up allies. I was with a friend of mine and we were having a chat about this, noticing that not a single country had rallied round to whatever cause it was that the UK was trying to fight, and the battleship that they had sent out to sea in an effort to make some kind of spectacle to attract the people was just sitting there in the open doom, I think. Then, it was announced that the Queen was going to hold a garden party at Windsor Castle on one of the days that this marine event was going to take place, so everyone was far too busy laughing at the complete failure of the British to actually go ahead and do something concrete about this

This story is somewhat along the lines of a discussion that I was having yesterday with the taxi driver who brought me home. Regardless of your feelings about Brexit (and mine are still as strong as they were in 2016), the days of the independent nation-state are long over. With aggressive globalisation and selfish power-grabs, you have to be part of a powerful economic alliance to survive these days, or the big boys will pick you off one by one.

I know that we were in our car planning to go somewhere, and we set out. My friend noticed that we had no warning lights whatsoever and wondered what else in the electrical circuit had broken down. I wanted to push on and get to where we were going, but he insisted on stopping to try to find out what this electrical problem was and to see whether we could repair it.

This story could relate to almost anything that I’ve ever done in the past involving motor vehicles. Back in the old days when things weren’t as strict as they are these days, I shaved all kinds of corners off the road traffic regulations and done other things that I wouldn’t even dream of doing these days

Isabelle the Nurse turned up to see to my legs and feet. She’d been doing her accounts last night because tomorrow is her last working day this month, and she needed my health card. However, because my 100% disability ran out at the end of July, the card was no longer valid. She asked me to have my cleaner sorted out today and she’d deal with my card tomorrow.

After she left, I went to make my breakfast, and while eating, I read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Once again, apart from banging the drum for “England”, he’s steering well-clear of controversy today. That’s a shame, because I’ll have nothing to moan about.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then suddenly, I awoke and saw that it was 11:05. I must have dropped off to sleep without even realising it, and I’d been gone for about an hour. With the wretched night that I’d had last night, it’s no surprise that I’d gone to sleep again. However, it looks as if we’re having a return to the bad old days of pre-dialysis when I’d go off for an impromptu and unexpected sleep at the drop of a hat at any old time of day.

Once I was awake, I carried on with what I was doing, and when I’d finished, I attacked the radio notes, and despite the usual interruptions of a disgusting drink and midday medication period and the arrival of my friendly neighbourhood cleaner to do her stuff, not only had I managed to finish and have the notes ready for preparation, but I’d also found some time to sort out the next programme too.

The next programme after the one I did today is going to be a concert. I only have an hour for my radio programmes, and for this concert, I have almost two hours’ worth of music and introduction, and I need to cut it down to about fifty-eight minutes so there will be room for my commentary on the front.

So far, after careful snipping and editing, I’ve got it down to about fifty-eight minutes and fourteen seconds, and it will end up even smaller than that once I segue the five pieces of music that I have selected.

Then it was teatime, and the usual sausage, chips and baked beans with black pepper and cheese, followed by two of my slices of home-made fruit bread

When the tea things were cleared and washed away, it was time for the football. Airbus UK Broughton v Rhydaman. These two promoted sides are having very different fortunes in the JD Cymru League. Airbus seems to be doing OK – they’ve already beaten their points tally and number of victories from when they were in the league the last time a few years ago. Rhydaman, on the other hand, are struggling near the foot of the table with just one point.

This was another game played at a frenetic place where I ended up out of breath just watching it. And Airbus had a lovely spell of ten minutes, shortly before the half-time whistle, that I really enjoyed watching.

All in all, Airbus won 2-0, but that doesn’t reflect their superiority. They had two goals disallowed for offside and hit the woodwork three times as well.

Rhydaman also had a glorious opportunity. An attacker, just outside the penalty area, was in possession of the ball when the Airbus defence just froze. It looked as if the attacker had a week to make up his mind what to do with the ball and, in the end, his shot hit the woodwork with a shot so loud that you could hear it here in the apartment without the aid of a TV camera.

Even better, there are two live football matches to be broadcast tomorrow. Y Barri v Cardiff Metro – a win for the Mets will see them back on top of the table – and Caernarfon Town v Colwyn Bay. That game last season attracted the fifth-highest league crowd ever, and I imagine (or hope) that it will be another bumper crowd with the two best-supported teams in the league, only an hour or so away from each other, facing off against each other.

When everything had finished, it was 23:15, so later than usual, I headed for the hills. Here’s hoping that I can have a decent sleep for once.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about policemen … "well, one of us has" – ed … two policemen were called to investigate a shooting.
Shortly afterwards, they radioed back to the station "some old woman here has just shot her husband. Apparently he walked on the kitchen floor while she was cleaning it"
"Have you arrested her?" asked the dispatcher.
"No" replied the policeman.
"Why not?"
"The kitchen floor’s still wet"

Thursday 13th August 2026 – THIS PHANTOM ALARM …

… thing is doing its job, right enough. It awoke me again this morning, and not once, would you believe, but TWICE I’ve no idea where it’s coming from or what it’s all about, but I suppose that I’ll have to just get on with it. Or, as I dictated at some weird time of morning –

This was another occasion where I was awoken by a phantom alarm. I actually went to switch it off before I realised. I’ve no idea what time, because I didn’t look, but it was certainly early in the morning rather than later, that’s for sure.

And then, to cap it all, a second phantom alarm went off just a couple of minutes before the real alarm did.

All of that was rather a shame because I needed all the sleep I could get. I crashed out well and truly last night, as I explained, and I still hadn’t returned to the Land of the Living when I crawled into bed. And although I was asleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for all that long before the “alarm” went off.

Once I realised that it was a phantom alarm, I went back to bed, but I couldn’t manage to go back to sleep. Although I must have done so at some point because of the second “phantom” alarm that also awoke me.

When the real alarm went off, I managed, after some not-inconsiderable effort, to raise myself from the Dead and head into the bathroom to organise myself. I had a good scrub-up and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I came back in here.

The first thing that I noticed was the temperature. Outside, at not quite 07:00, it was twenty-six degrees Celsius. Inside my bedroom, it was a mere twenty-five degrees centigrade. I opened the window and switched on the electric fan.

The first job, as usual, was to transcribe the dictaphone notes, which you have read just now, and then there were a few other things to do while I waited for Isabelle the Nurse to arrive. She was scorching already, especially as yesterday afternoon she’d decided to do her round on her bike. Granville isn’t the ideal town to go bike-riding, even at the best of times. It’s all uphill and down dale with no respite.

After she left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Today, he’s steering clear of controversy, although I must admit to not having taken very much notice because, as usual, I was dragged up several side alleys by remarks that he had made and which I thought needed a good deal of research.

Back in here, there were a few things to do and then I had to finish off the notes from yesterday. And once that was done, I closed my eyes for a little while and had a relax. I awoke at 11:40 thinking to myself “I really earned that”.

At midday, I went to prepare myself for dialysis, and my cleaner came around to apply the anaesthetic to my arm.

After she left, I waited for my taxi, and I didn’t have to wait too long either. She was early today, mainly due to the fact that we had Mrs Dinosaur to pick up. There was also a woman at the aqua-gym at St Pair, so it was a full car heading to Avranches.

We arrived early, which suited me fine, and what suited me even finer was that I was in one of the rooms nearest the front door. I was plugged in quite quickly too, but once more there was an excess of liquid to extract. Not very much more, so I just told the nurse that seeing as I was early, I’d stay for an extra fifteen minutes.

That seemed to work, but once more, we ended up with yet another world-record low blood pressure – a mere 6.3 over 4. This is becoming crazy.

Once I was plugged in, I watched the rest of the Cambrian United v Llansawel game. It ended up 1-1, and that was probably a fair result.

One thing that I’ve noticed though in the games at Rhydaman, Trefelin and Cambrian United is that we have proper old-time football fans, singing, chanting and hurling abuse at the opposition players throughout the whole ninety minutes, something that you rarely see these days now that the insistence on all-seater stadia has tranquillised the fans. I mean, since when has “polite applause” ever been any part of any football match?

In 2013, Trabzonspor winger Volkan Şen burst into tears and walked off the field after being on the receiving end of some abuse. But I’ll tell you what, and that is that I would go onto a football field and let the fans hurl as much abuse as they like at me for ninety minutes for just a quarter of what these players are being paid. After all, I used to be married, so I’m used to it.

The game that I saw afterwards was twenty minutes or so of Y Fflint v Y Barri. At the moment, it’s 1-0 to Y Barri so we’ll have to see how this match unfolds.

When I was finished, they unplugged me quite quickly, and my taxi was already waiting for me. It was a very interesting driver whom I hadn’t had before, and we had a good chat on the way home.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me, and she helped me into the apartment, and I needed it. I flaked out in a chair, and she passed me a disgusting drink to cheer me up.

After she left, I vegetated for a while and then came in here. I couldn’t face any food this evening. While I was doing a few things, I was chatting to a couple of friends on the internet, and now that my notes are finished for the night, I’m off to bed. I need all the beauty sleep I can get.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about chatting to my friends … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of the conversations concerned a rather strange and weird statue that he had bought recently.
"Somehow, some strange things attract you like that" I said.
"Exactly" replied my friend
"Yes, I often wondered why Nerina married me"

Wednesday 12th August 2026 – WE HAVE HAD …

… a partial solar eclipse here this evening.

Only a partial one, though. I reckon that the sun was about half-obscured by the moon, nothing like the total eclipse in 1999 that regular readers of this rubbish in an earlier version will recall that we went to see and photograph.

For many people, this eclipse today was a mind-blowing event, but to me and presumably everyone who was with us for those couple of days, it was a disappointment compared to 1999.

And seeing as we have been talking about disappointments … "well, one of us has" – ed … last night was something of a disappointment too. I was in bed later than I would have liked to have been, and it took a few minutes to go off to sleep while I sucked my menthol and eucalyptus sweet. And it wasn’t long before I awoke, although I have no idea of what time it was. I simply didn’t look.

What awoke me was another fit of coughing, and it carried on after I awoke. But then I remembered the second menthol and eucalyptus sweet, so I put that in my mouth. At that point, I began to cough, and, would you believe, I swallowed my sweet. That was a tragedy.

With nothing else better to do, I just lay there, trying my best to find a comfortable position, and that’s how I stayed until the alarm went off. It took me, as usual, a good few minutes to find the courage to stand up, but eventually I was in the bathroom sorting myself out.

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

I was with Seren and we were on the high school playing fields, and Vivienne was there. The three of us were watching a hockey game that was taking place. We noticed that one of the girls—in fact, a couple of girls — was not really of the same standard as a few of the others. One of them was the left-wing attack. At half-time, the coach came over to us and asked Seren if she wanted to play for the second half. She went onto the field when they started again, and she really did make quite a difference to her side once she was on there. When they finished, we decided that we’d head for home and have something to eat.

This is another one of those dreams that has a story behind it, but it’s a story that, right now, the World is not ready to hear. It’s something that is quite concurrent.

I’ve no idea why, but I can still see the ground even now. And it wasn’t the playing field at Buchan Grove as I expected it to be and where I once went as our school’s observer to watch our Grammar School girls’ team in a hockey tournament in 1972, but the playing fields at Shavington County Primary School where I spent six years and I didn’t even get time off for good behaviour.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual. She was preparing herself for an inspection of some kind of food hall somewhere, and she described some of the things that she needed to do. I decided that I’d let her get on with it, without involving me.

After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

And here we go yet again. He tells us that "in Normandy, as we shall see presently, English ideas probably prevailed, as was but natural, to a considerable extent."

Much as I hate doing it, I shall have to remind him that in the period about which we are talking, the Norman Conquest of England was quite a recent event, and thus it would seem to me that it was the Normans who brought over the ideas to England, rather than the other way around.

When he’s talking about various French cathedrals, he tells us that "we cannot fail to consider them either as direct imitations of English structures or at least as the working of a common element in the Norman mind on both sides of the water."

After breakfast, I came back in here. Outside it was already twenty-four degrees, and it was pretty much that in here. I made sure that the windows in here and the living room were fully open before I started work.

There were several things that needed doing so I did them to get them out of the way, and then I started on the notes from yesterday. They took longer than they ought to have done too, basically because, once more, these waves of sleep washed over me several times. Although I managed to stay awake and avoid crashing head-first into the desk like yesterday, there certainly were periods where my concentration disappeared completely.

Having finally finished the notes and posted them online, I began to think about the radio programme. There were still three or four pieces of music that I needed to find, so I spent more than just a little while hunting them down. And when I had everything that I needed, I chose the songs, reformatted and re-edited them.

Once they were all ready, I paired them and segued them. There was even time to start to write the notes before I knocked off for tea. That was a busy afternoon, that was. But, at least, the menthol and eucalyptus sweets had some effect on the cough, and I shall try them again.

During tea, which was rice with veg and a taco roll followed by pineapple and ice cream, it was gradually going darker and darker, and the sky was full of this grey-green light. It didn’t go completely dark as it had in 1999, which was a shame, but you could see that something unusual was happening. When I was going back into my bedroom to carry on work, one of my neighbours was just outside my window with his camera, on his way to find a good spec.

We had a good chat for about ten minutes, and he asked me if I would like to come outside for a view of the eclipse. He offered to help me. However, I declined because my bedroom is pretty well orientated. I only have to stick my head out of the window and I can see the sun setting over the sea.

And that’s what I did. And it was really bright, so I only looked for a second or two. But squinting my eyes, I could see the moon half-obscuring the sun, not completely as in 1999. So having seen it, I could carry on working. As I said earlier, I’m not going to celebrate this eclipse like we did the one in 1999. That really was something special

Back in here, there were a few things to finish off, and then I started to write the notes for the day. However, I’m not quite sure what happened, but after about half an hour or so, I seemed to have ground to a halt, and the next thing that I knew, I was sitting in my chair with the work unfinished and it was 22:15. I must have crashed out for an hour at least.

Once I awoke, I was in no mood to carry on with my work. I was wasted. And so I went to take my medication, rescue a few more menthol and eucalyptus sweets for the night, brush my teeth and prepare myself for bed. I’m not doing anything else tonight.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about swallowing … "well, one of us has" – ed … the film CARRY ON COLUMBUS received a few stinking reviews when it was released.

Anyway, Carry on Columbus received some stinking reviews when it first came out, but, funnily enough, it’s actually one of my favourites.
One of the best exchanges in the film is when one of the young girls was leaning over the deck rails looking at the sharks in the water.
"I’d be careful there, miss" said one of the passing seamen. "They’ll eat you if you fall in that water."
"Would they swallow me whole?" she asks out of interest.
"I don’t think so" replied the man. "I believe that they spit that out."

Tuesday 11th August 2026 – FOR A LITTLE …

… while, things seemed to be going better today than they had been yesterday, not that that was ever likely to be difficult.

So having abandoned my notes last night, I was in bed by 22:00 or thereabouts, but it took an absolute age to go off to sleep, despite how tired I was feeling. And once I was finally asleep, it wasn’t for long. I’ve no idea what time I awoke, but the car park light was still on, so it was before 02:30.

Once awake, I lay there in a daze, drifting in and out of sleep from time to time and not being absolutely sure of which was which.

When the alarm went off, I was on my way to pick up an old American schoolbus so that I could start doing my round of delivering alcohol now that Prohibition has ended. But I didn’t get very far into that before the alarm awoke me.

A friend of mine, Rhys, who is a regular reader of this rubbish, actually owns an old school bus that he is slowly converting into a mobile home. And appropriately, his “day job” is driving a school bus for his local education authority in South Carolina, not that Prohibition figures all that much in whatever he does.

At that moment, I was feeling rather wretched, and as usual, it took me a while to summon up the energy to leave the bed and head into the bathroom. And having spent a lot of time sorting myself out in the bathroom, I came back in here to see what else might be on the dictaphone.

Some friends from school and I had decided that we’d go out for a Christmas meal, so someone had booked eight or nine places at this kind-of restaurant place. I remember going there last year for a Christmas meal, and it wasn’t very satisfactory, mainly because the menu wasn’t properly prepared and there were bits here, bits there and bits somewhere else, so I thought that this evening, I’d go to have a look at the menu. One of my friends came in with me, and there was another one waiting by the door for someone else. So we went to look at this menu, and sure enough, the twenty-second of the month, the menu still hadn’t been properly prepared. I was having to try to argue with the staff about whether “this” would be available on Christmas Day or whether “that” would be available and what other options they would have for someone whose diet is pretty restricting. But this restaurant was one of these ones that was always in the dark and gloomy, and it’s very upmarket with a pub bar right in the centre of the room. They are trying their best to run it as a pub and restaurant, but it’s going to be difficult to try to combine the two.

Where this restaurant is situated, I have no idea. It doesn’t ring any kind of bell with me. However, I have been to plenty of pubs and restaurants where hasty recruiting, crammed venues and an excess of clients, followed by a “certain group” of kids from our school who were determined to spike the enjoyment of as many people as possible, led to unsatisfactory Christmas meals.

Isabelle the Nurse zoomed in, and I told her about the confusion yesterday at the dialysis centre. She was frankly appalled by the laxity over the question of my weight. But then again, she’s a former accident and emergency nurse, so the rules about recording medication, etc., are obviously much more strict there.

After she left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Well, once more, I actually didn’t. I was again caught short and ended up reading page after page of research. Not that it brought me much nearer what I was hoping to find, but I hoped that I’d be making progress somehow, somewhere.

Back in here, there were the usual things that needed doing, and they took some time today. And then, when they were out of the way, I could start to make my plans for this radio programme.

One thing that I needed was some music, so I had to search in all the likely and then the unlikely places on the internet until I found it. And that took hours. Not in the least because between about 11:50 and 13:00, I crashed out completely and definitively.

Even worse, ten minutes later, I crashed out again, and my face slammed right into the keyboard and my desk. And how that hurt! But at least the flow of adrenaline that resulted from the crash seemed to awaken me, and I carried on from there.

One thing that I learned was that either yesterday or the day before, not once but twice, my web pages have been used as a reference to answer a question in ChatGPT. I forget now how many times that has happened, but it seems that my tactic of introducing well-known but long-forgotten facts from old books into the internet seems to be paying off.

At 14:00 I had a visitor. Madame la Présidente of the Residents’ Committee came to see me. Apparently she’s put her apartment up for sale and is moving to St Nazaire to be near her family. That’s a shame because she’s actually quite nice and I can’t ever thank her enough for tipping me the wink about this apartment coming up for sale. I was really grateful for her help.

She brought me some pineapple, which was nice of her, and she stayed for about an hour or so while we chatted about her move, life in this building, the new occupiers we’ve had these last few months, etc.

After she left, my faithful cleaner came down to do her stuff. First thing that she did, though, was to chase me into the shower. Showering these days is much easier than it used to be. Once she’s organised the fittings, etc., I can go in and come out of the shower on my own. I’ve managed that now for the last three or four showers.

Interestingly, the other times that I’ve come out of the shower, I’ve had to come out backwards. Today, though, without even thinking about it, I came out forwards and even dried myself standing up, without having to sit on a chair.

After my cleaner left, I went into the kitchen to make two bread rolls and then came back in here to carry on.

At teatime today, I had the other half of my broccoli stalk soup from last week, with those tiny pasta elbows and my two piping hot fresh bread rolls. And as usual, it was absolutely delicious. I really shall have to make some more at some point, although I need to start eating the florets. I seem to have gathered quite a mountain of those over a period of time.

Having been given some pineapple earlier, for pudding I had pineapple with homemade ice cream. And that was what I call ‘really delicious’ too. I’m hoping that it will be just as nice tomorrow evening when I can have a second helping.

After tea, I washed up and then came back in here to do some more work, and then I began to write my notes. I’d done about half an hour, I suppose, and then the next thing that I remember was that it was 22:15. I’d crashed out in my chair yet again.

When I looked at what I had written, it seemed to degenerate towards the end, and I was typing all kinds of nonsense that bore no resemblance to what had gone on. It was full of spelling mistakes and typing errors too. That was when I decided to delete whatever didn’t look right, post the rest online and then clear off to bed.

Falling asleep on the porcelain horse didn’t help much either, so it was quite late when I finally crawled into bed – much later than I’d been hoping. I’ll never catch up on my beauty sleep like this.

One interesting thing, though, was that regular readers of this rubbish will recall a few days ago that I wrote about menthol and eucalyptus. While I was rummaging around in the drawers in the kitchen earlier today, I came across a couple of packets of menthol and eucalyptus sweets that I bought years ago from LIDL.

When I went to bed tonight, I opened a packet and took a couple with me to bed. Once I was in bed, I put one of the sweets in my mouth and sucked it for what seemed like ages. And to my surprise, my coughing immediately subsided. This is something worth knowing and remembering.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about artificial intelligence and ChatGPT … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’ve been confusing my own chatbot again. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … these chatbots have absolutely no sense of humour.
Last night, I asked my chatbot "what’s the difference between Nigel Garbage and Count Binface?"
My chatbot then set out to give me a huge list of differences, supported by evidence and links.
"No" I replied. "one is a comedy figure, a parody of a politician who has turned politics into a comedy show, who isn’t to be taken seriously and shouldn’t be allowed to stand for Parliament."
"And the other?" asked my chatbot.
"Oh, he’s a man disguised as a dustbin."

Monday 10th August 2026 – DON’T BE SURPRISED …

… if I fail to complete today’s notes before I’m forced to retire early to bed.

This afternoon, I have been to dialysis, as you might expect, and the nurse who dealt with me is one of the longest-serving nurses there. But she’s one of these “minimalist” people who does as little as she possibly can while still completing her assigned tasks. It’s quite true that her approach can save an awful lot of time, and for that, it should be applauded. However, it also leaves room for some glaring errors, and we’ve had one of those today.

And for a change, my luck was well and truly in, so I’m not complaining in the least. Far from it.

Last night was difficult, though. I was hours late finishing off what needed finishing, and it was well after midnight when I finished letting it all hang out and crawled into bed.

For some reason, it was really difficult to go to sleep, and when I finally did, it wasn’t for long, because at about 01:20, I was wide awake again. And there I was for a few hours too before I finally managed to go off to sleep.

When I awoke next time, I wondered what time it was. I thought that I’d better go and have a look, but just at that moment, the alarm beat me to it. It took a few minutes as usual to bring myself round into the Land of the Living, and then I headed off to the bathroom for a good scrub-up and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today. I have to do my best to look pretty, even if I don’t feel like it.

Back in here, I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe so that I could find out what’s been going on during the night.

We were doing some renovation work on a hospital. The original builder had not done a very good job at all. There were quite a few early mediaeval pieces of sculpture on show, and when we measured the dates with the periods, it seemed that there was plenty of ancient British craftsmanship going on between 375 AD and 450 AD. But when we wanted to know where this had come from, we saw that a message was posted on his page saying that it just came from various research following an investigation of the WORKS OF BEDE, which was no help at all. But then we were there in the afternoon, trying to take this wheel off this Land Rover, and he drove by, extremely closely, missing him by a couple of millimetres, I should think. We wondered if we should report him for the harassment of our diggings first.

You can see in this dream the influence of Charles Freeman’s book that we are currently reading and also my theory of ethnic cleansing by the Anglo-Saxons – about 450 AD was when the Anglo-Saxons began to arrive en masse.

There was something else about a film that we had been making, an old man and me. After a lot of time, expense and money, the film was about to see the light of day. The old man had now retired into the countryside, so I remember asking him if he was going to come up to London for the premiere or whether he was going to wait until it reached the local cinema near where he lives. He expressed some doubt or opinion as to whether the film would last until it reached any kind of cinema near him

There have been several films like that where they have underperformed so dramatically that they have been taken off general release before they have gone very far around the circuit. Probably the most famous of these is Stanley Kubrick’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.

There was a third thing about a girl who was playing football. She was right-back for some kind of team, but every time the ball came down the left flank, she would naturally gravitate towards the centre of the penalty are, which meant that out on the right wing where she had been, it was an undefended zone and the team was being cut to shreds through there

This dream is very reminiscent of a football match that I saw at the Stade Louis Dior in Granville. In this case, it was a male left-back who was being drawn inside, and just as I was discussing this with another spectator, a beautiful crossfield ball found the unmarked right-winger, who just cut inside and scored a simple goal.

Isabelle the Nurse came as usual, and she noticed my three new herb plants, now in jars of water. She was pleased that I was taking good care of them

After she left, I could make my breakfast, and while I was eating, I could read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Well, in theory I could, but I was sidetracked up yet another blind alley, looking up obscure architectural terms. Some kind of glossary and maybe even pictures would have been a really great help with this book.

Right at the very beginning of the book, he told us "The present work is not illustrated ; there was at one time an intention of adding engravings, but the idea was relinquished, as to illustrate it completely was altogether out of the question, and a partial and inadequate illustration seemed even more objectionable than none at all …. But, though a complete illustration of the work would have been highly desirable, the way in which the subject is here treated renders its loss less objectionable than it would be in a treatise of detail, or a record of existing specimens."

All I can say on this subject is "you speak for yourself, Mr Freeman. You’re the author, but I’m the reader. A five-minute sketch of, say, a polygonal abacus or a vaulted clerestory would save me hours of research".

Back in here, there were the usual things to do, including checking the radio programme that will be broadcast this week and sending it off.

And once it had gone, I began to research the next radio programme. This is going to be another difficult one to complete as, once more, I don’t have all the music that I would like to use, and again, it’s all quite obscure stuff that might take me a week or two to find.

Round about 11:40, I’d finished the first part of it, and so, as a reward, I curled up on my chair for a relax. It’s a good job that I have an alarm set for midday on dialysis days, otherwise I would still be relaxing now.

In the kitchen, I sorted out a disgusting drink and my midday medication and then began to prepare myself and my things for dialysis. My cleaner came along to fix my anaesthetic, and after a brief chat, she cleared off, so I waited for the taxi.

And waited, and waited.

While I was waiting, I’d had a good sleep, which was nice, hunched up over the table, but I couldn’t stay all afternoon like that. I rang up the taxi depot to find out where my car was, and they replied “another five minutes”. Sure enough, five minutes later, he turned up. Apparently, they had given him a whole host of local work without the slightest of ideas as to how long it takes.

He made good time down to Avranches, but in the car park there was a plant shredder busily shredding away at branches they had cut down. We had to park almost in the road, and so I had an uphill slog of fifty metres on top of the long walk that I usually have to take.

There were no aides infirmières – “nursing assistants” – to help me today, so I had to find my bed all on my own, having first stopped off at the gentleman’s restroom.

With no one about, I weighed myself and then found my bed and sorted myself out. I put my weigh ticket on the temporary table underneath the bombe de froid – “cold spray” – sorted out my computer and climbed into bed.

And this is where it all went wrong. The weight that I’d recorded includes the weight of the clothes, etc. that I’m wearing so usually, the nurse knocks off eight hundred grams for my outfit, telephone, keys, etc. Anyway, she computed her figures into the machine and said “two thousand seven hundred grams to take off today”.

“Get off”, I thought to myself. “It’s never that much!”. I went through all of the calculations that I could, and I couldn’t come up with a figure of two thousand seven hundred grams, but not having the correct information to argue, I left her to it and the machine pumping away almost flat-out at nine hundred grams per hour. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before I was in agony. It’s hard work when the machine is running almost on “max” …. "”Max” in our hero’s case is nine hundred and fifty grams per hour." – ed …

Halfway through the session, I suddenly realised what had happened. I don’t recall her, or anyone else, asking me how much to deduct for my outfit. And when I factored in this eight hundred grams, the figures made much more sense. I still didn’t say anything, though. I’ll have a good head start for Thursday as long as they don’t realise what she has done.

While I was being dialysed, I was watching some more football from the weekend.

The first match was Trefynnon v Connah’s Quay Nomads. Trefynnon, newly promoted and thrashed 6-1 on the opening day of the season, played much better today against a team tipped to be up there in the fight for the title this year. They lost 3-1, and it’s true that the Nomads played the better football, but Trefynnon kept on pushing forward and had the Nomads defence in a panic on one or two occasions.

What was interesting about this was the size of the crowd for Trefynnon’s first home game in the Premier League. Once it was announced, hordes of locals began to appear, carrying big, big carpets to be cleaned for less than half a crown.

The second game was Cambrian United v Llansawel. Another new club to the league, the team from the Rhondda Valley impressed me last week in their match against Y Barri, and I was looking to see how they would get on today. I managed to watch about fifteen or twenty minutes of it before it was time to go.

The nurse dealt with me quite quickly, but she couldn’t stay and compress me, so she found some kind of clamps that would do the job too. And they worked. And when I weighed myself, I was indeed eight hundred or so grams under my dry weight. We’ll see how this impacts the Thursday session.

My driver was waiting for me – one of my favourite drivers – and we had a good chat on the way home. My cleaner helped me into the apartment and then pushed a disgusting drink into my hands.

After she left, I made some food – a cheese salad with rice and veg which was delicious – and then came back in here.

Fighting off waves and waves of sleep, I made a start on my notes, but I couldn’t keep going. After half an hour or so, I posted online what I’d written and then went to bed. The draining of this non-existent eight hundred grams has rather flattened me.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about losing weight … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once bought a lovely new dress for Nerina, but it was two sizes to small for her, so I left her a little note – "I’d love to see you in this"
When I came home from work the next day, there was a coffin in the living room with a little note from Nerina that said "Ditto".

Sunday 9th August 2026 – THAT WAS WHAT …

… I would call “a good Sunday” – that is, once the early part of it was out of the way, because the early part of the day was nothing at all to write home about.

As I mentioned yesterday. I abandoned my work early and fell asleep at my desk, and for quite a long time too. And when I awoke, I dragged myself into bed, and that was that.

Well, that was that until about 01:25, when I awoke, thanks to another good coughing fit. And despite trying my hardest, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay there watching the clock go round and round and coughing all the time while I was doing that too. But as the day slowly started to dawn, I must have fallen asleep again, for I was awoken at about 08:40 by the arrival of Isabelle the Nurse.

She’d brought with her some cuttings of rosemary, thyme and lemon thyme, and while she was doing my legs and feet as I was lying in bed, we talked about the herbs.

After she left, it took me quite a while to leave the bed, and after I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom, it was 09:20 when I found my way into the kitchen.

The first job was to prepare my breakfast – porridge, black coffee and the last two home-made croissants. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Or, rather, I wasn’t. As usual, I found myself running up a side alley to the church at Barnack to look at the tower and steeple, and that led me on and on to several other places too. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … this was why I didn’t receive a very good grade from university – I was being continually side-tracked and spent more time learning the things that were important to me rather than the things that the examiner wanted to know.

Back in here, I had yesterday’s notes to finish off. That took longer than it ought to have done too because I was continually drifting off into that semi-consciousness when all kinds of hallucinations drifted before my eyes. However, they are online now … "the notes, not the hallucinations" – ed … for you to consult at your leisure.

Once the notes were out of the way, I had the dictaphone notes to transcribe.

I was with a former girlfriend last night, and there was something about going to hospital. And when she came back out, I built this big plastic greenhouse out of one of these kits that you buy from a DiY shop. It was absolutely impossible to anchor it to the ground with its plastic outer coating applied, so I tied two wires from front to back and two wires from side to side, and where they intersected, I dropped a row of paving slabs on it from the door to the inside, and the paving slabs held down the wire and stopped the greenhouse blowing away.

This story about my girlfriend in hospital and the plastic greenhouse and the unique method of holding it down reflects a remarkably similar situation that is currently or has recently occurred elsewhere in a different plane of existence than in a dream. However, this is yet another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.

There was something about an Indian, a young man who came round to me for some tuition in something or other, but in fact I ended up giving him some tutoring in English. There were things that he didn’t quite understand, such as “why is it ‘tutoring’ and not ‘tuting’?”. I did my best to explain and gave him a few other examples. He asked me whether it would be possible for him to come again. I thought “well, why not, if he’s keen and interested in learning?” so we agreed that this kind of tuition could continue for a couple more weeks and we’d see where we end up.

This sounds quite similar to one of the guys to whom I taught webpage design in Brussels twenty-odd years ago when all you have to worry about was HTML 5.0 and *.css. And these days, I’m still using them, with a little bit of IFRAME and JavaScript added on for good measure.

I was with a friend of mine, and we were walking around the edge of some city that I knew well. There were several big tower blocks there, so we went for a walk. One thing we found was a small cat trying to jump up to a window to climb into a house, so I went over to try to pick it up and help it, but at that moment, a woman opened the window, so I had a laugh and a joke with her and then moved on. In the shopping arcade underneath these big buildings, there were all kinds of shops that we were looking at, and we picked up one or two things from there. But round another corner was the Woolworth’s shop. I said to my friend “here’s something that I haven’t seen for years,” so he agreed, and we dug our way through the bombardment ruins and found our way into the supermarket. It was really nice and clean and small … fell asleep here … but my friend was talking at one time about us being in a hotel a while ago. It was one of these very posh places, and we’d been on a course of some kind. I’d been interviewed for something or other, so I was late returning to my table. The desserts had been cleared away, so I didn’t bother too much about that. In the end, they announced that they were wanting nominations for someone to be the hospital ambassador, I suppose, for the forthcoming year. But you can’t nominate yourself – you need six people to nominate you, so I decided to let nature take its course at that. I had a black Mk III estate, a 2000E, and I wanted to put that back on the road, so I wanted to do some work on it, but I ended up talking to two guys from the hotel. One of them wanted some documents signed, and the one who was with him, he ended up saying that my music was really great and that if anyone had any problems moving cars and leaving after the conference, they had a mechanic on site They would suspend paying the bill until the problem had been fixed. I mentioned all of this to my friend, and he told me that it was not really as simple as that. He’d had a problem with a motorbike, and what they had done was to push it off a trailer, left it for a while, started it up, told him that it was fixed and charged him €16:00. That made me go to think about if I were to advertise this car mechanics service, just explain that it was for basic things and nothing really major.

This housing estate could have been any one of a dozen housing estates around which I walked in Moscow and Leningrad when I was there with the coaches in the 1980s.

It could also be where I used to live in Brussels, where we did indeed have a little shopping centre on the ground floor of one of the blocks of flats nearby. However, there was no “Woolworths” in that shopping centre, neither in Moscow nor in Leningrad either.

The conference sounds like one of the Open University Students Association conferences, although we weren’t ever likely to be allowed to stay in an upmarket hotel. Not on your Nellie!

Once everything else was out of the way, there was football. I had the match from yesterday to watch, and when I went to restart it, I found that I’d only just about managed to watch half an hour of it, so I settled down for a long session.

There’s no doubt that Colwyn Bay played the prettier, more technical football, but there were plenty of nice touches from the Rhydaman players too. Rhydaman’s players were also the most aggressive, and although I’d left the match on Saturday with Colwyn Bay 2-0 up, by the time the game was over, it was 2-2 and some of the Colwyn Bay players were quite close to losing their cool.

Later on, there was a baking session. And something that I have learnt today is that my fruit bread doesn’t keep for much longer than a week. When I went to look at it today, at two weeks old, it looked as if it needed a shave, so it went the way of the west.

That meant as well as a loaf, I also had to bake more fruit bread. The two loaves that I ended up making look wonderful, both risen up like lifts. But what I’m going to have to do with the fruit bread is the same as with the ordinary loaf, and that is to cut it in half and stick one half in the freezer to pull out when the first half is eaten.

There’s no tea again tonight. I’m off to bed as soon as I’ve written these notes, backed up the computer, etc.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about herbs … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once lived in the same building as a girl who was studying for a degree in cookery.
One night she told me that her best friend had been expelled after failing her exams
"How come she failed?" I asked her.
"She had to cook a dish of fish cooked with herbs, but the examiner didn’t like it."
"Why not?"
"The examiner told her that this was neither the thyme nor the plaice for this kind of thing."

Saturday 8th August 2026 – THIS WAS ANOTHER …

… really bad day at dialysis, like all of them see to be becoming these days. More than enough things went wrong today to convince me that maybe I just ought to be doing something different. We even had a world record low blood pressure, if you think that the 68 a few months ago wasn’t low enough.

And last night, it didn’t help much either. After the football had finished, I wasn’t in the least bit tired, so despite what I had said on the previous day, I stayed up and wrote my notes, and then I put them online before finally going to bed a good few minutes after midnight.

Once in bed, I can’t remember going to sleep, and I can’t remember waking up either. It was simply a case of “why is it suddenly 03:30?”.

It wasn’t 03:30 for long because I must have gone back to sleep once more without realising it. And there I was at 06:29 when the alarm went off.

Once more, it was the usual struggle to force myself to my feet and head into the bathroom to sort myself out, but I had a good scrub-up and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

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

Round about 04:00 we had another one of these false alarm awakenings. What made me realise that it was a false alarm was waiting for the second one to go off five minutes later, but it never put in an appearance. Nevertheless, I still awoke, thinking seriously that the alarm had gone off.

This is something of which I have no recollection at all. I know that I was awake at 03:30, but I suppose that I’d gone back to sleep when this dream happened

There was some kind of tournament going on, like the Welsh Cup. The draw had been made, but a lot was being said about the fact that some teams really consisted of just one good player and ten other ordinary ones. Those clubs had named their teams after the player rather than the club, so we had to go through afterwards and find which clubs they were and change their names back, although trying to find the last one was extremely complicated, and we didn’t manage to do that until just before the kick-off.

This is something that is presumably related to the latest news coming out of the Football Association of Wales this week, something to do with the fact that in the Women’s Welsh Cup draw, no fewer than 4 clubs have been included that don’t even have a ladies’ section, never mind a ladies’ team, entered presumably by speculating fans.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, her usual chatty, cheerful self. We talked about her garden, and that too has been devastated by the drought, including some plants that her father planted in his garden to celebrate her birth.

She did, however, say that some of her herbs were still going strong, and she’s promised me a few offcuts of rosemary and thyme for my little aquaculture project.

After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Today, he has Augustus Pugin, the celebrated architect who led the “Gothic Revival” in the UK in the 1840s and 50s, firmly in his sights. "Surely then the segmental arch, which springs from the jamb at a sharp angle, is both more horizontal and less elegant than the four-centred, in which the angle is rounded off”, and the arch in the best specimens rises as gracefully and gradually as the simple pointed. Above all things it cannot be consistent in Mr. Pugin, who in his own buildings employs the segmental arch usque ad nauseam, to speak of the four-centred as a sign’of debasement. At the same time it is undeniable that the four-centred arch was in the last days of Perpendicular applied where it should not have been, just as the segmental was sometimes, though less frequently, at an earlier time."

Back in here, I had a few things to organise, but somehow, I managed to run out of time before I’d even started work. My midday reminder rang so I had to go into the other room and sort myself out with the laptop and other things that I need for dialysis, put on my shoes and sort out a disgusting drink with the midday medication.

My cleaner put in an appearance too. She applied the anaesthetic to my arm, and we had a little chat about this and that before she went back to her own apartment. I curled up in a kitchen chair, slumped over the table, and went immediately to sleep.

When the taxi arrived, ten minutes early, I was in such a deep sleep that I didn’t know where I was when I awoke … "nothing new there" – ed … and I was quite unsteady on my feet for a few minutes. My driver was a Ukrainian refugee and came to pick me up in a B-class Mercedes. The taxi company that I use has recently taken over another company in a nearby town, and this is one of their vehicles. It makes a change to travel in luxury rather than a base-model Skoda Octavia.

We had to go to pick up Mrs Dinosaur from her exhibition (even some of the taxi drivers are now referring to her as Madame Dinosaur) but even so, we were still a few minutes early. I had to wait a little while to be connected, but by 14:15 I was up and running, with the machine once more nearly on “flat-out”.

There were doctors on duty today, but while they went to talk to some of the patients, they seemed to be deliberately steering well clear of me. I wonder what it is that they don’t want to tell me. I could crack on and watch a football match that I hadn’t quite finished the other day, and then I began to watch Rhydaman v Colwyn Bay.

That was a match that I was hoping to finish today, but I crashed out long before half-time, and so that was that. But my sleep didn’t last for long. Firstly, the “low blood pressure” alarm was going off constantly and at one stage it had dropped to a new world record low of 67. And that’s with a pressure booster too. God knows what it would be like without one.

And then, we had the needle failure. It didn’t actually fail completely, but the alarm was saying that the pressure was not reaching what it was supposed to be. The nurses suspected that there was a blood clot forming in the needle and they tried everything that they could to free it, but it was back again by the time the next check was performed – and so on after that.

In the end, there was no choice but to abandon the session, and so, ten minutes before the appropriate time, with a couple of hundred millilitres of excess fluid still on board, that was that. I was hoping that at least I’d be down to my relevant dry weight, but no such luck.

My nurse unplugged me quickly, which was good, but I had to wait ten minutes for my taxi to arrive. And once it arrived, we had to go to the taxi depot to change car and driver, and so all the time that I had gained over the course of the afternoon disappeared by the time that I returned home.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment, for which I was very pleased because I wouldn’t have done it on my own. She gave me a disgusting drink and then left me to it.

Once I’d managed to find the energy, I came back in here to write my notes and maybe watch some more of the football, but it didn’t work out like that. I could feel myself becoming more and more tired and more and more ill, and soon afterwards, I gave up the struggle and posted online what I had managed to write so far.

After that, I’m not quite sure what happened. However, at something like 23:00, I awoke, curled up comfortably in my chair, and how surprised was I? I didn’t even remember falling asleep. At that point I just slid over onto the bed and fell in. I hadn’t even switched off the computer, as I discovered later.

Silly me was thinking that I was so tired that I’d fall straight asleep, but unfortunately it took me a while, and that’s something I can’t understand at all, seeing how tired I was. But in the end, I managed to go to sleep, wishing that I’d gone to bed a darn sight earlier than this.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Mercedes taxis … "well, one of us has" – ed … an old woman hopped into a Mercedes taxi. She looks at the Mercedes emblem on the bonnet and asks the driver "what’s that for"
"Well," said the driver, thinking that he can have some fun with this old lady. "that’s my sighting device. If I want to move a few pedestrians or cyclists out of my way, that’s what I use for sighting them. Watch!"
The driver swerves towards a pedestrian walking along the side of the road but at the last minute swerves away. However, he hears a loud “bang” from the back of his car.
"That sighting device of yours is rubbish" says the old lady. "We’d have missed him completely just then if I hadn’t got him with my door."

EPIC HALL

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

Category Archives: granville

Saturday 22nd August 2026 – THERE HAS BEEN …

Friday 21st August 2026 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

Thursday 20th August 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

Wednesday 19th August 2026 – I DON’T KNOW …

Tuesday 18th August 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Monday 17th August 2026 – THESE UNHAPPY, UNCERTAIN …

Sunday 16th August 2026 – IT HAS NOT …

Saturday 15th August 2026 – ANOTHER DESPERATE DAY …

Friday 14th August 2026 – WHAT A BIZARRE …

Thursday 13th August 2026 – THIS PHANTOM ALARM …

Wednesday 12th August 2026 – WE HAVE HAD …

Tuesday 11th August 2026 – FOR A LITTLE …

Monday 10th August 2026 – DON’T BE SURPRISED …

Sunday 9th August 2026 – THAT WAS WHAT …

Saturday 8th August 2026 – THIS WAS ANOTHER …