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LIVE: Thursday 5th November 2026 –
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**** REVISED ****IMPORTANT NOTICE ****
Judging by the amount of spam that I’ve received overnight, it seems that the Chrome browser version 150 has been compromised, especially when used with the Linux operating system.
Readers of this blog are therefore urged to check which browser they use, and if it’s Chrome version 150, to upgrade to the latest version or choose a different browser that isn’t based on the Chrome system.
As of 26th September, Chrome 154 has been compromised, especially when using the Linux browser. I had an enormous number of hits overnight. I recommend that anyone using Chrome switch to another browser such as Firefox, Comet or even one of the Microsoft browsers such as Edge because if Chrome is being continually compromised, I might have no other recourse but to ban Chrome from my site.
LIVE: Wednesday 4th November 2026 – YET ANOTHER DAY …
… when I haven’t accomplished anything like as much as I wanted to.
It was probably something to do with not going to bed until 01:20 – I dunno. Even though my notes from last night were comparatively short compared to how a few have been just recently, they seemed to take forever to complete, and I’ve no idea why. And then the stats needed much more work than usual because the reporting format, after about 27 years, has changed into a new layout, and it’s complicated trying to follow it round.
But anyway, I was glad to be in bed, no matter what time it was. And I actually managed, for once, to sleep right the way through until the alarm went off at 06:29. It was a shame that I wasn’t in bed earlier to make the most of it.
However, it was a very weary me who awoke when the alarm sounded, and I was extremely tempted to stay down the bed until the nurse arrived, but I can’t do things like that. I have to be up and about when the nurses come – except on Sundays.
Mind you, I’ve no idea what time it was when I finally took to my feet and headed off to unlock the door for Isabelle the Nurse when she comes, but it wasn’t early – I’ll tell you that.
Having done that, I staggered off to the bathroom to organise myself ready for the day, and then back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.
There had been some kind of medicine that had been invented or discovered. We were hoping to find people to come to us as trialists so that we could try it out on human beings, but we didn’t seem to find anyone. I was refereeing a football match later, so I took this cream or ointment or whatever it was with me and used it to bathe the knees of one or two players when they were caught out injuring someone. However, the teams weren’t happy when I heard that this was a new experimental thing and this was going to lead to some problems.
If ever there’s football involved, it’s probably due to the amount of football I’ve been watching just recently. But the new medication is interesting because, over the years, I’ve had lots of that.
However, why would it be that the player committing the foul is the one who needs the treatment? That’s rather bewildering, isn’t it? And bearing in mind all of the issues at dialysis, surely we would be using a cold spray.
Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my legs and feet. We had a little chat about nothing in particular, and then she shot off on the rest of her round, but not before telling me that I was the third of her patients so far this morning who had told her of how little sleep he’d had.
After she left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
We have left mycology now and gone on to the end-of-year meeting and presentation. But before leaving mycology, Dr Bull quotes from a book by Dr Charles Badham (deceased), a mycology expert, who says IN HIS BOOK, A TREATISE ON THE ESCULENT FUNGUSES OF ENGLAND that, speaking of the pleasure of searching for them, "I have indeed grieved, when I reflected on the straightened condition of the lower orders this year, to see pounds innumerable of extempore beef-steaks growing on our oaks in the shape of Fistulina hepatica; Agaricus fusipes to pickle, in clusters under them. Puffballs, which some of our friends have not inaptly compared to sweet bread for the rich delicacy of their unassisted flavour;" .
When I’d finished in the kitchen and dining area, there were still a few things to do, and then I came back in here to do some more work. Eventually, I managed to finish what needed doing and I could occupy myself with – firstly, to back up an old hard drive that I’d found just recently and which hadn’t backed up when I’d been going through the process not long after I’d bought this machine.
It took ages to figure out the drive, but I eventually managed to make it work, and even as we speak, it’s still working, uploading files ready for me to divide up for the various individual folders on the backup drives.
Secondly, once that was up and running, I was able to finish off the editing of the radio programme that I’d been working on yesterday.
It didn’t take long, and so I attacked two more after my disgusting drink and midday medication break. I finished one of them and that’s up and running already. The second one is almost finished and won’t take too long to be dealt with.
My faithful cleaner turned up to disturb me too, bringing in a recorded delivery letter that was waiting down at the post office. Another disturbance was for a ride on the porcelain horse, and then Rosemary called me. Rosemary and I were chatting for almost an hour today – a really sad come-down from our usual marathon sessions.
As well as all that, I was chatting to a couple of friends on the computer – just long enough to let them know that I’m still alive and kicking.
It was not long after that that it was teatime. I had pasta, veg and the last of those spinach mini-patties that I’d bought when they were on sale ages ago. When they were cooked, everything was all tossed in spicy tomato sauce, and it was totally delicious.
Another thing was finishing off the home-made ice cream with some more of the mixed fruit. Probably on Friday, if I have time, I’ll make some more of that ice cream. I have plenty of almond milk that I bought when I went with my friend to Noz a few weeks ago, and I’ll use that.
So now, having finished writing my notes, horribly late again, I’m off to bed. It’s dialysis tomorrow, of course, and I’m not looking forward to it. Not at all! Not for the least of the reasons that the promised cold spell has come upon us. It was 6°C outside when I awoke, and currently it’s 10°C outside and dropping quite quickly. On my thermometer here, it was 16°C in my room, so I’ve put the heater back on for tonight and we’ll see where we’re going once I’m awake tomorrow.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about chatting … "well, one of us has" – ed … there were two old couples sitting in a bar chatting.
"On Sunday night, we went to this really good restaurant and had a wonderful meal" said one of the men.
"What was it called?" asked the other.
"You know – I can’t remember now."
And after a few minutes –
"Ohh yes, what’s the name of the flower that has the same name as a war, and people give it to their partners on Valentine’s Day?"
"You mean a rose?" said the second man.
"Yes, that’s right" and he turns towards his wife. "What was the name of that restaurant where we went on Sunday night, Rose?"
LIVE: Tuesday 3rd November 2026 – GUESS WHO …
… is a nice, clean boy this afternoon?
That’s right. It’s not me. I’m certainly clean, but, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m certainly not nice.
And, what’s more, I have a nice, clean bed to slide into tonight. While I was in the bathroom having my usual shower, my faithful cleaner, who was in here this afternoon doing her stuff, sorted out some new bedding for me from out of the boxes under the bed. So I’m all set up.
It’s rather different than last night when I was running really late again and didn’t actually manage to achieve anything noteworthy before going to bed at a ridiculous time.
But once I was in bed, I was away with the fairies, although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine, quite quickly. There were the vaguest of memories about raising myself from the Dead at some points, despite me being well asleep in the land of Plenty of Others, but they didn’t last long, and I was soon back to sleep.
When the alarm went off, I awoke completely, and sitting on the edge of the bed, it took a month of Sundays for me to head into the living room and unlock the door for Isabelle the Nurse when she comes. I went back into the bathroom to pretty myself up and then came back in here.
I was far too busy to do much this morning. I started off with the rest of today’s notes, wading through them at quite a pace, as there were plenty to add into them this morning. And I hadn’t finished when Isabelle the Nurse breezed into the apartment, much later than usual.
She’s always late the first day after her break. That’s because she has “the touch” when it comes to injections and blood tests, so there’s always a queue of people waiting for her when she starts back after her week’s break.
While she was sorting me out, she talked about her experiences over her week off work, including her trip to St Malo to see the reported disasters, including the losses at the start of the Route du Rhum, which were horrifying, so I’m told
After she left, I went to make my breakfast of hot black coffee, toast, porridge and fruit juice for me, and while I was eating, read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
A couple of days ago, I read that the Woolhope Naturalists had made a considerable contribution to the subject of mycology, or mushrooms. A paper by Mrs Key, read to the Woolhope Club by her husband, the Reverend H Cooper Key and recorded in the report that I’m reading, is clearly the catalyst for the start of this movement. It’s only after hearing this paper that Dr Bull, who had had a longstanding interest in mycology, was inspired to take the issue to the national stage.
Back in here, rather later than I had hoped, I reviewed my Welsh homework, saved it as a *.pdf and sent it to my tutor. Then I prepared for my lesson.
The lesson itself really seemed to drag today, but the lesson went well and I was satisfied with the work that I had done in preparation. The only problem that I have is making some of it stick to my teflon brain, but that’s an impossible task.
During the break, I had some of my medication and a disgusting drink, and then raided the freezer in the bathroom. The other day, while I was ferreting around in there, I came across a packet of that frozen bean tajine that I’d made a year ago. In fact, there were two packets, but I fancied one for tea tonight, so I pulled it out of the freezer and put it in the kitchen to defrost.
After the Welsh lesson, I sorted out some clean clothes for after the shower and then finished off the notes from yesterday. If you have missed them, they are now on line for your perusal.
There were the dictaphone notes to do after my shower, but I’ll include them in here while I’m at it.
There was something about agriculture and agricultural prices, but I can’t remember anything more about that.
For some reason, whenever I think about this dream, I can see the petrol station at the Intermarché hypermarket on the outskirts of St. Pair-sur-Mer that we go past on our way to Avranches, but I’ve no idea why that vision comes into our head. I can’t think of what’s going on there.
Then I was with Nerina, and we were in London somewhere. There was something going on with someone, and we were interested in that because it was something to do with us observing them. We followed them and ended up in a strange bookshop where there was a weird exhibition. Then we carried on walking outside, and then we decided to separate at this really busy square place in London. Nerina walked off, and I found my car, which was one of these old mini-mokes. I started it up, ready to move into the traffic, and Nerina came back. She asked me lots of questions about this car – where I’d been in it, who I’d seen in it, what I’d done with it. It was very, very difficult for me to answer, but in the end, I assured her that there was nothing untoward about the car, and so we carried on.
This is much more like a dream involving Nerina and me. We quite often acted like this when we were following someone with the aim of catching them in front of reliable witnesses when we had to serve a summons on them in respect of car accidents and the like. Nerina was quite good at being a decoy.
And if she ever did see me in a strange car (and a Mini-Moke would certainly have been a strange car for me to have), she’d certainly want to know all about it.
My faithful cleaner came in round about 14:00 as usual and prepared the bathroom for me. When it was ready, she shooed me under the shower. And today’s shower was really lovely. I feel so much better afterwards, and with a clean bed to climb into, I shall regale myself tonight, that’s for sure.
After she left, I could make a start on what I had been planning to do – namely, to deal with the outstanding radio notes that I’d recorded in … gulp! … July and assemble a few radio programmes. By the time that I knocked off for tea, I’d almost finished the first one. I’ll see if I can do two more tomorrow.
Tea tonight was, as I said earlier, the bean tajine mix with couscous and vegetables. It was all completely delicious too, I have to say that. The pudding of mixed fruit and home-made chocolate and coconut ice cream was really nice too. It made a fitting end to the meal.
And now my notes are written, I’m off to bed to prepare myself for another hard day at the office … "I don’t think" – ed …
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about home-made ice cream … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends tasted my home-made ice cream and asked me where I learned to make it.
"That’s easy" I replied. "When I was little, my parents sent me to Sundae School."
LIVE: Monday 2nd November 2026 – THESE NOTES AREN’T …
… going to be finished today. And if that is the case, they aren’t likely to be completed until tomorrow afternoon.
The reason for that is that it’s my Welsh class tomorrow, and with there being a week off since the last class, due to half-term, On the way to Avranches this afternoon, Bane of Britain suddenly realised that he hadn’t done his Welsh homework. Consequently, after tea tonight, I’ve had to crack on and do it before I forget again, so now it’s extremely late, and I was exhausted before I started.
Not only that, but last night, it was after 00:30 when I finally went to bed, and I won’t be able to do yet another night like that.
Once I finally made it into bed, I was asleep fairly quickly, and although I vaguely remember waking up once or twice, it can’t have been for very long at all.
Later on, though, I heard my alarm sound. But it sounded miles away, and so I wondered if it was another phantom alarm. But I was wide awake, and it was still sounding, somewhere away in the distance, and because of my rather unique alarm sound, it can’t have been anyone else.
The ‘phone is always placed on the bedside table behind the head of the bed, so I reached for it to see exactly what was going on – but it wasn’t there! I suddenly realised that I’d left it in the pocket of my trousers last night and they were in the bathroom, so I had to leap out of bed and go as quickly as I could to turn off the alarm before it awoke everyone in the building. And that was the quickest that I’ve been out of bed for a long, long time.
When the alarm was finally switched off, I went to unlock the door ready for the nurse when he arrives, and then I went to sort myself out in the bathroom in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.
Back in here, I switched on the computer and began work. I’d actually been in a dream when the alarm went off, and although I hadn’t dictated it, I could remember quite a lot of it.
Last night, I dreamed that I was a member of the Welsh parliament, and it was my job to think of a way to cool down the housing market, and what I came up with was certainly novel. I proposed that when someone came to sell a house, the sale price should be compared with the purchase price and the date of purchase. The purchase price should be adjusted to represent the increase in the cost of living since the date of purchase, and whatever the difference between the sale price and the adjusted cost of the purchase price would be, it should be treated as investment income and taxed accordingly. Of course, there would be the cost of repairs and improvements to be taken into account too in calculating the adjusted cost of the property.
However, it was all starting to become too complicated for me to work out in a dream, so I was glad in some respects that the alarm went off to wake me up. Nevertheless, it would be a novel way of controlling house price inflation, and people spending money on new kitchens, windows or replacing a roof to keep the profits down could only benefit the economy.
There was time too to listen to the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend, to make sure that the programme was OK. And afterwards, when I was satisfied, I sent it off to the radio station for them to add into the list of programmes to be broadcast.
The nurse turned up as usual, but a little later today, and while he was sorting out my legs and feet, we were having a good chat, but right now, I can’t remember what it was about. It can’t have been that good.
After he left, I made my breakfast, and then while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
Everyone is in a self-congratulatory mood today because their annual report from last year has been accepted into the library of the Natural History Museum and a few other similar places too. It’s quite true that these reports really are exceptional, but I think that they are overdoing it a little.
When breakfast was over, I went back into my little office and began to sort out things for the next radio programme on which I’d be working. However, I’d noticed earlier that the radio programmes that I’ve been sending off just recently are beginning to catch up rather quickly with the programmes that are prepared and ready to go, and if I’m not careful, I shall run out of prepared programmes before long.
Consequently, I’m going to make a start on dictating some more radio notes. I stopped dictating the notes when the cough that I had reached epidemic proportions and there was more coughing on the tape than there were notes. But now, since I’ve started this immunotherapy, the cough seems to have subsided for the moment, so I really ought to be cracking on and getting myself up to date.
A little later, there was a knock on the door. The president of the residents’ committee has sold her apartment and is moving away. She’s holding a little party for everyone, but because I would be unable to go because of all the stairs, she came to see me to say goodbye.
We had a good chat about her future plans, and she brought me a little memento – an oven glove and an oven pad with interesting cartoon drawings of Normandy. That was really nice of her.
When the alarm sounded to tell me that it was time to prepare for dialysis, that gave her quite a fright, and in the best traditions of a “News of the Screws” reported, she “made her excuses and left”, and I could crack on with organising myself, which included a disgusting drink and my midday medication.
My faithful cleaner put in an appearance to apply the anaesthetic to my arm too. We had a little chat, and then after she cleared off, I slumped down over the table in my usual “resting” position.
When the doorbell rang, I thought that it was only thirty seconds since I’d collapsed over the table, but it was in fact something over half an hour. I found it hard to believe, but there it was. I must have been really comfortable.
There were two passengers in the taxi, going to the private hospital in Avranches, and one of them very kindly ceded the front seat to me, and then we set off, only for me to remember that the Welsh class starts back tomorrow and I haven’t done the Welsh homework yet. I shall have to rearrange my plans for this evening.
This driver was another one who knew where the accelerator was, so the drive down to Avranches was completed in quite a fast time and I was quite early arriving. However, it was to no avail because I wasn’t plugged in and running until 14:25.
Once everything had settled down, I began to watch the football from the weekend.
The first match was the rest of Y Flint v Trefynnon. Trefynnon are hopelessly adrift at the foot of the table, and so were Y Fflint. However, since Y Fflint have had a change of manager, they have churned out some impressive results and have caught up with the pack ahead of them. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Y Fflint are much too good a side to be languishing at the foot of the table, and so it is proving to be.
Although Trefynnon never threw in the towel and were still battling away at the end, the match finished 5-0 to Y Fflint. Trefynnon may only have been admitted into the league to provide cannon fodder and to produce an obvious relegation candidate to spare the more established clubs from relegation, but nevertheless, it was an excellent performance by Y Fflint.
The next game was the rest of TNS v Connah’s Quay Nomads, first versus second, played in front of a miserably small crowd as usual. For all of their performances and results and successes, neither club has managed to ignite the fervour of the local inhabitants in the same way that Caernarfon and Colwyn Bay have.
Before I’d fallen asleep, I’d watched up until the seventy-eighth minute, so I picked up from there and carried on.
The game was, as you might expect, more like a game of chess with neither side displaying any will or intention to grab the game by the throat. It was basically an exercise in protecting your own goal, and in this, Connah’s Quay, and in particular Dan Cowan, were excellent. The score finished 0 – 0, and anyone who succeeds in taking points off TNS will receive my fullest support.
The final game was the second division clash between Y Drenewydd and Bwcle that I’d begun to see on Saturday night before I fell asleep on my chair. I’d planned the timing to perfection, with this game finishing just a minute or two before my dialysis session finished. However, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men”, etc., etc.
As there wasn’t quite as much liquid to be drained today, I’d persuaded the nurse to set the machine to three hundred grammes over the limit, to give me a little more room to manoeuvre until Thursday. But when Emilie the Cute Consultant came by (and I had forgotten to shave this morning), she wasn’t very happy. However, the nurse said “Mr Hall insisted …” and, surprisingly, Emilie the Cute Consultant backed down immediately. I found that extremely interesting.
We had a long chat about why it was wrong to go over your limit, although she wasn’t going to change the setting (something else that I found interesting), and then we had a general chat about my health, but unfortunately it didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t know already.
She finished by asking me if there was anything else, so I told her of the situation of the rapid gain of weight, even though my trips to ride the porcelain horse are “productive”. I asked about the rise in blood pressure the other day, and the bleeding that restarted when I was at home. Unfortunately, she just gave me the generic answers, without going into my individual case, which I found disappointing.
After she left, it was time to unplug me, so I never managed to see the end of the game that I’d been watching. You’ll have to wait until Thursday now for a match report.
After I’d been unplugged, I had to wait a few minutes for my taxi home, and when it arrived, I was quite impressed. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the summer, my taxi company bought a taxi company in La Haye-Pesnel. This company didn’t have the cheap Skodas that my company does – they have B-series Mercedes, and one of them came to pick me up.
Even though it had 276,000 kilometres on the clock, it was wonderful and comfortable, much better than a Skoda, and I enjoyed the ride home very much.
My faithful cleaner was waiting for me as usual, and she helped me back into my apartment. Once I was sitting down, she stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty mitt and cleared off.
After I had recovered, I went into the kitchen for the other half of the broccoli stalk soup from last week. That went into a saucepan on one of the hobs and I put several handfuls of coquillettes, these small elbow-like pasta, to give it a little more body. While it was cooking, I put the two leftover homemade bread buns from last week into the microwave to defrost.
When the soup was cooked, I took it off the hob and added a pot of plain soya yoghurt and ate the soup with my bread. What a nice meal it made too, especially as pudding was mixed fruit and homemade chocolate and coconut ice cream.
After I’d finished eating, I washed up the dishes and tidied the kitchen and prepared myself to attack the Welsh homework. For some reason or other, the Welsh homework took much longer to do, and it wasn’t finished until 22:00. That didn’t leave much time for the notes of the day, and I was already tired out after dialysis before I’d even started.
As I suspected, I was nowhere near the end of my notes when I began to crash out, so I posted on line as far as I’d gone, and then I went to bed. I can finish off in the morning.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about moving house … "well, one of us has" – ed … my friend Rosemary was a volunteer with the Essex Social Services, and she was chosen to supervise the upbringing of a young Vietnamese girl who had lost her parents when they were fleeing Vietnam on their way to Europe.
"Why was it necessary?" I asked.
"well," replied Rosemary, "after leaving Vietnam for the west, the girl became disorientated."
LIVE: Sunday 1st November 2026 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S DISASTROUS …
… finish to the day, things seem to have settled down to something vaguely resembling normality today.
It’s probably only a short-term solution, because, of course, there’s another dialysis session lined up tomorrow night, and then we’ll be back where we started, I suppose. This is a never-ending cycle of dialysis – bad night – troubled sleep – day of recovery – troubled sleep – feeling much better but dialysis – bad night, etc., etc. It’s really getting on my wick, this is.
Last night, I quite literally fell in bed after waking up on my chair, and the sad thing about it was that I couldn’t go to sleep once I was in bed. There were all kinds of things going through my mind that were disrupting my thought patterns, even down to the behaviour of the doctor-in-charge yesterday at dialysis
However, I must have gone to sleep at some point because I have never ever been so far out of it when I heard someone in the mists of ‘I don’t know what’ call my name – insistently – for three or four times.
When I opened my eyes, the nurse was standing at the foot of the bed, duly armed with the cream to massage my legs and feet. And no-one was more surprised than me. I hadn’t heard a thing about his entry into the apartment or ringing the bell beforehand. It must have been a really deep sleep that I was having.
After he left, I had to pluck up the courage and the motivation to leave the bed, and after I’d sorted myself out in the bathroom, it was 09:27 when I finally made it into the kitchen.
The first job was to put the white beans in the slow cooker on “high”. They need to boil up quickly because later on this afternoon, I’ll be using them.
And next, I had to make the croissants. That involved brushing a roll of flaky pastry with butter, using the pastry cutter to cut it into six “pie slices”, put a teaspoon full of apricot jam in the middle of each slice, and then fold the slice up, with the pointed bit on top. Brush them with milk and then eighteen minutes at 180°C.
While they were baking, I made the rest of my breakfast – porridge and black coffee, with juice to wash down my morning medication. And not only was all of that delicious, the croissants were magnificent too. I had two of them, warm, straight out of the oven, and the other four are in the fridge for the next couple of weeks.
While I was eating breakfast, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
Today, they are at one of the meetings that follows up one of their field trips, and the subject at the moment is the trees of Herefordshire. Last year, they examined some of the more famous yew trees of the county, and today, they are discussing the question of the oak trees, commissioning photographers, etc., to photographically record the larger ones.
After breakfast, I checked the white beans. They had absorbed the water and were busy bubbling away, so I took them out, rinsed them with cold water, put them back with fresh water and reset the slow cooker on “slow”. I’ll check them when I come back in for my midday medication.
Back in here, I made a start on yesterday’s notes. And they seemed to take ages to write this morning, I don’t know why. And I didn’t post them on line until about 15:20, and that was my day effectively gone, just like that!
What kind of time was this, then, to go for my midday medication and disgusting drink? And the white beans were only warm when I checked them, so I turned them up to “medium” to cook them quicker.
There was football to watch from Saturday. Firstly, Stranraer were at home to Clyde – top (by goal difference) v second. It was quite an entertaining match, even though it finished scoreless. Still there’s absolutely no change at the top of the table, although Elgin City, in third place, won their match yesterday to close the gap a little.
Then we had Greenock Morton, second from the bottom of the table, away at Partick, the league leaders. And after Morton’s dismal start to the season, the bookies had put Morton at 11 to 1 to win the match. And I know that a couple of my friends had put a fiver on it, just to show solidarity with their team.
And I bet that they went home happy last night. No-one, a couple of weeks ago, would ever have expected Morton to have won this match 3-2. What on earth was Ian Murray doing with this team earlier in the season that they played so dreadfully? Under their new temporary management since Murray was sacked a few weeks ago, Morton have now won three games on the run.
It was now time to go into the kitchen, and I began by chopping up 250 grammes of mushrooms and an onion. The onion went into the wok, followed by some frozen garlic, and then the mushrooms went in. When they were done, I added a tablespoon of cornflour and then 250 ml of vegetable stock and stirred it round and round to thicken.
While it was simmering away, I began to make the dough for the bread. It turned out really well, so I put it on one side to prove, and then I went back to my mushrooms and onions. I added the white beans from the slow cooker and then everything else from the recipe that my chatbot had found for me.
While that lot was simmering away in the wok, I found a small pie dish, and I cut another one of the flaky pastry rolls and lined the pie dish that I had greased. I cut another piece of the pastry roll for the lid and put it on one side.
When the stuff in the wok had had a good simmer and mix, I put it in a glass Pyrex bowl and put it into the freezer to cool down quickly while I gave the dough a second kneading, adding some chai seeds, some of the mix that my cleaner had found for me, and some of my sunflower seeds.
Once the dough was all kneaded, I put it onto the bread mould for a second proving, rescued the pie mix from the freezer and assembled my pie, brusing it with milk and putting some steam holes in the top.
The temperature of the oven should be 200°C, so I had to wait for the oven to heat up. When it was ready, I bunged the pie in for twenty-five minutes, and in the meantime, I’d been doing the washing up and making the place look respectable.
At the end of its time in the oven, the pie came out a lovely golden brown, and when the oven was empty, I wound it up to 220°C. When it reached the correct temperature, I put the bread in for eight minutes and then turned the oven down to 180°C for another thirty-two minutes.
The bread, when it had finished, looked wonderful, complete with a lovely thick crust and I can’t wait to try it. However, there’s plenty of bread left from last week, so it might be a few days before I can get my teeth into it.
Back in here again, I began to write up my notes, and they are now finished, even if it is horribly late again. I can’t keep on going to bed at this time of night.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about baking … "well, one of us has" – ed … a man walked into a bakery with a 50 lb pike under his arm.
"Excuse me, but do you make fish cakes? he asked.
"No we don’t" said the baker.
"What a pity" said the man. "It’s his birthday tomorrow."
LIVE: Saturday 31st October 2026 – AT LEAST, THINGS …
… improved somewhat today at dialysis, although you might not have thought so. After all, any day at dialysis is a bad day from my point of view, and I would give all that I had … "and more besides" – ed … in order not to have to go there at all.
But that is, of course, another story. Today’s story really begins last night when, after the football had finished, I sat down to begin to write up my notes. And in a mad fit of enthusiasm … "God knows where that came from" – ed … I managed to completely finish them.
Once they were done, I had the backup and the stats, etc., to do, and by the time that I’d finished everything, on coming out of the bathroom, I heard the electric water heater switch on, so it must have been 01:00 at that moment.
Once in bed, I was asleep fairly quickly, but once again, it wasn’t for long, and although I drifted in and out of sleep, I was awake when the alarm went off at 06:29.
As usual, it took me a good while to raise myself from sitting on the edge of the bed and wander off to unlock the door for the nurse when he comes. And then I wandered off into the bathroom to clean and tidy myself up and even have a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis.
Back in here, I had a few things to do, but I was interrupted by the nurse, who arrived early this morning. We had a very interesting chat about blood pressure while he was sorting out my feet and legs. He still has no idea why I have had such a low blood pressure for all these years, and why it has suddenly soared at dialysis.
After he left, I made breakfast, and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
The club is actually based in Hereford, but they called themselves the “Woolhope” Naturalists Club after an area close by the city where the limestone, dating from the Silurian period, then quarried for making lime, was revealing a whole host of fossils, many seen for the first ever time in the UK and even in the World. Today, they have gone back there for further investigations.
While they were at it, "availing themselves of the kind permission given by Lady Emily Foley, all the members and their friends, numbering nearly forty, passed through the park and gardens of Stoke Edith" where they chatted to the gardener who "did solve one difficulty for us. He accounted for the presence of the Anchusa sempervirens, the alkanet, which was found growing on the roadside near the station. He had cultivated this plant in the garden for the bees, and after the fire which occurred there last spring, he removed the broken bricks and debris of the fire to the roadside, and with them doubtless the seeds of this plant had been taken".
Back in here, I finished off sorting out the music in the temporary folder and transferring the relevant data of their appearances and possible future appearances into the relevant database for their particular folder.
To tell you how my system works, my music is divided into seven folders, numbered from AA to GG, plus “Live” and “Concert” folders. Then when new music comes my way, it stays in the temporary folder until I have 4 GB worth, then I transfer it firstly onto a memory stick and then into whatever folder on the hard drive that contains any previous music by the group or artist. If it’s a new group or artist, I put it into whichever folder has the fewest groups or artists.
On the spreadsheet that I keep, it contains details of which artists have played, what songs were played, which week they played and what notes were written. One week will be AA, the following week will be BB and so on down to GG, and then we start again from AA. And so if there aren’t enough anniversaries to fill a particular week, I’ll fill it out with music from whichever folder that relates to that particular week.
This took me up to the alarm to prepare myself for dialysis, so I cleared off into the kitchen for my disgusting drink and midday medication and then began to pack away the computer ready for dialysis.
My faithful cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and then we had a good chat about our various financial situations. It turns out that, for various reasons, neither of us is actually in desperate straits, and we both own our apartments outright.
There was a reason for mentioning this, and it’s in relation to what might happen here in this building in the near future. But more of this anon.
After she left, I settled down as usual to have a little doze, but I was almost immediately awoken by the doorbell ringing. It was the taxi driver, twenty or so minutes early.
He was a new driver who had never been here before, so I explained a few things to him, and then we set off. We had to go by Champeaux to pick up the usual Saturday passenger, and he had been told in the depot not to follow the satnav directions because he would end up being stuck in an alleyway too narrow for the car. That’s certainly true, so I guided him via the alternative way.
We were early arriving at dialysis, and I was plugged in and running by 14:15, which was nice. I could sit down and watch the live football without having to worry, thanks to the “start from the beginning” button.
Today’s midday match was Cardiff Metropolitan v Penybont, a mid-table v 3rd placed match.
And what a surprise this game was. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … the Met play some lovely, technical football, and their games are usually very interesting to watch, but today, I’ve never seen them put up such a shambolic performance in all the time that I’ve been watching them.
Today, their defence was all over the place, certainly not where it ought to have been, and their attack down the wings was nowhere, with Zambian under-20 international Lifumpa Mwandwe being totally starved of any service up front. The final score, 5-0 to Penybont, just served to underline how badly the Cardiff Met defence played.
When that game was over, there was time after that to watch Y Fflint v Trefynnon from Friday night, but not enough time to finish it, so I’ll tell you about the game some other time when I’ve finished watching it.
In the middle of that game, I was interrupted by the chef de service. He asked me how I was doing, to which my response was “fine”. He ummed and ahhed for a while and looked at the machine.
After studying the read-out for a while, he asked me if I would like the machine turned down a little … "it wasn’t even anywhere near maximum" – ed … so I told him that never mind the eight hundred and thirty-four ml per hour, the other week I was being cleansed at over eleven hundred per hour regardless of his maximum of nine hundred and fifty, and there were no adverse effects at all, so he’s taking a far too pessimistic view of my ability to cope with the dialysis machine (which I’m certain that he is).
At that point, he cleared off. He didn’t even ask me if there was anything else, which meant that I was unable to tell him about the blood pressure, water tension and the bleeding issue, which, in my opinion, are urgent. But he really doesn’t like me at all, and he has no bedside manner either.
When I was unplugged, my driver, the guy who thinks that he’s the boss of the drivers, was waiting for me, and he took me home – and it was a gorgeous red sky where the sun was setting tonight. I was actually at home by 18:20, which was really nice. My faithful cleaner helped me into the apartment, and she stuck a disgusting drink into my hand as soon as I was sitting down on a dining chair.
While she was here, I didn’t drink it but put it on my trolley with a packet of crackers, some spreading cheese, some biscuits and an orange, and pushed it into the office here where I prepared for a footfest.
The first match was TNS v Connah’s Quay Nomads, which had kicked off half an hour ago, but thanks to the “start from beginning” option, I could watch it from the kick-off, the first time this season that I had seen TNS. The following match was a second division match between Y Drenewydd and Bwcle.
However, we had a calamity. With about fifteen minutes to go, I crashed out in my chair. I managed to see the start of the Drenewydd v Bwcle game, but with about ten minutes gone, I crashed out again.
When I awoke, it was fifty-six minutes into the game and I had never felt so ill in my life. I was in one of those situations where I couldn’t even move, I was so tired. Eventally, though, I managed to slide from the chair and go to bed. The blog can wait until morning.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about anaesthetic … "well, one of us has" – ed … a man from Crewe went into the local dentists and asked "how much is a tooth extraction here?"
"It’s £65:00" replied the dentist.
"Is there any way to do it cheaper?" asked the man. "That sounds expensive."
"Well, if you’re brave enough, doing it without anaesthetic will cost £50:00."
"That’s still dear. Would it be cheaper if a student dentist were to do it?"
"That would work out at about £40:00"
"And if we made it a training session with a load of students watching and maybe even trying?"
"In that case, it would cost just £10:00. But it won’t be a very pleasant experience."
"No" replied the man "but the price is right. So can I book the wife in for next week some time?"
LIVE: Friday 30th October 2026 – I HAVE JUST …
… seen one of the most exciting and interesting games of football that I have seen for ages. What’s more, it was a last-minute decision to watch it too instead of the game that I had planned to see, so I was even more pleased.
Much more pleased, in fact, than how my day started off today – or should I maybe say “last night” instead?
You’ve no idea how ill I was during the night. And when I awoke, it took me hours to recover. Today was definitely another typical example of a day of two halves.
Last night, for example, I crashed out yet again while riding the porcelain horse. I was away with the fairies, although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine, for well over an hour, and it took a while for me to recover afterwards. But I recovered so well that I sat down and dashed off the notes last night without even thinking about them.
After I’d finished, I was glad to crawl into bed, even if it was already midnight, and I was asleep quite quickly. And I only awoke once or twice, one time of which you’ll find out more as you read on further down, but I was soon asleep again until the alarm woke me.
Both those times, though, I was feeling really ill, with a dry throat and a really uncomfortable sensation in my stomach, and when the alarm went off at 06:29 and awoke me, I was still feeling quite unwell.
It took even longer than usual for me to return to the Land of the Living and stagger across the living room to the front door to unlock it ready for when the nurse comes later, and then I staggered back across the living room to the bathroom to sort myself out for the morning.
Back in here afterwards, my first job was to check the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.
I had another strange phantom awakening during the night. I dreamed that my cleaner had shaken me awake, so in fact I awoke. I felt so ill that I couldn’t move for a moment, and I thought that I would be still in bed when the second alarm goes off. However, the second alarm never went off, and when I looked at the time, it was 01:05. Before I was shaken awake, I was dreaming that something was going on during half-term at Eton Boys’ School, where the football coaches from Eton had taken in children from unprivileged backgrounds and were busy coaching them in football. There was a young girl who was there, and she was woken up and told to get out of bed, so she did a perfect cartwheel out of the bed. When she was upside-down, she stopped and stood there in an upside-down cartwheel for a couple of minutes before carrying on to finish it.
It would certainly be a fate worse than death if my cleaner were to shake me awake at some time during the night. But it was certainly one of the strangest “phantom alarms” that I have ever had.
Anyone who has read the book or seen the film GOOBYE MR CHIPS will immediately recognise the reference to the football setting, but the girl doing the cartwheel is part of yet another story that the World is not yet ready to hear.
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, and now in response to a request that I received, AMAZON GERMANY. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am extremely grateful when someone uses the links to make a purchase.
The nurse turned up this morning rather later than usual, and while he was sorting out my legs and feet, I talked to him about yesterday at dialysis and how ill I was feeling this morning. He was a former dialysis nurse, so I expected him to have a few answers, but he just gave me some “generic” replies that didn’t help the matter advance very much.
After he left, I made my breakfast, and while I was eating, I read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
They’ve finished being out and about, and in the short time that they have left before they need to take up their carriages to go to Craven Arms station for their train, they have gone sightseeing at the castle and church at Clun, just down the road.
As for me, I’ve been researching some of the very interesting names of people, places and fossilised animals that have cropped up in this short section, and that’s even more interesting.
Back in here, I had a few things to do, one of which was to check the statistics. And once more, I’ve had ChatGPT researching a web page of one of my sites, presumably to use as a reference to someone’s query. I’ve lost count of how many that is now.
When everything was done, I started work. and how much I rued my missing two afternoons earlier in the week, because it took less than ninety minutes to finish off writing the notes for the radio programme. I could have done that easily on Tuesday afternoon.
Once I’d finished, I went for a late lunch – to wit, a disgusting drink and the midday medication – and then I spent maybe twenty minutes tidying up the freezer in the bathroom. There’s plenty more to do in there too, and if I spend a short time in there each day, I should be able to make a lot of room in the freezer, I reckon.
This afternoon, I made a start on tidying up the music that I have stored on here. My temporary folder is flooded out with music and there’s much more than what will fit on a 4 GB memory stick, as I found out. I use 4 GB memory sticks because the hi-fi in the living room can’t handle more than 4 GB.
That took me up to about 19:00, and there was still more that could have been done, especially if I had had a few more 4 GB memory sticks … "he’s exhausted his stock now" – ed … I’ll have to find some more time and more memory sticks from somewhere to finish this off.
There had been the usual Friday afternoon interruption when my cleaner came to do her stuff. We had a good chat about things, and then she produced the 200 grammes of mushrooms that she’d bought me today. And when I went to put them in the fridge, I found that last week’s were still there almost untouched.
As there are three rolls of flaky pastry for croissant-making, I’ve decided that I’m going to make a mushroom pie on Sunday, to use up a roll of flaky pastry and last week’s mushrooms. I asked my chatbot if he knew of any decent recipes, and sure enough, he presented me with a mushroom and white bean pie filling that looked particularly nice. My white beans will need soaking over night so I’ll have to start this mixture off tomorrow evening.
Tea tonight was my usual air-fried chips, beans with cheese and black pepper, and a vegan sausage. And that was a lovely tea. I enjoyed every mouthful.
Pudding tonight was a pot of soya yoghurt, coffee flavoured, a handful of biscuits and a prune, and they were eaten back in the office after I’d done the washing-up, because there was football on the internet and I didn’t want to miss it.
My plan had been to watch Y Fflint v Trefynnon, but at the last moment, I changed my mind and watched Rhydaman v Hwlffordd.
As I said just now, this was a really exciting match that surged from one end to the other non-stop, and it was a find of exceptional interest, a really good showcase of the quality on show of the Novira Premier League. I was exhausted just watching it, never mind playing in it.
As for the score, I’ll let you find out if you like, because I’m hoping that other Welsh fans would sign in to watch the game – especially for the sting right at the end of the tail in this game.
And also, congratulations to Babucar Sauane of Rhydaman, the best player on the pitch, and by a country mile too.
So right now I’m going off to bed, ready to fight the good fight again tomorrow.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about visiting churches … "well, one of us has" – ed … one Sunday, the Devil decided to visit a church in the UK. And as he walked in through the door, all of the congregation fled, except for one man.
"Aren’t you going to flee too?" asked old Nick.
"No, I’m not" replied the man.
"Even thoough I could kill you with just a couple of words?"
"No" replies the man.
"Why not?" asked the devil.
"You go and live twenty-five years with my wife" replied the man.
LIVE: Thursday 29th October 2026 – I HAVE NO …
… idea of what’s happening to me at dialysis. All I do know is that something isn’t correct.
On Monday, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I was the lightest that I had been for a while when I weighed myself before we started. And it must have been correct because when I weighed myself afterwards, the weight corresponded with what it should have been given the amount of fluid removed.
As well as that, we had the blood pressure slowly creeping up and then, after a few hours back at home, we had that bleeding issue… "or that bleeding bleeding issue" – ed …
Today, I had the highest weight that I have ever had since I’ve been keeping records, and so I spent four hours there today. And heaven alone knows what it would have been had I not persuaded the nurse to take an additional three hundred grammes on Monday.
And then the blood pressure went through the roof – 13.0, which may be normal for you, but it certainly isn’t for me. Finally, after the ten minutes of compression at the end, the nurse relaxed her grip, and we had blood everywhere.
None of this is normal, not by any means, especially as I have no problems riding the porcelain horse, and the next time that I see Emilie the Cute Consultant, I shall tell her.
Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, last night I was terribly late going to bed again. But luckily, I was able to go to sleep quite quickly. I’ve no idea what time it was that I awoke, but I lay there vegetating for quite a while. Eventually, I decided that I may as well show some signs of life, but the alarm beat me to it.
And then, miserable failure that I am, I was still in bed when the second alarm went off, and it’s been ages since that has happened. I ended up being hours late unlocking the door ready for the nurse when he arrives.
In the bathroom, I sorted myself out and even had a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later on.
Back in here, with nothing to download off the dictaphone, I found a few other things to do until the nurse put in an appearance, earlier than usual. And today, we discussed the weather while he was dealing with my legs and feet. It’s supposed to be nice this weekend, but I’ll wait and see.
After he left, I made my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
And here we go again. Today, our heroes have gone to visit the Bury Ditches Hillfort near Clunton in Shropshire. Our party leader explained to his group that he "had examined these earthworks since, and from their bold and perfect condition, he was of opinion that they could not be older than the Roman period. They might even be Roman, for it is now well known that the Romans made elliptical camps as well as square ones. There were, however, no authentic Roman monuments similar to this one, and this, therefore, was very doubtful. If not a Roman work, what is it? He considered it to be Saxon, of the very early period of the Saxons. He believed it to be—not a camp—but the house of a Saxon chieftan of great importance, dating probably from about the sixth century."
According to everyone else these days, it’s an Iron Age hillfort, as are almost all of these hillforts.
Back in here again afterwards, I had a few things to do, and then, oh! what might have been. I attacked the radio notes and in just about seventy-five minutes, I’d completed about sixty percent. If only I had worked this hard on Tuesday and Wednesday.
When the alarm went off, I headed into the kitchen for my disgusting drink and midday medication, and then I began to sort my things for dialysis. My cleaner came along as usual and applied the anaesthetic to my arm.
We had a good chat, and then after she left, I had a couple of things to do and then collapsed over the table.
And, as usual, I was just about to drift off into another comfortable dream when the doorbell rang. It was the young, chatty taxi driver who had come to take me to dialysis. He was ten minutes late, but as I was the only passenger, we made up a lot of the time. And at dialysis, we had the pantomime that I had mentioned.
After I was plugged in, I watched the last football match from the weekend – Caernarfon v Llansawel.
It took a while for Caernarfon to settle into their stride, but once they were up and running, they had much more in the tank than Llansawel and scored three really good goals.
But all through the match, Llansawel’s tactic of putting low crosses into the box was meat and drink to the Caernarfon defence, and I was screaming at them to put the ball in the air. With about three minutes to go, they finally got the message and began to pump high crosses into the goal area, and sure enough, in stoppage time, they managed to pull a goal back. But it was too little, too late.
For the rest of the session, I had some things to do, tidying up on the computer.
As usual, when I’d finished, I had to wait until the nurse (the other one of the two whom I mentioned a couple of days ago) finished cleaning the machine before she attended to me, and then there was the history about the blood. But eventually, I was ready to leave, the last patient in the building.
My driver, another chatty one, was waiting for me, and we had an interesting chat about religion on the way home. My cleaner was ready, waiting for me, and she helped me into the apartment.
It was almost 19:45 when I arrived, and there was no danger of me cooking at that time, so I had crackers and spreading cheese, followed by some biscuits and an orange.
Now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed in the hope of having a good night, but once again, I shouldn’t be so optimistic as it only leads to disappointment.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about blood pressure … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember arriving at the hospital in Paris, and when they checked my blood pressure, it was through the roof.
"Your blood pressure is high today, Mr Hall" said the nurse.
"Well, I’ll tell you what," I replied. "You go for a drive around Paris with the chauffeur who has just brought me here and see what yours is afterwards!"
LIVE: Wednesday 28th October 2026 – IT HAS BEEN …
… another day just like yesterday when I ran aground in the afternoon after a really good start to the day. I’ve no idea what’s going on there, but there always seems to be something. Even staying up until late last night, for example, couldn’t seem to make any improvement to how things had been during the afternoon.
Once in bed, though, I was asleep fairly quickly, which made something of a change from the last couple of nights. Mind you, I was awake fairly early – I’ve no idea what time – and couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards. When I eventually looked at the time, it was 05:05, so I reckoned that I’d give it half an hour and then raise myself from the Dead. But when I looked at the time a little later, it was 06:17. What had happened there, I don’t know.
Still, never mind. I put my feet on the floor and sat upright on the bed. At least it will be an early start, even if I won’t have done any work.
Once I’d managed to haul myself to my feet, which wasn’t easy, I staggered off to unlock the front door ready for the nurse when he arrives, and then it was into the bathroom to sort myself out, ready for the day.
Back in here, I attacked the notes from yesterday, and I’d almost finished them when the nurse arrived.
The other day, I’d received the quarterly newsletter from the local regional council, “Granville Terre et Mer”. In it was an article concerning the local bus services that the regional councils run and how they intend to review the infrastructure of the bus service with effect from the start of the new year and try to make it wheelchair-friendly.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that I was astonished that when they’d started on the upgrade three or four years ago, they’d upgraded several bus stops, including the one outside here, but the most important one, right outside the health centre where the doctors’ offices are, that was never upgraded.
Not only is it on a very low kerb where the road has subsided, you have to walk out into the roadway to climb aboard the bus.
For some people like me, that’s impossible, and so if I want to go to the health centre or even into town, I have to take a taxi or not go at all, and it’s the same for hundreds of other people. That bus stop should have been amongst the first to be upgraded.
Now, I’m not supposed to know this, but I do know that my nurse is actually on the council as the health consultant, so while he was here, I took advantage and launched into my usual rant about the bus stop. He certainly listened, so who knows? It might actually be done and I might be able to actually resume my trips into town one of these days. However, knowing the local council, I’m not making any plans.
After he left, I made my breakfast and while I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
Today, we’re visiting the little settlement of Capel y Ffin – “The Chapel at the Border”. Our heroes think that it refers to the border between England and Wales, but more modern research seems to think that it was actually the border between the old ecclesiastic regions of the Bishop of St Davids and the Bishop of Llandaff. And seeing as there is a place in the immediate vicinity called “Tarenn yr Esgob” – “the Bishop’s Ridge” – there are grounds for the modern interpretation, even if nothing else had been found.
The “Capel” is one of the smallest religious buildings in Wales. Although built in 1762, it replaced an earlier one from the fifteenth century, but judging by the immense, elderly yew trees by the church and the fact that it is a “capel” and not a “llan”, it implies that there was a religious building on the site maybe as far back as Roman times, long before the regroupment of settlements around the churches that were built following the reconversion of the population to Christianity in late Saxon times.
Capel y Ffin is also the site of Llanthony Abbey, the home of a weird collection of bizarre, unrecognised monks and nuns led by Joseph Leycester Lyne, who was trying to encourage the return to monastic life but whose organisation collapsed after his death due to a lack of leadership and some scandalous and disgraceful allegations concerning the morals of the inhabitants.
If that wasn’t bad enough, it later became the home of the disgraced sculptor Eric Gill, his family, and not forgetting, of course, the family dog.
Back in here, I finished off the notes and posted them on line. And having made you sit and suffer through almost three thousand two hundred words the other day, I promised that I’d write less last night, and so it was the case. There were only two thousand, eight hundred and ninety-nine words for you to wade through.
The next thing that I remember, it was 11:50. I’d fallen asleep in my chair without even realising it and slept for well over an hour. And I really did feel dreadful when I awoke. It took me a good twenty minutes to bring myself back into the Land of the Living.
The first thing that needed to be done was to finish off choosing the music for the radio programme on which I’m currently working. All of the music had already been reformatted, so the final tracks needed re-editing and remixing. This meant that I ended up having a rather late lunch today – well, not actually lunch but my disgusting drink and midday medication.
It was actually a very productive lunchtime because I spent half an hour sorting out the freezer in the kitchen, and with reorganising things in there, I ended up with much more room than I had before. There’s still plenty left to do, and then I want to start on the freezer in the bathroom, which also needs a good tidying up.
When I’d finished, I came back in here. I had to pair and segue the music that I’d chosen, and that took longer than it ought to have done, but eventually it was all finished and some of the joins are excellent. I try to keep it around the forty-six minutes and thirty seconds limit at this stage, but today I seem to have ended up with almost forty-seven minutes. I hope that that’s not going to cause me too many problems.
And then I had to write the notes. So far, I’ve only done about a quarter of them, mainly for two reasons. Firstly, many of the artists are new to the programme, so I need to search their biographies, and secondly, I seemed to have run out of enthusiasm and motivation, which is a terrible thing to admit.
Eventually it came round to teatime, so I staggered off into the kitchen. Tonight I had pasta and veg in tomato sauce with one of those spicy burgers in breadcrumbs that I had bought years ago from Noz, the “end of range” shop. I tried a new method of cooking them, which was to cover one side with a thin layer of butter and put it in the air fryer, butter side up, and then after five minutes, flip it over and butter the other side. That produced a wonderful burger. I’m really going to have to learn how to breadcrumb some things that I make because it makes a real difference to the taste and enjoyment.
Pudding was another coffee-flavoured soya yoghurt and a plum, and that was nice too. All in all, another really good meal in total.
So now having written my notes bewailing these two lost afternoons, I’m off to bed, later once more than I would like it to be, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think " – ed …
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about bus stops … "well, one of us has" – ed … there were two girls from Crewe standing at a bus stop.
One of them asked the other "which bus are you waiting for? I’m waiting for bus number 1"
The other one replies "that’s funny. So am I"
Just then, bus number 11 comes round the corner.
"Oh look" replies the first girl. "It looks as if we’ll be travelling together."
LIVE: Tuesday 27th October 2026 – HAVING REGALED YOU …
… last night with a blog entry of a near-record three thousand one hundred and seventy-seven words, I shall try to be a little more concise tonight. After all, I don’t want you lot wasting as much precious time reading my rubbish as I seem to do writing it. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … my downfall when writing essays always was the word count. I’d reach the word limit before I’d even warmed up.
Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …
Last night, I was in bed later than I would like to be, but not as late as some nights have been just recently. And for a change, it took longer than usual to go to sleep. That’s because I’d had something of a shock before going to bed.
When I’m around the house at this time of year, I wear a sweater, but when I go out, I change the sweater for a fleece jacket and change back when I come home again. When I changed back yesterday evening, I noticed nothing amiss.
However, when I was undressing last night, I noticed that the tubing on my arm that holds the compresses onto the pinholes in my forearm was drenched with blood. I had a feel of it and the blood seemed to be slowly drying out. It wasn’t bleeding any more, I reckoned, and as I had some old tubing that had lost its elasticity, I put a piece over the tubing on the arm to stop the blood staining the sheets and quilt cover when I’m in bed.
Nevertheless, it took me by surprise because I had felt nothing at all. And we’d been told at dialysis that at the rate the body will lose its blood through these pinholes, we will only have five minutes to react before it will be too late. And that’s no use at all if I’ve no idea that the clock has already begun to wind down.
That was the thought that was going through my mind as I tried to go to sleep.
At some point, I must have gone to sleep because round about 01:40 or thereabouts, we had another phantom alarm call that woke me. I recognised straight away that it was a phantom call so I didn’t react, but I didn’t go back to sleep either – well, not for a while.
After tossing and turning in my bed for ages, I went through another phase of this “sometimes I’m awake, sometimes I’m asleep, but I don’t know which is which”, and I was definitely awake when the alarm rang.
As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … being awake is one thing – being up and about is something else completely.
But once I was up and about – well, if ever you want to have an idea about what makes a “day of two halves”, you only have to read on and all the rest will become clear.
First task this morning was to unlock the front door ready for the nurse when he comes round, and the second was to go to sort myself out in the bathroom. The bleeding on the arm had stopped a long time ago, but some of the blood that was on the tubing had soaked through to the tubing that I had put on later. Luckily, it hadn’t soaked through onto the sheets and the bedding.
Back in here, first task was the dictaphone to see what had gone on during the night.
I was in another chaotic household with my mother again last night and with loads of people. Someone said that the family was going off on holiday next weekend. I asked whether that was true, and she replied that it was the end of November. I was sitting down in a corner with a friend of mine from Germany, and we were talking about a project that had been put to us all, my friend and me, about going off on some kind of educational course. We said that we hadn’t heard anything about this for ages, so we imagined that it had been abandoned. Then we talked about certain people whom we knew and certain businesses that we’d heard of, why they had all gone wrong and all these people who had gone wrong. She said that she could remember some of them before they tried to be in business. One of them was a “failed CV”, whatever that was. After a long discussion like this, I told my mother that I was going to bed. I walked up the flights of stairs to where my room was, and the guy who had the room next door to me, he came along as well. He asked if I was really going to bed, and I replied “no”. I was just going to sit in my room and listen to music or something. He asked me about a girl whom I knew. I’d mentioned her to him before. I suddenly remembered who it was, and I said that I’m afraid that she already has a boyfriend. He was extremely disappointed about that.
Being in “another chaotic household with my mother” is nothing new at all for me. It’s how we lived back in “those days”, and regrettably, I seem to have inherited it.
My “friend from Germany” was here with her daughter about eighteen months or so ago, and what we all had in common was that we went to the same university. Her daughter even became a lecturer there. The mother and I sat on some of the same committees, so having plans and so on was something that we always had up our sleeves.
The ramshackle stairs up to my room in the attic remind me of something, but I can’t think what, and the young girl with the boyfriend – I know who she is, but she’s in the wrong generation for this dream.
The nurse turned up, earlier than usual, and we had a chat about his week off as he was sorting out my legs and feet. And after he left, I made my breakfast.
As I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
Today, we are discussing erratic boulders. These are huge, isolated rocks that differ totally from the rocks around them, and our friends are debating how they might have arrived in their particular place today, hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from the rest of the rocks of their type.
Several people were taking wild guesses, but eventually someone came up with the answer that corresponds with modern-day thinking, and that is that they were brought down by glaciers and “dumped” when the glacier ran out of steam to carry them.
He tells us that these erratic boulders "were slowly carried along by the motion of the glacier, year after year, however great their dimensions, till, on arriving at the edge of the ice, which was always melting during the heat of summer, they were precipitated into the valley below, there forming masses of debris commonly called moraines."
Today, there are several types of moraine recognised by geologists – two of which are, firstly, lateral moraines that form at the side of the glacier, and secondly, terminal moraines at the end of a glacier. And you can tell how far a glacier has retreated by checking the succession of terminal moraines. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we had hours of fun exploring and scrambling over a terminal moraine of the Brother John Glacier in northern Greenland several years ago.
When I’d finished breakfast, there was some tidying up in the kitchen to do and then I came back in here to carry on work.
There were several things that needed my attention, and then I could continue with the task of reformatting the rest of the music that my friendly neighbourhood chatbot found for me yesterday. When it had all been done, I had to remix and re-edit it all and then choose the individual tracks to include in the programme.
That’s where my chatbot came in useful again. I told him to review as many reviews as he could find of each album that he had selected and to tell me which song had received the most positive reviews, why, and what the reviews said. In no time at all, he had identified most of the tracks and had a little cameo of a post about them that I can translate into French in due course.
That has also saved me a couple of days’ work.
There was enough time to deal with a few of them and prepare them for broadcasting, but then it was time, long after time, in fact, for my midday medication and disgusting drink. My faithful cleaner came in at that point and caught me once more in flagrante delicto having a break, but she also showed me what a heroine she is.
Talking to my chatbot the other day, we were discussing my bread and how I could improve on what I was doing and how I was making it. I told him about the sunflower seeds, occasionally brazil nuts and sometimes almonds that I included in the flour, and asked him whether or not there was anything else that was healthier that I could include.
The chatbot gave me a list that included chia seeds and several other grains, so I had given a list to my cleaner for her to keep a lookout.
She’d wandered around the “weigh it yourself” section at Leclerc this morning and managed to find chia seeds and a mixture that contained most of the other seeds that the chatbot had mentioned, and she’d bought a supply of them both for me.
As well as that, they had my favourite arrabbiata sauce on special offer – buy two and the second one is sixty-eight percent off – so I told her to buy four if she saw them. And sure enough, there were four of them on the kitchen counter next to the seeds.
Once she’d sorted everything out, I told her about the problem with my arm. She had a look and decided that it was suitably horrible, so she removed all of the blood-soaked dressings and cleaned my arm. She found some things to make a temporary dressing and then wrapped my arm in cling film.
The reason for the cling film is because it’s Tuesday today, and Tuesday means that it’s shower time. She then sorted out the bathroom for me so that I can shower in comparative safety.
When the bathroom was converted, I had hope to have had a flat floor, like a walk-in wet room, but when you have a floor made of solid grès de Chausey granite, installed in 1667, it’s simply not possible to do so. No-one can chisel their way into that so the base is fifteen centimetres off the ground. I need to have a couple of steps up. And as yet, there are no handrails in the shower, so my cleaner needs to take the portable handrails that fence in the porcelain horse.
The shower today was wonderful. I washed my undies and my night attire in the sink first, and while I was showering, I threw them in too so that the shower would rinse them. But the water was lovely and hot, and I took full advantage of it.
The bathroom was hot too. Although I turned the heating off after the first night, I switched the heating on in the bathroom before the shower with the temperature set to twenty-four degrees. The heated lightbulb was on, of course, and so it was even nicer stepping out of the shower too.
After I’d dressed, I went into the dining area, where my cleaner attended to my arm. It had bled a little more under the shower but it had stopped again. Nevertheless, she made a thorough job of patching the arm so that it wouldn’t bleed again, and if it were to do so, the number of compresses under the plasters would absorb the blood quite quickly.
At about 15:00, as usual, she cleared off to her next client, but she said that she would be back when she returns this evening to make sure that everything will be OK.
Back in here, I tried to restart work, but for some unknown reason, all my motivation and energy had gone. All my “get up and go” had got up and gone. That was a real disappointment, as I had so much to do. I just sat here and vegetated for a while instead of working.
None of this was getting the baby bathed, but it really was turning into a day of two halves.
At about 17:00 I decided to start tea. There was the broccoli stalk from Saturday’s Leclerc delivery, so I was going to make another broccoli stalk soup.
First, though, there was the bread. And seeing that I intended to make enough soup for two meals, I decided to make four bread buns. With chia, you need to use more water than normal, so instead of a hundred and thirty millilitres of water with my two hundred grammes of flour, I used a hundred and forty.
While the dough was proving, I chopped up the broccoli stalk and a potato into tiny cubes and put the mix on one side. Then a pile of mushrooms were chopped, and I put them on one side too, mixed with a handful of frozen garlic. Finally, I chopped up a couple of small onions.
My favourite saucepan has a really heavy base, so I fried the onions in it, and when they were well done, I added the mushrooms and garlic and gave them a few minutes too before adding the broccoli and potatoes, stirring everything around. Once everything had been frying for five minutes, I added enough vegetable stock to cover the food and left it to come to the boil and then simmer.
By now, the bread bun mix had risen considerably, so I added a spoonful or two of chai seeds and three or four spoonfuls of the seed mix and gave it all a second kneading before dividing the dough mix into four and making flat pancake-like lumps of dough, which I put on some baking paper.
While I was waiting for things to happen, I washed up everything and tidied up. And that’s not like me at all. Usually, I end up in a total mess with stuff all over the place and there’s no room to do anything.
While I’d been talking to my chatbot about bread, he’d given me some useful tips. Firstly, never mind the one hundred and eighty degrees – wind the oven up to two hundred and twenty. Then, put a big container of water … "like his metal pie dish" – ed … at the base of the oven. Finally, put the baking tray in.
When the oven “pinged” that it was ready, it was full of steam and the baking tray was scorching hot. But I put the buns and their sheet of baking paper onto the hot baking tray and put it back in the oven.
The chatbot had recommended parsley, chives and thyme as herbs for my soup, so I’d added those a little earlier, but now I poured the soup mix into my whizzing jug, and with the whizzer, I whizzed it all up into a rather thick liquid. Half of it went into the fridge in a sterilised jar, and the other half went back into the saucepan with several handfuls of these coquillettes, the small elbow-shaped pasta.
After fifteen minutes in the oven, I followed the chatbot’s advice, turned it down to one hundred and eighty degrees and removed the water. Then I left it all for another ten minutes.
As I took the soup off the heat, I added a pot of vegan soya and stirred it well in. And the bread buns were total perfection. I have never ever had a success like this. Two buns went into the freezer for the other half of the soup some time, and two, I dipped into my soup and cleaned my bowl when I’d finished.
Pudding was a pot of coffee-flavoured soya yoghurt followed by a prune. All in all, that was a really nice meal, but it had taken ages to prepare.
Back in here after tea, I began to write up my notes, and I’d reached the halfway stage before I was totally overwhelmed with sleep. It was late too – not too far short of midnight, so I posted on line what I’d done, added a “to be continued” stamp and then went to bed.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about making soup … "well, one of us has" – ed … afried of mine told me about the antics of a famous chef in a Mayfair restaurant in London.
"First, he diced some vegetables really finely, cooked them in water and added a couple of oxo cubes. Then he threw a hyena into the pot, and finally, he jumped in himself"
"Really?" I asked.
"Oh yes" she replied. "He made quite a laughing stock of himself, he did."
LIVE: 26th October 2026 – JUST FOR ONCE …
… at dialysis, I had a session where nothing seemed to go wrong, and it passed this afternoon without the slightest of worries.
On top of that, the médécin de garde this afternoon was Emilie the Cute Consultant, and what could any man want more than that?
In fact, I had an idea that it was going to be a good day today. Although it wasn’t early when I went to bed last night, it wasn’t as late as many have been just recently. And once I was in bed, I went pretty much straight to sleep.
Although I have a couple of vague memories of waking up during the night, I must have gone more or less straight back to sleep because I don’t really remember very much at all until the alarm going off at 06:29.
As usual, it took me a while to rise to my feet, and the first task was, like it always is these days, to go to unlock the front door ready for Isabelle the Nurse when she arrives.
The second task was different today. It was to go to stir the chilli mix. It had been in the slow cooker all night, and it still hadn’t boiled at that point, I noticed. Consequently, I put it on “high” to give it a kick start and went into the bathroom to organise myself for the day, including having a shave ready for Emilie the Cute Consultant in case she examines me.
When I’d finished in there, I went back into the kitchen to check the chilli. By now, it was bubbling away, so I gave it a really good stir and turned the temperature down to “medium” and left it for a while.
Back in here, the first job was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.
We were at some kind of meeting, and there were hordes and hordes of people there. We were sitting in seats and we were all crammed in. It was a really tight fit to have everyone in there and seated. There was virtually no leg room at all. I was sitting right near the back with a group of people around me and we were getting on really well. The final day of this meeting, they were taking everyone off into the city nearby for a sightseeing tour, but it had started to rain, and quite a lot of people had decided that they weren’t going to go, including a couple of our little group, so we were debating what we were going to do. I was interested in one of these girls, so I was wondering if she was going to stay here too or if she was going to go back to her room or whatever, but anyway, I got up and went for a walk around to stretch my legs, and despite the huge meal that we had had earlier, there was some kind of small running buffet where people could make sandwiches and so on. I noticed my Welsh teacher from last year sitting on the front row talking. So I had a quick glance at this food, and they had bourbon biscuits, so despite the meal, I helped myself to a couple of those and walked back to my seat to see what the other people in our group had decided.
Here I am once more with another little group of friends. But apart from that, there’s nothing in this dream that I can readily identify. However, it does have a very familiar ring to it and I’m sure that there’s been something like this happening before, but I just can’t place it.
The presence of my previous Welsh teacher is interesting too, although I’ve no idea why she’s there.
As for the bourbon biscuits, the cheap Tesco ones are in fact vegan, and on several occasions when I was over in the UK, I’d bring back several packets to keep me going. And that gives me an idea – why don’t I ask my chatbot if he can work out a good recipe for me? I may as well try.
… "And as a matter of fact, he did ask, and his chatbot came up with an excellent recipe" – ed …
There was also something else. My friend from the USA rang me and was talking about going to some kind of wholesale shop for things. But first, the story was about his vehicle that had been stolen. I said that it was probably in Canada or somewhere like that, being used by someone else, although I knew where it was, I knew who had stolen it, and I knew the reason why, so I wasn’t going to say anything. This person who had had it had inadvertently put the vehicle’s registration number on line in a blog entry. My friend said that he had looked for the vehicle on line and he hadn’t been able to see it, except for something in Canada, so that gave me a little relief. In the meantime, he said – he asked me if I could look up in a USA directory the way to get from his place to somewhere else in the area. I had to hunt down three or four maps and they were all the wrong ones. In the end, I found the correct one just as he was returning to the ‘phone. He told me that he was going to go to this wholesale shop using the card of someone else. She turned out to be a girl at this meeting with whom I was talking. I asked him how he had met her, and he said that he was at the meeting last year and that was where they hooked up for a while.
It looks as if I stepped back into that first dream later on, but this is another dream that means nothing at all to me. I’m not sure why the car would be involved, why I’d be expected over here in France to look at a map and why a girl in the UK would have a trade card for the USA that she would let someone else use.
I was in the USA last night with my van. I was driving down these roads towards Texas and there was a heavy fog approaching, so I didn’t want to be on the road when there was this heavy fog, so I pulled off by the side of the road, right by a cemetery. I went to have a look in the cemetery, and one of the things that I noticed was a huge monument on a grave, and I read it. It was by some guy who had died in Texas, and on his tombstone was written a quote that he had made, which was “don’t ever go to Texas because all you ever see are headstones and monuments in graveyards”. I walked back and climbed back on board the coach, and there were only two or three people there, so I asked them where everyone had gone. They replied that everyone else had gone to walk up and down a hill. I waited for them all to come back, and I asked the guy in charge where they’d been, and he said that they’d been for a walk along a canal. So I set off and carried on driving, and we were passing through all these small villages that looked very much like English villages. We ended up in a square in one of these places, which was magnificent, with a couple of archways in and a couple of archways out, and a pseudo black and white shop. I suggested to the guy in charge that we stop here and let people photograph for five minutes, so he gave everyone a fifteen minute break for a coffee, and I went to park up my motorbike outside a shop. The guy inside the shop came along and helped me padlock it too with another padlock on another hook. I asked him for a key, and he gave me twenty cents. I wandered off and took a few photos, and when it was time to go back, I went back to the shop. I unpadlocked one end and the guy unpadlocked the other. A third guy came over and asked me about Audis. I told him that they were expensive cars. He wanted to go over and have a look at my van, so he went over and had a look at it, then he went inside and told the passengers that I hadn’t given him a tip for holding the motorbike and that I was probably going to beg them for a tip at the end of the holiday. I threw him off and we set off again in the coach. We ended up by the sea. Someone had said that they could see the sea from where we’d stopped. But here, we came to a very narrow entry and pulled out onto a main road. The guy in charge asked me which way, but I said that I didn’t know because no-one had told me which hotel or even which town I was supposed to be going to. I drove the coach along a bit of the way and the road disintegrated into a kind of woodland. We climbed out of the coach and walked through the woods, and the coach followed us. We ended up at this big hotel that looked more like a hospital. This, apparently, was where we were supposed to be.
This one is the most weird of them all.
If I were to point out every inconsistency in this dream, we’d be here forever trying to explain them. But the most important is how my mode of transport changed from being a van, a coach and a motorbike and then back again, and then there was the image of a self-driving coach taking itself through the woods.
It’s probably best if I were to say nothing and let you try to work the rest of them out for yourselves. Perhaps someone can identify if this relates to anything else that has happened in the past.
Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, but a little late today. With her oppo taking over tomorrow, I imagine that there has been a rush for last-minute injections and blood samples. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … she has “the touch”, whereas her oppo doesn’t.
While she was working on my legs and feet, she told me of her plans for her week off. At St Malo over the weekend there’s the start of a single-handed yacht race – the Route du Rhum – between Brittany and the Antilles, finishing at Guadeloupe. She’s off to witness the start and to wish everyone bonne route. It’s a race that takes place every four years, and the record time is well under seven days.
After she left, I made my breakfast and while I was eating, I read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
And those of you who were perturbed by all of this mass slaughter of disappearing wildlife that I mentioned yesterday will be pleased to know that the fish had their revenge. Our author tells us that, on the train along the Wye valley near to Llangoed Castle, "you see from the railway the very pool where poor Mr. Holmes was drowned while fishing, in sight of his newly married wife."
When I’d finished breakfast, I went round into the kitchen and tipped a couple of handfuls of peas and a tin of sweetcorn into the chilli mix, gave it a really good stir, and then began to tidy away the breakfast things. While I was in the fridge, I pulled out two small tubs of soya yoghurt, and when the tidying was done, I switched off the slow cooker and tipped the yoghurt in, giving it a really good stir. Now I’ll let it cool down.
Back in the bedroom, I reviewed the radio programme for this week and sent it off to be added into the stream for the coming weekend, and then I set about reconverting into a format that I can use, the music that my chatbot found for me yesterday. And I hadn’t finished it all when my alarm clock sounded to remind me that it’s time to stop work.
So I sorted out my midday medication and a disgusting drink and then began to pack away the travelling laptop, ready to take with me to dialysis.
My faithful cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and I’m glad that she was here because one moment, I was sitting on a chair at the dining table and the next moment, I was lying on the floor with a pain in my head where it had apparently collided with the electronic drum kit.
Between the two of us, I managed to sit back into the chair so that I could finish off putting on my shoes.
After my cleaner had left, I did my usual “collapse in a semi-recumbent position over the table” until the taxi arrived. And it was my favourite Belgian taxi driver too, so we had a good chat. We had to go off into the sticks to find another passenger and then into Sartilly for our usual Monday passenger.
And going off into the sticks is no problem for me. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m going to parts of Normandy that I never knew existed until I started travelling with this taxi company.
As a result of everything, we were late arriving at dialysis, but it didn’t matter too much because I was seen more or less straight away and I was up and running by 14:25. It’s been later than that a few times even when I’ve been on time, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.
To my surprise, especially after the last couple of weeks, there wasn’t much to be extracted, so I persuaded the nurse to wind it up by three hundred millilitres so as to give me a head start for Thursday.
I spent the afternoon watching football. The first game was the rest of Cambrian United v Airbus UK Broughton. From 2-0 down, Airbus won 3-2. This was a Cambian United-sponsored stream, so they had one of their fans commenting, and even he was forced to admit that once Airbus began to play with the wind in the second half, they were by far the better team. Cambrian’s “kick and rush” style of play into a headwind was taking them nowhere.
When that match was over, I watched the whole of Colwyn Bay v Cardiff Metropolitan. Very much against the run of play, the Met took the lead, and when the Seagulls had a player sent off in the thirty-first minute, we thought that it was “game over”.
However, then we had two of the most extraordinary goals that I’ve seen for a while. Defending a corner kick in a swirling wind, a Met player went to head the ball out of danger. The wind, however, swirled the ball round to the back of his head and another gust of wind took it into his own net.
Even worse, a few minutes later, the Seagulls had another corner. Kicking an inswinging ball into the penalty area in the same swirling wind, the ball beat everyone and went straight into the net. So from being 1-0 down, Colwyn Bay had gone to 2-1 even with being a man down.
However, in the second half, the Met had the wind in their favour and they managed to find an equalising goal, although it wasn’t as bizarre as those of Colwyn Bay.
Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me. She wanted to know how I was getting on with the immunotherapy, so I explained that I seemed to be doing OK. She said too that she would see what she could arrange about this COVID vaccination, which was nice of her.
While she was there, I took advantage of asking her about the nighttime sessions of dialysis. She explained that it probably wasn’t for me, which is a shame. Firstly, you need to be autonomous, which I’m not. You need to be in good health and not require medical supervision, which rules me out too, and then you need to be able to compress your own wounds, and that definitely rules me out.
When it was time to be unplugged, I didn’t have to wait long, and the nurse came over to me with a nursing student just starting her second year. She’d come on a work placement to dialysis for a few weeks and it was her first day.
However, there was all kinds of chaos going on around me, with ill patients, rebellious patients, and machines sounding alarms all over the place, so I let my experienced nurse clear off once she’d unplugged me and I taught the nursing student how to do a compression … "is there no end to this man’s talents?" – ed …
My driver was waiting for me when I was ready, and I was home by 18:40. My cleaner helped me inside and then stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt.
After she left, I made some rice and veg and then heated up a couple of serving spoons full of my chilli in the microwave. That was tea tonight and it was delicious, but I’ll know all about it tomorrow, that’s for sure.
Pudding was more apricot halves with home made chocolate and coconut ice cream, and that was as delicious as usual too.
After the washing up, I portioned out the rest of the chilli into individual servings, and then I had to tidy the freezer to be able to fit them in there. But now, they are quite happily freezing away, ready for use another time.
So now that my notes are written, there are just a couple of other things to do and then I’m off to bed. No Welsh course tomorrow, so I can relax a little.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about nursing students … "well, one of us has" – ed … a student nurse from Crewe went to do her first work placement.
Amongst the things that she had to check that she had brought with her was a red crayon.
"Why have you brought that?" asked her placement supervisor.
"Well" replied the student. "I’m not sure how else I’m expected to draw blood while I’m on this ward."
LIVE: Sunday 25th October 2026 – THIS WAS HOW …
… a proper Sunday should be organised, and I enjoyed every minute of it, for a change.
Despite not finishing my notes and going to bed instead, it was by no means early when I hit the hay. It might not have been after midnight, but I bet that it wasn’t far off.
But never mind. Sunday is my Day of Rest and my aim was to sleep for as long as I could and be awoken by Isabelle the Nurse when she arrived, especially as today we were all treated to an extra hour in bed.
Although I awoke a couple of times during the night, I was soon asleep again, and it was indeed Isabelle the Nurse who awoke me when she came into my bedroom. I didn’t hear her ring the doorbell or open the front door to come in. Considering that I’m supposed to be a light sleeper, what use would I be if someone broke into my apartment overnight?
She gave me my anti-flu injection and then dealt with my legs and feet. Once they had been oiled and massaged, she had to hang around because there was a wait time of fifteen minutes to see that there were no unpleasant side-effects with this injection, so we had a cosy little chat about dialysis.
After she left, I raised myself from the Dead and went into the bathroom to sort myself out. Then, into the kitchen for breakfast – porridge, black coffee, juice for the morning medication and the last of my delicious home made apricot jam croissants. I’ll make some more like that next Sunday too.
While I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
Today’s topic concerns a visit of the group to Llandrindod Wells, and the first item is that of salmon fishing. Apparently a bunch of salmon poachers had been arrested in the river there, and the leader of the group was lamenting the fact that these days, salmon in the upper reaches of the Wye and its tributaries were few and far between.
However, he tells us that "as we have lately seen new and wise fishery laws passed, giving a much better chance to the upper proprietors than they ever had before, by the removal of fixed engines, a weekly close time for nets, and the prohibition of all fishing by nets after the first of September—all which regulations are very much in their favour—we may hope now for a better spirit to prevail. We have heard from more than one member of the Board of Conservators that there is every disposition on their part to act in the fairest and most liberal manner to the upper proprietors, and on the other hand it is fair to expect that they, the upper proprietors, will assist all they can in protecting the breeding fish"
On the following page, he records with pleasure of "Sir J. Bailey’s fishing cottage, then by the Nydd and its far-famed salmon catch of Cavan Shwn Lewis, where it is said Mr Charles Stretton killed twelve fish in one day".
With equal pride, he adds that "A salmon was taken as high up as Newbridge by angling, 39.5 lbs., and several over 20 lbs., and at Holm Lacey, four miles below the city of Hereford, the monster fish of 56 lbs. was caught by the nets …. Two other salmon were caught at the same draught, one 11 lbs. and the other 12 lbs. Numbers of others, varying from 35 lbs to 15 lbs, have been taken, and this season the capture of a 25 lb fish has been an ordinary occurrence."
It seems very much to me that his supposed admiration of the “new and wise fishery laws” and his crocodile tears over the salmon being “few and far between” were really nothing more than window-dressing.
Back in here later, I attacked the outstanding notes, and they are now on line. They took quite a while to do because there was so much of them. I don’t know how, out of a boring day like yesterday, I could have written so much.
One thing that I noticed, though, was that it was warm in here. In fact, the thermometer was showing 23°C. Consequently, I turned all the heating off to let things cool down a little.
After the outstanding notes were on line, it was time for the disgusting drink and the midday medication, and then I was back in here transcribing the dictaphone notes.
I was mixed up with a group of people who were in all kinds of different things, like actors and so on. One or two of my friends had arranged for a weekend in Dublin. I thought that that would make a pleasant surprise for Nerina because it’s her birthday very soon. We all got down to making plans about it, and during the week, we ended up with about eighty-odd people. I mentioned to Nerina that we were going away for the weekend. When she asked where, and I replied “Dublin”, she went berserk and, for some totally unknown reason, completely lost her head about this idea. We had a huge row, which was complicated by the fact that I just couldn’t understand her reaction. Anyway, I went back to sort things out with my friends to see what they were doing and how they were going on, hoping that Nerina would cool down. However, she ended up taking a room in a really posh hotel in the immediate vicinity of where we were. Once we’d finalised all these details about Dublin, I went over to the hotel to see if she’d woken up yet, and the receptionist pointed outside, and Nerina was waiting by a set of traffic lights in Earle Street. I thought that from the position that she was in, she was not going to Dublin. I said “I suppose that you have finally decided not to go”. That triggered another huge argument. She said something like “I hope you have fun there”. I said “if you’re not going, then I’m not going, and we’ll go home”. “Right,” she said. “In that case, I’m not going home”, and stormed off. I was busy trying to scratch my head about all of this because I didn’t understand her totally unreasonable attitude about this.
.
This is not an unreasonable dream because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, we did have a travel club, a little group of us … "certainly nothing like eighty though" – ed … but it’s not been as active as it used to be since I lost the use of my legs and began dialysis.
Actually, in real life, the “traffic lights” were the zebra crossing in Earle Street between Tiko’s café and the Cheese Hall pub. However, there’s certainly no luxury hotel across the road from there. There’s a very cheap building with what used to be the old Victor Value supermarket and with government offices on top.
As for Nerina, it really was her in the dream. Her mother was Italian, and Nerina had inherited not only her mother’s cooking but also her mother’s Italian character. It took me a while to come to terms with her somewhat flamboyant emotional side, but once I’d understood the psychology behind it, I found that married life was refreshing and exciting, and, to be frank, since I’ve met other women afterwards, I really wish that things between Nerina and me had worked out better. Anyway, this dream went way, way beyond anything that I had ever experienced with her.
It’s hard to explain what was going on in this dream, but this was one of those rare dreams that seemed to be completely real when I was asleep. And although there is nothing in the dictated notes about this, I can still remember going with Nerina up a set of stairs over a shop to a small, candlelit restaurant with red furnishings and heavy dark oak furniture in the Victorian style, and also getting on board a train made up of individual carriages, although I was with just one other person on that train, who wasn’t Nerina.
And the bit about “busy trying to scratch my head about all of this” – this afternoon, I noticed a scab of some sort on the back of my head as if I had been scratching it so much that it had bled. That wasn’t there yesterday.
Later on, we had more football – this time it was the Scottish Cup between Stranraer and non-league Tayport, played in a monsoon at the bottom of a waterfall in a tornado.
Tayport played with the wind in the first half and made the most of it, going in 1-0 up at half-time.
But class will out in the long run, and in the second half, Stranraer scored three, with this site’s favourite forward, Robbie Foster, scoring one of them.
Greenock Morton’s game against Ayr United was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch.
While all of this was going on, my chatbot was busy researching music for me, and he came up with piles of interesting stuff. He’s done about two days worth of my research for me while I’ve been doing other things, and that’s one of the benefits of artificial intelligence. And based on what he’s found, this programme is going to be a really interesting one, I reckon.
Later on, it was time to go a-baking, and a sunflower-seed loaf was first on the agenda.
While the was proofing, I began to prepare the ingredients for the recipe for the aubergine and chilli whatsit that my chatbot found for me the other day. And after I’d added the sunflower seeds into the bread and left it to prove for a second time, I fried the onions, aubergine and garlic lightly and then tipped them and everything else into the slow cooker on “low”, where they will be festering all night.
The loaf was magnificent. It had risen the highest that I have ever had a loaf of bread rise, and it’s cooked to perfection. As for the stuff in the slow cooker, it tastes wonderful, although before I have a helping of it, I shall have to remember to put the toilet paper in the fridge first. It seems that the measurements for the chilli powder are somewhat exaggerated.
While the bread was cooking, I had a bite to eat – the first food on a Sunday night for ages. It was a small helping of this vegan chilli meal that was on special offer at Leclerc, with a generous helping of steamed vegetables tossed in butter. It was nice, but if it had been sold at full price, it would have been expensive for what it was.
So with the notes now written, there are just one or two more things to do, and then I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed … with the heating still switched off and the thermometer showing 18°C.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about playing football in heavy rain … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember discussing a football match at (thinks) Llanberis several years ago which was postponed because there was three feet of water covering the pitch.
Whoever the opponents were, I can’t remember now, but they were keen to play the game.
When I asked their manager why, he replied "Llanberis can switch on the floodlights, and we’ve brought a full complement of subs."
LIVE: Saturday 24th October 2026 – I HAVE BEEN …
… sitting in here watching the football for the last two hours, freezing my nether regions off.
And at the final whistle, I checked the temperature in here. It was 16°C. No wonder I was sitting here in a pullover and a fleece and still freezing. Consequently, and with regret, I’ve put the heating on tonight, a whole week earlier than I would usually like to.
Still, it can’t be helped. I shall console myself with the fact that last year, it was the 13th October. The previous year was the 27th October. And so it’s not unusual to have it switched on before the end of October.
The reason why it’s suddenly gone cold after the wonderful early October that we had was that the weather has been so darned miserable these last couple of days. Last night, I could feel a chill in the air inside the apartment and I was glad to be in bed, notwithstanding the fact that it was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out.
Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly, and I lay there without moving for a good couple of hours. However, I soon awoke, thanks to the wind again, and after that I couldn’t go back to sleep again. I couldn’t persuade my lazy self to leave the bed for an early start, and it was only when the second alarm was due to start that I managed to sit up and put my feet on the floor.
But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … having my feet on the floor is one thing. Being up and about is something else completely. It took me a good few minutes before I found the courage and motivation to stand up and go into the living room to unlock the door ready for Isabelle the Nurse when she arrives later.
From there, I went into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day, and I even had a good scrub up and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later this afternoon at dialysis.
Back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone, I had a few things to do while I was waiting, and I noticed that during the night, once more, a ChatGPT chatbot had visited my site to look up some information to use as a source for a reply to a question. How many is this now, I wonder?
When Isabelle the Nurse arrived, we talked about the storm that was still blowing, the miserable weather, the damage all through the town and the fact that there are still several thousand houses in the suburbs still without electricity. You would think that someone would have done something about that by now.
After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
Our expert his finished his waxing lyrical discussion about primroses, and now one of the experts from the Naturalists Club is debating the matter with him, stating that he can’t agree. Although I can’t quite follow the argument, not knowing sufficiently about the subject, it’s good fun to watch the experts falling out amongst themselves.
When breakfast was over, I came back in here, but I wasn’t in here for long as Leclerc’s delivery driver came by with my shopping. She dumped it all on the kitchen table and left me to sort it out, which is normal practice.
The frozen food went away first, and then the fresh food that needs freezing. The juice, milk, veg and fruit, etc., went into the fridge or the vegetable drawer under the worktop, then the dry stuff, and finally the tins. There was quite a lot of stuff today – but then again, it’s been just over four weeks since my last order, so it’s no surprise. At least, I have everything that I need to make my aubergine and kidney bean whatsit on Sunday afternoon.
There was time to do a little more work before the alarm went off, and then I began to prepare myself for dialysis.
There was the disgusting drink and the midday medication, and my faithful cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic.
Once she had left, there was no time for me to adopt my usual semi-recumbent position over the table while I waited for the taxi because a couple of people wanted to chat to me over the internet, and that was how I was occupied when the taxi arrived, bang on time at 13:00.
When I opened the front door to leave, the hurricane blowing off the sea was far too much for me, so I persuaded the driver to drive around the back of the building to the fire escape, where I only had a couple of paces to walk.
There was just me today in the taxi with the driver, and taking the shortcut to avoid the gilets jaunes, we were at dialysis at 13:35. However, expecting me to be coupled up quickly is a rather optimistic expectation, and it was 14:35 when I was finally connected up.
Today, there was no question of excess weight or excess time, so things proceeded as normal. However, I had one of the two nurses who do just about the minimum work required, cutting corners here and there, and there were continual interruptions and alarms as the machine complained all through the session about the quality of the connection until one of the other nurses came and did what was necessary to satisfy it.
Once everyone had settled down, I watched the live football match, Connah’s Quay Nomads v Llandudno. Llandudno’s early-season form has melted away and their dismal run of form continues. The Nomads, on the other hand, are on an excellent run, and it continued today as they beat Llandudno 2-0.
Like most clubs in the Novira Cymru Premier League, Llandudno’s problem is the lack of a front-line goalscorer. Earlier in the season, their forwards were making hay against the weaker clubs, but now, their fixture list has become serious, and they are playing against serious, established clubs who can exploit the weaknesses of the other teams.
When that had finished, I watched some of Friday night’s game between two newly promoted clubs, Cambrian United v Airbus UK Broughton. I hadn’t finished watching the match when it was time to go home, so I’ll tell you more about it on Monday evening when I’ve finished watching it.
In between everything, the doctor (not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately) came to see me. She told me that she had been looking at the details of my sessions for the last few weeks and had noticed that the black line (which represents the amount of fluid being extracted at that moment) had fallen below the yellow block (which represents the excess weight over my dry weight) on almost every occasion.
She had come to the conclusion that my dry weight was wrong and that she should increase my dry weight by 500 grammes. That’s a shame because I had come to like the new, trim me. And in any case, the new dry weight may well make a difference to the first extraction, but once I’m at the new weight, it won’t make a bit of difference to any subsequent extraction. Still, she’s in charge and may well know what she’s talking about, even if she does have to use a calculator to divide 3800 by 4.
When the time was up, my nurse concentrated on cleaning the machine rather than disconnecting me. And when she finally came round to disconnecting me, she compressed the wounds for just five minutes instead of the ten that are usually required, and then returned to cleaning the machine again. That’s not really satisfactory, but it’s what you come to expect when she’s working.
This early evening, I was really lucky. I saw my favourite taxi driver, whom I haven’t seen since the beginning of May in the garden centre in Granville. We had a chat for a couple of minutes, and then the driver who was to take me home emerged from the ladies’ … errr … rest room. She was another one of my favourite drivers, and we had a really good chat on the way home.
Back here at the apartment, the gale had started up again, and in spades too, so my driver dropped me off at the rear of the building again. Only a couple of paces then into the building and out of the wind.
My cleaner helped me back into the apartment, and once I was sitting down, she pressed a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt and then cleared off. I didn’t drink my disgusting drink then, but I put it on my little trolley along with a packet of crackers, some vegan cheese spread and an orange. There was no time to make a meal because there was more live football on the internet and it had already kicked off (thank heavens for the “start from the beginning” option on the live stream).
This was Y Barri playing against Hwlffordd in the driving rain and hurricane winds that made this match a total lottery. Y Barri, whose usual tactics are to play with the ball in the air, were bound to be second best to a Hwlffordd side who like to play with the ball on the ground.
And having watched the game, I was convinced that the referee and the two linesmen were refereeing a totally different game to the one that I, the Y Barri staff and most of the crowd were watching. There were several incidents in the Hwlffordd penalty area which, if I had been refereeing, I would have given a stonewall penalty, and the refusal of the referee to consult the VAR cameras made a mockery of having VAR in the first place.
The result was Y Barri lost 1-3, and their early-season form, when they were leading the league for a while, seems to have deserted them, just like it has at Llandudno.
After the end of the game, I began to write up the notes of the day but I almost fell asleep on several occasions, so in the end, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that I wasn’t doing justice to today, so I called it a day, published on line what I had done so far, added a “to be continued” stamp, and made myself ready for bed. I can always finish off the notes tomorrow.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about gaining weight … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends told me that it’s only natural for married men to gain weight.
"Why is that?" I asked.
"Simple" replied my friend. "When they are single, they come home, look at what’s in the fridge and then go to bed. When they are married, they come home, look at what’s in the bed and then go to the fridge."
LIVE: Friday 23rd October 2026 – THIS BLASTED HURRICANE …
… or whatever you would like to call it, is still going on and showing no sign of abating. That’s about twenty-six hours that we’ve been battered, and the damage in the town and especially up here in the old town is “significant”. At least it was when my faithful cleaner went into town this morning. It must be much worse now.
At about 05:00 a gust of wind of 143 km/h was reported, and there have been others at 120 km/h, so I see from the site of the weather station down at the end of the rock. And in Finisterre, they’ve had gusts of over 150 km/h.
The prevailing wind all day has been from the north-west, and there’s nothing between us and the eastern coast of North America in that direction except the Atlantic Ocean, so there’s nothing to slow down the wind.
As I mentioned yesterday, the wind was getting up as I was coming home last night, but it really began to blow at about 20:30, and by the time that I went to bed, at about 23:30, it was really giving it a good go. I’m surprised that I managed to go to sleep. I was down the bed under the quilt, and I could still hear it howling.
But go to sleep. I did, although it wasn’t for long. At about 02:40 I had another phantom alarm call, and although it awoke me, it didn’t entice me out of bed. However, I couldn’t go back to sleep as the wind continued to roar with an intensity that I haven’t heard for a good few months.
When I looked at the time later on, I saw that it was 06:10, and I was tempted to make an early start but I thought better of it. However, at 06:25 I swung my feet out of bed and onto the floor, thus claiming an early start.
After both the alarms had gone off, I went into the living room and unlocked the door to let Isabelle the Nurse in when she arrived, and then I went to sort myself out in the bathroom.
Back in here, I attacked the rest of the notes left over from last night and they went on line when they were finished. At that moment, Isabelle the Nurse put in her appearance. She was supposed to give me my anti-flu injection this morning, but when she saw the state that I was in, with a streaming head cold that won’t go away, she wanted me to check with the doctor at dialysis that it’s OK to give it to me right now or whether we should wait a while.
She was soon on her way out to continue to fight the good fight with the hurricane outside, and I could go and make breakfast.
While I was eating, I was reading some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
We’ve finished the story of the Herefordshire Beacon, and now we have another expert waxing lyrical about the primrose and its various developments. “Well, in a cowslip’s bell I lie!” I thought to myself.
Once breakfast was over, I went back into the bedroom to send off my Leclerc order, but to my dismay, all deliveries are cancelled today because of the storm. I shall have to wait until tomorrow for my delivery to arrive. I hope that it’s before I go to dialysis.
My faithful cleaner sent me a video of the storm in the port this morning, the waves crashing over the harbour wall and causing nothing but mayhem in the outer harbour. It really was impressive, so I sent it on to a few friends for their perusal.
There were a few more things to do, as well as being engaged in several animated chats as a result of the video that I sent, and then it was time to start work on the notes for the radio programme.
It wasn’t long, though, before I had to stop for my midday medication and disgusting drink, and I was caught in flagrante delicto by my cleaner, who had come in to do her thing. We chatted for quite a while as she was working, and after she left, I carried on with work.
By about 18;00 I had finished the notes and they are ready to dictate, but I could have finished a lot earlier had I not crashed out at some point. And it seems that it’s not just Rosemary who has installed a camera in here, because as soon as I awoke, a friend sent me a message on the computer, and I ended up chatting to him for a while.
It’s a shame, though, because while I was asleep, I was away with the fairies, although not in any manner that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine.
While I was asleep this afternoon, I was doing something with a group – something like Grand Funk Railroad. Then the group split up and I immediately joined another group but my former colleagues had not and this was confusing the authorities who did not understand that I was not out of work. There was plenty of other stuff too, such as being in a house and being in a department store, something like Woolworths, but as soon as I awoke, someone sent me a message on the computer and that completely destroyed my thought pattern and the dream disappeared.
That’s always a problem when dreaming during the day. At night, I’m usually uninterrupted … "chance would be a fine thing" – ed … but in the day, there are all sorts of things going on.
When I’d finished work, I summoned up my friendly neighbourhood chatbot, and between the two of us, we worked out some music for the next radio programme after the one that I finished today. This will be yet another one that will overflow my hour with more than enough artists and albums. My chatbot is becoming more and more efficient at tracking down what I would like.
Teatime was next – my regular Friday night tea of vegan sausage, baked beans with cheese and pepper and air-fried chips. For some reason, the chips were even better today – as perfect as they could ever be. This method that my friend showed me, of par-boiling the chips before putting them in the air fryer, is making some delicious chips and I’d wished that I’d known about this before.
No pudding tonight – just a handful of biscuits because we had football. The match that I’d chosen was newly promoted Trefelin, near the bottom of the table, and an established Y Fflint, struggling likewise near the foot of the table.
As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Y Fflint play some really nice football and it beats me why they are so low in the table, but tonight, for the first half-hour, it was a kick-and-rush game. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m a big fan of this “long ball over the top”, and Y Fflint certainly have the goalkeeper in Jack Flint who can do it, but firstly, you need to be accurate with the ball, and secondly, you need a couple of quick forwards. Most of Jack Flint’s balls out of defence were going nowhere and to nobody.
Trefelin had by far the upper hand at first, but by the half-hour mark, Y Fflint had found their composure, settled down and began to play proper football.
Early in the second half, Y Fflint won a penalty and Trefelin’s keeper was sent off after he brought down an opposition attacker. The penalty was no trouble for Y Fflint’s centre-forward against the young substitute keeper, and the centre forward scored a second goal shortly afterwards when, unmarked at the far post, he turned in a cross from across the goal.
After that, it was all one-way traffic towards the Trefelin goal, but Y Fflint couldn’t increase the score.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that the idea of increasing the size of the league has just been to add some cannon fodder and to provide some easy relegation candidates to save the established clubs. And sure enough, the result in one of the matches tonight, an established club against a struggling new promotee, would have made a useful rugby score.
Now that my notes are finished, I’m off to bed before I turn into a pumpkin, and go to sleep, if the high winds let me.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the high winds … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends from the USA asked me if anyone had ended up today like Lottie Michelle Belk of Chester, Virginia.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"She was walking along the promenade at Virginia City in a wind of 40 km/h when she died, stabbed to death by the pointed end of a beach umbrella that had broken free from its mounting."
LIVE: Thursday 22nd October 2026 – TODAY IS THE …
… anniversary of one of the most famous dates in the histories of Granville and Paris.
It was today in 1895 that the express train from Granville, pulled by a 2-4-0 locomotive, number 721, failed to stop in time as it pulled into the old Montparnasse railway station in Paris.
The train had been running on time out of Granville but had been delayed en route, and so the driver had been going faster than normal in an effort to make up time. When he arrived at the station, he applied the train brake, but it didn’t slow the train down quickly enough, so he applied the air brakes, but they didn’t work the first time round and there was not enough time to try again.
The train crashed through the buffer stops, slid across the concourse and ploughed through a stone wall where it came to rest nose-down in the street. One of the lumps of stone that it had dislodged fell onto the head of a newspaper vendor in the street below, and the poor woman was killed instantly.
The photo above that accompanied the text is a famous photograph now out of copyright, but in the past, the copyright was held by the Studio Lévy. It has been suggested that the photographer was someone called Kuhn.
So apart from that, what other mischief have I been getting into today?
Last night was another horribly late night. It was after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out. It was about 00:30 when I finally climbed into bed.
And once again, I was asleep quite quickly, but once again, not for long. And today, there was a valid excuse. There was another hurricane howling around outside, and the heavy rain was being battered against my windows with a noise loud enough to awaken the Dead. No-one could sleep through that.
There I was, with my head wedged tightly underneath the quilt, but it made no difference at all.
From then on, I didn’t have a wink of sleep, and at one point I was thinking of raising myself from the Dead too and doing some work, but while I was debating with myself, the alarm made up my mind for me.
It took another long, long time for me to find the courage and energy to raise myself to my feet, and then I shuffled off to the front door to unlock it ready for the arrival of Isabelle the Nurse.
Then back across the apartment to the bathroom where I made myself pretty in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. I even remembered to have a shave too, so that I didn’t look like Captain Birdseye.
With nothing on the dictaphone this morning, I had to find other things to do to entertain myself, but not for long because Isabelle the Nurse was early today. While she was sorting out my legs and feet, we were chatting about injections again. However, there was nothing new in what she said.
After she left, I made my breakfast, and then I read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
The retiring president, in his speech to the members, is making a few timely observations, such as "the morbid and depraved ‘sensation’-ism that has tainted and enfeebled a large class of our literature" and this is before the days of chick-lit, the Daily Wail and “News of the Screws”.
He continues by discussing some of the works of Lord Macaulay, and the phrase that caught my eye when the author was summing up was, concerning science, "If it has not yet destroyed the scourge of war, it has so revolutionised its practice, both naval and military, that already its worst feature, that of duration, is probably abridged for ever". His words were written forty-seven years before World War I and seventy-two years before World War II.
As well as that, he adds that science "has facilitated intercourse", and if indeed it has, I shall be looking for a science course as soon as I have pressed “send” later on!
A little later on, there’s a discussion about the hillfort on one of the Herefordshire Beacons, and Edwin Lees, one of the speakers who considers himself to be an expert, in discussing the provenance of the hillfort, declares, having considered all of the evidence, that "The Princes of North and South Wales were really powerful, and made a bold defence against the advances of the Saxons until the beginning of the 10th century. To them, this camp was an important border fortress, and it was therefore by the Britons or Welsh of the Saxon period – between the years 400 and 800 – that I conceive this great castrametation to have been made and maintained."
This was quite a usual theme in the Victorian era, and we have encountered it on previous occasions. The fact is that the camp, according to modern research, was built no more recently than 200 BC.
After breakfast, I came back in here to carry on with my radio programme, but at first, there were some things that needed doing. … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed … Consequently, there wasn’t much time left to do a lot of work with the radio programme until the alarm rang.
That was the cue for me to go and have my disgusting drink and midday medication, and then to prepare for dialysis. My faithful cleaner came down too to apply the anaesthetic on my arm.
After she left, I checked the freezer to see what frozen foods needed to be ordered, and then I folded up over the dining table and waited for the taxi in an air of somnolence.
The taxi was ten minutes late, and it took me a while to make it to the car due to the strong winds blowing around. But I was the only passenger today, so we weren’t all that late arriving at dialysis.
As usual, I was one of the last to be plugged in, and that didn’t take place without a dispute. The liquid to be extracted was well over the maximum for three hours, so I told them to do it over four. However, the doctor (not Emilie the Cute Consultant) refused and said “three and a half hours maximum”, despite the instruction from one of the other doctors, something that I have mentioned on several occasions just recently.
The advantage with having two new nurses on your ward is that they aren’t quite up to speed with the nuances of the service, so my way of thinking is that if I’m being refused permission to follow a doctor’s instruction by another doctor, there are a few other doctors’ instructions that I can choose to ignore too. So the maximum nine hundred and fifty millilitres per hour rule went into the bin too, and I persuaded the nurses to wind it up to eleven hundred per hour so that it would be done in three and a half hours.
Of course, when the doctor (it was the new girl who had only recently started) found out, she went berserk, but I stood my ground and in the end, she wandered off. She instructed the nurses to set the blood pressure machine to “every fifteen minutes”, but the “discussion” had actually done me some good and I was recording unheard-of blood pressures. I even made it up to 120/80 once!
When the nurses came back, I had a chat with them. The problem with many people in the medical profession, particularly here, is that they have all of these machines with bells and whistles that tell them how a patient ought to be feeling and programme things accordingly. They don’t actually listen to the patient and ask him how he’s feeling. I remember once having a blood pressure of 68, the medical team was panicking while I was happily watching a football match. And again, when the black line dropped below the yellow block, they were asking me “do you have cramp? You must have cramp. Surely you must have cramp by now”, and I was quietly doing my shopping list with no cramp at all.
And that’s another thing – if I were to have cramp, I’d know how to manage it. Years of sporty activity taught me a lot. I certainly wouldn’t complain about it and cry for the machine to be stopped.
And while I was at it, I sowed the first seeds for the “dialysis de nuit”. They have all-night sessions here where the dialysis goes on for eight hours while people sleep. It’s for people who work in the daytime or those who always have a really heavy load to shift, and as I don’t do much except (try to) sleep during the night, it might be a solution for me. I’ve no idea how it works, but I’d be interested in finding out.
Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … dialysis centre, there was no football to watch, so I prepared my shopping list. And once again, a whole load of stuff has been cleared out of Leclerc’s home delivery range. Things are going to start to become difficult for me if it continues.
After I’d been plugged in for three hours, one of the taxi drivers stuck his head around the door to ask if I was ready. I explained that it would be another forty-five minutes. It seems that the inexperienced nurses had forgotten to ring up the taxi company to say that my session had been extended.
That’s bad enough, but knowing full well that the driver was waiting for me, the nurses chose to clean the machine at the end of the session rather than unplug me, compress the wounds and then send me on my way. And when we finally started for home, the threatened hurricane was already starting to rise.
The wind was such when we returned home that the driver had to reverse down the fire road at the back of the building and drop me off by the fire escape which my faithful cleaner had opened from the inside. There, I only have to take three steps and I’m inside the building rather than the usual three hundred.
And when I was back in my apartment, she stuck a disgusting drink into my sweaty little mitt.
After she left, I looked at the time, and, once more, it was horribly late. However, I took a slice of frozen shepherd’s pie from the freezer and ate it with veg and gravy, followed by tinned apricot halves and home-made chocolate and coconut ice cream. And how delicious was that?
Back in the office, I began to type out my notes but the effects of this strenuous dialysis session caught up with me. I crashed out once and I could feel myself going again, so I abandoned the session, posted on line the notes as far as they had gone, added a “to be continued” stamp and went to bed. The rest of the notes can wait until tomorrow.
And seeing as we have been talking about tomorrow … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’ll probably be the same tomorrow night too. There are football matches in Wales and they don’t finish until about 22:45, so I’ll only be able to start the notes then, and so there won’t be many of them on line Friday night.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about hillforts … "well, one of us has" – ed … during an attack on the Herefordshire Beacon in 196 BC, one of the sentinels, who came from Crewe, shouted "there are some people coming up round the eastern side of the fort!"
"Are they friends or enemies?" asked the commander.
"They must be friends, sir!" shouted the sentinel from Crewe. "Look how close they are standing together!"