Saturday 20th February 2016 – IT REALLY DOES COME TO SOMETHING…

… when I can’t think of anything to write.

I suppose that it’s all to do with what’s going on here right now. I’m not moving, not going anywhere, not doing anything, and the only excitement that I’m having seems to be going on at night.

Last night was no exception either. And the first part of it all was so interesting is that I didn’t even feature in it – either as a participant or a spectator. It took place back in the USSR – not in the John Lennon/Beatles era, but in World War II. There was a huge cinema there, a typical Soviet-era edifice, and a series of patriotic films was being shown. There was a young girl in charge of distributing water bottles in packs of six. These were given to different girls who acted as distributors during the show. One pack was given to a girl who was there with her friend, an officer in the Red Army, and her younger sister. This girl put the six-pack of water into a dustbin full of water to keep it cool so that she and her friends could sit quietly and watch the film. At the end of the film they prepare to leave but some official comes round to collect the unused water bottles. The girl in charge points out to him the other girl, who is on the point of leaving the cinema, so he shouts over to her. The girl whispers to her two companions to keep on walking and not to acknowledge her otherwise they would be sucked into this discussion. She walks back and the official asks her about these six bottles. She explains that they are a few rows back, stuck in a dustbin full of water, but the dustbin has by now disappeared. He starts to accuse this girl of anti-Soviet behaviour for having stolen these water bottles or else having been careless about their disposal. Suddenly, she makes a flash of recognition and dashes forward to where the first girl is sitting which is a kind of swamp (in a cinema?) and there’s a makeshift quay discreetly hidden amongst the seat bases. It unfolds to this officer that the girl in charge had been craftily going around and collecting all of the unused water, and someone had come along with a boat and taken it all away. Then she had dismantled and hidden the quay. He then turns his attention to the girl in charge rather than the other girl. But then a most extraordinary thing happened about that affair, in that the Soviets started to hush up the affair. It transpired that one of the people involved in this deception about the bottles of water was none other than the Queen Mother of the UK. This would not only cause the Queen Mother some alarm but the British Government some alarm too and if there was any estrangement between the two countries, the British would stop supplying war goods to the Soviet Union. The USSR needs to keep quiet about that.
After that, I ended up personally in a theatre attending what I reckon was a rehearsal for a play involving quite a few children. The producer was someone called Basil Blackwood – someone who really did exist by the way. As well as being a prominent barrister and civil servant, ha was an illustrator of children’s books and was killed at Ypres in World War I. But I digress. Blackwood had all of these children, some wearing the most extravagant costumes, all milling around and dancing. he was calling out all kinds of manoeuvres at a machine-gun pace, confusing them all but at the same time instilling some kind of discipline into them. And suddenly, he called a halt, and someone came in with a plate of sandwiches – little squares with the crusts cut off. Each child was allowed two squares but I was allowed three because, as he said, I had brought in the cheese and meat.

I managed to encourage the woodstove into action this morning, and that was exciting too. There were a few embers still in it so I gave them a really good prod and then opened the air vent. After about half an hour of simmering away, and a few delicate adjustments of the controls, it flared up so I quickly dumped a couple of logs into it and they caught quite nicely, and so we were off.

Liz and Terry left me alone for an hour and a half too while they went into St Gervais for the shopping, and left me to get on with a few things. one of the things that I’ve been doing is to continue where I left off before Christmas and catch up transcribing the notes from the dictaphone. It’s now grown to 146 files and I need to free up some space on there or else I’ll be running out. It’s not simply a case of transcribing them either but saving them to a hard drive and also copying them onto a CD as a back-up. I’ll be here for ever if I don’t put my foot down.

Some more home-made ice cream for tea tonight too and it’s tasting better and better. And now I’m off for yet another early night. I can’t last the pace these days with this hectic life that I’m living.

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Friday 19th February 2016 – THAT’S MORE LIKE IT!

Having used the decongestant stuff last night before going off to bed, I finally managed to have a good night’s sleep last night, even managing to finish off watching the Flash Gordon film that I started to see the previous evening.

I only woke up once too, for the usual reasons, and promptly forgot everything that related to the little journey that I had been on up to then. But I had more luck when I went back to sleep afterwards. I seem to have cricket on the brain right now because I’d started a new job in an office somewhere and this place had a cricket team. There was some important cricket match taking place quite soon and I’d offered my services, but I’d never heard any more. Word on the grapevine however suggested that I’d been chosen to play but I’d never had any confirmation from anyone. Come the day of the match, I appeared at work without my cricketing gear, reckoning that if they were to tell me of my selection at this late hour they could allow me half an hour to go home and pick it up. But nothing happened so I didn’t bother. The match itself was played against a touring XI, either the Indians or the Sri Lankans and was largely a bad-tempered affair. One of the star touring batsmen was dismissed for a duck and the fielding team performed a little choreographed dance in celebration (which I thought was in extremely poor taste) and even the square leg umpire joined in the celebration, which is unheard-of. Obviously, the batsman was quite upset by this and made some kind of remark or gesture, which was met with a barrage of abuse from the fielding side and the umpire. All of this made me think that I was glad that it was a match in which I wasn’t taking part.

I could have gone on from here too but a rather dramatic noise from the kitchen broke the spell. What was actually happening was that Liz was busily destroying a cardboard box to use as kindling to light the stove. From upstairs, it sounded like an earthquake.

At least I managed an early breakfast out of it and then, in accordance with my usual custom, did absolutely … errr … badger-all for the rest of the day. I was the only one who did nothing however. Terry was out for a good few hours cutting another pile of wood and Liz had another student come round for a lesson. We also had a social visit too.

For lunch, I finished off the leftovers from yesterday’s pizza (which, like most spicy or garnished foods, tastes even better the following day) and for tea it was chips, burger and baked beans – with real Sarson’s malt vinegar.

In fact, the nurse asked me how I was doing and asked if I was eating well. I replied, quite honestly, that I was in the best restaurant in the world here and once I’ve recovered and ready to go home, I’m going to find something else wrong with me.

Now, having watched the England cricket team, and especially Chris Topley, brilliantly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory against the South Africans, I’m off to have yet another early night. I can’t last the hectic pace these days, can I?

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Thursday 18th February 2016 – AND WASN’T THAT A WASTE OF TIME?

We went off to Montlucon this afternoon and the hospital. Terry dropped me off and then went to do some shopping, and I hobbled gamely inside.

Much to my surprise, it didn’t take too long to be seen, and to be honest, I needn’t have wasted my time. Nothing was resolved here that couldn’t have been resolved by five minutes on the telephone and what is even worse, they could have held this interview while I had been in the hospital on another occasion. All that happened was that I was asked about 20 questions while the doctor made notes.

What is even worse is that I now have to come back on three more occasions in this respect, and two of those will be half-day sittings too. Saying that I’m fed up is something of an understatement.

We came back home via the pharmacie where we stopped so that I could find something to help with my nasal problems. It’s no fun having a code in de dose, Balcolm.

And so that was that. What a waste of time. And I don’t have much to spare either as you know, not at my age. And the amount of fuel we are using to travel the 100kms each way and the pain that I’m suffering during the journey is starting to get on my nerves.

I can’t say that I wasn’t prepared for the journey though. I’d fallen asleep watching an old Flash Gordon film from the early 1950s (and it was funny to hear the outer-space villains talking in extremely camp German accents) and managed something resembling a decent night’s sleep with just a couple of interruptions. I started off back working for Shearings again and I received a communication from them saying that I had to go to a certain hotel to pick up a coach from a driver who had been taken ill. I was in BKV, my old Morris 1300GT at the time, right by Jackson’s Corner in Willaston facing towards Nantwich, and after taking the phone call from the phone box there, found that I had locked myself out of the car. My jacket and all of my keys were in there. Luckily, the rear passenger door was open so I could enter the car that way. I did a “U” turn, right across the traffic, with no lights on or anything, which upset everyone else on the road. I checked everything that I had to make sure that I hadn’t forgotten everything, and then I was off. It transpired that where these people were staying was near Walsall in a hotel near the football ground car park. It was a huge, sprawling, rambling modern hotel which, from the outside, was not dissimilar to one that I had visited a few nights ago (although the interior was totally different). All of the drivers and hostesses had a huge communal bedroom with a pile of beds in it, some single and some double. Mine was a single bed right in the corner by the wall. I managed a couple of hours’ sleep and then found my way to the showers. That wasn’t easy and they were communal too. After the shower, I went to sort out my diesel receipts. With not having a fuel card for the coach, I would have to pay cash and seek reimbursement so this would be an opportunity to recycle some of my old receipts. There I was, sorting through a huge pile, and then I realised that that was a waste of time because how would anyone accept a diesel receipt for today that was dated 1999? I gave it up and went back to bed to have another sleep. I was awoken by a girl sleeping in a bed on the far side of a double bed being shared by two drivers. She was complaining about how people should be more careful about who sleeps with whom, because of all of the noise. One of the two drivers was complaining about how he had slept in a circus and how he had continually thrown his partner out of bed to wake him up as he snored like a bull. I asked him whether I had snored very much. He replied in the negative, saying that I was all right, so I made a face at this girl, wondering why she was dragging me into the conversation. We were then interrupted by a photographer who came in with a pile of primary school kids in sky-blue pullovers and grey trousers or skirts. The aim was to photograph all of us and I had brought Strawberry Moose with me so I made sure that he was quite prominent on the photo. I had then to go somewhere across the car park quite quickly and I’d taken Strawberry Moose with me. Some young boy from this photography session, aged about 7 or 8, came along and we were chatting about His Nibs, he being vexed about how his father hadn’t introduced them to each other. I therefore let him carry His Nibs back to the hotel. I was in a hurry to return as the father was going to show me around his garage where he had quite a collection of old vehicles.
A short while later I was in a van – it might have been Caliburn, I think, with someone else whom I don’t remember. We were in the centre of a big city and pulled up at some traffic lights. Here was a police control and my van was checked over by a plain-clothes police team. They insisted on seeing my papers, which were all in order anyway, but they were taking their time about it. While we were waiting, a big artic pulled up alongside in the outer lane. It was a pale yellow matt colour. The police pounced on that too and asked for the driver’s documents. His cab was quite high off the road and so he simply threw his paperwork out of the vehicle, and also a television and a fruit cake (why a fruit cake I have no idea). The police picked up his documents and walked off round the corner with them to where their vehicle was parked. Meantime, the lorry driver realised that he had forgotten a paper so I said that I would take it. I really had to climb up high to reach it, and the lorry driver started to talk to me in Spanish, only a bit of which I could understand. When I descended from the lorry I had a quick look at the number plates, expecting to see Spanish plates, but in fact they were from Tennessee. I was surprised to see a lorry from Tennessee here in Europe but at least it would explain the Spanish (I was confusing Tennessee with Texas, I reckon). I took the paper – it was a flimsy yellow paper, written on one side with punch holes in various places – round to the policeman in charge. He asked “why do I need to see this,” to which I replied that I had no idea, but the lorry driver clearly thinks that it’s important. Anyway, we waited. And waited. And waited. For hours, I reckoned. And then I went round to see what he was up to, this policeman, and there he was, having a little street party and dancing with a couple of kids. I filmed it with my mobile phone and sent the images off to the local radio station. After all, there we were, this lorry and my van, blocking the street, the lorry driver had run out of hours too so he couldn’t move his lorry now anyway. The radio station sent a car and a camera around to film it for themselves. It didn’t half cause a stir.

I made myself another pizza tonight. The pizza base was one of these big square ones that I had bought by mistake so there’s plenty left for lunch tomorrow. Now I’m going to sit quietly and watch a football match, then I’ll be off for yet another early night – and hopefully finish watching my Flash Gordon film.

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Wednesday 17th February 2016 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT!

This streaming head-cold that I seem to have acquired during my stay at hospital is, if anything, worsening. It’s most uncomfortable, to say, the least, and I keep on waking up every half-hour or so with the most awful congestion.

This is interrupting my sleeping patterns quite dreadfully, not that they were anything much to write home about beforehand but now they are even worse. As a result, I’m just having patchworks of nocturnal voyages and waking up just as something interesting is about to happen.

For example, during the night I was off on so many nocturnal rambles that it was hard to keep track of them. You may laugh about the old joke about being a traveller in ladies’ underwear but that’s exactly how I started out last night and what’s more, I was travelling through the “wild west”. I was almost immediately held up, in good old western fashion, by a couple of desperadoes. One of these was, would you believe, carrying a baby. As this hold-up progressed, some corrosive liquid was spilt and this went all over the arms of the guy holding the baby. He was there panicking, holding this baby, while his arms were being attacked by this liquid.
I was being some kind of manager for a tower block on some kind of housing estate in either East Ham or West Ham. One of the families living here was a black family and as the parents were ill, I was obliged to make lunch for the four children. I decided on something quick and simple – beans on toast. Each child received two rounds of buttered toast and a scoop of baked beans. But for some strange reason, I couldn’t get the cooking to synchronise. I ended up burning the beans and the toast was cold. The two elder kids came in off their own bat to have their lunch leaving me to deal with the two younger ones. I had to shout down the corridor from my flat to theirs to tell them to come. But there was a man walking past and he was clearly some kind of official who was running the place. He stuck his head into their apartment and started to lecture their mother about something or other. In the meantime, I was calling these two kids and eventually the elder one came, so I sent him back to fetch his younger brother but this disturbed the man who was trying to tell the mother something. He had a couple of words to say to me about it so I replied in kind. But one thing that was going through my mind was that I needed four bowls (why not plates?) for these kids and I only had three white ones and one yellow one. I was wondering about any possible argument about which kid should have the yellow one.
We then went on to the local church hall where some kind of kids concert was taking place. I turned up as it had almost finished and the kids were all sitting on the floor around the counter of the bar or buffet. I nipped behind the bar and found a couple of biscuits to eat, for I was hungry. While I was there, one of the women told me where to go to sit down so I grabbed my biscuits and went off to sit on the floor where indicated, right at the end of the queue. As I took my place, a girl came up to me and told me that I need to sit at the other end of the queue, so I explained that the woman in charge had told me to come and sit here. Anyway, we ended up having quite a chat about this particular event
From the East End of London I ended up in the North-East of England at a terrace of miners’ cottages somewhere on a cliff overlooking the sea. These houses, although terraced houses, were actually in pairs of a similar style, with the next pair being quite different, and so on. One of the miners here becomes bankrupt and surrenders himself to the authorities to take charge of his bankruptcy, and being rudely awakened at this point, that was all of that.
Once more back into the arms of Morpheus, I ended up now on a train heading back from London. It was a big express kind of thing, a locomotive pulling a rake of carriages, and it pulled into Crewe station, which is where I wanted to alight. The train usually had a long wait at the station so I hopped off, leaving everything behind – my coat, my luggage, my laptop. I’d been sitting in a seat, one of a block of four, and this was where most of my luggage was to be found, but I’d moved with the laptop across the aisle to a seat with a table so that I could work from there. The train arrived at quarter-to the hour and was due to leave at ten past the hour so I had plenty of time to stretch my legs before gathering up my possessions and leaving. I went into the station buffet looking out of the window and the train suddenly pulled out, at ten minutes to the hour! There was no announcement at all. I wasn’t quick enough to leave the building otherwise I would have made a sprint for an open door, as many other people were doing. Now, all my possessions were streaming off northwards and I was only in the clothes that I was standing up in, plus some money in the pouch that I wear around my neck when I’m travelling. I had to wander off and try to find the station manager or someone in the lost property office to lodge a complaint about my possessions and to see if they could be intercepted by an official on the train or at the next station, before someone else redeemed them unofficially, and permanently.

It’s hardly surprising that after all of that, I wasn’t up to too much. Terry went out to cut some wood for an hour or two during a break in the weather (because it has been cold here, that’s for sure) and left me to my own devices but I wasn’t in the mood for getting into much mischief. I just sat and vegetated instead.

That was really the story of my day too. It’s too cold to do very much, no-one goes out unless they need to and so I’ll be staying here on the sofa.

Well, not tomorrow afternoon because I’m back at the hospital for yet more tests and examinations. I’m not at all sure why they didn’t carry out all of these tests while I was there because in my condition, still with my stitches, a round-trip of 100kms on some bad minor roads is not doing me any good at all. At the moment I might be taking one pace forward, but then I’m immediately taking two paces backwards and I won’t ever improve at this rate.

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Tuesday 16th February 2016 – OHH NOO!!

As if I don’t already have enough to worry about, they seem to have discovered that it appears that I have a pulmonary embolism. No wonder that I’ve not been feeling up to all that much just recently.

That’s right – I went out to Montlucon today, thanks to Terry who drove me, and the hospital for a check-up. Rather like the young girl who came back home after a trip around Eastern Europe and told her mother that she was pregnant.
“How do you know?” asked mother. “Have you had a check-up?”
“No, mother” replied the girl “It was a Bulgarian”.

Anyway, here we are. I have to go back to hospital on Thursday for yet more tests. This is going to be a never-ending cycle and I can see it ending up like this as a rather permanent arrangement.

If that’s not enough to be going on with, they’ve decided that they ought to change my anti-coagulant for another brand. That’s right – just five days after I’ve spent €447 in buying a month’s supply. Of course, I’ll be reimbursed by my insurance but that’s hardly the point if I have to stand it out in the first place anyway. And so I told them flat that I’ll change – once this supply is exhausted (and when I’ll be exhausted too, I shouldn’t be surprised).

There’s news about the blood tests too. From now on I only need give the samples once per week. That might sound like good news but it isn’t necessarily, and for two good reasons. Firstly, I’m having the twice-daily visits of the nurse anyway, so I’m not really going to benefit by anything very much. And secondly, it says on the prescription that I’ll be needing them for the next FOUR MONTHS! That takes me up to the summer and I wouldn’t be surprised if things go beyond that too.

in case you haven’t already gathered, I’m sick up to the eyeballs of all of this. I think that we all knew that it wouldn’t be too long before I wished that I had my spleen back so that I could vent it. I shall just have to borrow someone else’s.

Still, on the positive side, it was nice to be out and about today. First time that I’ve been out for over a week – since I came back from hospital in fact. It was freezing cold, minus 1°C as it happens, and I felt every single degree of it. But at least I could get to the Amaranthe and buy a load of vegan cheese and some oats so that at least I’d have things to eat. But once more, I felt every bump in the road and I was so glad to sit down on the sofa back here.

I’d had a very leisurely morning though, which is just as well because I’d had a hectic night. Difficulties sleeping however, but now that I know the reason why, it’s no surprise. But once I’d gone to sleep, I was gone – and I do mean “gone”.

First port of call was at a football match in Scotland – a non-league game and one of the teams playing was pushing hard for the non-league championship so that it could be promoted to divisional football there. However, there was a TV programme broadcasting about how this would be unlikely to happen because several of the players at the club were friends with players at the club that risked being relegated. One of these non-league players even gave lifts to the star performer of his own team, to take him to matches. The TV programme was alleging that all of this co-operation would come to a shuddering halt in order to preserve the league club’s status, and that the non-league club would deliberately try to avoid winning the remaining matches. This then drifted on to a report about Aldershot football club. This club, as we know, went bankrupt years ago and was reformed, and fought its way back to Football League status. The new club had built a new stadium (which, of course, it hasn’t) and the TV programme was focusing on all the the problems that the club was having there – the drug abuse, vagrancy and delinquency of the area, all kinds of things going on on the car park affecting the club. It seemed that the club was bitterly regretting building this ground in the area where they did and how they were hoping that fate would be kind to them and enable them to move to a new ground in more salubrious surroundings.
Our next voyage concerned a visit to a man who had a collection of chimpanzees and monkeys. He had a cage, where he kept his chimpanzees and monkeys, fitted up as a room with all kinds of different signs, cut-outs and objects in it and he was training these monkeys to recognise all of these objects and behave accordingly. One of these signs was like a wooden notice-board that swung out from the wall rather like a door might do, but would fold back 180 degrees. It made a horrible squeaking noise when it swung open, and one of his monkeys could imitate the noise perfectly and this was quite an astonishing feat.
We haven’t finished yet either. I found myself in an office at a place where I used to work (it wasn’t the same office but the people were quite a mix of former colleagues from different places) and I was making myself a cup of tea. I’d run out of tea bags and so I “borrowed” one from someone else and while I was doing so, someone made a remark that I’d better hurry up or else a black man would be doing my work. A third person, overhearing, and being evidently surprised that I had not commented on the remark, asked me what the previous person had said. I repeated the remark, except substituting “grand-child” for black person, which took the wind out of her sales. She was clearly expecting some kind of racist observation.
From here we went on to North America and an outdoor event like a fair or some such. As we arrived, a stream of runners were returning from a race.It was about 14:30 and, apparently, the day always started at 08:30 with a marathon race and as we were arriving it would be when the main stream of runners would be returning, and this was what I was telling my companion. One of the runners was the President of the USA and as he was sitting on the floor recovering, two young boys came to interview him. However, we were all interrupted by my alarm clock going off.

Yes, I’m doing quite well again with these nocturnal rambles, aren’t I? it’s hardly surprising that I’m totally worn out with all of this travelling. I need to save my strength if I now have to cope with a pulmonary embolism on top of everything else.

It’s hardly surprising that I’m thoroughly fed up, but at least the food is second-to-none here at Liz and Terry’s, and no-one can ask for any more than that.

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Monday 15th February 2016 – WHAT A NIGHT!

Last night was definitely, to coin a well-worn football phrase, a night of two halves. I was in bed early watching one of the series of films of the “Three Mesquiteers”, a series that was heavily parodied in The Three Amigos! but afterwards, I just couldn’t doze off to sleep. I was awake for hours. By the time 01:30 came round, I was in agony too. I told you a day or so ago that I was really feeling uncomfortable in my stomach, and the feeling had developed right through the night until it was unbearable.

In the end, I staggered off down the corridor to the porcelain horse and this is where it all starts to become vulgar, because if … errr … flatulence had been a recognised sport, I would have comfortably won an Olympic Gold Medal.

Strangely (or maybe not), I felt so much better afterwards and even managed a decent sleep, of which I remember almost nothing at all. But I do recall some kind of preoccupation that the nursing staff at the hospital had with all of this. A couple of times per day they would ask me if I had … errr … made any gas recently. Clearly, in the nature of post-operative care, that kind of thing is quite important, and after last night’s effort I can now understand why.

This was like something out of “Kez”, which is quite surprising because that is a film that I have never ever seen, so how would I know? I can’t remember too much now about what was actually happening but what I do remember was that I was having an aerial view of what was going on, actually as if I had been the kestrel that was flying above the scene. It was all rather disorientating.

We had the nurse this morning, and my blood count has gone down again – to just 9.8. I’m hugely disappointed by that but then again, if it’s too early to be glad about the positive news from Thursday’s test, then it’s too early to be sad about today’s. I have to bear in mind that if someone had offered me 9.8 as a permanent figure after my operation, I would have been glad to take it, given some of the dire results beforehand. Don’t forget that I haven’t had any “extra” blood for well over a week.

We also had a heavy snowfall too. The temperature has been teetering around freezing point for most of the day so it was really only like slushy rain, I suppose, and while it looked as if it was so impressive, it melted away almost as soon as it landed. It will be interesting to see what happens overnight – I have to go back to hospital tomorrow.

The snowfall didn’t stop a visitor arriving. To save Liz the trouble of going out, one of her pupils came here and had a two-hour lesson. It was interesting for me to overhear what was being discussed as I’d never previously really sat in on a lesson.

For tea I had a beautiful bean pasta-bake with grated cheese. Gorgeous, it was. What was even nicer was the vegan ice-cream. That’s still just a little short on shop-quality as far as the smoothness goes (which is no surprise seeing that we aren’t set up here for an industrial operation) but as far as the taste goes, it was excellent and Liz can be proud of herself. It’s the third batch that she has made, all of which have been through trial-and-error, and each time there’s a major improvement.

I shall be really sorry when I have to go home.

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Sunday 14th February 2016 – THAT’LL LARN ME …

… to go bragging last night about being able to sleep, two nights running, right the way through the night. It goes without saying, therefore, that last night was a totally different kind of animal and I was awake for long periods on several occasions during the night.

But at least it meant that I remembered rather more of my nocturnal travels during the night. We started out with me having had my stitches out already but I was far from ready to have this done. I knew that my body hadn’t healed up properly but they had been taken out all the same, and you’ve no idea just how uncomfortable this whole idea made me feel.
From here I was on the move – quite literally too because I’d moved house – or, rather, a different house which was a two-bedroomed mid-terraced house of the 1920s rather like on the housing estate that I mentioned the other day. One weird thing about this house was that there were no doors to the rooms – just narrow slits in the wall. You had to be slim to squeeze through them. I didn’t have much problem to squeeze through but anyone overweight would have no chance of moving from room to room. A friend of mine and his wife told me that they would come to visit to look at the house, so I’d tidied up – just like normal. it really did need it. But in tidying up I’d left a big oily mark on the nice wallpaper on the bedroom wall – I’m not quite sure how. And so they turned up, and the first thing that I noticed was that it wasn’t his wife (although, actually, it was) and the second thing was that it was really late at night – more like in the small hours. Apparently they had been to visit someone else on the way and it was now 01:00. They had had nothing to eat that evening so i took them off to some kind of greasy kebab house in the vicinity where they had a burger and chips. They went to pay but there was no change in the place so I had to end up by giving them change out of my own pocket. We then started to go back to my house, engaged in deep conversation and as a result we walked right past my house – I couldn’t recognise my house from outside. It was only by looking at the house numbers that I realised that we had gone about 10 houses past where I was living, so we had to turn round and retrace our steps back to my place.
I was then in a prison but it wasn’t a prison, more like a hospital. I was sharing a room, or cell, with a couple, a couple who reminded me very much of a couple who used to go to watch the football at Pionsat every now and again. We could leave our cell, or room, but only step into the corridor. I found that I had a packet of biscuits but I couldn’t eat them because they contained milk so I was going to leave them outside my room for anyone else to take them away. But I was holding the packet in my mouth as I needed my two hands free to do something else but it looked just as if I was trying to tear open the packet, and I was seen by one of the “nurses”. Each time I went to put the packet outside, I had it in my mouth, and each time I was seen.

The alarm clock woke me up with its usual cacophony and off I trotted downstairs. We’d had snow again during the night and there was some of it still hanging around. The nurse came again – twice as you probably know – and it wasn’t quite as painful as last night. I’m now concentrating on having the injections on the left as the right is far more painful. To be honest, it feels as if I have a belt around my waist – a belt that is far too tight.

Liz has been experimenting with her cooking too. We now have home-made nut cutlets, home-made tahini, home-made hummus and my ice-cream too. It’s nice to see a fridge stacked high with vegan food.

Apart from that, I’ve done my usual badger-all today. There’s nothing to do and in any case I’m in no mood to do it. I wish that I could hurry up and recover.

Ohhh – and Happy Valentine’s Day to you all, with love from me.

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Saturday 13th February 2016 – TWO DAYS ON THE RUN NOW …

… that I’ve managed to sleep right through the night without having to go for a stroll down the corridor. This is pretty-much unheard of and it must be a sign that I’m recovering a little.

But the downside of it all is that I remember almost nothing of any nocturnal ramble. The only thing that I recall for sure was that my red Cortina estate car XCL 465 X was involved in it somewhere.

I hated it when the alarm went off at 07:45. And I hated it even more when the nurse came round to give me my injection. The first one of this next session, and I’m fed up of it already. If that wasn’t bad enough, the injection that I had tonight hurt like blazes and that made me even more fed up. Still, only another 29 days to go!

And so apart from that, I’ve done almost nothing at all. Sitting down reading stuff on the internet, including what must go down as the most classic mistype of all time. In yet another case on The Old Bailey Online, one of the witnesses describes himself as “manager to J. A. Lawton and Co., carnage manufacturers, of 24, Orchard Street, London”. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

But Liz has been busy. She’s found more tips and hints about making vegan ice-cream and so she’s started one off to see how it goes. Coconut milk and a bar of mint-flavoured chocolate, together with maple syrup and a secret ingredient. We’ll definitely have to see how that goes!

But that’s my lot today. Nothing else has happened at all apart from the howling gale and torrential rainstorm that blew up around here. I’m going to go for yet another early night and watch yet another film. It’s this kind of life that is doing me good, I reckon.

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Friday 12th February 2016 – I’VE BEEN ON MY OWN …

… for much of the day today. Liz and Terry had things to do in St Gervais and Montlucon so they were gone long before 09:00, and I was left to my own devices.

Much of the time was spent trying to encourage the boiler. It’s a solid-fuel boiler burning wood and it’s one of those machines that if you know what you are doing and the thing is set up right, it burns away quite happily to itself. All you have to do is to load it up every hour or so. But if you don’t know what you are doing and the boiler is still a little on the cool side, it needs continual coaxing. And that was what was happening today – I had to be there for a considerable amount of time trying to make it warm up correctly.

Still, it’s all good experience.

Apart from that, I was doing something quite interesting. I’d been reading about one of the earliest “garden village” council estates in London, built at the turn of the 20th Century in Tooting. But doing some more research I came across the court case of the person why built it. He was borrowing money to finance the business (which was normal in those days) but the London County Council, not only “valued” the work four weeks in arrears, but then took another four weeks to pay up (which even the Prosecuting Counsel in the court case admitted was a “difficult way for anyone to do business”). It goes without saying that the builder fell into difficulties and the bank promptly pulled its financial backing, even though a distribution of his assets produced a surplus. He ended up adopting some rather questionable financial tactics to keep his business afloat and ended up with seven months imprisonment which, if you ask me, was quite outrageous. If they had left him alone, and had the Council paid up on time, he would have completed his contracts and made a decent profit for everyone concerned. But it does just go to show that aggressive banking and unsympathetic Official Receivers is far from being a modern phenomenon.

When Liz and Terry came back, they brought half the contents of the local chemist’s with them. It appears that the prescriptions that I had been given by the hospital are … errr … somewhat exaggerated. I’m going to end up with more stuff here than they will have in their stores.

We had a nice tea tonight – I had vegan lasagne with peas and chips – and then watched Chris Morris demolish the English bowling to win single-handedly the one – day cricket international. And now I’m off to bed for an early night.

And I need it too because I was off on my travels again. The first part was back in a hospital somewhere which had been invaded by an Arab fighting force. I’m not going to go into details because you are probably eating your tea or your breakfast or something and I’m trying to keep this site fit for human consumption and fun for all the family. But I was being chased around by a soldier and a nurse wielding a huge hypodermic syringe and I remember thinking to myself “just how am I going to get out of this?” – which I did by the simple expedient of waking up. And I remember saying that I wish that I had thought of that earlier.
From there I ended up back in Crewe, driving around the block formed by Middlewich Street, Badger Avenue, Broad Street and Coppenhull Lane. I needed to park up somewhere near the top of Middlewich Street to go into a shop to pick up something but there was nowhere to park. And so I cruised round and around the block hoping that something would free itself up. But nothing did. And then I noticed that at one certain moment, there was no-one behind me for miles so I would have had plenty of time to double-park to go into the shop, had I thought on. But a car pulled up and that was where my socks were, in the storage box between the front seats over the top of the handbrake. I nipped out of my car, pulled open the passenger door and dived in to retrieve my socks, and fell right over the passenger in the front seat – none other than the girl who has been on my travels with me on a few occasions now.

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Thursday 11th February 2016 – FOR THE FIRST TIME …

… since coming out of my morphine-induced semi-coma about 10 days ago, I haven’t been on a nocturnal ramble during the night. Or, at least, if I did, I know absolutely nothing at all about it.

I had an early night and watched a film on the laptp, one of the ones that I downloaded from http://www.archive.org while I was in hospital, chatted briefly to a friend on the internet, and the next thing that I knew, it was 06:15. A stroll down the corridor to the porcelain horse, and then the next thing that I noticed after that was the raucous cacophony of my alarm clock telling me that it was 07:45. I remember absolutely nothing else at all.

The nurse finally turned up at 08:40 for the blood test, and then I could have breakfast. And then, I’ve done precisely nothing at all. And I don’t care either. I’ve spent most of the day either relaxing or dozing. And that’s my lot.

As for the blood test though, there’s some good news. Most of the things that should be expected to go up have indeed gone up, and most of the things that should be expected to go down have indeed gone down. My blood count is a massive, astonishing 10.4 and it’s never ever been that high. Of course, one swallow doesn’t make a summer and I’d want to see 20 blood tests with that kind of figure before I pass judgement, but it is an encouraging sign.

To celebrate, I made myself a pizza for tea. The process was slow and agonising but the end result was well-worth it. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now I’m off for an early night, hoping that I can have yet another really good sleep. I deserve more than a couple after all of my exertions and I’m hoping that they’ll come soon enough.

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Wednesday 10th February 2016 – IT SNOWED TODAY

Great big flakes, the size of dinner plates too! That’s what we had for about half an hour here round about 15:00 or so. It didn’t stick, unfortunately, otherwise it would have been something really impressive, but at least winter is back. That’s bad news for all of the plants that are growing, because one thing that I noticed on my way back from Montlucon the other day is that we have the blossom on the trees. This weather will have put paid to all of that.

We had another visitor too. Liz and Terry have a friend who lives out the other side of Les Ancizes and she passed by this afternoon to say hello. It’s nice to have company every now and again.

Apart from that, I’ve not done too much. I still have pains in my chest and in my side and it’s uncomfortable to sit for too long. Typing is difficult too as the constant movement of my arms and fingers is putting a strain on the muscles that have been injured.

And I’ve also been having to recover from my night-time voyages too. I’m still racking up the miles here and there as I travel about the world, and last night was no different. We started off with some kind of disturbance involving a group of kids going on a rampage in an underground car park, and I was eager to get away from all of this. I hopped into my car, a late-model Series III Hillman Minx, and headed off out of the exit. As I arrived at the end of the exit ramp I noticed that all of these kids were there, blockading the way out, so I did a smart u-turn and went back down again. These kids immediately drew the attention of a passing police car to me and so they all decided to set up an ambush for me. My car was actually quite conspicuous, because it had one of these exaggerated spoilers fitted to the boot – the type of aerodynamic spoiler that was fitted to the very first of the aerodynamic Formula One racing cars. I came out again at a different exit across the road, but was spotted so I had to go back down again. The third time that I tried to leave, it was at a different exit right across at the opposite end of the car park. It was at the top of a bank, at the far end of a surface-level car park which was totally empty so that you had a really good view of the surrounding area. And there was snow and slush just about everywhere. The entrance and exit to this surface car park were controlled by traffic lights which stopped the traffic on the main road. These worked sequentially so it was quite easy to work out the rhythm. This was important as I would only have one opportunity to make good my escape without being blocked in by the police and everyone else. I timed my run down the bank very, very carefully just so that I arrived there just as the lights turned to green which stopped all of the traffic on the main road, and I could squeeze my way out and nip off. By now, my car had transformed itself into an old PB Cresta … "it was actually a PA Cresta" – ed … and I was driving through this snow and slush and black ice and ended up in Tunstall (nothing like Tunstall of course). At the top end of the town was a roundabout with three roads feeding in, and it didn’t matter which road I took, it always brought me back to this roundabout again. On one occasion approaching this roundabout, a cyclist was following me and as driving a car in this kind of weather in Tunstall only meant for slow progress, I was exchanging conversation with this cyclist every time we caught up with each other. At one particular moment we came to a part, just before this roundabout, where the road narrowed. There was a church encroaching into the carriageway. Someone in a BMC 1300 was coming the other way and ended up on my side of the road, blocking the highway. I had a race to see if I could reach this part of the road before he completely blocked it off but we both arrived at the same time. In the end I had to swerve around him on the wrong side of the road and on the wrong side of these bollards to pass him and return to my side of the road. And then, of course, I ended up yet again back at this roundabout.
From here I went off on a sprawling, amazing ramble. I was involved in an incident with a girl but I can’t remember now who she was and what was going on. I liked this girl quite a lot and I’d spent some time trying to establish some kind of rapport with her. It ended up that she had to leave, and this meant going across this bailey bridge or pontoon bridge that was full of Chinese refugees fleeing some kind of attack. All of these people were struggling across this bridge that had been hastily thrown together and she was in a small car of some description, stuck in the middle of this bridge. Someone had given her a crystal ball and so while she was waiting for the crowd to advance, she was admiring this crystal ball. As the crowd began to advance, she slipped this crystal ball into the back pocket of her dress and started her car. At that moment, the crystal ball exploded, for it was really a booby-trapped bomb. From where I was standing, on the bank of the river I could see this pillar of dark brown smoke going up into the air from about where her car was situated. I went home to change my clothes. I’d been scratching myself and I’d scratched the heads off a couple of scabs on my legs and there were a few trails of blood running down my legs. I was intending to write a letter to this girl and I was writing her address on my knees for some reason or other. At this moment, Nerina put in an appearance. She’d been out since yesterday and was only just coming back. I commented upon her arrival, saying that it was quite a coincidence as I’d only been back long enough to write this address on my knees. Nerina replied that lunch would be ready soon, so I explained to her that I had to go out and deliver this letter, so hold up lunch until I came back. I wouldn’t be long. But as I was writing this letter I noticed that they started to lay the table downstairs. And then the food appeared, and of course that wasn’t in my plans at all. But then I noticed that all of my breakfast things were still on a tray in the corner of my room so I needed to take all of them downstairs. I still hadn’t finished this letter and I was becoming more and more annoyed by all of this. Having asked for lunch to be delayed, I was expecting someone to take notice of what I was saying.

Anyway, life is going to be like this for a good few weeks, I reckon. I’m just going to take it easy, not do too much and slowly recover. I have the nurse starting back tomorrow for my blood tests (and how I hope that the situation will at least have stabilised and that I don’t have to have any more transfusions) and so I’m going for an early night. The days of lying in look as if they are well and truly over for the foreseeable future.

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Tuesday 9th February 2016 – I HAD A VISITOR TODAY

And wasn’t that nice too? Ingrid came round to visit me for a couple of hours to see how I was doing and that cheered me up greatly. It’s nice to have good friends and it’s nice for them to take an interest in what is going on and in what you are doing. She came round ar 15:00 and we were chatting away until after 17:00, with lots of news about people whom we used to know. After all, since the demise of all of the community self-help groups that we used to have, we’ve all been out of touch with everyone else and what’s been going on.

After Ingrid left, we had tea. Liz had made some vegan pies in the morning before going to work and I had mine with a baked potato, broccoli and sweet corn. Absolutely gorgeous, it was too.

And I needed it too because I was exhausted after a most astonishing series of lengthy rambles during the night. It started off with a group of six women, blasted off in a rocket to go to a distant planet. When they arrive, they divide themselves up into three groups of two. One of these pairs, an older woman and a younger one, leave the rocket to go in search of intelligent life, I suppose. However they become separated and the younger one, who is very insecure, wanders around very carefully trying to avoid being contacted and meeting anyone. She then finds a little shower block kind of place where she can take a shower. Its a white stuccoed stone-built small circular building but on multi-levels descending deep underground with just one shower on each level and a continual supply of warm water. It’s just like a scene from one of the Our Man Flint films. Down in the basement where there are actually two shower units and someone has been doing some plumbing there, she finds a suitable shower where she can have a wash even though there is no soap. In mid shower, she’s interrupted by two humanoid women who work here – clearly human but clearly of this planet. She asks them if they have any soap which takes them quite by surprise. But still, someone produces some. They start to chat and this young girl from the spacecraft reveals that her interest is in Population – both growth and control. Just by chance, it turns out that this is the Office of Demographics of this planet so they decide to engage her. They are very very friendly and very very helpful, finding her a desk, somewhere to sit, some work to do, and they add her onto all of the rotas for holidays, birthday cakes, memo distribution. She fits in straight away, right from Day One.
And what was my role in all of this? I’ve no idea but after a trip down the corridor it was my turn to be new in an office. I was wandering around there, getting my bearings, and I met up with Laurence’s step-father Paulo. We had a long chat and he invited me to lunch, taking me to a café. And it was the worst café that I have ever visited. The queues were absolutely enormous with one queue for meals and another queue for snacks and no-one came to serve at the queue for snacks, except on the very very odd occasion. Someone would, very occasionally, be moved on from there but we waited and waited. The place was filthy and horrible and the servers were quite disgusting, picking up and serving the sticky cakes with their fingers and then licking their fingers clean. Eventually we did make it to the head of the queue, Paulo, his friend, and me, and we found the food to be very very basic, something with chips. I just asked for a giant plate of chips but they were freezing, freezing cold. It was horrible, the worst café in the world and I can’t think of any reason at all why anyone would ever want to come and eat here, in this filthy café with this disgraceful service and shocking food.
From here, we wound ourselves backwards to Hillbilly days and we had received a carriage from the Flying Scotsman. It was to be converted into a convertible for some kind of exhibition or other, which we were very unhappy about, but we had won this prize and that was that. We had to go to stay in this place in the Wilderness which was two converted railway carriages used as holiday homes. It was the weirdest place that I’ve ever visited or ever been. The people who were running it were strange people to say the least and there were two guys there more content on stealing everything that they could lay their hands on rather than anything else. And that includes one of the carriages, for which they had rigged up one kind of cable and winch to help them tow it away. But we were easily able to outwit these men because they were not too bright, to say the least. The people who ran it were as poor as church mice and doing everything in their power to try to get more money. One thing that they were trying to do was to defraud the baker, and we had to continually speak to the baker to ensure that we received our order and that it was correct. We noticed that the food that these people were eating was disgusting – cheap, offal kind of meat slices and cheese slices. They were even eating kittens and one of our party, a young girl (wherever did she spring from) was so dismayed about this. We tried to convince her that this is what rural people have to do – kittens are useless mouths and out there you have to eat anything that presents itself and which would otherwise consume foodstuffs itself.
By now we were at an airport and waiting for a couple of people to arrive (and this had strains of déjà vu about it too). Four people in fact, and they turned out to be a girl who has featured occasionally in these nocturnal rambles, her mother, her friend and her friend’s mother. We had to take them somewhere and so they all piled into the car, which was my father’s old grey Cortina. But then the girl suddenly remembered that she had forgotten something and dashed out of the car to fetch it. We were all there urging her to get a move on. But eventually I parked the car up and decided that I would abandon it, as I have done with a variety of other Cortinas during my nocturnal ramblings . It needed to be emptied but as it was still dark I connected up a light to the car’s battery but it wasn’t good enough to see very much so I decided on coming back a little later to do it when it was light. But “a little later” meant that it was even darker because it had been the evening just a couple of hours ago. I’d also left the light connected and so I was wondering if the battery of the car would be flat by now. There was one of these “know it all” teenagers hanging around offering me all kinds of gratuitous advice and that was getting on my nerves too.

No wonder that I was exhausted. I even managed a sort-of lie in until 08:15 too. But it wasn’t quite as good as it sounds because according to the dictaphone, which I use during the night to record these adventures, I’d woken up every two hours or so anyway, just like being back at hospital, I suppose. I can see me having to work hard to snap myself out of this. But it’s perfectly understandable that I didn’t do very much this morning either after all of this during the night.

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Monday 8th February 2016 – DECENT FOOD AT LAST!

Yes folks, I’ve been discharged – or released – or expelled. Make up your own minds. Liz came to pick me up at about 17:00 and that was that.

I felt every single bump in the road on the way back, which is not surprising seeing that I still have my stitches in and I’m sore all over. but it was well worth it for a plate of pasta and mushrooms in a spicy sauce. You’ve absolutely no idea just how disgusting hospital food is. It’s so bad that it made me feel quite nostalgic for school dinners.

I had an early night afterwards – we’ve had enough excitement for one day.

Especially with what was going on during the night. I can’t remember now who I was with but there were four of us – a couple of whom were kids – and we were in an old black Morris 6-cylinder, the type that had a bodyshell that resembled an overgrown Morris Minor. We’d seen a small brick-built outbuilding built into a brick wall and so we parked the car to go to look in the building. It was full of bicycles, old French mopeds of the 1950s and an early 1950s Lambretta scooter, the type with the twin seats. However, I hadn’t set the brake properly on the car and it started to follow us down the hill. It hit a fence post and slewed across the road to the other side, facing the other way, just missing a car that had been following it. I went off for a wander and discovered a big medieval church a little farther around so I went in. It was actually an Abbey church belonging to a monastery where all of the monks wore white habits (are these the Cistercians?). When I left the monastery, I too was wearing a white habit and I was on my way, on foot, to another place 32 kilometres away. At least, I was planning to go on foot or maybe to find a lift en route but for some reason I kept on finding myself behind the wheel of different vehicles. I was passing through Spalding (although I don’t recall it as being anything like any part of Spalding that I know). At a set of traffic lights at a T junction where five artic lorries (just the tractor units) all of which had suffered front-end damage (a red one had a huge hole right where the radiator grill would be) and were being driven off down the side street. There was a policeman there forbidding other vehicles, especially other damaged lorries, from following these five because they didn’t want a trail of broken-down lorries all over the town. I went straight on and ended up going past Spalding harbour and the docks. There was a long brick wall that was formerly part of a huge warehouse that had been demolished, so beyond the wall was a large concrete pad, formerly the floor of the warehouse, that went down to the quayside. It was all abandoned, with just half a dozen abandoned cars and old small lorries dotted about
From here I ended up at a football match between Portsmouth and Manchester City. Manchester City were playing in their usual sky-blue strip while Portsmouth were playing in blue and white stripes rather like the Argentine national side. It was an indoor game and the Portsmouth goal was a simple large square outlined in white paint on the end wall of the building – leading quite naturally to a controversy about whether a Manchester City shot was “in” or “out”.

As well as all of this we had the usual interruptions during the night. There’s always a couple of people sticking their heads in asking if I’m OK (which is a totally pointless exercise anyway – if I’m not OK, I’ll ring the bell). Then someone comes into take my carafe, then we have the blood pressure tests, breakfast, the cleaner, the person who makes the beds and anyone else whom I may well have forgotten.

But at least with leaving today, I didn’t have the cleaners and the bedmaker. They will presumably give the place a good going – over once I’m on my way out. I was left pretty-much to my own devices for most of the day, which suits me fine.

Someone came round during the course of the afternoon with a huge pile of paperwork and I suppose that I’ll need to go through that in early course. But that’s not for straight away – I’m not in the mood. I just want to leave and go home.

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Wednesday 27th January 2016 – WELL, PEOPLE, HERE I AM

All ready for the off, in more ways than one too. I’m now in my hospital bed waiting for sleep to overwhelm me so that I can have a comfortable night. I doubt if my next sleep will be anything like as comfortable.

Last night’s was, though. I actually had a night last night where I didn’t have to leave the comfort and safety of my stinking pit

Cécile’s mother came to join me last night on my nocturnal rambles – without Cécile! Cécile’s mother is well into her 80s – 86 or 87 I think, and yet there she was on the outskirts of Crewe going up Gresty Bank near Dubberley’s Farm (where we were the other night if you remember) waiting for a bus, all on her own, which considering that she has dementia issues, is a rather outstanding feat. She was having to travel to the Doctors’surgery in Shavington, which involves taking the bus to Goodall’s Corner and walking back 200 yards. Onto the bus she clambered when it stopped for her, but we ended up at a motorcycle sales office which was full of mopeds and scooters, inside as well as outside. Cécile’s mother had a little moped that was painted all yellow, even the chain, and there was rust breaking through the paintwork. I was looking at the other vehicles which were on sale but there was nothing that interested me of course – I wanted a real, proper motorbike. One of the salesmen took me through to the back and there were about 10 or 12 motorbikes from the 1960s and 70s – much more like it. What caught my eye (from a technical point of view) was a kind-of Triumph scooter. Not a Triumph Tina, but something that doesn’t exist in the real world and based on a T50 or T65. I was giving this a good look over, from a point of view of pure curiosity, and the salesman asked me if I was interested in it. It wasn’t at all the thing for me, as I explained to the salesman. I wanted a real motorbike.

At that moment, Liz’s alarm went off in the next bedroom and it woke me up too. 06:45 which, considering that my alarm was set for 07:00, it wasn’t worth going back to sleep so I went downstairs for breakfast too.

By 07:20 we were on the road and by 08:00 we were having a coffee at the café where I had a coffee yesterday lunchtime. And then we came up here. I’m all installed now for the foreseeable future in room 360. The fridge is full of chocolate, soya yoghurt and vitamin B12 drink and the cupboard is full of crisps, biscuits and so on, and I’m in the comfy chair in the corner with my feet on the footstool. I’m prepared for a long siege in here.

First thing that happened to me was that I had a shave. A nurse came along and did it for me. And I’m not talking about my face either. I have to clean my belly-button too and I’ll be given a special disinfecting soap with which I need to wash myself in the shower, tonight and tomorrow. I have to be really clean, apparently – a hopeless task as far as I’m concerned.

Second thing was to have a drain fitted in my arm. The nurse who did that was quite careful which made a very nice change. And, to my surprise, the nurse has a daughter who is vegetarian and so she’s well aware of my diet and the kitchen staff is expecting me, as my meals to date have shown. Not very exciting, but vegan nevertheless.

But all of these exertions this morning deserved a coffee, I reckoned. And much to my surprise, one was produced. I’m not used to this.

The blood transfusion took ages too. Two pochettes but there was a big delay in swapping them over. It could have been done in half the time. But then I’m not the only patient here and there are others in a worse position than me.

I’ve spent most of the day reading books on the laptop and listening to the radio programmes that I’ve downloaded from www.archive.org. But now, the special soap has appeared and I’ve already been reminded once about the shower. I suppose that I’d better go and do the business and I’ll hopefully see you all tomorrow.

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