Sunday 27th December 2015 – I COULD HAVE GONE …

… out again today.

Everyone was planning on going down to the reservoir here at the bottom of the hill. With having had very little rain this last few weeks, the water levels are quite low (but not unfortunately low enough to see the abandoned village at the bottom) and there’s a nice kind-of beach down there with kiddies’ play items. After lunch, everyone wandered off down there and left me alone for I’m still not feeling up to going out.

I stayed behind and had a little play with my 3D program. After all, my course starts in a week’s time.

And I shouldn’t be tired though, either. For the first time since I don’t know when, I slept right through the night without waking up. And it was the best night’s sleep that I have had for donkey’s yonks.

Mind you, that’s not quite true. I did wake up once, feeling the desperate need to go off for a wander down the corridor, and so I looked at the time. 07:30. Well, in that case I can hang on for another 15 minutes until the alarm goes off.

But I was having some incredible dreams during the night although, sad as it is to say it, most of the stuff had disappeared completely out of my head (it’s not as if it has much competition in there, is it?). I do however remember one small part – namely going into a model shop where, in the window, was an Airfix scale model of a Japanese Zero fighter with its wing broken off. I expressed an interest in the plane so the salesman fetched it and its wing to the counter. But that wasn’t what I wanted. What I wanted was some advice about soldering a wing onto an aeroplane, so the salesman went to fetch some kind of wing stub to show me how to do it. Yes, soldering two plastic objects together – and with a gas pistol too. It all happens during the night doesn’t it?

I had breakfast nice and early and then the nurse came round to give me my morning injection. AFter that, I did precisely … not a lot. I spent most of the time up until lunchtime working on my notes from Canada in the autumn.

And who can blame me? Both the nurse and the hospital have said “take it easy” and that’s precisely what I intend to do.

Saturday 26th December 2015 – I COULD HAVE GONE …

… out today, but I decided against it.

Not too far away from here at Chapdes Beaufort is an area that has a system of pathways running through it – the Chemin Fais’art – and these are decorated by all kinds of sculptures. It really is a pleasant walk, especially in the kind of weather that we had this afternoon, but I wasn’t up to the long walk so I spent the afternoon back here.

Mind you, I was probably exhausted by the events that took place during the night.

We were in Crewe, of all places, last night, and having to arrange some kind of deception – a red herring to disguise the fact that the Queen of England was on her travels. This involved finding a stand-in double for the Queen, rigging up a copy of the Royal train and sending it off on a completely different route. As it happened, but we didn’t know this at the time, this was something that was already common practice and the girl who stood in for the Queen was a girl whom I knew from my days in Stoke on Trent. And she – the girl – always started her decoy duties from Crewe in a train pulled by a huge black steam locomotive and on one occasion I was treated to an overhead view of this train pulling out from Crewe and heading northwards as I flew over it.

We then ended up again in Nantwich and having to go by foot to Crewe Station in order to travel to Thailand where there was some kind of meeting taking place, organised by the Islamic State. This was to take place in a hotel that was advertised as 312 metres above the town and in my state of health I was dreading the climb up there. No buses were running from Nantwich Bus Station to Crewe so we had to walk, and our train was in an hour so we couldn’t hang about (it was 4 miles to walk) so we set off down Beam Street. I fell in firstly with two boys who were in the year below me at school and secondly, with Zero, who quite often joins me on my nocturnal rambles. I was chatting to the boys but they turned off to go to the house at the back of Crescent Garage, so I set off to run after Terry (who was to be my travelling companion to Thailand) and Zero. But the faster I ran, the further away they went and they completely outpaced me off down Park View. I could see Zero saying goodbye to Terry and going off down the path to her front door. I wanted to say goodbye to her too but by the time I reached her front gate she had long gone inside her house and, of course, I’m not welcome there these days. In any case I didn’t think that I had the time to spare. Yes, slipped through my fingers yet again.

But it’s hardly surprising that I was exhausted after all of that.

And so I had a leisurely day where I didn’t do very much at all. I just sat and vegetated – and had a shower too, mustn’t forget that.

But the excitement took place this evening too. Southampton have been on a very poor run of matches – in the pat five games they have taken just one point and that was in a draw with the bottom club in the league. On the other hand, the Arsenal have been on a really impressive run of games just recently. So Terry and I both said – and at exactly the same moment too – that it’s odds-on that, given the way the Premier League is going right now, that Southampton would stuff the Arsenal.

And how I wish that I had had the courage of my convictions and put the mortgage on that outcome.

Friday 25th December 2015 – MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I was going to say “Merry Christmas to all my readers” and to refer you to the old tale about Crewe Bus Station – the one that I have recounted before. Every year, in fact, or so it seems, so I’ll give you a rest this year.

Instead, I’ll simply refer you to my nocturnal rambles, such as they were and, more importantly, such as I remember because one thing that I’ve learnt this last evening was that it doesn’t matter whether I do have anything to drink or not during the evening, I still have to leave the comfort of my stinking pit on several occasions, something that breaks up my rhythm of sleep and, more often than not, causes all memory of my nocturnal rambles to disappear.

What I do remember about last night was struggling up Gresty Road past the football ground, dragging two huge suitcases with me. I was heading for a cheap hotel and I knew that there were rooms available at my price range in a dingy hotel down on the east side of Mill Street (in the days before that whole area was wiped away in the slum clearances) but much nearer to where I was going was the Royal Hotel up on Nantwich Road. And while this was a much more expensive hotel, there were a few rooms available at just £20:00 and I’d stayed in one of them once before. So hoping that there was still something of that nature available, in I went. Struggling through the door was one thing, navigating my way through the dining room and all of the false partition walls was another thing entirely. And when I did finally find the reception desk, people kept on pushing in front of me and there I was, worrying that if there were any rooms at £20:00, they would be all long gone by the time that I was seen to.
Somehow we wandered on past there into Nantwich and there I encountered a girl who had lived close to where we lived as kids in Shavington and who went to the same school as me. In real life she was a “big” girl, and I DO mean big, but last night she was a quarter of the size, with different-coloured hair and a very different personality – a completely different girl in fact. But seeing as how I never ever thought for a moment about her at the time, then how come, over 40 years later, she suddenly appeared last night? That’s probably the most bizarre thing about all of this

There was much more to it than that too, but that’s long since gone out of the window.

Anyway, there I was, crawling out of bed some time (but not much) after 07:45 and having my morning injection. Breakfast consisted of speciality bread (I had fig, nut and raisin bread rolls) and a huge home-made fruit salad that was absolutely delicious.

No need for me to tell you what happened next.

With a couple of young kids in the house we had Christmas-present-opening. Father Christmas had been and left piles of presents around the tree. And even Strawberry Moose entered into the festive spirit of events by supplying presents to all of the people present, such a friendly and generous moose that he is.

Everyone had a great time opening their presents and then we stopped for food

We decided that there would not be a big meal as such, but instead we would eat at intervals throughout the day. 12:30 saw us tucking into the starters, which was a kind of running buffet of all kinds of different nibbles. Raw vegetables in France prepared ready for eating are called crudités which is highly appropriate considering that I am here. After all, if you want crudities, then no-one is more qualified than Yours Truly.

There was a great deal of chatting to friends on the laptop too, although I didn’t have much to say to anyone. Most of my friends have their own family lives and Christmas is, after all, a time for families.

We had our main course at about 16:30. A real Christmas dinner with all of the correct veg including roast potatoes, and brussels sprouts cooked to perfection. I had a big slice of nut roast that went down a treat.

Dessert was at 18:30 and, unfortunately, no Christmas pudding. No-one but me likes it around here. Instead, there was a couple of bûches de Noël and for me, a Black Forest gateau, made of home-made vegan chocolate cake and home-made ice cream in a very large coupe and topped off with soya cream.

But one thing that was astonishing this evening was the moon. It’s full moon today, the first time that it’s been full moon on Christmas Day since 1977. And a huge moon that it was too.

Unfortunately, the camera on my mobile ‘phone isn’t up to as much as I would like it to be and so it can’t reproduce the moon as it was, but it’s the best that I can manage.

And so that was Christmas. Nothing much happened from my point of view but that’s not important. In a house with young kids, the most exciting part of it all is watching the delight on their faces as they see what Santa has brought them. That was certainly very much to the fore today. It’s all about kids and all about families, and I can have my own private Christmas another time.

Thursday 24th December 2015 – IT’S CHRISTMAS EVE

And I hope that you are all ready for the festive season. I know that I’m not.

In fact, I’ve never felt less festive in my life, which is hardly surprising. It’s not the illness and it’s not the thought of major surgery but this relentless 07:45 start that’s doing my head in. Especially today because it’s blood test day so I have to be à jeune – no breakfast for me until he’s been.

And I had the results too this evening thanks to this e-mail subscription thing. My blood count has gone up, but a mere 0.4 to 8.1. When it was that low 2 weeks ago, they called me in for a transfusion and it went up to 9.0. I’m dismayed that my count only went up that little bit, I really was. Hence the lack of festive spirit from that point of view.

I was on my travels last night too. I was in Canada, although a more un-Canada-like Canada I have ever seen. I was with George, a former employee of the tyre depot and we were driving around looking for something in the middle of winter with bright sunlight everywhere and not a trace of snow to be seen. We were trying to make for a town that we could see in the distance and as we approached, we ended up in a different town and this necessitated a hard-left turn right in the town centre. George told me where to turn and, much to my surprise, it was a turning into a field, right in this town centre. There were hordes of pedestrians walking along this footpath and in a complete departure from tradition, a policeman stopped the pedestrians so I could drive into this field. Here, I misjudged the entrance and ended up clouting the right-hand wing of the vehicle, which was actually a right-hand drive Hillman Imp, dark green in colour. I made the excuse that I must have slipped into some cart ruts that had pulled me out of position.

So after starving myself until the nurse had been, I had a leisurely morning – in fact a leisurely day doing very little except write up my notes from Canada.

I was alone, though, in not doing very much today. Everyone else was at it, and in spades too.

The trampoline is still outside and so the kids and mummy went to play on it. And, surprise surprise, Strawberry Moose went to join in all of the fun. A very gregarious moose, His Nibs has loads of fun outside playing with the youngsters and also with Violet and Sebastian, the sock-sloths. It’s all one big happy family here and everyone is enjoying himself as much as possible.

In fact, Strawberry Moose was quite exhausted when he came back in.

After tea it was bedtime for the little ones, ready for when Father Christmas comes with the parcels. Of course we had to lay out some stuff for him – milk and mince pies, together with a carrot and some reindeer food.

But no bedtime is complete without a good story, especially on Christmas Eve.

Liz read “A Night Before Christmas” to everyone, including Strawberry Moose who enjoys a good story as much as anyone else.

Of course he’ll be up and about waiting for the arrival of the reindeer, but for reasons of his own which are entirely different from those of everyone else.

And so now he and I have some work to do, but we are not going to be up for long. Regardless of whatever time it might be, he and I (especially me) are wasted and I for one will be having an early night. It doesn’t matter what time I go to bed, I still have to get up flaming well early at blasted 07:45.

Wednesday 23rd December 2015 – I KNEW THAT IT WAS A MISTAKE …

… to drink that half-litre of sparkling water with blackcurrant syrup last night. I was up and down like a yo-yo all through the night and I didn’t really have a very decent sleep because of it. Serve me right.

And the film that I saw – the James T Wong film – was the first time that I’d seen it. It was the first one of the series apparently and Boris Karloff had only a supporting role rather than the lead role that he had later in the series. And the film lost quite a lot because of it. The plot was rather thin and the denouément was rather weak.

Anyway, I was up at the usual time, had my injection and then had my breakfast. It was about 11:00 when everyone was ready to leave and so while they shot off to Montlucon and shopping, I went round to my house to check it over and relax for a while. Surprisingly (or maybe it isn’t), even though the day was grey and depressing, the batteries were fully-charged and the water was heating up nicely.

I headed off to Montlucon at about 14:00 and went to Carrefour, but I couldn’t remember what it was that I wanted to buy so it was rather pointless. And then I went off to the hospital.

16:30 was my appointment, and so I was seen bang on 17:45, and least I now know what they think might be up with me. Apparently I have a lymphoma of the ganglions, and the cure for that is quite drastic. They intend to take out my spleen. The spleen is also the organ that controls a great deal of the immune system and so while removing the spleen MIGHT (and only “might”) solve the lymphoma problem, it might provoke problems all of its own.

But it did lead to an interesting dialogue –
Doctor – “I’m afraid we are going to have to take your spleen out”
Our Hero – “Blimey – isn’t that a really difficult operation?”
Doctor – “Rubbish! Generations of surgeons have been taking the backbone out of politicians for almost 100 years! It’s child’s play by comparison!”

Anyway, after the holidays, they will arrange an appointment for me with the surgeon and the anaesthetist and we’ll see what happens then.

So rather chastened by the news I headed back here to tell Liz.

Liz – “Are they going to do that here?”
Our Hero – “No Liz – not in the kitchen”

To cheer me up, there was home-made ice-cream. The strawberry was excellent but as for my inspiration of the choco-mint-chip (made by the simple expedient of grinding up a mint-chocolate bar into a litre of coconut milk), it was astonishingly good. I was amazed.

At least that cheered me up. And I needed cheering up too because that wasn’t the only bad news that I had had. I mentioned to the doctor the story about the twice-daily injections and she confirmed that unfortunately they do have to continue.

So I shan’t be having my lie-in after all. Drat and double-drat!

-1

Tuesday 22nd December 2015 – WELL, I HAD THE CALL!

Yes, at about 09:30.

“Mr Hall, we’ve had your blood test results. You need to come in this morning for a transfusion”
“I’m still waiting for the District Nurse to come, and it’s over an hour’s drive to Montlucon, you know.”
“Well you really need to be here before midday”.

And so that was that. With no District Nurse by 10:30, I was off and gone – on my way to Montlucon.

Mind you, I was off and gone long before that. Despite having once to leave my bed (for the usual reasons), I had a really good night to make up for the dreadful one that I had had the night before. And I was running the Formula One racing network too. My youngest sister was driving one of the cars and my niece in Canada was doing the voice-over television commentaries. However, we were under attack in our house (which bore a strange resemblance to Hankelow Hall, the abandoned stately home where we squatted back in the 1970s, except that there was a more modern extension built onto the back) by people who wanted to take over the running of the organisation. We were trying to defend it resolutely but looking out of the back, I noticed that a load of gear, including skis (for some reason), was being passed from the new extension into our house on the floor below through a window that should have been guarded by my elder sister. The door into our room was then battered down and into the room surged a crowd of people, TV cameras, everything, and my sister saying that we had all agreed to pass on our rights to this new company. I however made it quite clear that she was not speaking for me.
From there via several removes, I ended up back at my house in Gainsborough Road Crewe where I was living with a woman who was about 20 years older than me, and we had a daughter of about 11. The behaviour of this woman was extremely bizarre, which puzzled the girl and me a great deal.

So after breakfast, we had to play Hunt The Moose again. Today, Strawberry Moose was in the sun-lounge camping. And also reading a story to his new best friend Violet the sock-sloth.

Robyn was keen to join in of course. She loves having stories read to her and no-one reads stories like Strawberry Moose. And in exchange, she drew a beautiful picture of him.

At the hospital car park, there was hardly anyone about so I had a good spec right by the entrance just 200 metres from the front door of the hospital. And they were waiting for me when I arrived, which made a nice change.

“Only one go” I said to the nurse trying to inject the drain into me. “They had four goes last time that I was here”
And so she did it in one, and a more painful injection I have never had. Total agony.

Lunch wasn’t up to much unfortunately, but you can’t expect much in the way of special diet when you turn up a l’improviste. However, I had foreseen this, having been caught out last time, and I had packed a packet of crisps, a handful of Liz’s home-made vegan biscuits and a banana. They didn’t ‘arf go down well. What was not so acceptable was the inexcusable, unpardonable sin of forgetting me when it came to bringing round the afternoon coffee. The fact that I MAY just have closed my eyelids to give my tired eyes a rest is neither here nor there. What you can be sure of is that harsh words were exchanged – and I did get my coffee.

I also got something else quite important too. The internet speed at the hospital is quite respectable for a public place, and so I profited by downloading a huge pile of radio programmes and a Mr Wong film from archive.org. That should boost up my supply of listening and watching matter if I’m going to be incarcerated elsewhere.

And talking of that, I was also speaking to my friend Alison, with whom I used to work at The Conference Board – that weird American company in Brussels. She had a very serious operation in Belgium and was full of praise over the treatment and care that she received. I’ve always said that Belgian health-care is the best in the world and that is where I would go if I were ever seriously ill, and so I asked her which hospital it was that she used.

It’s the one at Leuven, and having made enquiries, Alison told me that there is in fact a dedicated lymphoma department there. Furthermore, she rang them and it transpires that they would be glad to talk to me, and they passed their number onto her to give to me.

Why I’m doing this is that they have already told me that they don’t have the facilities to treat me in Montlucon. If I need treatment I have to go elsewhere. Clermont-Ferrand is, at the limit, acceptable because I’m still within some kind of travelling distance of possible visitors and facilities, but anywhere else is uncharted territory with no possibility of visits. Smuggling supplies into the hospital will therefore be extremely difficult and I’m not going to survive on what food a hospital can offer me.

Not only that, I’m dismayed at how much Flemish I have forgotten since I’ve left Brussels. I reckon therefore that a spell of immersion in a Flemish-speaking environment will do me the world of good.

An added advantage of Leuven is that there’s a Belgian 2nd-Division football club – OH Leuven, in the immediate vicinity and public transport in Belgium is very good. I’m sure that I can smuggle myself out of hospital occasionally on a Saturday night. If so, I can track down a fritkot too, and Alison has already promised to be my conduit for illicit food parcels.

I was thrown out of the hospital by 16:00 and I was wondering whether to go home for an hour or so but I wasn’t feeling up to much so I came back here. As a surprise, Liz and Kate have made me some vegan ice cream – strawberry and also choco-mint. It wasn’t ready for tea though but it will be fine for tomorrow. I hope that I’m still here to eat it, and not detained elsewhere.

I met up with the District Nurse too. He’s concerned about the continued use of this anti-coagulant and reckons that I ought to speak to the doctor about it tomorrow. he can understand why I needed it but it seems to him that the crisis has passed. He reckons that it’s now at the stage where it can be doing more harm than good, especially if I keep going for the total of three months for which it has been prescribed.

I’m all in favour of that. It’s costing me an arm and a leg for a start, and it will also mean that I can go back to having my Sunday morning lie-in. These continued 07:45 starts are killing me off.

-2

Monday 21st December 2015 – WHAT A HORRIBLE NIGHT!

Last night, I had the worst night that I have ever ever had.

I told you that I went to bed as early as 20:00, watched a film and by 21:15 I was tucked up nicely in bed dozing off to sleep. But at 22:30 I was awake again, with a chronic indigestion – or, at least, what I thought was indigestion. And as time rolled on, the pain became worse and worse, spreading right across my stomach behind the lower part of my ribcage.

It wasn’t long before I was doubled up in agony – I say “doubled up” but that’s not really true as there was not a single position (that I found anyway) that was better than any other as far as the pain went. Within the space of an hour I was driven out of my attic into the bathroom where the proximity of the sink to the porcelain horse was very useful and was put to good use.

And that, dear reader, was where I stayed for a good hour or so even though it did nothing to diminish the agony. So back in the attic again, but 10 minutes later I was back in the bathroom.

This was clearly going nowhere (except into the bathroom) and so I ended up making sure that the route from the living room to the bathroom in the cellar was free, and then I settled down on the really comfortable sofa in the living room.

By about 03:30, having made several trips to the bathroom, the pain slowly began to subside. I remember it being 04:00 and then the next thing that I remember was it being 06:45 and the pain had gone. The alarm at 07:45 brought me to my senses (such as they are) and that was that. The worst night that I have ever had.

I had my blood test at about 08:30 and signed up to a scheme whereby I could receive my results by e-mail. Sure enough, at 17:30 they were there. The blood count has gone down further to 7.7. I was expecting a phone call from the hospital to call me back in, and although I did receive a call, it was to tell me that my Wednesday appointment has been put back to 16:30. Never mind, I’ll discuss my blood situation then.

After breakfast, we had to hunt for Strawberry Moose again.

Today, he was in the sun lounge painting Christmas decorations. And it does have to be said that he seems to have more paint, glitter and Christmas stars on himself than he did on the decorations that he was painting.

Still, he gets full marks for trying.

Everyone went to the shops this morning, except for Terry and Yours Truly. We had a very relaxed morning watching the cricket in Australia. We had our usual argument too. Terry is all for this modern “slash and run” cricket whereas I’m much for the good old days of Geoff Boycott taking three days to score 20 runs.

We had a late lunch when everyone returned, and then I decided that I was going to do something that I detest – only doing it in the direst emergencies – and that was to go back to bed. And there I stayed until tea time.

The nurse has told me to talk to my GP about my blood results but I’m waiting until Wednesday at the hospital. The GP can’t tell me any more than I know already and all that she can do is to refer me to the hospital. And that won’t be any quicker than doing it myself on Wednesday.

Bedtime for the little ones came at about 20:00 and you can’t have bedtime without having story time first. It goes without saying that Strawberry Moose wanted to be involved in story time too.

We’ve ended up being nice and peaceful this evening, with nothing much going on except to sample Liz’s home-made blueberry biscuits – vegan of course. Just for a change, I’m not tired but then again that’s no surprise seeing as how I had a good three hours sleep this afternoon.

But it doesn’t matter what time that I go to bed, I still have to be up at 07:45 for my anti-coagulant injection, and I’m getting quite fed up of this.

-1

Sunday 20th December 2015 – APART FROM A BRIEF …

… sortie from my comfortable bed at about 02:00 in the morning, I had the sleep of the dead during the night. But one thing that I didn’t allow for in my calculations is that the immersion heater is in the attic behind a false wooded wall right by the head of the bed. Consequently, I was wide awake at 07:30 this morning.

Well, sort-of wide-awake anyway, or, at least, what passes for wide-awake these days. And the nurse didn’t take too long in coming either and so I had something like an early breakfast.

And we are not alone here in this house either.

I mean, you know that anyway, with Terry, Liz and her family. But even more importantly, Strawberry Moose is here. he’s come to stay for Christmas too. After all, Liz’s grandchildren are amongst his most faithful fans. This morning when we came downstairs, we found him busily trying to organise lunch for everyone, but he didn’t have a great deal of success unfortunately

He needs to work on his technique a little.

We spent much of the morning making templates of Christmassy items (and I do have to say that my Christmas tree looked superb) and then we used some of that snow spray stuff to spray the patterns all over the windows in the sun-lounge. And I do have to say that it all worked out rather well too.

Anyway, in the absence of fresh fish for lunch, we had a great big salad buffet. I had the rest of yesterday’s pizza and some sandwiches using some kind of vegan cheese and garlic spread that Liz had found in a health-food shop in Montlucon. That’s the kind of stuff that puts hairs in places I didn’t even realise that I had.

Everyone else had a wonderful time too for, as I have said before, the food that is served up in this house is the best that I have ever eaten anywhere.

After lunch, everyone went off to the Christmas market at Marcillat. I was invited but of course I’m not quite up to things like that right at the moment. There was some stuff that I wanted to finish, but I spent most of my free afternoon sitting on the sofa vegetating. However, I did finish my Christmas shopping by finding on-line something that I’d been looking for for quite a while.

I didn’t remain up and about very long this evening either. By about 20:00 I was done for, I reckon, and so I went to bed. An early night, and it’s getting earlier and earlier, but I don’t have the stamina these days. I managed to watch a film on the laptop, one of the Bulldog Drummond films that I’d tried to watch on several occasions that I’d downloaded from archive.org. Tonight, I managed to watch all of it before dozing off to sleep.

I can do with an early night.

-1

Saturday 19th December 2015 – MY PEACEFUL CONVALESCENCE …

…may well be over now – and for two reasons too.

Firstly, we have now been invaded by two children – Dylan aged 7 and Robyn aged 4. I suspect that that will be the end of lie-ins (not that 07:45 is a lie-in by my standards but it certainly is for children of that age who are excited by visiting their grandparents and the imminent arrival of Father Christmas) and the start of things like “read me a story” and all of that kind of thing.

Secondly, and much more importantly though, my blood test results came today. And my blood count has gone down – in the space of 72 hours, from 9.1 (which is already a good deal lower than the 13 that is the usually-accepted minimum) to 8.1. If the blood test that I will be having on Monday morning shows a similar decline, I suspect that I will be back in hospital by Tuesday morning.

This was confirmed by the District Nurse who came by this evening to give me my anti-coagulant injection. He took my pulse and the pulse-rate has gone up. With the diminished blood count, my heart is having to pump the blood around faster to keep up the same supply of oxygen, and this can create problems of its own.

Up in the attic last night, it took me ages to go off to sleep. In fact, I was still awake at 02:00 despite my very early night. But once I’d gone off to sleep I was right away with the fairies until the alarm went off at 07:45. Totally painless.

During the morning there were chores to do and while I wasn’t up to doing much in the way of heavy work, I did what I could. And after lunch, while Liz went off to the airport at Limoges to pick up her daughter and family, I went out – the first time for a couple of days.

There was a pile of stuff to take to the recycling, and for that there’s a little recycling point on the outskirts of Les Ancizes where there are a few of these containers. Everything went in there, and then I was off to the supermarket. Surprisingly, considering that it’s the last Saturday before Christmas, there weren’t very many people about. I was expecting the place to be heaving, but apparently not. father Christmas was wandering around looking totally lost, with no children around to entertain him.

I bought most of the things that I was asked to do but despite visiting a couple of supermarkets, one or two things eluded me. But what I did do was to find a nice quiet spec in the sun (because, at 18.3°C at 16:00 in the afternoon, it really was glorious) and read a book for a while.

Back at the ranch, it was pizza for tea. Everyone was to have pre-bought pizzas but Liz had bought me a pizza base so I made my own. Tomato sauce (Bane of Britain forgot the herbs, of course), onions, fresh garlic, mushrooms and grated cheese and it really was beautiful too. I couldn’t manage it all, so guess what I’m going to be having for Sunday lunch?

And after that, Liz returned with her family at 19:15 and all mayhem was let loose. I managed to stay awake until about 22:00 and then I went off to my attic. It’s been a long day, a short night last night and I need to be on top of my form. I’ve no idea what the future holds for me but I don’t think that it’s going to be so good.

-1

Friday 18th December 2015 – EEEUUURRRGGGHHH!

That’s how I’ve been feeling today.

Despite my very early night last night, and even though I was awake for about an hour or so (during which I wrote last night’s blog) I was well out of it this morning. In fact, I’ve had another day like I had a few days ago which, you will remember, I sat around all day and did nothing at all. Even Liz and Terry going out for an hour or so this morning to St Gervais, leaving me all of this time to get into mischief, failed to galvanise me into action.

The nurse as late too – 10:00 when he arrived. “A lot to do this morning” he said, and which for all I know may well be true and I don’t have a problem with that. I just wish that he had phoned to tell me, or mentioned it last night so that I could have seized the opportunity to have a lie-in. I would have appreciated it.

And so apart from spending most of the day being tired, what else have I done?

Ohh yes! I’ve moved myself and my possessions into the garret. The fact is that tomorrow night Liz’s daughter and son-in-law are coming tomorrow to stay for 10 days and bringing their two kids with them. The kids, aged 7 and 4, clearly need to sleep in the next room to mummy and daddy so that’s all of the rooms on the 1st floor occupied. I’m still here of course, simply because I can’t be anywhere else on my own right now, and so it’s the attic for me. Just like home, isn’t it? But not that it bothers me too much because there’s a rocking chair up there and a couple of agnostic guitars. But it’s a shame that, since I’ve been on the Prozac, I haven’t had the blues for months.

In other news, the results of my blood test from yesterday haven’t arrived. I don’t know what’s happened to them because they should have been here this morning – but that might explain why I’ve not been summoned to the hospital at Montlucon for a blood transfusion. I’ll doubtless have that pleasure to come.

And so apart from that, nothing special to report. I’ve not done much – I’ve not been out of the house. All in all, a pretty nondescript day. But tomorrow, while Liz is off to the airport to meet her family, there will be a list of tasks to perform and it looks as if I’ve drawn the “shopping” straw.

Aren’t I the lucky one?

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Thursday 17th December 2015 – ANYONE WOULD THINK …

… that it was me doing the tiling today, not Terry. Half an hour after lunch I was well out of it – two trips to Terry’s van and back with some stuff for here had finished me off. And back here, I was crashed out on the sofa at 18:00 and in bed by 19:15.

I’ve clearly seen better days – that’s for sure.

But a lot of this could be put down to the efforts that I had made during my nocturnal ramblings. I’d started off with something like a huge contemporary discussion about the qualities of different Roman emperors – and I can’t remember now with whom I was having this discussion. But from there I drove back (it’s good, this time-travel lark) to Stoke on Trent. None of the usual Clayhead characters out in an appearance unfortunately, but I do remember at a roundabout (it might have been one of the newish ones at Longton) I was confused by the exits, took the wrong one, and ended up on the road to Tunstall (a fictitious road of course but one that has featured on my travels before). It then occurred to me that there was one of these old-time sweet shops (just like there is in Longton) somewhere on this road and so I kept my eyes open for it. I ended up walking through this decrepit shopping centre-type of place to try to find it, to the accompaniment of jeers from several people lounging around – and what was that all about?
But back home I ended up chaperoning a young Shirley Temple-type of girl (as if I’d ever be asked to chaperone anyone of the female sex?) who was taking part in a singing competition that was to last all of the weekend. I asked her what would happen if she had to wait right at the end of the competition before it was her turn to sing, to which she replied that there were tons of things that we could do while we were waiting – have a party, go to the zoo, read stories.

No wonder I was exhausted!

So after my blood sample and a painful breakfast, we went off to Pionsat and the bank. I need to build up the fighting fund with all of this going on. Shopping at Intermarche was next, and there we met Clare, Julie and Anne who were off to Clermont-Ferrand for a fun day out. I fuelled up Terry’s van, seeing as how I had some money for once, bought my stuff for lunch and then shot off to the house for the tiling

When we arrived, the batteries were fully-charged already and the water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the surplus charge was slowly rising. That tells you everything that you need to know about the weather that we have been having just recently.

We had a visitor too! In the jungle that is Lieneke’s field opposite my front door we had a sanglier – a wild boar. We couldn’t actually see it but we could hear it grunting away and see all of the shrubs and bushes moving around as it prowled its way around. Magnificent beasts, these sangliers – I remember being up on my scaffolding when I was pointing the eastern wall and watching those two herds approaching each other and the eventual confrontation.

And while Terry carried on with the tiling, I did some desultory tidying-up. But my heart wasn’t in it and I couldn’t even cut straight today. In some respects I was glad when Terry decided to call it a day.

We’re a long way from finishing (I like the “we” bit, don’t you?) but the most difficult bits have been done. And I know that I promised you all a photo but Terry closed up the house while I was outside washing off the tools, so you’ll have to wait until next time.

And now back here, I’m in bed having an early night but I dozed off for an hour, woke up, and now I can’t go back to sleep again.

This looks as if it’s going to become a regular feature. I wish it didn’t, though, and I could have a decent 8-hours sleep.

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Wednesday 16th December 2015 – I WENT BACK …

… to my house this morning. And what’s more, Terry came with me.

Terry has no work on at the moment and I’m not in much of a state to do much right now, and so I made an executive decision (an executive decision being one in which if it all goes wrong, the person making the decision is executed) that perhaps we should go and do the tiling in my shower room. It’ll give Terry something to do, it’ll help me catch up with work at the house, and so on and so forth.

So that was what we did.

But it didn’t work out quite like that – for the simple reason that my shower room is very small. There wasn’t room in there for both of us and so after five minutes in which we had done nothing but get in each other’s way, I left Terry to it.

And we’ll go back tomorrow and do some more too because by about 16:00 it was far too dark do do anything.

But while Terry was tiling, I was tidying up on the ground floor. And you can now actually see the floor in there, a huge pile of stuff has gone out into the lean-to, I’ve sorted out most of the tools that are in there and so on, and now there’s actually a pile of room to move about. If I can do as well tomorrow as I did today, it will be quite impressive.

Of course, we’d parked the van in the little lane at the back of my house to unload it as there was so much to do, and so of course, not having seen the farmer for months and months, it’s today that he decides to bring his cows to the field, so we have to move the van. You could have bet your mortgage on that, couldn’t you?

On our way to my house this morning, we went into Pionsat. I have a huge pile of used needles from my twice-daily anti-coagulant injections and I need to dispose of them. The pharmacy seemed to be the best place to start, and he gave me a couple of boxes to put them in and take them … to the dechetterie.

And so we did. And there at the Council tip at Pionsat, a woman worker took the box off me and put it in a much bigger box of the same shape and colour, to join many other smaller boxes in there. Apparently, it’s what you do around here. We also went to the Intermarché for some bread for lunch, and I met Nada there. I haven’t seen her for ages.

But back to the shower room, I stuck my head in once or twice to pass Terry tiles, or trim something down with the angle grinder, but I haven’t had a really good look in. I’m saving that for tomorrow because although it will be far from finished, it’ll be good for me to be surprised – pleasantly, I hope. I’ll post a couple of photos too if I remember, but I won’t be posting a photo of the ground floor because it is rather a mess, even with it being tidied up. There’s still too much rubbish in there, although I’ve nowhere else to put it and I need to make some extra room somewhere – anywhere!

On the way back here, we were pursued down the lanes by Liz whose last lesson of the day at Montlucon was cancelled. She’d seen some nice Christmas trees and so after a coffee, she and Terry nipped back up to St Gervais to do the necessary. After all, with little people being around, a Christmas tree is essential.

So I’m off to bed for an early night. I have a blood test in the morning and I need to be on form. And I hope that my blood count holds up because if it doesn’t, I can see me in Montlucon on Friday having another blood transfusion and I’m becoming rather fed up of them.

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Tuesday 15th December 2015 – I WENT OUT …

… to Montlucon and the hospital today – and thereby hangs a tail. I arrived early at the hospital, before the patient who was in front of me in the queue, and as it happened, the echograph machine was free. “Okay then, Mr Hall” said the nurse “you may as well go in now”.

So in I went. “You’re Mr X” said the doctor
“No, I’m Mr Hall” I replied. “Apparently Mr X (or whatever his name was) isn’t here yet”

And the net result of all of this was that I was in, out and gone, and sitting in the hospital café having a mug of coffee even before the official time of my appointment. That’s not something that happens every day.

What does seem to happen every day, or, at least, has been happening every day quite recently, is that I was on my travels again during the night.

Last night, I was working in an office where we had to calculate the value of cars used by sales people and work out some charge for annual use of them. I was inspecting a Daytona-yellow Mark II Ford Escort built in, would you believe, 2008 and carrying an 08 plate. But the car was filthy with a good deal of surface rust and a huge dent on the roof down the offside that looked as if a scaffolding pole had dropped on it (we almost had this once with Caliburn). I reckon that to repair the damaged roof, it would cost about £800. I lifted up the bonnet and it was bright yellow painted-over-rust with a reasonably clean engine but with a major oil leak (just like my Passat). I told the owner that he needed to put a different oil in it, to which he replied that he wasn’t on the Mercedes plan!
And talking of Mercedes cars, four of us then went off to do some checking up on the road, and we were in my Mercedes (I do have a W123 240D around at my house somewhere). We ended up driving up a railway line, one track of which was in excellent main-line condition and the other track (where we were driving) being all abandoned and overgrown. As we were climbing up the hill, a beautifully clean and shiny green steam locomotive came charging down the hill pulling a huge load of shiny black oil tankers and being chased by a light locomotive. Of course we all wondered what was going on here and we reckoned that the light locomotive was chasing the train to try to catch up with it (as if that was ever likely to happen). It never occurred to us, even when we reached the top of the bank and saw the incredibly steep climb up which the train had travelled, that the light locomotive had been banking the train up the bank and had just come off. But as we pulled to a halt at the top of the hill to open a gate at the side of the line that would let us off the line onto a dirt track, we were overtaken by a wildly-out-of-control machine something similar to Cugnot’s famous fardier, also painted yellow. As the fardier pulled back in line, it overturned onto its side. I immediately dashed out of the car to take some photos, but all that I had was my mobile telephone and I just couldn’t get any of the photos to come out properly and I was so frustrated.

I was so engrossed by all of this that after the alarm went off, I went back to sleep and it was a wild panic that saw me dash downstairs 15 minutes later. And it’s a good job that I did because the nurse was early to give me my morning injection.

I had a shower after breakfast and then set off for the hospital.

After the hospital I went, would you believe, for a walk. The first time since I’ve been ill that I’ve managed to do that. There’s a huge new shopping precinct that’s recently opened just opposite the Carrefour and so I went in there for a wander around, and did some Christmas shopping too. And then off to the Carrefour itself to do some more Christmas shopping.

For lunch, I treated myself to a plate of vegetables and chips at the Flunch – a long time since I’ve done that but why not? I’m ill and I need to cheer myself up. And as an aside, diesel at the Carrefour is just 102:7 cents – when was the last time that you ever saw it at that price?

I went back home after lunch. I’ve brought upstairs another pile of wood and now there’s enough to keep me going for about a week once I return home. What with the food that’s already up there, I should be self-sufficient for a while. I also made a start on the tidying up and believe it or not, I can actually see a difference (even if no-one else might). However, there’s still quite a lot to do.

Back here, and it was raining too when I drove home. First time it’s rained for ages (or, at least, rained that I have noticed) and those new windscreen wipers that I fitted the other day don’t half do the business. I had the nurse soon after I returned and then I had tea. There’s no footy so I shall probably treat myself to an early night.

I think that I deserve it.

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Monday 14th December 2015 – WELL …

… that didn’t work out quite as planned, did it?

I told you that I was going back home this afternoon to have a tidy-up, but it didn’t really work out quite like that. I did make it home with no problems but the first job was to unload Caliburn. There was all of the tiles in the back, as well as three big sacks of tile cement and grouting, a pane of glass, some floorboarding and a pile of other stuff too.

But although I moved all of the heavy stuff out of Caliburn, and one or two other bits too, but that was my lot, I’m afraid. It rather finished me off. I did manage a little later to make a door handle of sorts for the front door though, so my afternoon wasn’t completely wasted.

I blame a lot of it myself on what was going on through the night. I’d had an early night and started to watch a film, and that’s almost always guaranteed to send me off to sleep, just like it did last night.

And then I was on my travels again. With a fitful night, I don’t remember too much about it. But what I do remember was exciting enough. It concerns something like a vampire on the prowl over London and some kind of surgeon being implicated as the perpetrator. Doctor Watson was leaning out of the living room window at 221B Baker Street whilst musing to Holmes and recounting the 31 departments (are there 31? There were last night anyway!) in a modern Victorian hospital to which a surgeon might be attached. But I was exploring another avenue, a thread that led past a group of teenagers. I somehow managed to filter a message down to them with just enough information to provoke them, so as to see if it might smoke someone out of their cover. And sure enough, some girl rang me to thank me for the information which had helped them greatly. I tried to engage her in conversation, as part of my plan, but the line went dead – either we had been cut off, or (more probably) she had hung up. But I do remember being in my bedroom (wherever this might have been) which was a total tip (as usual) in a bed on wheels so that I could paddle it about the room. And I’d woken up at the usual time despite having had a late night but it was now in mid-afternoon and I was still in bed, not sure how I was going to manage to go back to sleep and also thinking that in five minutes I could have this room looking really tidy, so why wasn’t I doing it?

But that’s enough of that. I crawled myself out of my stinking pit at just before 08:00 and it wasn’t long before the nurse came. I had my injection and also my blood sample (and he burst out laughing when I told them how many goes they had had at the hospital to find my blood) and then I spent the rest of the morning working on the notes for my trip to Canada.

Coming back from home this evening I bumped (well, not literally) into Nicolette. She was taking their new dog Snowy (a younger version of Siroy who is unfortunately no longer with us). We had quite a chat and then I came back here, with Caliburn storming up the Font Nanaud, clearly enjoying being a quarter of a tonne lighter.

So tonight I’m watching Leicester against Chelsea and then I’m off to bed. I have the hospital in Montlucon tomorrow.

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Sunday 13th December 2015 – YES FOLKS, IT’S SUNDAY!

And not only did I have to be up early, I was actually wide awake, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed long before the alarm went off. And on a Sunday too. How often does that happen?

What’s even more surprising is that I was well off on my travels during the night too. And because it was something of a fitful night too, with a couple of trips down the corridor, my memory of my voyages is only scanty. But they were phenomenal enough for a great deal of what happened to survive in order to make it down on paper.

We started off with me waiting somewhere on the south coast to meet a coach that was coming over from the Continent and I was to take over the driving back up north. And so I did, but I missed the entrance to the motorway, which meant that I had to go and find somewhere to do a “U-turn”. Across a staggered junction was a pub with a big car park and that looked just the place, but it turned out that this was the oldest pub in England. It seemed that the logical thing to do to cover up my mistake was to give my passengers 10 minutes to go to explore the pub and have a quick pint if they wanted. When the other driver said “good idea – there’s a cash machine here so I can get some UK cash” the cover-up was complete. I announced to the passengers that because he other driver wanted some cash, we would stop here and that would give them 5 minutes to look around. So I let them off, parked up the bus and then went into the pub – but I couldn’t find any of my passengers! They had disappeared!

I then drifted off again on my travels, into a hospital where it seemed that isolation and disinfection was the theme, and back out of the other side, and so on until I ended up back at home (wherever that might have been), packing with Nerina to go on holiday together. We had a pile of dolls to pack but one was far too big to go in Nerina’s suitcase so I said that I would put it in mine. We ended up on a plateau at the back of Lyon. Before we had left, we’d been given a few enigmatic and cryptic postcards of small bourgs – there was obviously a mystery involved in all of this but we didn’t know what it was and these postcards were the clues. We’d managed to work out where these villages might be (the plateau at the back of Lyon) but we couldn’t identify them, so the next step was to ask. The first person whom we asked knew the villages depicted on the postcards. We asked if there were any houses for sale there, with the idea that we’d have an estate agent take us there, but he said that he would take us up there if we would meet him at his office at the back of the church. And so we did, and it turned out that he was the local gendarme. He had to prepare his car, so he said, and so we went to give him a hand, and it was an old, rotten white Renault 19 with no glass and no wheels, and tied onto a trailer with ratchet straps. While we were preparing it to leave, the phone rang. It was the woman who was looking after George, my old taxi driver, while we weren’t there. She said that his catheter had come out and what was she to do. I told her to telephone the District Nurse but she refused flat – there had clearly been some kind of issue between them. “Well okay” I replied. “I’ll be home in a bit” which can’t have been much comfort because normally she finished at 18:00, it was now 20:00 and we were a world away, in the mountains at the back of Lyon in southern France.

So lying here for a while vegetating, and when the alarm went off at 07:45 I was ready to leap into action. Well, the spirit was – the flesh was a little weaker than that. Nevertheless, when the nurse came round for the injection, I was up and about, ready and waiting.

But apart from that, nothing much else has happened. I’ve torn myself just four times off the sofa where I usually sit – twice to go for a ride on the porcelain horse and twice for meals, and that’s my lot.

What I have done though was to find another course about the development of aviation in World War I and so I had a play with that this morning. And the verdict was that it was rubbish. It just glossed over the subject, spending a lot of its time on “token-womanism” which has nothing to do with World-War I aviation, a lot of time discussing the Wright Brothers (and not a single word about Richard Pearse and his ground-breaking work on ailerons), and being full of inaccuracies – the classic howler being the lecturer talking about the “Me-109” and not the “Bf-109”, which is its correct designation.

Yes, an awful course.

But as for me, I’ve decided that if the weather is as nice tomorrow as it was today, I’m going to go back home after lunch and tidy up my attic – try to bring a little order into chaos. We all know that Nietzsche said “out of chaos comes order”, but Nietzsche had never visited my attic.

But I think that I ought to make some kind of preparations about putting my house in order. I have no idea what the future might hold for me but it’s very likely that I’ll be back there sometime. At the moment I’m feeling reasonably healthy so if I can move another big pile of wood upstairs there will be enough for a week or two and that should help me out considerably. And then if the place is clean and tidy (or as clean and tidy as I can reasonably make it) then it will be fairly welcoming for when I have to go back.

I can’t keep on being a house-guest here for ever.

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EPIC HALL

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