Saturday 30th August 2025 (… continued …) – SO STARTING AGAIN …

… after the adventures reported in the previous entry, Saturday has not been a very good day for me, for a whole variety of reasons, and I’m glad that it’s over.

It started off with me still being at my desk working at some ridiculous time like 00:40, and long after that too. But you know how it is … "No. How is it?" – ed … Once you start something, it’s very difficult to stop it, and trying to download about 50GB of Artificial Intelligence data software is not the work of five minutes.

That was something that was going on and on and on, and I didn’t want to stop it and start again. I was working on the theory that if I’m really tired during the day, I can always have a good sleep at dialysis in the afternoon. In the end though, it was starting to become ridiculous so I simply switched off the screen, left the computer working away to itself and went to bed.

Despite the very late night, I was awake again a few minutes before the alarm went off but, as you might expect, it was something of a struggle to persuade myself to leave the bed and have a good wash, shave and clean up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant … "if anyone from the dialysis centre finds this remark objectionable, my we ask why you have invaded Our Hero’s private life, in defiance of the Patients’ Charter, by hunting him down on the internet?" – ed…

After the medication, I ended up back in here, a good hour after having left the bed, and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a Roman empress or the wife of a Roman emperor or the wife of a British governor who visited the office of one of the native tribes in England for some kind of interview, but things went so badly that the woman took out a dagger and slashed all of the horsehair-filled seats that were in the room, causing a lot of damage, so the tribal leaders tried to contact the Roman legions who would pay for the damage, but of course they wouldn’t and everything was left up in the air with a very bitter taste in the mouths of the British people and the tribe concerned.

Quite recently, I’ve been reading quite a lot about different Roman Emperors, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and there was also something going on in my mind yesterday about car seats. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that several years ago in Québec we went to visit the RIVIERE DES VASES which was where the eel grass, used to stuff car seats in the early days of motoring, was harvested and the discussion had turned round to horsehair seats in the UK

The nurse came in at his usual time today and caught me working at my desk, so he took my blood pressure here at my desk. He reckoned that it would be a much more accurate reading if I remained sitting here rather than standing up and going into the other room.

He sorted out my legs too, then after he left, I could make my breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

This morning, I didn’t go very far into the book because I went off on a tangent, following the trail of the Roman armies as they wandered peripatetically around what today is Scotland. There was also a little trail to follow about the collapse of the “Hen Gogledd” culture as the Romans pushed from the South and the Picts pushed down from the North, events recited in the Heroic Welsh ballad Y GODODIN.

After breakfast, I came back in here to see how the Artificial Intelligence downloads had gone. By the looks of things, everything was complete, but it’s going to take a good while to sort out. And after all of that, when everything is ready, I’ll probably find that I would have been much better off with Natural Stupidity because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … Artificial Intelligence is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

However, having said that, it’s an old principle of computer programming, drummed into us when we were messing around with Machine Code at Night School in the mid-seventies, that the only equation in computing on which you can rely is GI = GO, which stands for “Garbage In” = “Garbage Out”, and it’s probably fair to say that … errr … “confusion” in a computer program is inevitably the fault of the person who has programmed it.

Once more, my faithful cleaner caught me unawares as she came to put the anaesthetic cream onto my arm, and she stayed for quite a while chatting. I’m not sure why I seem to be the “Flavour of the Month” right now. However, our chat was interrupted by the arrival of the taxi so we went outside to meet it.

Unusually, I was the only passenger in the car today, so I asked the driver about the lovely lady who usually accompanies me. However, he had no news of her, so we travelled alone.

For once, I was early arriving, but as usual, I was one of the last to be connected, which was a shame. And as I expected, for the first half-hour I was away with the fairies, although not in any fashion that would be of interest to the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. When I came back into the Land of the Living, I didn’t really do all that much.

The doctor came to see me and I told her the story of the injections. She thought too that I’d be much better off going back to the old series of injections rather than this new one that had so upset my body.

Eventually, they came to unplug me after, for once, having had a full session of three and a half hours without a crisis of any kind. However, the woman in the next bed was not so lucky and they had to unplug her after an hour or so. When she’d recovered, she was whipped off to hospital for observation

Earlier on, I had asked one of the nurses if she knew why the lady who usually accompanies me on Thursdays and Saturdays was not present today. She had checked up during the course of the afternoon and while she was compressing me, she told me, to my deep shock, that she had died yesterday.

When I’d seen her on Thursday, I noticed that she didn’t seem to be herself, but to hear that she had died the following day was the last thing that I expected to hear.

On the way out, they weighed me as usual, and I am now the lightest that I have been for quite some considerable time. I can see that this is not going to end well, but I can’t think of what to do about it, with the lack of appetite and everything that I eat tasting heavily of salt since the chemotherapy began.

The taxi was waiting for me when I left, but there was another passenger who needed to be dropped off in Avranches, so what with all that had gone on today, I was far later arriving back home than I otherwise might have been, which was annoying. There was a rainstorm too that was rather annoying.

My faithful cleaner was waiting for me and she sorted me out quite quickly. She’d also brought two of the guitars downstairs, which was nice. The others will follow in due course.

After she had left, there was football on the internet. The game between Hwlffordd and Caernarfon had started half an hour ago but the advantage of being on the internet is that you can wind it back to the start.

Mind you, it wasn’t a very interesting match. For some reason, all of the liveliness and energy that had seen Caernarfon go to the top of the table and score a bagful of goals so far this season seemed to have disappeared and it was a very lethargic performance. Hwlffordd gave a workmanlike performance but didn’t set the game alight either.

A 1-1 draw was probably a fair result, and I have seen far, far better matches than this one. If Caernarfon wish to stay at the top of the table, they will have to play much better than this. However, perennial champions TNS dropped another two points with a tame draw down south at Barry Town and Penybont, who have shown some class and character over the last two or three seasons, were surprisingly beaten at home by Connah’s Quay Nomads.

At half-time, I paused the game and went to make some tea – pasta and veg with chick peas. And it was a big mistake because what with the nausea that I have been feeling these last few days, I ended up in some kind of severe difficulty. In the end, as soon as the football finished, I typed a terse note and went straight to bed.

Tomorrow is another day and we’ll see how we feel. My cure for everything at the moment is to go to bed and sleep it off.

But seeing as we have been talking about my poor fellow traveller … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told my faithful cleaner about her death. After all, she had met her a couple of times.
"How many of your fellow passengers have now passed away over the last year?" she asked.
"Three" I replied "and a fourth one now has to come by ambulance".
"You’ll do everything you possibly can to have a car to yourself, won’t you?" she said.

Saturday 30th August 2025 – THESE LITTLE ATTACKS …

… of nausea that I have been having these last few days have finally caught up with me this evening.

That’s why there’s not much here tonight, because I’ve gone to bed with a bucket by my side. I hope that I’ll feel better in the morning, when I shall write my notes correctly, but right now I just want to lie down and go to sleep.
(… to be continued …)

Friday 29th August 2025 – I HAD FORGOTTEN …

… all about the wind outside here.

When I lived on the first floor, I was at the back of the building and so my only encounters with the wind were on the rare occasions when I went outside the door – or couldn’t, because the wind was so strong that we couldn’t open the front door so I would have to go out of the back.

However, last night, I remembered all about it.

The wind had begun to rise as I was on my way home last night but I hadn’t really taken much notice. However, by the time I’d finished my notes and was preparing for bed, it was blowing quite hard, and then I realised that being in the front, overlooking the cliffs and the sea to the right, is not necessarily always a great advantage and that there are after all, some drawbacks.

But last night, I was so tired. I fell asleep a couple of times while I was writing my notes and no fewer than three times when I was … errr … contemplating the state of the nation. I was glad to make it into bed, when I fell asleep almost immediately.

And there I lay until all off … errr … 05:29. For once just recently, I awoke earlier than the alarm, and I was seriously contemplating raising myself from the Dead, but the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29, so I must have gone back to sleep.

It was a real struggle yet again to find the energy and enthusiasm to leave the bed and sort myself out. Yet again, it was over an hour, all told, before I ended up back in here after the medication.

First thing was of course to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Last night, I was doing something with some kind of radio equipment, I can’t remember what, when a couple of my friends turned up. They weren’t going to stay for long so it was necessary to clear the sofa of everything so that they could sit down. One of them volunteered to put all of the clothes away even though there wasn’t room for them anywhere. In the end, they both managed to sit down. Later, after they had left, I had to look for the clothes again. They had been rolled up in bundles and put on the stairs, each bundle, and several had been put into other places. One had been hung inside a CD cupboard, with the CDs from the shelves in that particular column being merged into other shelves in columns elsewhere. I was thinking that that probably means that I have to sort all of these out into alphabetical order again.

That’s a task that I still have to do, because the records, CDs and DVDs seem to be in any old kind of disorder, and sticking the clothes back into places where they don’t belong is also something quite relevant at the moment.

Later on, I was on a Plaxton Elite coach, driving it, taking a load of English kids back to boarding school. When I went to join it, it was crammed full of children and I couldn’t understand at first what was happening. It turned out that these kids were all French refugees who had fled France during the invasion by the Germans in 1940 and were being taken to some kind of hostel. I was charged with distributing all the food around. That became extremely complicated as people were moving around, and I didn’t know who had had some food and who hadn’t. There were all these giant biscuit things that I was distributing. Every now and again someone would raise their hand and ask for some more food. If I had some, I would take them half of one of these biscuits. Earlier, I’d been talking to a couple of boys about how comfortable it is to be going back to school. When I met them on the bus at that moment, I asked them what they thought of it now but they didn’t say very much. There was a mass of clothing on one of the seats right by where these two boys were sitting. I asked them what it was and they replied that it was a little French girl who was asleep. In the end, this began to become more and more confusing as I was awaiting the signal to leave and handing out these biscuits. I thought that at one moment that these biscuits will run out and what am I going to do then?

It would be a good dream to be driving a Plaxton Elite in wartime, seeing as they weren’t introduced until about 1968. And once again, in a dream, I’m worrying about something that might never happen, and that seems to be a recurring theme these days.

The nurse came as usual, armed with his blood pressure tester, and once he had taken one of the measures of the three that he was supposed to take, his batteries went flat … "in the machine, not in him" – ed …

After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Once more, it’s hard to understand the thought patterns of our author, Montagu Sharpe. He’s spent several pages bewailing the loss of artefacts from the period, salvaged by all and sundry without any record being kept, yet on page 37 he tells us that when he spoke to the person who had discovered and uprooted the Ancient British stakes that guarded the ford across the Thames at Brentford, "He kindly gave me several specimens which I have since passed on to Museums and to interested persons.".

He goes on to add that "from the inner portions various articles as mementoes have been made".

A little earlier though, on page 32, he has a crisis of T Rice Holmesque proportions when examining some notes by JS Maitland on Caesar’s crossing of the Thames. He tells us that "Maitland, in his “History of London,” places Caesar’s passage of the Thames at Chelsea" and continues by saying "All that Maitland seems to have done in 1732 in support of his theory was to take a boat to sound the river for shallow places, and thirty yards west of Chelsea College found the “channel N.E. to S.W. was not more than 4 feet 7 inches deep.” ! ! He made no quest for the remains of the stakes which Caesar says lined both the bed and bank of the Thames, which have in great numbers been so found, guarding the great ford of the river at Brentford,"

That’s not what I would call a respectable academic criticism of Maitland’s theories.

After breakfast, I had a couple of ‘phone calls to make. The nurse is writing up his accounts for the end of the month and needs the prescription for the injection that he gave me on Monday. And so I telephoned the hospital at Paris. I tried on several occasions, but they didn’t answer the ‘phone, which is no good at all for an emergency helpline.

In the end, I e-mailed them, only to have it returned as my professor is on holiday. I had to resend it to his assistant.

But that gave me an idea. It was Monday when I had this new injection, and it was about Monday that my problems of nausea and dizziness began.

Accordingly, I rang the dialysis clinic, but once more, it took several attempts before I was able to speak to the doctor who saw me on Thursday. I explained to her that I’d had a new injection, and she confirmed that side effects of dizziness and nausea are quite common with this new injection.

My cleaner turned up early in the afternoon to do her stuff, and we had the nurse back at 16:00 to take the afternoon’s blood pressure, with new batteries this time.

After he left, the President of the Residents’ Committee came down to inspect the apartment. She loves it so I thanked her for giving me the tip about it going up for sale. Without her, I would never have managed to purchase it. She brought me a yellow tea towel, to match the walls, as a housewarming present. That was really nice of her to do so.

The rest of the day has been spent playing around with some Artificial Intelligence. So far, I’ve managed to run two Artificial Intelligence chatbots into endless loops, which goes to show, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that Artificial Intelligence is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

Something else that I’ve found is an Artificial Intelligence server that downloads to your own computer. Even as we speak, I’m having a play around with that and downloading it, to see whether I can program it to be more random than it actually seems to be. It takes about 50GB of space, so I’ll be here for ever doing that.

Tea tonight was vegan nuggets with salad and chips, and now I’m off to bed, long after midnight but I’ve been dealing with all kinds of things this evening that have run me up a variety of blind alleys. And I’ll have the howling gale outside to blow me to sleep.

But seeing as we have been talking about Artificial Intelligence … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember an old Andy Capp cartoon that featured two men struggling unsuccessfully to move a large computer through a small door.
"No problem" said Andy Capp. "Just plug it in and let it work it out for itself."

Thursday 28th August 2025 – YET ANOTHER MORNING …

… when I slept right the way through until the alarm at 06:29. And once more, I had no end of a struggle to leave the bed prior to the alarm going off.

Last night wasn’t however as late as some have been just recently. I was actually, for once, in bed prior to midnight although it does have to be said that there can’t have been much in it.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly and that’s all that I remember of anything until 06:29 when the alarm went off. It’s not very often that I sleep as soundly as that.

It took me an age to make myself ready this morning too. What with having a good wash, scrub up and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, I went into the kitchen for my medication and didn’t come out again until 07:41 precisely. That was what I would call a “slow start”.

Yes, and “Emilie the Cute Consultant” … while I was waiting for my Doppler examination yesterday, with nothing better to do, I found a copy of the “Patients’ Charter” and read it. I do strange things like that every now and again.

Article 11 states that "a person who has been hospitalised has the right to express his observations on his treatment and on his reception." Consequently, if I have received an “over-generous” welcome from a member of staff, I shall say so, whether or not the doctor in charge of the service blows a gasket.

Even more importantly, Article 9 says that "every hospitalised person has the right to have his private life respected." It continues by saying that such a person "has the right to confidentiality respect of his …" communications.

Therefore, if the chef de service doesn’t like what I’m writing, I shall want to know why someone has been disrespecting my private life by hunting me down on the internet and reading my communications.

Frankly, I’m not in the least bothered about who tracks me down on the internet and who reads anything that I have written. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … if you have seen something that displeases you, no matter how you found it, there’s a “contact” button on the bottom right.

But if you are reading this and you aren’t supposed to, no matter what the reason, you only have yourself to blame.

Back in here, I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. At some point during the night, I was at Aberystwyth watching Aberystwyth Town playing in the JD Cymru South League following their relegation from the Premier League. It was a completely new side with all their old favourites missing. It just wasn’t the same kind of team that it was before. Several of their former players who had left in the summer were there but seemed not to become involved or take any kind of side during anything that was going on. That was a disappointment again.

Amongst the players whom I recognised in the stand was Louis Bradford, Aberystwyth’s former centre-half, but also Alec Mudimu, someone who has no connection at all with Aberystwyth. He’s a Zimbabwe international defender who played in the JD Cymru League previously with Cefn Druids and after a spell playing in Eastern Europe, signed for Y Fflint the other day.

The nurse came at the usual time for a change today, and once more, he was full of jovial good humour. I really don’t know from where it’s coming, but I hope that he keeps it up. He’s a much more agreeable person when he’s in this kind of mood.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES.

Our author is still setting the scene but he’s now moved on to talk about hunting. And in the middle of his discourse, he stops to paint a very illuminating but fanciful account of a fictional hunt involving Cunobelinus and his “daughter” Helena, a personage just as fictitious as Montagu Sharpe’s description.

Sharpe talks about the wild "animals turned by the long line of bank and hedge now known as Grimm’s dyke, blindly rushing towards these outstretched leafy arms," of the hunting trap. And then he loses the plot completely as he talks about the "blast from a long bronze carnyx, the sportsmen scatter to their places, and with weapons ready".

Would anyone like to guess what might happen to a herd of wild animals if someone in their vicinity were to blow a note on a solid bronze anything?

Really, this kind of writing has no place in what is supposed to be a genuine and serious historical account.

Back in here, I had a few things to do but time caught up with me quite rapidly and my cleaner arrived to sort out my anaesthetic patches. After she’d finished, we had a very long chat and then she left me to await the taxi to take me to dialysis.

It was late coming this afternoon and the other passenger in the car with me had the air of being extremely unhappy. We were late arriving at Avranches and as you might expect, I was the last to be plugged in.

To make matters worse, having had the session interrupted on Monday, I had so much liquid to lose that I had to stay for four hours. And the internet was down all day too, which really put the tin hat on it.

Océane was looking after me today, which was nice. The first needle, I felt a sensation when she pierced the skin but that was all. As for the second, the one that gives me problems, I didn’t even realise that she’d injected me, so good was the puncture. She can do it again like that and I’ll be happy. And once she had finished, I crashed out for a whole forty-five minutes

The doctor came to see me at one point. They had had the report from the hospital. The implant is definitely faulty and they are discussing whether to repair it or replace it. That was not what I wanted to hear.

During the session, the blood pressure alarm kept sounding as my blood pressure dropped. With twenty minutes to go, it was down to just about eight so at that point, Océane stopped the session. She’s already seen me in a coma once and doesn’t want to see it again.

She raised the bottom of the bed to give my blood pressure the space to recover, and when my pressure was stable at 9.5 she uncoupled me. The doctor gave me a prescription for the nurse to monitor my blood pressure for the next couple of days.

The taxi driver was waiting for me, last out of the building as I was, and she brought me home. My faithful cleaner was awaiting me and what a relief it was to come back into my apartment without those wretched 25 steps.

After a good while to recover, I made tea – a leftover curry. And now I’m off to bed, exhausted once again. I don’t know what’s the matter with me these last few days.

But seeing as we have been talking about hunting … "well, one of us has" – ed … two guys are out hunting in the forests of Maine when they are attacked by a black bear. One of them escapes but the other one is badly mauled.
Eventually, the one who escapes goes back to his friend and sees the bloody mass on the floor.
Taking up his ‘phone, he ‘phones 911."My friend has just been badly mauled by a black bear. I think that he’s dead"
"Really?" asks the dispatcher. "Can you make sure?"
On the other end of the ‘phone, the dispatcher hears a “BANG”
"I’m really sure now" says the surviving hunter. "What do I do next?"

Wednesday 27th August 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… when the alarm went off at 06:29, I was still fast asleep.

It’s no surprise really, for when you don’t go to bed until after 00:30, there really isn’t all that much time for sleeping. It is, however, disappointing to say the least. I was hoping that this series of very early starts would go on and on and on.

Yes, it was after 00:30 when I finally went to bed last night. I know that what with one thing and another, it was a late night but I hadn’t realised that it was that late until I checked the time.

Once in bed, though, I remember nothing at all. I must have gone to sleep quite quickly and stayed there until the alarm. Being as tired as I have been over this last week or so since chemotherapy, the good (well, for me, anyway) sleep probably did me some good.

Mind you, I didn’t feel like leaving the bed when the alarm went off. Once again, for two pins I would have gone back to bed. I had a real struggle to leave the bed before the second alarm went off.

It really was a slow start to the morning. It took an age to sort myself out in the bathroom and I didn’t rush to take my medication. It was about 07:40 when I finally made it back into here.

First thing that I did was to check the dictaphone, “just in case”. I was travelling miles in my sleep but I can hardly remember anything of it because the alarm awoke me yet again. However, I do remember that on one occasion I was going back into a place where I worked, trying to smuggle out a textbook or instruction book or something so that I could do some work at home on the Thursday or Friday and have the book back in the office for Monday morning. I also remember doing something with a sheet of newspaper, rolling it up into some kind of spiral like the kind of thing that you’d make if you were lighting a fire. That’s all that I remember about what was going on during the night.

And isn’t that disappointing too? Having a really interesting dream, only to find it evaporate away like that.

The nurse was early again and he was once more in a spirit of amiability. I hope that this keeps up, rather than his usual depressive state

After he left, it was breakfast time. However, I had hardly started it, never mind finished it, when there was a ring on the doorbell. I’m not sure that I mentioned yesterday that the dialysis centre wants me to go for a Doppler examination on the implant in my arm. It had been arranged for 09:30 this morning here in Granville, so I wasn’t expecting the taxi at 08:45.

We arrived at the hospital at 09:05, in plenty of time for my appointment at 09:30, so it goes without saying that I wasn’t seen until a little after 10:00. My taxi driver had already been once to pick me back up but she found me sitting there waiting to be called.

The doctor who performed the examination was someone whom I have met on several occasions in the past. A small lady of “a certain age”, she would make a very good companion to my favourite taxi driver, for she is another one who gives a running commentary of “a certain kind” while she is working. Those two working together would make a wonderful combination.

She had me there for well over half an hour, and the result is exactly as I knew it to be before we even talked about going – namely, there’s a fault in my implant right where the second needle goes, and the fault has been there for months, exactly as I said that it had.

That is the responsibility of the clinic that tried its best to rob me of €1667 or thereabouts last summer, and for which I had to fight over four months for it to be returned. I am now awaiting the formal report before I decide my next move.

However, I shall be having words with the doctors at the dialysis centre too. I’ve been complaining about this implant for months, and no-one has done anything about it. It’s a shame that I had to write to the dialysis centre’s head office so that something could be done, and despite the objections of the chef de service who, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, took great exception to my letter, my letter has produced some kind of results.

When I left the radiology booth, my poor taxi driver was still awaiting me. I felt terribly sorry for her but there wasn’t all that much that I could do about it.

It was 10:55 when I arrived back here and I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that was that it was lovely just to walk back all on my own across the courtyard to the front door, into the building and straight into my new apartment without having to worry about how I’m going to climb 25 stairs.

First thing that I did when I was back here was to reheat my porridge and coffee in the microwave and then finish my breakfast, at long last.

The second thing was to say hello to my faithful cleaner who came in carrying an urgent letter. And so it’s official that Tuesday 16th September I go to Rennes for my next session of chemotherapy.

It looks as if it’s just for the day too. Plenty of mention about what I need to bring, but nothing at all about an “overnight bag”. Of course, I’ll telephone to check. However, if it is just a day visit, that will cause a few other problems because I don’t think that I’ll be in much of a state to travel afterwards, if the previous sessions have been anything to go by.

Much of the afternoon has been spent beginning to unpack my office and installing my external drives. There’s a lot to do in this respect and it will take a while to do it all.

However, the good news is that I have had my first shower. And it was gorgeous too. It worked just as I wanted it to and I was so impressed. However, climbing in and out of the shower is difficult. The step up is just a little too high for me.

But I have a solution to that. Lying around here are all kinds of offcuts of scrap wood from the kitchen, and if I put two or three together and screw them so that they don’t move, they would make a nice step up of half-height and so I should be able to manage the ascent so much better.

What kind of state am I in these days?

Later on, we had another foot-fest. I’d missed the match between Stranraer and Clyde at the weekend, and last night Stranraer had taken on Glasgow Rangers Youth in the Scottish League Cup.

The match at the weekend was a tame 1-1 draw but last night’s match was … errr … interesting, to say the least. Stranraer won 4-1 but, big Stranraer fan that I am, their third goal was scored from the softest ever penalty award that I have ever seen which in 99 games out of 100 would have been waved away, and as for the fourth goal, you can show me that again as many times as you like and from every kind of angle too, and I will still say that the Stranraer forward was half a mile offside.

However, Stranraer has in the past been on the wrong end of several dubious decisions in the past so I suppose that things eventually even themselves out.

Tea tonight was an aubergine and kidney bean whatsit out of the freezer with pasta and vegetables, and in a return to normality after the upheaval of the last week or so, I read some more of MIDDLESEX IN BRITISH, ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES by Montagu Sharpe.

Sharpe has been discussing the Iron-Age occupation of Middlesex by the various Celtic tribes and that has led me on a chase around cyberspace for buried treasure. Quite literally too, because the subject of buried hoards from the Iron Age came into the discussion.

Of course, I went off on a side-track and in the words of Fridtjof Nansen, "the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I perceived – riddle after riddle led to new riddles and this drew me on."

And that, dear reader, is the answer to why it takes me so long to write up my notes, and why my Degree studies were not as they ought to have been. I am side-tracked far too easily by things that, to me at least, are much more interesting than whatever I am supposed to be doing.

So late once more, even though at one stage it promised to be quite early, I’m off to bed, wondering if I’ll have another “lie-in” until the alarm goes off.

But despite my having the first decent meal tonight since before chemotherapy, it’s been something of a bad day. On several occasions, I’ve felt my head spinning round and I’ve had to hold on to something to stop me falling. I’ve still not recovered from chemotherapy, I reckon, and I have no idea for how long this is going to continue.

But seeing as we have been talking about Fridtjof Nansen … "well, one of us has" – ed … he is of course famous for his epic hike across Greenland in 1888. During his trek he came across an Inuit building one of these little round houses out of ice blocks.
"What do you call this building?" asked Nansen
"It’s an ig" replied the Inuit
"Don’t you mean ‘igloo’?" asked Nansen
"Oh no" replied the Inuit. "There’s no plumbing up here on the Greenland Ice Cap."

Tuesday 26th August 2025 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I’ve felt as ill as I have today?

And how long is it since I’ve been to bed well before 23:00 (21:56 was when last night’s notes were published) and slept right through until the alarm sounded at 06:29?

Yes, it has been a day of all kinds of records, some of them unwelcome, and I hope that things improve quite rapidly as I can’t go on like this.

Last night, though, I was in all kinds of states. I was feeling nauseous, my head was spinning round and I was absolutely flat-out tired. I dashed through my notes and staggered through my preparations for the night, and then fell into bed.

During the night, I remember nothing at all, and no-one was more surprised than me to still be asleep when the alarm went off. It’s been an age since that has happened. It took me a while to stagger to my feet too – for two pins I’d have gone back to bed – and even longer to go to sort myself out in the bathroom.

Once I was ready, which took a lot longer than it ought, I went into the kitchen to take my morning medication. I must try to return to my old routine now that everything is calming down. I’ve forgotten the medication more times than I care to remember just recently.

There was a task that remained uncompleted from when I was taken ill at dialysis yesterday. I was in the middle of splitting a music soundtrack, and I’d only completed “less than half” of it. There’s no time like the present so I had a good go at that to finish it off.

The nurse interrupted me with his visit, and I do have to say that since he’s come back from his holiday, he’s become quite likeable as he was when I first met him. He was disappointed that the Hound of the Baskervilles has left though.

Breakfast was next, and it was nice to have an unhurried, leisurely meal looking out of the window at the World as it walked by. Much as I liked the view from upstairs, outside here on the ground floor is much more animated.

Back in here, I can’t remember what I did next. It wasn’t to go through my usual routine of seeing what had gone on during the night and transcribing the dictaphone notes, that’s for sure. It was probably something to do with trying to find some of the things that I need that have been put into boxes, there to remain, probably forever.

There were a few people online with whom I wanted to chat, so that passed some time as well.

After lunch, I had a foot-fest. There had been a whole series of matches in the J D Cymru League yesterday and I had purposefully refrained from reading about them because the live match would have been when I was on my way home, so I wanted to watch it all in one go as if it were a live game.

So this afternoon I had Connah’s Quay Nomads v Y Fflint from yesterday afternoon. And having watched Llanelli throw away a 2-goal lead to go down 4-2 to Llansawel the other day, this time it was the turn of Y Fflint to throw away a 2-goal lead, to go down 3-2.

For the first half, Connah’s Quay were awful and Y Fflint made it look easy. But at half-time, the Nomads made no fewer than four substitutions, the first time that I have ever seen so many changes at half-time by one club. It obviously worked, because they stormed away throughout the second half.

There were also all of the highlights of the other matches, including Colwyn Bay’s impressive 1-1 draw against perennial champions TNS. After four matches, Caernarfon are currently leading the table, and it’s been a very long time since that has happened.

What with one thing and another, I’d almost forgotten the dictaphone notes. They were next on the list and the massive “War And Peace” from the previous night is now online. I’ve no idea what must have been going on during the other night, but there are tons of stuff, and it’s well-worth a read.

Having done that, I could then turn my attention to last night’s notes. At some point during the night I dreamed that my cleaner came down with a whole load of stuff that had been sitting around and about the apartment, and threatened me under pain of dire retribution to start to move anything around. However, I was in bed at the time and certainly didn’t feel like getting up so I didn’t say anything. I just left her to go about doing it. But after a good half-hour or so, I had a look at the time. It was 02:26 so it must have been a dream that I had had, probably because I couldn’t see any changes to any of the piles in here. So now I have to try to go back to sleep and hope that I can manage it before all my staff desert it all for the goldfields.

Firstly, I can’t remember awakening at 02:26. And then we’ve had dreams within dreams before now, and I always find them to be an interesting phenomenon. Finally, the incident about the staff deserting for the goldfields reminds me of a VERY AMUSING INCIDENT ONCE WHEN I WAS IN LABRADOR. Who will ever forget "Gold Strike at Bear Creek"?

Later on, we’d moved into some new digs. I was sitting there, comfortably thinking that when we all go out on Tuesday, I would go and buy a motorbike for myself. That way, I could travel to and from work and everywhere I want to go much more easily. Of course, my brother thought that the idea was silly. He said that it would be two weeks before I fell off it, or something like that. However, I decided that that was what I would do. In the end, I ended up having a discussion with the landlady of where we were staying. She talked about different things, and I happened to mention that I might go back on the buses. She said that that was a huge jump up from driving a car. Did I think that I’d be safe? Did I think that I wouldn’t have any problems? Etc. I told her that I used to drive for Shearings, which lit up her eyes. She said “ohh, well you’ll probably remember me then”. Just as she was about to say why, the alarm went off.

Apart from my family sticking the oar in, imagine these days still being asleep when the alarm went off. Had I been awake, I would have missed this little voyage.

All through the day, I had been feeling nauseous, my head had been spinning and by the late afternoon, my vision had become blurred and I could hardly see what I was doing. I couldn’t find the force to stand up and I wasn’t feeling at all hungry, even though I’d eaten nothing since breakfast.

However, I forced myself into the kitchen, later than usual, and made a bowl of pasta and vegetables with one of the vegan burgers that I have. I didn’t feel like eating it but if I don’t make an effort, I’m going to be seriously ill one of these days … "as if you aren’t already" – ed …

Standing up afterwards, my head was spinning around and I could barely find the energy to stay standing upright, crutches or not.

But now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed, horribly late.

But seeing as we have been talking about the saloon in CARRY ON COWBOY … "well, one of us has" – ed … in the same saloon, the local preacher came in to preach to the cowboys about the evils of the demon drink.
"Would you like a whisky first?" asked the bartender.
"No evil liquor should ever touch my lips" roared the preacher. "I would rather spend the night in a brothel with a woman of ill-repute!"
At that, several cowboys dashed up to the bar and handed back their whiskies to the bartender.
"Why are you doing this?" asked the aforementioned.
"Well" replied the cowboys "we didn’t realise that we had a choice."

Monday 25th August 2025 – I HAVE HAD…

… another malaise – or “funny turn” – at dialysis this afternoon. And what a state I was in too. For a good while they had to switch off the machine.

It surely must be the after-effects of the chemotherapy, because I can’t think of what else it might be. After all, I had what for me would have been a good night’s sleep last night.

When I finished all of my notes etc last night, it was about 23:20 but as seems to be the case these days, I fell asleep at my desk yet again and it was at about 23:50 when I tore myself away and went to the bathroom. When I finally crawled into bed, it was just slightly after midnight.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, but I awoke at about 04:10. I was seriously toying with the idea of raising myself from the Dead at that point, but instead I went back to sleep and finally awoke at 06:20, just a few minutes before the alarm. Six or so hours’ sleep is quite good going these days.

The Hound of the Baskervilles and his master were already awake, and they went off for a walk while I tried my best to organise myself.

When they came back, we had a coffee and a good chat, and then my friend began to pack while I made myself some breakfast.

The nurse had been round earlier and, for a change, he was quite sociable. He gave me this new injection, which may well be a contributory factor to this malaise, and then he cleared off.

My guests left at about 10:00, and then I had plenty of things that needed doing. So much so that I forgot to transcribe the dictaphone notes. There are plenty on there, so you’ll need to look further down the page.

My cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic cream, which we are trying instead of the patches. She did her best to organise me, but I was already not feeling too well so that was a waste of her effort unfortunately.

The car down to Avranches was full today, and it was driven by one of the chatty females who wants to take me to an axe-throwing session (we have some strange pastimes around here). I’m almost tempted to go, except that I can’t stand up straight these days.

At the dialysis clinic, I was stuck once more in a room on my own, where I was attended by one of the more … errr … “senior” members of the nursing fraternity. She had lived in London in the past, and wanted to practise her English.

There wasn’t very much water to remove today, mainly due to the fact that I’m not eating much these days, but I persuaded her to wind up the machine to take out more so that I have a head start for next time.

There were plenty of things to do, but after a couple of hours, I began to feel ill. My head began to spin, my eyes blurred over, I had a dreadful pain in my right shin and I began to sweat profusely.

They put me flat on my back with my legs in the air and put an ice pack on my head. That didn’t seem to calm me down, but I managed to doze off for an hour or so, which was probably the best thing to do

When it was time to go, I was left pretty much to my own devices. The good news though was that it was my favourite taxi driver who brought me home, and we had a good chat about her house-moving project next week.

My faithful cleaner and the neighbour had been helping me move were waiting for me. But by now I was wasted and couldn’t really function. They left me alone and eventually, I managed to make some food. However, you can tell that I’m ill because I left some of it, and it’s not like me to leave food on the plate, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Eventually, I managed to catch up with the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. I must have had a really mobile night. I was out in the street in a cul-de-sac somewhere and set up on a very low stage right at the end of it was a rock group whose singer played trumpet, saxophone, flute, a bassist, a couple of guitarists, a keyboard player and a drummer. They were doing all the songs that I knew. One of the songs was Hawkwind’s CHILDREN OF THE SUN. Their version of it was absolutely terrific, and the bass line was just how I would have played the bass line to that song too. We were all having a really good time watching them, and the musicians were dancing around. One of them, one of the guitarists, was dancing with the crowd and collided with me but I just smiled and let him carry on. It was a tremendous concert. At the end, they happened to mention that two of their musicians were taking the day off at the weekend for some reason or other and they were going to be rather short-handed for a gig on Saturday night. I wondered whether it was worthwhile my going over to introduce myself to see if they wanted a bassist for a couple of nights, looking for a change to go out and about and go back on the stage.

As it happens, I know where this cul-de-sac is. It’s just round the corner from where I lived in Gainsborough Road in Crewe. And I also know the track “Children of the Sun” and I would indeed play the bass line in a different way to Hawkwind. Also, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, once I settled here I began to relearn the bass guitar and six-string guitar. It was all flooding back to me and I was really enjoying myself and giving serious thought to going back on the road. I even bought a 200-watt bass combo amp. However, losing the mobility in my legs, not being able to stand up, and having this implant in my arm means that I won’t ever play the guitar again.

At another moment, I was down in Hampshire, on my way back to the cross-channel port ready to go home. However, I had someone else to see but I can’t remember who it was. Someone with whom I was talking happened to mention that they were looking forward to seeing me, and I remember replying that I wasn’t looking forward to seeing them. It turned out that I had 400 miles to go in order to reach the ports so I had to leave quite quickly and there wouldn’t be much time to see anyone because 400 miles on French roads in a day is fine but 400 miles on UK roads could be problematic so there wouldn’t be a minute to spare to go to see anyone in my opinion. I didn’t know how I was going to fit this extra visit in.

400 miles from Hampshire to a Channel Port? The only port that might fit that description in any way at all is Rosyth, from where there used to be a ferry that sailed to Zeebrugge, although it’s been cancelled for years. Strangely, my friend and I were talking the other day about this ferry crossing.

Later on, I was out in a minibus last night with someone else. We were dropping off TV decoders at different places. At one place, right out in the countryside, we had to wait until someone came along with a car. It was a woman with a tiny, tiny daughter. She came to pick up the TV decoder and she began to tell us about this car park where we were waiting. I can remember it being a gravel place at the side of the road but these days, it had been modernised and made to look much nicer although I thought personally that it was a waste of money. This little daughter was running around somewhere very close to the side of the road. I thought that this was extremely dangerous and would cause a great many problems if she wasn’t careful. We were discussing this situation, the driver and me, saying that we’ll never have this job finished by 16:00 at the rate that things were going, so I was trying to think of a way to speed it up.

Later on, I was with a little girl who was my daughter. For some reason, I didn’t have a partner and the girl didn’t have a mother. We were going to a party so she was dressed in a little lilac party frock. We went in, and everyone looked at us. We eventually found a place to sit down. The two of us were chatting to each other. I could hear one or two whispers that people were thinking that maybe it’s wrong for a guy to have a daughter without having a partner there as well, but we didn’t really care all that much. Then my niece appeared. She asked me later if that place was going to be my local from now on, the place where we had that party. I told her that I’d been here before and I know what it’s like. I’ve had a few games of snooker here but it’s rather far out here from home so I don’t really know.

Something else that’s bizarre is the story of the lilac party dress. The nearest thing that I ever had to a daughter was Roxanne, whom I looked after for three years. When her mother and I separated, Roxanne had left some things in the apartment that we had. There were her communion dress, her bridesmaid’s dress and the clothes that she wore on the night of the wedding that she attended. There were also some other items and two extremely large dolls, one of which was almost as big as she was, and I can’t bring myself to give any of them away, sad creature that I am. When my faithful cleaner was sorting out my old suitcases, she came across the party dresses for the two dolls (you can’t go to a party all dressed up yourself and not take your dolls, dressed up too!) and one of them is a lilac party frock.

The story about being a man on his own with a daughter is probably something to do with the fact that I got on better with Roxanne than I did with her mother, and I was sadder about her having to leave than her mother leaving.

Then we moved on from there and I was with this young Italian girl. We were talking about all kinds of different things, having a really interesting chat. Then she took me off into a corner of this car park where we had been with the minibus earlier. There were half a dozen graves there. She pointed out one and said that it was her little brother, then she pointed out another and said that that was her mother. She said that she had had a lot of difficulty coping with the death of her mother because she was so young. I felt really sad for her and put my arm around her to console her, and we began to walk back to the town. She told me, to my surprise, that I was a really nice person, which I didn’t think very much, and she told me that I ought to moderate my language because it is rather coarse, and I ought to take more care of myself etc, my dress and so on, because she said that the two of us might actually make a very nice couple at some point, which pleased me immensely because I liked this girl. We carried on chatting until we came out of one of the back entries on Nantwich Road ready to go down Edleston Road into town. This was another one of these dreams that felt so comfortable and felt so relaxed. I haven’t had one of these dreams for months that had this calm, comfortable and relaxed feelings.

As I said in my dream, I’ve not had one of these dreams for ages. As for Italian people, I love them and all of their emotions. When I first met Nerina, I found it very difficult to come to terms with the emotional side that she presumably inherited from her mother, but having worked with a bunch of Italians in Brussels later on, I just wish that I had met Nerina ten or fifteen years later. But you can’t turn the clock back, no matter how hard you try.

It’s true too that I suppose that I don’t take enough care of myself and my personal appearance, and it’s true that some of my speech is … well … quite emotional. However, you can take the man out of Crewe but you can’t take Crewe out of the man.

So having struggled to do the washing up, I’m off to bed, even though it’s quite early. I can’t keep on going any more this evening, so I hope that I’ll feel better tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about feeling out-of-sorts … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time that I was at Balmoral talking to a serving wench, when suddenly she burst out in uncontrollable laughter.
"What’s the matter, girl?" asked the Queen. "Are you feeling hysterical?"
"Och no, Ma’am" replied the girl. "He’s feeling mine!"

Sunday 24th August 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… evening that was last night. I can’t think of a time when I have been as tired as I was last night. In fact, I can’t remember whether it was three or four times that I fell asleep while I was writing my notes. One thing was sure though, and that was that I fell into bed almost immediately afterwards and that was that.

It wasn’t as if I had done anything special to warrant it last night either. And I’d had a nice, relaxing if painful session at dialysis too. It must be the after-effects of the chemotherapy that I had on Tuesday and Wednesday, I suppose. That does quite a few strange things, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Anyway, once in bed, there I stayed. I knew nothing about anything at all until all of … errr … 06:50. And it took twenty minutes for me to raise myself from the Dead. This might sound late to some people, seeing as the alarm is usually set for 06:29, but in fact Sunday is my Day of Rest and the alarm doesn’t go off until 07:59, so it’s still an early start.

First thing was to go to sort myself out in my nice new bathroom, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was one dream about the hospital and the taxis, and dialysis, all of that, but I had rather a rude awakening and the moment that I basically went to grab hold of the dictaphone, the dream evaporated and I could remember nothing whatsoever except a very little of how it began and what was involved in it. It was a huge disappointment when it happens like this.

It’s obviously preying on my mind, all of this, and it’s no surprise. Over the past twelve months or so, I’ve become a slave to the medical service and I can’t see any way out of it, except to go out horizontally. There is no cure in sight, nor is there ever likely to be, and I shall have to just keep on trudging wearily on until I meet the inevitable.

Although I didn’t dictate it, I have a vague memory of being upstairs, looking at the old apartment and how clean and tidy it was, even down to the polished glass in the old oven. And there was someone there saying “you aren’t really dreaming, you know” or “this isn’t a dream, you know” – something like that. There was also a vague recollection of having to go downstairs, and that I’d taken half a dozen steps to the top of the stairs before I realised that I didn’t have my crutches, and I had to send someone to fetch them.

As it happens, I have been specifically banned from entering the apartment upstairs, on pain of suffering the wrath of my faithful cleaner who has done her best to tidy up after me And I am not alone in that interdiction, because a similar ban has been also placed upon the Hound of the Baskervilles.

Interestingly, how many times is that now that I have been dreaming of going somewhere without my crutches? I hope that this is a positive premonition once I start to have my treatment in Rennes. We can but hope.

Eventually, the sleeping beauties on the sofa crawled back to life and I was looking forward to a coffee but the Hound of the Baskervilles had urgent business to which he needed to attend so he dragged his master off outside.

But not before the nurse had taken us unawares yet again. Not quite as early as yesterday, but still early enough. And once more he didn’t hang around.

While I was waiting for everyone to come back, I attended to the erection of the antenna for the maritime data recorder. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I maintain and operate the maritime data recorder for the Port of Granville, a radio transceiver that tracks the movements of the boats and ships in and out of the port and sends them to a Worldwide central control database receiver in Denmark.

When we had all collected in the kitchen, we had a coffee and a chat, and when they went out again, I attended to the assembly of the hi-fi unit. That involved drilling a couple more holes in the rear and the side of the shelf unit so that I could pass the cables through. It didn’t take too long, and we celebrated our success by eating breakfast accompanied by music.

After breakfast, my friend went to empty out the van while I tidied away the tools that I had been using, but we didn’t get very far because the girls turned up. They checked the books to make sure that I hadn’t rearranged them, and then we sat around for a while and had a really good chat as they are going home this afternoon.

Everyone went off later for a late lunch so I came in here to sit down and relax for an hour or so. I needed it.

When my friend came back, having stuck the girls onto the train, I began the baking exercise – a loaf of bread, and a pizza for tea.

Firstly, my new adjustable stool really is the business. Adjusted to the maximum height, sitting down to knead the dough is totally painless. The stool was an excellent purchase.

Secondly, the oven is wicked. Even with the baking time reduced from 55 minutes to 30 minutes, it still burned the top of the bread. It’s now a glorious dark brown instead of the insipid white of the old table-top oven.

As for the pizza, I cooked it for 15 minutes instead of 25 minutes, and even so, it still burned the edge. Nevertheless, it was delicious.

There was a mountain of washing-up to do and that took an age, but now I’m finished. I’ve written my notes and I’m off to bed in a minute. Tomorrow, the Hound of the Baskervilles and his master are leaving, so I’ll be on my own. There are still plenty of things to do, but they will have to be done some other time, and I don’t think that we’ll be able to take the solar panel off the roof of the van, which is a shame.

You can’t win a coconut every time.

But seeing as we have been talking about the new oven and its cooking capabilities … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was thinking that my mother would really be at home with my new oven.
Back many years ago, I remember telling a friend "my mother treats me like a God"
"Why’s that?" he asked.
"Well, every time we came home from school, my mother served me up a burnt offering."

Saturday 23rd August 2025 – AT LONG LAST …

… we finally have the house internet working.

But not for long though, because according to the technician’s report, the cabling is breaking up. They are going to send out yet another engineer on Wednesday to re-wire the internet circuit, so let’s hope that it keeps on working until then.

There are lots of other things in this apartment too that weren’t here yesterday, and I reckon that we can safely say that this furniture removal should be complete tomorrow afternoon. My friends and neighbours (such of whom were present) have been absolute heroes and words cannot describe just how grateful I am for their assistance.

Last night I left the Hound of the Baskervilles and his master lying on the sofa ready to go to sleep, and I carried on in here writing up my notes.

When I’d finished, it took me a good while (but not as long as Thursday night) to summon up the energy to leave the chair, and after having sorted myself out ready for bed, I hit the sack.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, but once more it was a turbulent night, not the profound, solid sleep for which I was hoping. Once more, I awoke round about 05:20, but this time, it was 06:00 when I left the bed for a good wash, being careful not to mention Shhh! You Know Who!

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We had been discussing boundary revisions down in South Wales. There had been one between Afan Lido and one of the other Welsh football clubs. Afan Lido had been awarded a fair amount of territory. The delegué went back to the main office to collect the ladder because his intention was to begin loading and unloading it soon as quickly as possible so that no-one would have time to lodge any kind of objection to the Court’s decision just now.

There is a very lengthy, and at one moment very controversial story about Port Talbot Athletic and the creation of Afan Lido FC who also play in Port Talbot. However, that was long ago in the past.

There was also that dream about the economies of scale of making giant motorcycles that could travel across the USA with freight etc. Four times the size, four times the power, four times the speed. However, the people behind it decided to secede from the USA to govern themselves, and there was a big battle just outside the town from where they came, and they were overwhelmed and defeated, and the project was abandoned. There were no more of these giant motorcycles.

Even now, I can still see this battle raging and roaring up the high street of the town – a typical Wild West scene with gunmen in the street shooting the baddies off the roofs. But the “four times the size” relates to the dispute that we mentioned the other day between Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Dr Dionysus Lardner about the size of ships and the freight that they can carry.

When those next door awoke, we had a coffee but were surprised by the nurse who came really early. He knocked us out of our stride so much that we both forgot our medication and I even forgot my disgusting drink break.

The Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for a walk and I began to tidy up again in here. And I made really good progress too. We did however hit a major snag with the hi-fi and that will need some work tomorrow.

When everyone came back, we had breakfast, and then my friend went to fetch some things like the Carlsbro combi amp and speaker out of the van and to bring a few other things down from upstairs while I carried on tidying up.

By the time my cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic patches, we’d made good progress and there was plenty of space on the floor for more stuff.

The girls arrived just as I was going out. The taxi had come early and we had a good whizz down to Avranches with a very chatty young driver. She dropped us off early and much to my surprise, I was seen quite quickly. My nurse today was Julie the Cook so we had plenty to talk about.

The first needle, I felt nothing at all. It was totally painless. The second absolutely killed me, making me even more convinced that there’s a fault in the implant.

The time was spent watching Llanelli throw away a two-goal lead to go down 4-2. Llanelli will have to play much better than this.

There were the highlights of the rest of last night’s games, and all of that took me up to a quite early departure.

Back here, I saw the efforts that everyone had made this afternoon. My room is full again, and we now have a huge bass stack against the wall. There’s not much more at all to come down, and then there’s the cab of the van to empty. I would really like the solar panel off the roof too, but that will be difficult.

Back in here, I saw the latest internet issues and so I had a very lengthy and unproductive chat with someone on the helpline – probably the worst that I have ever had. But anyway, they are coming to rewire on Wednesday.

While everyone was out, I had tea. Baked potato, breaded quorn fillet and salad. And now I’m off to bed, dog-tired, exhausted, call it what you will. Tomorrow, I’ll finish this off because I really can’t keep going any longer.

But seeing as we have been talking about Port Talbot … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once went to a fancy dress ball there, and met a man, totally naked, with a girl sitting on his shoulders.
"What are you supposed to be?" I asked him
"I’m dressed as a snail" he replied
"And what about the girl on your shoulders?"
"Ohh, she’s Michelle."

Friday 22nd August 2025 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S DREADFUL …

… day yesterday, things have gone much better, although physically, I’m still quite out of it.

Looking back on what I wrote last night before going to bed, it’s easy for anyone to see how stressed out I was. However, looking back at a few of the previous times that I’ve had chemotherapy both this time and before in 2016, I can see the same patterns, always a day or two later.

The difference has been that at those times, I’ve always been on my own and have been able to take to my bed and there to stay. It’s much more complicated coping with these kinds of chemically-induced emotions when one is amongst others and when things aren’t going correctly.

Chatting to my faithful cleaner a little earlier today, she told me (and I agree with her) that my best course of action should have been to eschew the restaurant last night and slink off to bed ready t fight the good fight the next day. But that’s not really something that one can do when one has company.

Things could hardly have been worse last night though. After I’d finished my notes, I couldn’t move off my chair. I was so stressed out and I just couldn’t calm down. It took me about an hour to be able to leave my chair and another half-hour to make myself ready for bed. God alone knows what time it was when I finally crawled underneath the covers.

Mind you, I knew what time it was when I left the bed this morning. It was all of 05:50, and I’d first noticed the time ar 05:20. It actually felt as if I hadn’t been to sleep at all.

After a good wash, I went into the kitchen, trying my best not to awaken the sleeping beauties, and began to clear away the devastation that I had mentioned yesterday. My friend awoke soon afterwards and he joined in, and within about half an hour, the kitchen at least was looking more-or-less how I wanted it to be. We’d deliberately postponed coffee until it was done, so we then sat down to a well-earned drink.

The nurse surprised us, but he sorted out my legs and then cleared off. The Hound of the Baskervilles then dragged his master off for a walk, and I carried on with the re-arranging.

When they came back, we had breakfast. I made porridge which, despite being extra-careful, erupted in a volcano yet again. As my friend said to the girls later, "when Eric makes porridge, everyone else gets some too."

We also discussed my new plan for today, which was that nothing else whatever comes downstairs until tomorrow. Today, we concentrate on putting away what is already down here. One thing that did come down though was my bedroom carpet. On a polished wood floor, every time I stood up from my chair, the chair rolled away, my feet slipped and I fell over. The carpet would stop everything slipping and sliding.

While the others had been out, I’d managed to do a lot of work on the stuff on the floor, and so we carried on. It was looking quite well when Alison and Jackie arrived from their digs.

They both fell in love with the kitchen and they liked the bathroom. In fact, they liked everything about my little apartment.

Once the guided tour was over, they asked what they could do to help. I set them a task, TO PROVE THAT THEY ARE WORTHY, which was to organise my kitchen and put everything away.

That’s a job rather like asking Hercules to clean the Augean Stables, but they tackled it willingly. I probably shan’t know where anything is now, but it does look beautiful.

At that point, I packed them off out for lunch. I had a disgusting drink break and I was going to have an hour or so of rest, but first Rosemary wanted a chat, and then so did my friend from Newport in Shropshire who is handling my project over in the UK.

When they came back later, Alison and Jackie decided that they would sot out my books, so my friend and I devoted ourselves to the Threading of the Electrical Cables. We were trying to drill holes through a chipboard panel but gave up when we saw that it was armoured with kevlar. In the end, we discarded it and substituted a light hardboard panel as a kick panel under my desk. That was much easier.

We had to thread a few cables around the living room, so the girls helped us manoeuvre … "PERSONoeuvre" – ed … some of the furniture around.

Later on, everyone went for tea and I was left alone with The Hound of the Baskervilles. The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone and to my surprise, there was something on it, so I must have gone to sleep at some point. I must have dozed off for a minute and I was back talking to one of the drivers from the taxi company that I use, the boss, and we were talking about all strange and weird things that made no sense whatsoever. One of the girls who was standing nearby asked me “is his name Alexi”? However, I couldn’t think of what his name was so I didn’t really say very much. But it was a conversation that didn’t last very long but it was talking really about nothing that made any sense.

Firstly, since when have I ever said anything that has ever made any sense? Secondly, that dream tells me that I have several things going on right now that are preying on my mind, and how I wish that I hadn’t. They aren’t things that I can resolve either, unfortunately.

Next thing was to begin the installation of the big office computer and screen. That’s going to take quite a while because there is so much of it to install. There is also a mountain of cables to untangle so I began that too.

At about 19:30, I knocked off for tea. I wasn’t hungry but they will only moan at me at dialysis if I don’t eat anything, so I had pasta and veg tossed in olive oil and black pepper, with grated cheese.

There was football afterwards, LLanelli v LLansawel. LLanelli roared into a two-goal lead, but Llansawel slowly pegged them back to 2-2 and then the computer froze, so I shall have to watch the rest tomorrow at dialysis.

By now, my friend was back so we had a chat, and then he went off to join The Hound of the Baskervilles on the sofa while I wrote up my notes.

And now, in a better frame of mind than last night, I’m off to bed. It’s dialysis tomorrow and hopefully, while I’m out, the others will help the internet engineer fix the fault on our line. Then we will be back in business.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Jackie and Alison rearranging my books … "well, one of us has" – ed … I noticed that somehow, there were two books of the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy together in one place, and the third on its own somewhere else.
"Did you move the odd one to next to the other two?" asked my friend later
"Oh no" I replied. "I didn’t dare."

Thursday 21st August 2025 – HAVE YOU EVER …

… had one of those days where nothing at all has gone right? I’m in the middle of one right now and I’m going to have a major sense of humour failure before long. It just isn’t my day at all.

Last night was quite nice though. After everyone had left after tea I sat down, wrote my notes, did what I had to and even managed fifteen minutes of tidying up. It was quite late when I eventually went to bed, but I didn’t mind at all. I was enjoying myself in my new abode.

Once I finally made it into bed, I was asleep quite quickly, but unfortunately not for long. At 05:05 I was wide awake and by 05:30 I’d given up all hope of going back to sleep, so I called it a night and left the bed.

Unfortunately, there was nothing whatever on the dictaphone. I know that I must have been tired after my marathon 48 hours of the last couple of days with just a few hours sleep, but it really must have been a very deep sleep into which I slipped.

So instead, I had a good wash and scrub up, trying to avoid mentioning Emilie the Cute Consultant in case the boss of the dialysis centre finds out and blows a gasket, had my medication and then did some more tidying up. The kitchen was now looking quite tidy, which was lovely.

When the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master in, we had coffee and a chat, and then I made yet more strides with the tidying up while the two of them went out for a walk.

While I was at it, I rang up about the internet. It doesn’t seem to be a fault on the line, so they think that it might be a bad connection here. They will send out a technician to check it, but he can’t come until Saturday afternoon. In the meantime, we managed to arrange some kind of temporary internet that might keep us going for a day or two

When everyone came back, we had a very late breakfast, where I discovered all about just how powerful my new microwave oven is when I went to make my porridge. Consequently, I had to spend ten minutes cleaning the oven, which did not make me feel any better.

Once breakfast was finally finished, the tidying up restarted and I began by trying to make enough space to bring my bass stack down from upstairs, on the grounds that it will be farthest away from the door and so much easier to bring in without there being any obstructions. However, everyone else had other ideas of what needed doing next, so while I was busy putting away the stuff that I’d taken off the floor, everyone else was filling the space with other things.

Nevertheless, we soon managed to work out a rhythm of how we were doing to work out everything, but with a very late start, the cleaner came in to sort me out, ready for dialysis long before I was ready.

Once she’d left, I began to prepare the stuff for the washing up of what had accumulated but the taxi driver beat me to it, so I left a mountain of stuff all over the kitchen ready to do when I returned home.

My arrival at Avranches coincided with the arrival of five other people so as usual, I was the last person to be coupled up. I almost had heart failure when they told me that I had gained so much weight that I needed to stay for four hours, especially as I’d starved myself and hardly drunk anything at all since Monday.

However, they realised that they had miscalculated, and reset the machine for three and a half, which eased my plight somewhat.

The dietician came to see me about an expired prescription, and the doctor came to see how Paris went, but one glimmer of good news is that The University Hospital of Rennes ‘phoned me. It is indeed licensed to administer Bandamustine, and I can go there on Tuesday 16th September rather than to Paris. That sounds extremely optimistic

While I was there, I made good use of the internet right through until it was finally time to go, but as you might expect, not only was I the last to be uncoupled, there were so many problems with the people being uncoupled before me that I had to wait nearly half an hour before the nurse could attend to me.

When I was finally free to go, the taxi was there waiting but there was someone else to travel with me, but we had to wait ten minutes for her to finish and be ready, and then she lived fifteen minutes down the road in the opposite direction.

Consequently, it was 19:30 when I arrived back here, far too late to do the washing up, the pile of which had grown considerably during the afternoon.

Still, out we went and met up with the girls who had come down from Brussels and Cologne to help out for the weekend. I’d booked a table at a restaurant, completely forgetting that there were several steps down into the building and no handrail, so I almost fell in, and then spent the whole of the meal being stressed out about how I was going to climb back out again.

The meals that the other three had were delicious. My first salad came with ham on it, and the second one came with eggs in it so by this time I had long since given up all hope of anything going my way at all.

With some help, the climb out of the restaurant wasn’t as bad as I was fearing, but the hundred yards up a steep hill to the car was far too much and that stressed me out even more. I should never ever have considered trying it. I made it though, but I won’t ever make it again.

Back in here yet again, I just took one look and the huge mess in the kitchen, that seemed to have grown even more, and I gave up in despair. This was exactly what I had been trying to avoid. My one pet hate is waking up in the morning to a pile of dirty dishes, and this huge heap in front of me has depressed me beyond all measure.

Calling it a night, and hoping that I’ll feel better in the morning, I came into my room to write my notes. I picked up a bag of things that had been left on my desk, and knocked off a huge pile of other stuff that had been abandoned on there.

There are several other things that I could mention but it would just depress me even more, and probably depress you lot too. So I’ll call it a day and go to bed, in the hope that I’ll feel better in the morning. Although how I’m going to cope with all of this washing-up I really don’t know as yet.

But I shall really have to stop being so stressed out. It’s a really bad week for me, with chemotherapy, the trip to Paris and everything. It’s hardly surprising that I’m just totally out of it all right now. But that doesn’t make me feel any better. Perhaps a good night’s sleep will help. Who knows?

But seeing as we have been talking about my bad luck today … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of being in Sheffield when the boiler at the vegan tomato soup factory exploded as I walked past.
"That was your lucky day" said a friend.
"Not really" I replied. "The only implement that I could find was a fork."

Wednesday 20th August 2025 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what on earth they must have tried in this latest cocktail of products to try to counter the vicious side-effects of the Bandamustine, the second and third parts of this chemotherapy that I have, but if they had tried it after the first or even the second visit, I would not have had all the issues that I had had in the past and I would not have lost my enthusiasm for going to Paris.

In actual fact, I had to ask the nurses twice if they had already given it to me because in sharp contrast to the two previous visits, I felt no effects at all. Not even a single shiver. Mind you, the stabbing pain in my foot, that had been absent since the previous visit, returned to haunt me at some point during the night and continued throughout the morning.

One probably unwanted side-effect might have been that I thought that I had had a nuit blanche – a night when I didn’t go to sleep at all.

That could possibly have been because I had crashed out in the afternoon yesterday – and royally too. I was totally out of it when one of the nurses called in to see me, and for a moment I didn’t have a clue where I was … "for a moment only?" – ed …

But anyway, that was yesterday. Last night, having finished my notes early, I went to try to have an early night during the pauses of the chemotherapy sessions, but I ended up not going to sleep even though I was tired.

At least, I thought that I hadn’t gone to sleep, but when I listened to the dictaphone, I discovered that I must have because there was actually something on there from the night. There was something about a woman and her daughter aged eleven being on one of these express buses going somewhere. The bus was involved in an accident and luckily the girl was sitting somewhere else because the mother took the full force of this lorry coming through the side and was killed immediately.

To whatever that particular dream relates, I really have no idea at all. It doesn’t seem to tie in with anything that has sprung to my mind in recent past. However, I did note that I refrained from saying “a little girl”. The last girl of eleven to whom I referred as “little” was definitely not amused and I still had the bruises two weeks later.

It was a very slow and unsteady start to the day and it took me quite a while to come to my senses, which is a surprise seeing how few senses I have left these days. I checked the stats, transcribed the dictaphone (see above) and just as I had finished, the doctor came to see me.

He told me that the University Hospital at Rennes is licensed to dispense the Bendamustine and so he’s been in touch with them. However, the professor in charge of the unit is away on holiday so he won’t have a response for a couple of weeks. Consequently, he’s reserved a bed for me for the 16th and 17th of September for my next course of chemotherapy, but he’ll let me know about Rennes and will cancel these dates if appropriate.

He also said that the last session of Bendamustine will be given at 10:00 so after a rudimentary breakfast, I dashed into the bathroom for a good wash and shave. If I’d known earlier about the long delay for the final session, I’d have had a shower.

When they came to give me this last session, I checked again to make sure that it was the same that they had given me earlier, to which they agreed, so I carried on working, trying to work out the chords to two songs by Lindisfarne, WE CAN MAKE IT
and BORN AT THE RIGHT TIME, because for the former, one of the recurrent themes in my postings is the loss of knowledge of the old men that they take to the grave with them. For the latter, I think that those of us born at the later stages of the “Boomer” generation really were born at the right time and really did have it all.

When they came to disconnect me completely from the machine I obviously had to notice, but I was so distracted later that I didn’t notice the arrival of the taxi driver until he yelled at me.

He had been booked to appear at 13:00 but it was actually 14:00 when he arrived. Not that it was important because he had had to drop off someone here in Paris or thereabouts on the way, and then go round to another hospital to pick up a lady to drop off in Bréhal up the coast.

The lady, I have travelled with before and she’s quite chatty The driver knew how to talk too, and of course, I am not renowned for my reticence so we had quite an animated drive back here, and you’d be surprised at how quickly time flies when you are having a good chatty drive.

We dropped off the lady first and then came home to Granville where we arrived at about 18:30, and found my reception committee awaiting me.

Not having to climb twenty-five steps is a real boon, and I fell in here to find that despite my instructions for everyone to take the day off as a Day of Rest, they had carried on working and they had made another great difference to the rooms here. I was astonished.

The shower is finished too and never mind the money that it cost me, it is a masterpiece. He had put a lot of work into it and you can tell.

While I was at hospital, I hadn’t eaten my sandwiches so I had them for tea while my friend finished off the stuffing with some mashed potato. But now that he and his sidekick the Hound of the Baskervilles have gone back upstairs to where the sofa is, I’ve written my notes and when I’ve done ten minutes of tidying up, I’ll be off to bed too.

But seeing as we have been talking a lot about talking a lot and “little” girls of eleven years old… "well, one of us has" – ed … one of them once asked me "why do you spend so much time talking to yourself, Eric?"
"Well, Pernilla," I replied. "When you reach a certain age, you become accustomed to talking to the most intelligent person in the room."

Wednesday 20th August 2025 – STILL NO INTERNET…

…here in my new abode = yes, I am now back home = so in order to read about my doings today you’ll have to wait until I’m at my Thursday afternoon dialysis session – always assuming that they let me back in – to find out all the excitement of today.

Tuesday 19th August 2025 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow, and not sitting in my nice, new apartment, but sitting in my mouse-infested hovel in Paris with all kinds of tubes and pipes attached and plugged into me, in the middle of a session of chemotherapy.

Consequently, if this entry stops abruptly, you will know that I have been overwhelmed with side-effects.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … nice, tidy apartment, still apparently without internet so I am told, I finished writing my notes rather later than usual, what with one thing and another, and with not being able to do anything else on the internet and still seething with rage, I went to bed.

And it was after midnight too.

During the night, I remember one or two little moments of consciousness, but I slept all the way through until the alarm went off – at 06:00 this morning. And it was the most glorious night that I have had for ages. I really felt at home in that bedroom.

Opening the shutters and breathing in the fresh air first thing in the morning reminded me very much of 1970, 16 years of age and on my student exchange in Burgundy, opening the shutters of my little room over that bar in Chasselas up in the mountains at the back of Macon. Ohh, happy days!

Or they would have been, but I was totally unprepared for that trip. Coming from a tiny rural village, I had no perception of what the outside World was like, even less about what a foreign country was like. I was far too shy and nervous to make the most of it.

As Ernest Borgnine (I think) said in THE WILD BUNCH, "What I don’t know about, I sure as hell am gonna learn", and so I did. And I’m still learning, every day.

As Hugh Latimer once famously said to Bishop Ridley, that voyage lit "such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.". And it hasn’t either, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. 600 or 700 miles from the North Pole in 2018 at 64 years of age, and still wishing to push onwards.

After a lovely wash in my beautiful sink in my wonderful bathroom, I went into the kitchen to make some sandwiches for my trip. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I think that the food in the hospital is dreadful … "for the benefit of anyone from Avranches reading this, on 8th May 2025 our hero wrote to the hospital about it and there was subsequent correspondence, but nothing ever changed." – ed … so I am obliged to take my own food supplies to keep the lupus from the porte, as they said in Ancient Rome.

With plenty of time on my hands, I began to re-arrange the food in the kitchen and in the fridge. The new fridge-freezer is huge but even so, there is still not enough room to put everything in the freezer – my permanent gripe, it seems.

Having packed my backpack, I was sitting having a breather when the Hound of the Baskervilles breezed in, dragging his master behind him. We had a chat while my friend … "the master, not the Hound" – ed … drank a coffee. I never eat or drink before I go to Paris. With a four-hour drive, I work on the principle that what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out during the journey.

My friend brought down the washing-up equipment so I could clean up after the meal last night, and just as I finished, the nurse burst in. He had a quick look around the apartment and it passed muster, so he patched me up and cleared off.

The plumber was next, and he brought with him his account. I had to go to lie down in a darkened room for ten minutes to recover. It was expensive, but he has done an excellent job and I am well-impressed. I really did strike it lucky with my plumber and joiner. Not so the electrician though, because the internet plug that he fitted doesn’t seem to work.

Until the taxi arrived, I busied myself stacking the pile of books onto the bookcases to make the place look a little less cluttered.

It was the senior driver who came for me today. We had a really quick run to Paris, punctuated by a stop at his depot to fuel up the car.

The road to Paris was also punctuated by a whole series of different messages with a huge variety of different people, as well as a ‘phone call from the dialysis centre. They want to come round to inspect my new abode, presumably to ensure that I’m not living in insalubrious circumstances. Mind you, at the rate that these hospital appointments are coming, I shall hardly be living there at all.

There were just a few slight interruptions at Caen and on the edge of Paris, but apart from that, it was quite fluid and we were here twelve minutes early, and everyone else was at lunch.

They put me in the room that I share with the mouse, and after the induction session, they left me to my own devices for a while.

That was the cue to put on line yesterday’s complete blog entry, and then I went deep into the bowels of my coding that I wrote for the operation of my websites (all of the underlying coding for my web pages was hand-written by me) and looked at the visitors.

Sure enough, as I suspected, last night I had two readers from Avranches searching through my blog, another one just down the road from Avranches in Brittany and three from disguised locations but with French IP addresses. So the vultures are flapping their wings in the trees, waiting for the wounded wildebeest to drop to his knees.

Alors, je vais vous dire quelque chose. Il y a un bouton au fond de la page à la main droite. Si vous avez lu quelque chose que vous n’appreciez pas, appuyerez sur le bouton et vous allez trouver une boîte de communication. Plutôt que faire des plaintes anonymes, m’en ecriviez directement afin d’exprimer votre mécontentement. Quand j’écris quelque chose, je mets mon non en dessous. Il n’y a aucun raison pourquoi vous ne pourriez pas faire la même chose.

The Professor who is dealing with my case came to see me. He had heard that I no longer wanted to come to Paris so we had a lengthy chat about it. In the end he agreed to have a chat with the people at Rennes and also St-Lô where there is apparently an outstation of the Neurological Department of the University Hospital of Caen.

Since then, tea has been, and so has the chemotherapy. So now I’m off to lie down while I still can, ready for Round Three tomorrow. The taxi has been booked for 13:00 so it had all better be finished by then and I had better to be on form to be able to travel home, even if the internet still isn’t working.

But seeing as we have been talking about plumbers … "well, one of us has" – ed … in Crewe in the 1960s, someone went to the Rolls-Royce factory to buy a new car. He paid his deposit and was told that he could pick it up exactly ten years from the day.
"Would that be the morning or the afternoon?" he asked.
"It’s in ten years time" said the salesman. "Does it make a difference?"
"Actually, it does" replied the customer. "We have a water leak in our house and the plumber will be coming that morning to fix it."

Monday 18th August 2025 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow, but sitting on my office chair next to my nice, comfortable bed, downstairs in my new apartment. I am in here at last, and in the words of Maréchal MacMahon, "j’y suis, j’y reste" or “here I am and here I stay”, even if the internet will not be connected until tomorrow.

My friends and neighbours are heroes, absolutely. While I was at dialysis this afternoon, they moved my bed and office chair down into my new bedroom, the dining table and chairs into the dining area, most of the food from the kitchen upstairs into this kitchen, and the second bookcase and all of the books that go with it.

While I’m away in Paris, they propose to bring down the rest of my office and studio and to make a start on the living room.

As well as that, a neighbour in the next building has said that he will come by with a large sacking truck and help move the washing machine. And that’s very helpful too, because the washing machine is what has been worrying me.

No-one can ask for better neighbours than those whom I have. It’s no wonder that I didn’t ever want to leave this building. And my friends are wonderful too. Without them, I would be sunk.

And last night, I thought that I was going to be sunk too. Much as I tried, I couldn’t finish off my work by 23:00. I was a good half-hour late going to bed, and probably more besides.

And although I went to sleep quite quickly, I awoke quite quickly too – round about 01:20. And from then on, I had a very disturbed night, tossing and turning, falling asleep and awakening more-or-less straight away.

At about 05:00 I called it a day and arose from my bed.

The first thing that I did was to check the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. They were talking about the Stranraer game last night. Stranraer had lost 3-1 to East Kilbride and they were discussing the various performances of the team. East Kilbride thought that the central defence of Stranraer wasn’t good enough and neither was the goalkeeper, of whom they said was responsible for two of the goals, and they wer urging Stranraer to make a couple of new signings. Stranraer’s captain, who was forty-one today, was saying that they were quite awful, and he couldn’t think of a reason why that should be that they couldn’t reproduce the form that they showed against Alloa or against Queen of the South several weeks ago. it was all such a mystery. Manager Scott Aitken on the other hand refused to speak to the press. He’s believed to be having several stern words with some of his players prior to the next game next weekend.

There is a lot of truth in the foregoing. Stranraer did indeed lose 3-1 to East Kilbride on Saturday. Their team is largely made up these days of Lowland League players who lack experience at Professional level. They have had some impressive Cup victories against clubs such as Alloa Athletic and Queen of the South; but their league form leaves something to be desired. People are urging the manager to strengthen the team

There were plenty of other things that needed to be done and so I kept quite busy until I heard something stirring on the sofa in the living room. That sounded like my friend and he Hound of the Baskervilles raising themselves from the Dead, so I went off for a good wash and brush up while my friend made coffee.

We had a good chat and put the world to rights, drinking coffee, for quite some time until the nurse arrived. He didn’t stay long – just enough time to sort out my legs – and soon cleared off.

The Hound of the Baskervilles then dragged his master off for walkies and I began slowly to dismantle the office. Not that I managed to make much progress because I can’t work as quickly as I used to do.

When they came back, we had breakfast and then the work began. My friend taking all of the books out of the second bookcase and I dismantled the office.

And that was a task and a half too. With the collection of backup drives, the array, the charging cables, the preamp and speaker connections, its a veritable cat’s cradle of cables. Luckily, it’s all quite self-explanatory so although it will be a complex task to reconnect everything, it won’t be complicated.

My cleaner came along to fit my anaesthetic patches, and then we all went downstairs to see the plumber.

He’s made rapid strides but he won’t be finished until tomorrow. However, I don’t care because he has made a beautiful job of the work and I am really impressed. I reckon that I really struck it lucky with the plumber and the kitchen fitter. I couldn’t have asked for better.

The young, chatty taxi driver picked me up for Avranches, and after picking up and dropping off someone else along the way, we ended up at the dialysis centre rather later than usual.

And here, I found that the whatsit had hit the wherever.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that ten days or so ago, I wrote what has been considered by some to be a rather warm letter. It concerned several things that had happened at dialysis about which I had complained and about which there had been no action. The incident with the collapsed mattress had pushed me over the edge that day and so I put pen to paper … "fingers to keyboard" – ed …

It was to the Director-General at the head office at Rennes to whom I wrote, and he had apparently passed the letter down to the clinic at Avranches, and so the boss of the service came to see me and he was not a very happy bunny at all.

However, instead of trying to deal with the issues that I raised, he did his best to justify what had taken place, and even to blame me "if things are hurting you so much, it’s your fault for refusing painkillers" for things going wrong.

However, painkillers never cured anything – they simply mask the underlying symptoms and make the doctor’s life easier because he doesn’t have to search for a permanent solution to the problem. And in any case, what do painkillers prescribed for AFTER the dialysis session have to do with the pain that you feel when they plug you into the machine?

Be that as it may, he thinks that the problem with the pain is not with the implant but part of my overall neurological problem, which is being treated in Paris. So if that’s not evidence of his “service having given up all hope”, I really don’t know what is.

He also took exception to the points that I had raised about the dietician. But just what is offensive about saying "we are no longer living in the Dark Ages, as your dieticians seem to think"? It strikes me that there are some people around here with some extremely thin skins.

We talked about my complaints to the hospital administration last year about the food. He told me that the hospital dieticians are totally different people from the ones at the dialysis clinic.

That may be so, but when the clinic’s dietician came to see me, she discussed my complaint to the hospital last summer. So if she’s in a different service, how did she know about the complaints?

My letter did include the statement that I had discussed these matters with the service previously. He denied that I had, which also raised my hackles because in my letter, I even referred to several examples.

He finished this part of the discussion by prescribing another painkiller for me. You couldn’t make it up, could you? When I wrote in my letter that it seemed that the dialysis clinic had abandoned all hope, you don’t need clearer evidence than the prescribing of a painkiller to underline exactly what I said.

The upshot of the matter is that he seemed to be more interested in defending his service than dealing with the issues.

After that, he came out with something quite surprising. "You keep a blog, don’t you?"

He told me that someone in the service has read it and that some of the comments have disturbed some of the people who work there. He wanted me to "be very very careful" about what I wrote in future, without going into any specific details as to what I need to be very careful about, and why.

First of all, I’m afraid that I react rather badly to threats. They simply wind me up even more

Secondly, whatever I have written has in the main been quite complimentary about most of the staff. Even in my letter, I said that “the nurses are doing their best”. There have been one or two about whom I may not have been quite so generous, but I can back up my comments with specific examples.

Rather bewildered by his remarks, I asked him if he could give me a few examples of what I had said that had upset people, but he couldn’t – or wouldn’t. And that infuriated me even more.

Occasionally, I do write in a rather … errr … terse manner … "you aren’t kidding!" – ed … but everything that I have written has always had my name on it and I will stand foursquare behind it. The idea that someone should make an anonymous complaint and refuse to justify it by quoting any definite examples, but to stir up a hornet’s nest of innuendo and suspicion without the courage to come forward and approach me directly, that I am just not prepared to accept.

But this leads on to something much more sinister.

Just WHO from the dialysis clinic has been stalking me through cyberspace?

How have they found my blog if it wasn’t through searching the internet for my name?

Why would they want to search the internet for the name of a patient, unless it’s to pry into his private life?

Is it good professional practice to pry informally into a patient’s private life? If I were to do do that during the course of my employment, I would probably find myself facing some serious issues.

How much of my blog have they trawled through in order to find some allegedly disparaging comments?

And why would a blog, that has a circulation of merely a couple of thousand readers if it’s lucky out of the eight billion people on the planet, be of such importance to them?

As I said, all of this is very sinister.

First of all, let me make it clear. I don’t care who stalks me through cyberspace. If I cared at all, I wouldn’t be writing a blog. People can follow me around on the internet as much as they like. But I’ve always worked on the principle that "people who listen at keyholes will never hear any good of themselves.".

Many of my readers actively engage in this blog, in one way or another, and it is with my great regret that others choose not to. Everyone is welcome to read these pages and I appreciate your visits very much, but if I don’t know that you are here, how can I restrain myself? You can’t blame me if i write something inconsiderate that steps on your toes if I don’t know that you are reading it.

What infuriated me by far the most about this affair was the fact that this interview was held in an open ward with several other patients, several nurses and one or two taxi drivers present. That really wound me up. This interview should have been held in a private room where I would have had the opportunity to have stated my case without any of my private details being disclosed to people who had no business to hear them – and I can only imagine that the reason why it was held in an open ward was basically to shut me up so that the doctor could hold the floor without interruption.

That was the saddest part of this whole affair.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … dialysis clinic, they took more water out than was necessary, in order to give me a good head start when they start pumping stuff into me at Paris tomorrow. When I weighed myself after the session, I found that I was halfway down from my usual weight to my athletic weight, and it’s been a while since I can say that.

My favourite taxi driver took me home, and she and I had a lovely chat all the way back here.

My usual reception committee was waiting, and they brought me in here to show me what they had done, and it was wonderful I love my new apartment. I cooked my first meal in here tonight, stuffed peppers for my friend and me, and then he cleared off upstairs and left me all alone in my new, beautiful abode.

The plumber is coming tomorrow to finish the shower, and then the place will be all mine completely, and how I am looking forward to it.

But before I go, the ideal way to finish this entry tonight would have been to tell the story that I told recently about the woman complaining about the man in the next room, but she had to peer through the air brick to see him. That would have been so appropriate tonight, given what went on this afternoon.

However, seeing as we have been talking about my friends and neighbours… "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my neighbours told me "the guy on the third floor says that you aren’t fit to live with pigs."
"And what did you say?" I asked
"Oh, I stood up for you" she said. "I told him that you were!"

EPIC HALL

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