Sunday 25th August 2024 – TONIGHT’S PIZZA …

… was the best that I’ve ever made.

And having made some good ones just recently, that is certainly saying something.

In fact, all in all, it was rather a good day today, helped by the fact that I had something like a decent sleep last night.

It might have been after 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed but it was before midnight. And with a lie-in until 08:00 promised, that meant that at long last I was in line for a eight-hour sleep. And how I’ve needed one of those after all of the events just recently.

After I’d finished writing my notes last night I had some dictating of the radio notes to do. And after dictating the notes for the additional tracks for the two programmes that were half-prepared, I found that … errr … that was all. As far as dictation goes, I’m bang up-to-date at long last.

There are half a dozen or so programmes that need the notes writing, so that gaps in the sequence are filled in, but that aside, I’ve now prepared programmes up to 25th April next year.

If I can keep ahead like this, or even maybe extend the distance at which I’m in advance, I’ll have a nice head of programmes to keep going after I shuffle off this mortal coil.

And so at 23:45, having managed not to knock myself or cut myself or bleed anywhere, I crawled into bed, wrapped the quilt around me and that was that.

With the alarm set for 08:00 it was a big disappointment to awaken at 07:20. But even though I couldn’t go back to sleep there was no danger of my leaving my stinking pit at that time of morning. as the old song goes,
"REMEMBERING MORNINGS, SHILLING SPENT
IT MADE NO SENSE TO LEAVE THE BED
THE SAD OLD DAYS THEY CAME AND WENT
GIVING WAY TO FRUITFUL YEARS"
and while you’re at it, listen to Glenn Cornick’s magnificent bass line.

So at 08:00 I arose from the Dead and headed off to the bathroom. And at 08:20 I was washed and dressed and back at the computer listening to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were having an expensive meal at a hotel. There were quite a few of us and we were on several tables. The boss seemed to be micro-managing the meal, telling people what they could eat and what they couldn’t eat, which was extremely annoying, leading to quite a lot of confrontation. When it came to the dessert, one of the desserts was “profiteroles”. There was a plate of eight mixed profiteroles and there were eight people at each table. When the server began to deliver the food he turned round ad said “huit profiteroles” and pointed to one of the tables. I heard someone at the table say “why is he allowed to choose the dessert for us?”. They said “there are eight profiteroles. Can you not choose your dessert. It makes no difference that he said which dessert this table could have. He’s nothing to do with this table”. Basically, we were told “this is what we were going to have, and like it!”. I stood up and told the server to take that away, come back here to interview each one of us and find out what each one of us wants”. He became extremely aggressive so I took two paces towards him, he took two paces towards me so that was it! It was a confrontation that had him in the end running away through the kitchen and outside with me chasing after him. I thought to myself “I’m going to get him organised and then once I’ve sorted him out I’ll be coming back here and getting hold of the boss to tell him what I thought of all of this” because I was now in one of these fighting moods that actually take quite a lot of stopping.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a dream where I’ve really been enraged. At one time they were a regular feature, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I thought that I’d calmed down since the last time and that it would be permanent. But it’s obviously not to be. However, I’m continuing to be impressed that I can remember big and complicated words, like “profiteroles” for example, when I’m asleep. And not being too afraid to speak my rather colourful mind when it comes to addressing my boss is a regular feature that occurred more than once in the real World too.

Isabelle the Nurse was quite chatty this morning and we had a lengthy chat about nothing whatever while she sorted out my legs. She was telling me that it was the annual Melon market today. I can’t say that I’m too disappointed to miss it.

While I was making breakfast afterwards, my former neighbour who is now in a Home ‘phoned me. I think that she wanted her morale pumping up because she doesn’t seem to be coping too well with her new situation. We chatted for about 15 minutes and I hope that she felt a little better afterwards.

After breakfast we had football – Stranraer v Elgin City. And that was a game of two halves if ever there was one. It finished 1-1 but the first half was all Elgin on the attack and the second half was all Stranraer.

There has never been such a dramatic change in a game. I don’t know what Stranraer’s manager put in their half-time cup of tea but I wouldn’t mind a pint of it.

Later on I tacked the recordings that I’d done before going to bed. They are now edited and the programmes are completed.

While I was at it, I had a look at the back-up. There’s a big USB key permanently in a USB slot in this computer and I back up to it at least once a day. It’s pretty nearly full now but there’s a lot of stuff on there that’s superfluous so I went through and weeded out everything that has since been overtaken by events

Over the past few weeks I’ve been collecting music – soundtracks and the like – that I’ve downloaded to the computer. I’ve been going through it this afternoon, converting it to an acceptable format listening to it and chopping up some of it into sound-bytes.

There are tons to go at that have been collected for quite some time so this is a long-term project but I have a feeling that it’s a losing battle. I seem to be downloading it quicker than I can process it.

Something else that I did was to go one better than Dave Crosby – maybe because I had the ‘flu for Christmas. Although I’m not likely to be looking in my mirror and seeing a police car any time soon.

The pizza was, as I mentioned, totally delicious. The dough was really light and fluffy and this new vegan cheese that my cleaner found the other week seems to melt better than the last stuff.

So let’s hope that she can find some more of it for next time

So running rather late yet again, I’m going to bed ready to Fight the Good Fight on Monday.

But while we’re on the subject of haircuts … "well, one of us is" – ed … there was the story of the one-legged man who went for a haircut at the barber’s.
The barber unfortunately snipped the man’s ear and the man began to complain
To try to ease the tension the barber began some light-hearted chat. "I don’t think that I’ve seen you here before …" he began
"You haven’t" said the man. "I lost this leg in the War"

Saturday 24th August 2024 – I HAVE EMULATED …

… my namesake the mathematician today and ended up doing three fifths of five eighths of … errrr … nothing.

Yes, it’s about time that I had a day off after everything that I’ve been doing just recently. And how much I enjoyed it too.

So much so that I actually sorted out a few squares of chocolate from the supply and treated myself. God alone knows what this would make my potassium count, but who cares?

After last night’s efforts and not going to bed and letting it all hang out after midnight, it’s nice to have a little treat like that. I certainly deserved it. Watching the football and writing my notes last night was exhausting work.

By the time that I’d done everything that I needed to do it was a long time after my preferred bedtime when I crawled under the sheets. And with just a handful of hours before the alarm it was just as well that I was asleep more-or-less instantly.

There was the odd bit of awakening during the night but when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was fast asleep under the covers.

So when the alarm went off I switched it off and made my way into the bathroom.

First task was to deal with this little sample that the nurse wanted. And in my befuddled state at 07:00 in the morning I was confused and wrote tomorrow’s date on the side of the container. That will confuse them down at the laboratory.

Then I had a good scrub up and washed my shorts. That’s my usual Saturday morning task, to make sure that they are clean for the forthcoming week. It’s a pain only having the one pair.

Back in here afterwards I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some kind of show on the television about some folk musicians. They were all sitting together playing some music. One of them had his bass guitar and played a few bass runs for one song and they were really impressive so we stopped the programme at that point ad went back to begin to talk about this guys bass playing, which was something that we didn’t really know. He told us a little story, and told us about these bass runs. One of the other people there joined in so I said “I’ll go and fetch my bass and we can have three of us together playing it. Someone else there had a recorder so they joined in. One of the bassists with the recorder couldn’t get the recorder in tune as if there was something blocking one of the reeds. No matter how he blew he just had a strange noise out of his flute or recorder, whatever it was. In the end we had to stop the programme again while he had to dismantle his instrument. It was really interesting because I would have given everything to have been on that programme as a bassist instead of as a simple interviewer but it just wasn’t to be. It wasn’t to be my day to get me on there. Everyone seemed to be far more interested in the story that these people had to tell than any story that I could add into it. And quite right too. It was why they were there – to entertain and to tell their stories. I have plenty of other opportunities to tell mine.

That’s a story that has an all-too-familiar ring about it. I always seem to miss out on an opportunity as there will always be “another time” which as we all know, is something that never comes around

This was a dream in an Immigration Centre where a young guy was coming into Wales to play football for one of the teams. He’d lived in Wales before, for four years and had played as a Junior and as a full adult in various teams before being transferred out of the country playing abroad but was now coming back. At first the Immigration officials were very unsympathetic but he overheard a discussion between someone else and the Immigration about a large group of people, one of whom was an undesirable, but that person was arguing so hard to let him in that it was embarrassing. This was what galvanised the boy into thinking maybe he ought to persevere with this officer about trying to come into Wales because it seemed to be that his case was much more solid than this other person’s yet so much interest was being taken in it. That encouraged him to press on wit his application rather than give up as he might have done before.

There are more than a few stories about things like this in British football where because of the strict Immigration laws, imaginative solutions have to be applied to some footballers coming from outside the EU, such as loaning them to clubs in Belgium where the Immigration laws are much more relaxed, until they have enough “European” time.

There was a charge for misconduct brought about against one of the leading clubs in the league. They had produced something like a 20-point plan showing why another club was in breach of all kinds of various regulations. At the Court hearing the offended club stood up and made the argument that apart from the title, everything else in this document was based on pure speculation. At that point I stood up and accused their solicitor of gaslighting because I’d produced some evidence about a Court case that had taken place and will take place in the future. That was included in this document so I knew for a fact that those allegations were perfectly true so I was perfectly convinced that the solicitor for this football team was trying to gaslight the meeting so I stood up and made my objection known. This went down extremely unwell and managed to rob me of a position at the summit of the football league for three or four days

This has a ring of truth about it. I used to write for an on-line Sports magazine called, would you believe, “Shitesports”. This was almost 25 years ago when I ran a spoof news column about fictitious events in Welsh football, but the chairman of one of the biggest clubs in Wales took it seriously and made several remarks that were considered to be totally out-of-place in the factual World, based on some things that I’d written in my column.

Isabelle the nurse came round later and we had a chat as she took my blood sample and then sorted out my legs. She was impressed that I’d done what she asked and done it so quickly too. She’s not used to this.

And then all of the supplies are fully stocked up. That took her by surprise too.

After she left I made breakfast and had a very slow start to the day, reading an ancient book on ley lines and the like. The author is of the opinion that ancient roads and trackways honeycomb the country and any like drawn between two ancient monuments will pass through dozens of churches, ponds and other sighting marks.

His theories have been rubbished – someone saying that you could do the same this with telephone boxes for example, but on the other hand, aren’t telephone boxes usually sited at crossroads, at monuments and outside churches?

The author is probably wide of the mark when he suggests that every case of a straight line can be laid at the door of a Neolithic ley-man, but I bet that there’s more truth in his assumptions than his critics allow.

This afternoon I had to mooch around for a while and then make an important ‘phone call.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me mentioning that I’m on the verge of spending a lot of money on a project in the UK. Wheels are now in motion and staff has been engaged, and I had a very long chat with my “colleague” to receive his report and set out a plan of action.

One thing that I have learned is that specialist tasks call for specialist help and trying to do tasks like this yourself end up costing you much more money than you will save.

If you have access to professionals, then make use of these opportunities and don’t worry about the cost as they will save you money in the long run.

The costs of me travelling back and forth to the UK, even if I could, would be more than whatever I would have to pay a professional consultant to act on my behalf and deal with matters by Zoom.

But more of this anon.

By now it was tea-time and I’d had no food since breakfast so I was good and ready. I’d promised myself sausage, beans and chips and that was exactly what I had, and it was delicious.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … no-one makes baked beans like the British, not even the “British Recipe” beans in Maritime Canada, and I’ll be devastated when my little stock here runs out.

So now I’m going to dictate some radio notes and then go to bed.

But the guy with whom I was talking was one of the ones with whom I spent that glorious “Summer of ’76” camped out at that old sand quarry near Congleton. Part of the bank had collapsed so there was like a beach that went down into the lagoon and that was where we all hung out.
One of the girls was swimming in the water and shouted to him "why don’t you come and swim with us?"
"I can’t come in like this" he said
"Like what?" she asked
"Like this" he replied, opening his dressing gown to reveal that he wasn’t wearing his swimming trunks underneath.
He was a big boy too and sunk her at a distance of 25 yards. But later that night, apparently she crept into his tent for a closer inspection

Friday 23rd August 2024 – WELL, IT’S ANOTHER …

… really late night tonight.

For some reason that I don’t understand I completely forgot about the football tonight. Y Bala v Y Fflint and this was a game that I really wanted to see.

But it slipped my mind and when I came back from tea tonight the first half was almost over. Luckily it’s on a recorded stream so I could wind it back to the start and watch it from the kick-off, but it means that now the final whistle has gone, it’s not really late

There’s definitely something going on here because I seem to be forgetting just about everything these days and I can see this bringing me into some serious trouble at some point because there’s a load of stuff piling up and some of it is really important.

At least I remembered to wash my puttees. After I finished my notes last night I went into the bathroom to sort myself out and then washed the puttees. They had been soaking for 36 hours in warm soapy water so it didn’t take long and they were quite clean afterwards.

Furthermore, I managed to do it without knocking myself or making myself bleed and that’s an achievement in itself these days.

It was quite early too when I went to bed. In fact I beat my 23:00 target. Only by a couple of minutes but even so, that’s still important. And it didn’t take long to go to sleep either.

A couple of times during the night I awoke but I remained stuck to my mattress until the alarm at 07:00 when I crawled out of bed and into the bathroom. I had a good wash and shave of the parts that I missed yesterday, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson had been recruited to hunt down an old friend of Watson’s who had disappeared, someone who lived in salubrious surroundings. It was no surprise that he’d disappeared but a lot of people were worried soo they were set on the trail. Eventually, following a series of clues, they managed to track him down to a doss-house in Limehouse where he was staying under an assumed name. Apparently he’d had money difficulties so he’d sold a lot of his possessions to a pawn shop and with the money was living the life of an escapee in crude digs or something. When Holmes and Watson caught up with him he was extremely remorseful. He said that he’d spent £2900 but that was everything that he had and there was not a penny left so Holmes and Watson had to sell whatever possessions he still had in order to recruit him back into society. They had the cunning plan of advertising an Electricity Service where they could band together all the residents in one particular area and agree to arrange their electricity for them, including new houses that hadn’t had electricity up until now so they were going through these houses and photographs, selecting the best photographs. There was one there with a ghost walking out of the front door between two people and they were trying their best to capture this image but for some reason the image didn’t seem to want to be captured

There were several stories similar to this one in the Sherlock Holmes repertoire and of course his author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was very interested in the paranormal, being a huge supporter of spiritualism, séances and the supernatural arts to an extent that was almost fanatical. Seeing a ghost in between two real live humans would have been no problem for Conan Doyle.

When the nurse came I told her the good news about her supplies, my new puttees and the switch for the door. She gave me my injection and then dealt with my legs while chatting away. She reminded me that it’s a blood test tomorrow and she also need another … errr … sample … of a different type. I hope that I remember.

After breakfast I tidied up a little and then went to my Welsh class. It’s the last day today for a week or so so we can relax but she still had us working hard. I feel much more confident about my skills right now, but there was an awful lot to take in.

The big issue is that Welsh is not a Romance language like French or Spanish or Italian. It’s a Celtic language similar to Breton, Gaelic and Scots Gaelic so the rules of grammar are nothing like those to which I’m accustomed.

The vocabulary too bears little resemblance to any Latin-based language so sometimes it’s impossible to have a guess at the words.

There was a pause at midday when my cleaner came in to bring the medication – or, at least, the first load. The rest will come over the next day or two.

When the lesson finished I was surprised once more by the cleaner. We have a friend in the building who has now gone into a Home, and my cleaner, who had been tidying up her apartment, brought down some apple purée and tinned food that might be of use to me, which was very kind of them.

A neighbour popped in to, and left me some lovely strawberries. I seem to be flavour of the month right now.

Then Rosemary wanted me on the phone so we had a quick chat. Only a short chat today – just 58 minutes. We seem to be losing our touch

Tea tonight was falafel and chips with a vegan salad – delicious as usual but I’m running low on salad stuff. It might be sausage, beans and chips for tea tomorrow night yet. But regardless of that, the strawberries were delicious and there are some left for the next few days.

Then we had the football. Newly-promoted Y Fflint v Y Bala down at maes Tegid – Bala’s “Cae Tatws” football ground.

As has been said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there’s a massive gulf between the second tier and the first tier and that was evident today.

But while Llansawel, the other promoted side, were being well and truly turned over by Cardiff Metropolitan, Y Fflint put up a gritty battle and while the result (Y Bala won 2-0) was never in any doubt, Y Fflint were in the mix all the way to the final whistle.

A loss though is a loss and already we’re starting to see a little gap open up between the two new sides, stuck at the foot of the table, and the other 10 clubs in the division and it’s rather early for this kind of thing. Three games without a point is still no points, no matter how well you play and how close the game are.

So right now I’m going to bed, hours later than I intended. I’m not doing myself any favours at all.

But talking of mediums and spiritualism and the like I once had someone ‘phone me up
"I’m phoning to tell you about Madame (whatever)". said the voice. "She’s a world famous Medium …"
"Well, she can’t be much good, can she?" I said
"Why?" asked the voice
"Because if she’d been any good, she’d have foretold exactly how this conversation would end …" and I hung up the ‘phone.

Thursday 22nd August 2024 – I AM NOT …

… turning into a politician, or a Conservative.

The heart specialist had a play around with his machine and after much searching and so forth, actually managed to detect a heartbeat.

So something is working where it ought to be working and that can only be good news

The better news is that he seems to think that he can do something for me. And if so, that will take a great weight off my mind. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m being pumped full of blood-thinning products in order to ease the strain on my heart. That has some unpleasant side effects, such as my blood being so thin that I bleed at the slightest excuse.

And that was the reason why my early night last night ended up not being an early night at all. And once more we have a rail of blood all around the apartment from when I had to wander off and look for the sticking plasters.

Yes, in the distance that it took me to go from my chair into the bathroom I managed to knock myself and bleed all over everywhere.

It was quite a while before the blood stopped flowing enough for me to consider going to bed. And once more, it didn’t take any effort at all to go to sleep. That doesn’t seem to be a problem anyway.

What does though is whatever it is that keeps on awakening me in the small hours of the morning. I’ve no idea what time it was this morning but it was still dark. But no chance of my leaving the bed. I PULLED THE BEDCLOTHES HIGHER, DREAMED OF SUMMERTIME INSTEAD until the alarm went off at 07:00

In the bathroom I had a really good wash and shave (for a change) and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a hold-up on the motorway and everyone was detained while the hold-up was fixed. It took several hours through the night and at one stage the Police had organised an impromptu football match between various members of people waiting in the queue. A lot of people weren’t happy and were making complaints but there was nothing that anyone could do. Even so they were coming up with the most incredible excuses about having to see the Queen, things like that. There were several young families there and entertaining the children was a huge priority. Although this was going quite well in one or two places it was quite bad in a lot more. No-one seemed to be able to get to grips with any of the issues that were arising, whether it was the passengers. Of course, the longer the delay went on, the more urgent some of the passengers became and the more targets the Police and Customs had to pick to search, which only aggravated the issue even more. It was all part of some natural disaster and wasn’t a man-made issue that had blocked the motorway

Later on there was a huge thing about illegal immigrants and with the Pole Board blocked the immigration service was going through interviewing anyone and absolutely everyone about their immigration status. It was upsetting to a great many people but nevertheless it was something that was carried out and it was interesting to see different people’s reactions. Some took it quite calmly. Some took it quite emotionally. It was absolutely everything there. In the end it turned out that what it actually was was tickets for a Scottish Cup Game between Rangers and someone else at the other team’s ground. The Police had this barrage there to control the arrival of fans. After Rangers had won the match they contacted the club that was hosting the next round game to ask them about ticket arrangements but Rangers were quite happy for it to be a “pay on the gate” game. They didn’t seem to think that it should be a “ticket only” match so the Scottish FA was giving the matter some consideration about simply making it “first come first served” for a seat

This may not seem to make any sense at all but that’s not surprising. Hardly anything that I do or say in a dream seems to make any sense at all. But then again it’s probably not supposed to.

The nurse was very late coming here today. She’d been across the road to take a blood sample from someone and it had proved to be more difficult than she imagined.

She was pleased that we have some new puttees on the way and that her supplies have been ordered. She saw my prescription for a blood sample and is going to take it on Saturday

After she left it was too late to have breakfast, which was just as well that I didn’t start anything because the taxi was early. The driver helped me down to the car and we had a nice, pleasant drive to the Medical Centre.

But that’s twice now that I’ve been out and about in the sun and it makes me yearn to be in the apartment on the ground floor where, with a folding chair, I could sit outside and enjoy the beautiful weather

Being early at the Medical Centre I had to wait for a while before I was seen. The doctor remembered me from three years ago and asked me what happened to my cure.

And so I recounted to him my story about being passed from pillar to post in Belgium to such an extent that I lost interest. He pleaded with me not to lose interest this time.

So fair enough. Let’s see what he’s got under the hood, as the old saying goes. Can he really conjure up something to help ease all of my issues?

He wasn’t impressed with the fact that I’m covered in bruises and wanted to know if I’d had a fall. I explained about how I bruise really easily while I’m taking all of these blood-thinning products.

While I was waiting for my paperwork I encountered one of my neighbours, just back from holiday. We had a little chat and then my driver came to take me back home.

He helped me up the stairs as far as the lift and I could go the rest of the way on my own. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the lifts are only on the half-landings and don’t go all the way down to the ground floor, which is an inconvenience.

Back here I finally could have breakfast which I took at an extremely leisurely pace, and then joined my Welsh class.

My Welsh Summer School seems to be going very well, which is nice. I can’t think what I’m doing right. I wish that I knew because I’d do it all the time

During the lunchtime pause I made some dough for the next loaf, and in the afternoon break gave it its second kneading.

At the end of the lesson, in a mad fit of enthusiasm I made a pie using a couple of vegan burgers that I diced, along with onions, garlic, sweetcorn and lentils.

All of that went into the oven with the bread and some potatoes, and I ended up with a lovely tea tonight – baked potatoes and pie with vegetables in gravy. There’s enough pie left for three more meals so it’ll go in the freezer when it’s cooled down enough

My faithful cleaner stuck her head in the door too. We went through the medication so that she knows what to order on the next prescription supply from the chemist’s.

She says that she’ll go tomorrow, but I reckon that she’ll need a lorry to bring it all back.

So on that note I’ll go and give my puttees a good wash and go to bed, see if I can have a decent sleep ready for my last day for now in a Welsh Summer School (there’s a third week later). We have piles of homework to do and that will keep me out of mischief.

But not before I tell you the story about the Eye Clinic in the Health Centre.
A patient went in and told the doctor that he was having difficulty seeing and needed his eyes testing.
"Fair enough" said the optician, and turning to his secretary, said "take your clothes off, Miss Smith"
The patient was outraged. "I’m the one who needs his eyes testing" he said. "Why should she take off her clothes?"
The optician turned to the patient and said "if you can’t see why she should take off her clothes you really DO need your eyes testing."

Wednesday 21st August 2024 – "ONCE YOU START …"

"… the dialysis procedure, all your problems will be over."

Yes, and we’ve all heard things like that before, haven’t we? If something like that could really solve all my problems I’d have done it a long, long time ago. Long before this.

In actual fact, it might solve one or two but I’m not expecting a Damascene conversion where I pick up my bed and walk. That’s being rather optimistic. But what we have learned from all of this is that it appears that dialysis is very much on the agenda.

Well know more after the 28th of August. That’s when everything is being inspected. They’ll make a decision very shortly afterwards. So if you see me leaping around like a two-year old, you’ll know that it’s done the business.

But for the moment let us return from our flights of fantasy back into the Real World.

After I’d finished my notes I wandered into the bathroom and there I put my puttees in the bowl to soak. The other pair I rolled up and put them ready for use in the morning.

Eventually I managed to make my way into bed, hours later than intended, and fell asleep almost immediately.

Something else awoke me at some point but I’m not sure what and I’m not sure when. This “not wearing a watch” is embarrassing but I’m scratching myself to death when I do.

The alarm summoned me to my feet at the usual time of 07:00 and I headed to the bathroom for a good wash and scrub down followed by a change of clothing. You never know – I might get to see Emilie The Cute Consultant this evening.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This is another dream that involves some kind of panic attack. It was at one of these fairground places and there was a lot going on that didn’t seem to work correctly. There was a human cannonball who was fired from a cannon but the cannonball wouldn’t fire. It just rolled out of the bottom of the gun. It rolled over to by I think my youngest sister’s husband so what they had was this guy and this girl who had to climb inside the cylindrical thing where my brother in law was sitting. He was going to do something with the cannonball and they were going to intercept it but it was a terribly confined small space and I was there expecting some kind of panic or riot as the people concerned were unable to effectively escape from this claustrophobic environment. Luckily it passed off without any major incident. I certainly didn’t want to have to do it again with anyone and go through what was potentially a panic-stricken routine to extract them from this cylindrical tube thing while someone does something silly with a cannonball which seemed to be totally superfluous and ridiculous to me but that’s how it was

It goes without saying that I’ve no idea what’s going on there with that. The last thing that you’d expect to dream about is a human cannonball

A bunch of white track suits with a slogan on them were found to be mistyped. The slogan was wrong when I examined them as such and were counterfeit. They were able to test that by using a blob of chewing gum on the dragon’s head that was part of the label. There was a special technique for testing whether they were correct or not, in using chewing gum. This test failed so all the track suits were seized and were donated to refugees who were held in one of these detention centres

That sounds much more plausible. Forged sports equipment is quite a racket and I’m sure that we’ve all heard stories of famous mistypes in counterfeit sports goods. Without them there wouldn’t be famous sporting quotes like
"She was only the football supporter’s daughter
But she liked her ‘Uddersfield and her Arsenal"

When the nurse came, she moaned about my puttees losing their elasticity and asked me to arrange for a new pair. And on top of that there’s another issue. She has an electronic key to enter the building. She had it from my neighbour who has now moved into a Home and so wants her electronic key back

This will upset the nurses as the will then have to ring to be let into the building. And it would upset me because a couple of times now the nurses have intervened in my health issues when I’ve been unable to respond.

Consequently giving them unfettered access to the building is essential from my point of view and from theirs. Could I oblige?

So after she left and I’d had breakfast I put wheels in motion and made a phone call or two

Once more the Welsh lesson passed off well but I was still glad that it was over. In the pauses I’d chosen the missing track and written the notes ready for dictation so that’s that all done now.

The taxi came early for me so I was in a hurry to prepare but I ended up having everything to hand, for the first time ever, and we were there in plenty of time.

It wasn’t Emilie the Cute Consultant which was a shame, but her sidekick. And he tells me that he’s become a faithful listener of my radio shows. That means I have an audience of at least one.

We ran through everything and he told me that his Social Services department is on the trail of this Clinic in Avranches. He’ll let me know how it pans out.

Apparently my doctor had written a new prescription for me on 13th August. Where it’s gone, I don’t know but he printed it off, all … gulp … 19 items of it. And he added on an additional prescription for some new puttees, which will please the nurse.

He thinks that this dialysis will solve all of my problems, but he doesn’t even know what problems I have so he’s a very brave man

Back here my cleaner, who had been tidying the apartment, was waiting for me and she helped me upstairs where we sorted out the paperwork. We’ll check the medication on Friday and order some more.

Tea tonight was a delicious leftover curry with naan bread, cooked to perfection. But that’s the last of that batch of naan dough. I’ll have to make some more.

Now I’m off to bed. I have the heart specialist tomorrow morning so will he find a heart? Or am I turning into a politician? Watch this space.

But talking of human cannonballs, we had Gandey’s Circus who used to winter at Arclid near Sandbach. I had a friend who worked in the Crewe Employment Exchange who told me "Gandey’s are looking for a human cannonball. Do you fancy the job?"
"I thought that they already had one" I replied. "What happened to him?"
"Apparently he was fired last week" she replied.

Tuesday 20th August 2024 – I WAS GOING …

… to say that Day Seven of my Summer School passed uneventfully.

However, after my hot chocolate I came in here and sat down in my comfy chair ready to start work and the next thing that I knew was that it was 19:07. I’d been out like a light for well over an hour and hadn’t felt a thing.

One thing that can be said though and on which many of us are agreed is that we are cracking on at a hell of a pace.

The conclusion was reached that there are some people attending the regular courses who are maybe not as committed as the rest. Those who give up several weeks of their Summer and pay the money to attend the course are amongst the most committed and most enthusiastic and hence push things along that little bit quicker.

But it’s all at quite a cost. And I’m not talking about money either. I’m totally exhausted and there are another three days to go before I can have a week’s break.

It might possibly help matters if I manage to have an early night one of these days but last night was another one of these interminable evenings where I seem to have so much to do and not enough time to do it.

By the time that I’d finished whatever it was that I have to do, it’s long past my bedtime and I’m eating my way into the next day. This kind of thing is doing me no good at all.

So eventually I managed to stagger into bed once everything had been completed. I was soon under the covers and once more, I was out for the count. No need to even start my little bedtime mantra because I was away with the fairies almost straight away.

At some point in the middle of the night I awoke, but I’ve no idea what time it was. A strange, random fact is that since I’ve stopped wearing that new watch that I bought a couple of months ago I’ve not felt the urge to scratch my arms. That’s really quite strange. I think that I must be allergic to whatever the watch strap is made from.

So for that reason, I didn’t notice the time at all

Instead I turned over, tucked myself down under the quilt and went back to sleep until the alarm went off.

After I switched off the alarm I went into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. The Police in North Wales were investigating a big drugs ring in North Wales. One of the people whom they actually pulled in in this respect was someone who played for one of the bigger clubs but has recently been transferred. He was caught with a considerable amount of drugs that he was trying to move around the country and was imprisoned practically straight away. From there on the Police were working really hard to dismantle his ring and to catch who else was in it if they could. They were interviewing some man who seems to have been involved in it for three years. Interestingly they had come across a car with three women in it. It turned out that these three women were Russian and worked as interpreters so naturally the Police became interested in them to find out exactly what they were doing and why they were travelling, where they were going. They speculated that these women were officially listed as dead in the Russian people’s work so that they cold move around quietly without being controlled and use their skills to infiltrate organisations or societies, things like that, where they could be expected to extract certain information, submit it to Russia and move on to the next case. The Police felt that they were on the edge of breaking some kind of case in some kind of record numbers. This would be a huge feather in their cap for their Force.

As for the footballer, I could tell you much more about him but this isn’t the kind of event with which too many people would wish to have their identity associated, even if it were in a dream and bore no relation to reality. But it was certainly interesting. As for the three women, that was a well-known ploy back in the olden days for someone to acquire a birth certificate and hence a passport in the name of a person who had died. But after the STONEHOUSE AFFAIR that particular loophole was blocked which was a shame because I had … errr … plans…

Later on I was working in some office. There was an issue with regard to the electricity that we were using. The bills were coming out really complicatedly and expensive. When the Accounts girl complained to the Electricity Company she was accused of being nothing but a lousy American cheapskate. Being British, she was immediately offended. But that gave her the idea then that if she converted all of the temperatures and all of the figures in the office to Centigrade instead of Fahenheit the consumption of electricity would be a lot less and that would spike the guns of this company. As well as that, they had te habit of using one of our car-parking spaces. That privilege was immediately revoked. All the labels on our appliances were changed from Fahrenheit to Centigrade throughout the office. Several Americans didn’t understand it. I had to ring up the File Repository later on about the disposal of a file, the origin was someone called R. McHarrie, a young, tall, slender white girl with long light brown hair dressed in Office Manager-type of clothing.

Can you imagine anything worse than being described as a “lousy American cheapskate”? I know that if anyone were ever to think that I were American I’d be outraged. I’m not sure how changing the labels from Fahrenheit to Centigrade would reduce the electricity bills but the fact that “several Americans” wouldn’t “understand it” is something with which we would all agree. And I’m impressed that I could remember a name like R McHarrie when I’m asleep.

It’s Isabelle doing the nursing duties now for the next seven days, and I don’t mind her cheerful chatter quite so much. We “exchanged pleasantries” and she wants me to wash my puttees tonight. So yet more work to make me late going to bed.

After she left I had breakfast and then I had a few ‘phone calls to make.

The first was to the taxi company. There have been one or two extra trips added to the list just recently and I needed to make sure that they would come to pick me up. And that reminds me – I need to collect a taxi voucher for one of the trips. I mustn’t forget to ring up to request one from the doctor concerned

The second call was to that evil clinic where The Beast of the Hôpital de la Baie hangs out. They want me to go for another appointment on 10th September so I phoned them to say that I wouldn’t be going.
"I’ll find you another date" said the secretary
"It won’t do any good because I wouldn’t come" I replied
"But you have to come" she wailed. "It’s the post-operative review"
"I’m sorry" I said "but I’m not setting one single foot inside your “maudit établissement”" and I told her my tale of woe about the bill

She was totally astonished, as have been everyone else to whom I’ve recounted my little story. And having told it now to the surgeon’s secretary, it’ll spread like wildfire. Yes, the French have a saying – la vengeance, c’est un plât qui se mange mieux froid – “revenge is a dish that’s best eaten cold”. And I have the patience to play this out for as long as I think it necessary

There was no Welsh homework but nevertheless I went over a few things, and then I went to the lesson. We have now acquired a student from that well-known outpost of Welsh culture … errr … The Czech Republic. It’s becoming quite an interesting course.

In fact, the lockdown was the best thing that ever happened to the language. With the College that provides my courses, when the courses were face-to-face they had on average 100 students per year from North-East Wales. With lockdown and on-line courses, the first year they had 1038 students from all over the World.

During the pauses I was chipping away at these radio notes with the intention of finishing them off later but instead, at the end of the course I crashed out. And while I was out I was away on my travels. There was something going on about being in a house with a conservatory and to reach the hilly land behind the house the only way was to climb through the venting window in the roof of the conservatory. I had that down to a fine art, even as far as wearing my shoes inside an oversize pair of wellingtons when it snowed, which t did quite often. But the conservatory soon became too public with other people in there so climbing out of the roof window became more difficult and led to confusion about whose shoes were whose when it came to climbing out of the window

That was a complicated procedure but it did remind me of my family home in Davenport Avenue in Crewe which did in fact have a glass conservatory of the type in this dream. But at the back of our house instead of hills we had the Mornflake Oats factory and then the railway line to Shrewsbury.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg followed by another slice of this delicious apple crumble. That was a lovely recipe that has produced a really good topping and I’ll have to make this again

Back in here I finished off the radio programme. I now have my two halves but tomorrow morning I’ll have to choose the final track and write the notes for it.

So having finished my notes I’m going to wash my puttees – or, at least, put them to soak – and then go to bed ready to fight the good fight tomorrow. In the evening I have a medical appointment which ought to be fun. Would I have a neighbour in the next cubicle as the one that I had last time?
Once I overheard a discussion between the doctor and his patient. The patient was bemoaning his lack of … errr … success.
"What do you expect?" asked the doctor. "You’re eighty-three"
"My friend Joe is eighty-seven" he said "And he tells me that he makes love to his wife twice a day"
"So what?" asked the doctor. "If it bothers you, you could always tell him the same thing"
"Maybe I could" he replied. "but I don’t know his wife as well as all that."

Monday 19th August 2024 – AND SO THAT’S …

… Day Six of my Summer School. Just four more to go before I can have a break, and catch up on the mountain of correcpondence that has built up over the last couple of weeks

There’s a week off to cover the August Bank Holiday week, and then there’s the final week of the three before the next year’s course gets under way.

The final week is actually to cover the year that I’ve just had. This two weeks is to catch up on the time that I spent in Canada and then in hospital a couple of years ago. However I seem to have miscalculated in that this is actually the second half of a continuing course and I really needed the first half.

Ahhh well … These little things are sent to try us, I suppose.

So last night it was another late night before I could drag myself out of my comfortable chair and into my stinking pit. This gap of several inches is like a yawning gap with all of the effort it takes for me to haul myself across.

But once I was in bed I didn’t need much rocking. My night-time mantra had scarcely begun before I was drifting away into the Land of Nod.

And there I stayed until the alarm went off – the correct alarm this time too. It was like awakening someone from the Dead when it finally range. Whatever had gone on during the night, I knew nothing whatever about it.

IN the bathroom I sorted myself out, washed and dressed, and then came back in here to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where ‘d been during the night

And to my dismay, there was nothing on it. That’s a real disappointment because, as I have said before… "and on many occasions too" – ed … what goes on at night is the only excitement that I have these days.

So with no dictaphone to distract me, I uploaded this coming weekend’s radio programme to the office for them to fit into the live stream

When the nurse came he was his usual chatty self but he didn’t have all that much to say for himself. This shopping list though is growing and if we carry on like this we’ll need a lorry to bring it all home

But seriously, that’s the one thing that’s worrying me about moving. How’s it all going to work without a band of willing volunteers?

Like most things these days, it’s something just to ignore and hope that it all goes right on the night.

As I said earlier, the lesson passed quite well. We were doing the Genitive case today, “the bag of Sian” and all that. It’s quite complicated because in Welsh it’s all written in archaic form, there are contractions that don’t follow any rules and some other contractions have rules that just aren’t logical

But this is the problem with a language where its development and evolution was suppressed for over 70 years, from 1894 to 1967, and this was a time when a lot of linguistic evolution was taking place.

The French Community in Québec had similar issues but even so they had “la Hexagone” in Europe on which to fall back. Nevertheless, you’d still be surprised at the difference between Québecois French and thenFrancais de Paris. The Welsh had no similar benchmarks.

There were the usual pauses during the lesson, during which I made a start on editing the radio programme that remained from the batch that I’d dictated on Saturday. And by the tie I’d reached the end of the day I’d done about a third of it. I’m not doing too well with my editing right now. I need to put my foot down.

But I had several pauses, including one for my hot chocolate and slice of chocolate cake that still seems to be doing well in the fridge in its airtight container.

Tea tonight was, as usual, a stuffed pepper. And there’s piles of stuffing left for a taco roll and for a leftover curry on Wednesday.

This batch really is excellent and quite spicy. It’ll probably put hairs in places where I didn’t even realise that I had places.

So now I’m all tidied up, washed up and finished I can do what I need to do and then go to bed

But talking about Québec reminds me of the two guys living in Trois Rivières where there’s that great big sundial on the side of the church tower.
"What time is it?" asked one of the guys
"No idea" replied his friend
"Go and look at the Sundial then"
"Don’t be silly" replied the guy. "It’s dark outside"
"Well" said his friend. "Take a torch with you!"

Sunday 18th August 2024 – I’VE NO IDEA …

… what happened this morning but I was up and about quite quickly once I heard the alarm, and switched it off promptly.

And later on after having washed and sorted myself out, sitting down at the computer in here, I noticed that the time was 07:54 – 6 minutes BEFORE the alarm is due to go off on a Sunday

Sure enough, at 08:00 the alarm went off So what was it that had awoken me so decisively earlier? The alarm is set for 07:00 on six days of the week and at 08:00 on a Sunday, and nothing has been changed in that respect for weeks if not months.

But it’s no use my saying that I don’ have a clue, because you lot have known that for quite some considerable time and don’t need me to repeat it.

But while we’re on the subject of repeating … "well, one of us is" – ed … that late night that I had on Friday, I repeated it again last night. Once more, the effects of having a mid-afternoon sleep meant that despite being exhausted, I wasn’t tired enough to go to bed.

After I’d finished my notes and done what I needed to do, I dictated another pile of radio notes. And now I’m not all that far away from being up-to-date – at least, in that respect.

Practically everything that has been written has been recorded except for one or two special projects on which I’m working. They’ll be receiving attention over the next week or so as I try my best to push on. I just hope that no-one else famous dies so that I won’t have anything else to distract me.

Eventually though I managed to find the energy to cross the Great Divide of several inches and fall into bed. And I’d hardly even started my little night-time mantra before falling asleep.

From what I remember about the night it was pretty calm and peaceful. I can’t recall being disturbed at all. That is, until I had that strange, phantom alarm call that awoke me like that.

It’s totally bewildering, this kind of thing. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve had these phantom alarm calls before but usually, sooner or later, I’ve recognised them for what they are.

This is the very first time that I’ve been so completely taken in by a phantom alarm. I’ll have to carefully check the time each morning before I leave the bed because I could have done with spending that extra half-hour or however long it was in bed.

Having had a good wash, I came back in here and had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was doing something with the local police, investigating a road accident. We were on our way to inspect a particular site and someone made a really witty remark to me about something or other which at first glance didn’t seem to tie in with anything but when we were there inspecting this site one of the boys walked past carrying a certain object that looked like a part of a sheet of metal. Someone announced what it was and its correct name was actually this posh name that someone had used for something else earlier in the chat so it became some kind of clever pun or witty joke and I wish that I could remember what it was because it disappeared out of my mind as soon as I picked up the dictaphone, this particular word

As it happens I can remember this dream really well and the word that was used was actually on the tip of my tongue but it disappeared the moment that I put my hand on the dictaphone.

This morning I actually upset the nurse. He breezed in asking me all kinds of silly, frivolous questions that I was in no mood whatever to answer and he soon got the message. That early start had really knocked me for six.

After he left, I had my breakfast, read my book for a while and then came in here to watch the football. This morning it was Clyde v Stirling Albion in the fourth tier of Scottish football.

Clyde had 99% of the play and spent most of the match camped in the Binos’ penalty area. However, there were just two breakaways as the Binos roared down the field into the Clyde half each time and they ended up with just two shots on goal.

Anyone care to predict the final score?

However many people there were inside New Douglas Park I really have no idea but I bet that every one of them left the ground shaking his head.

There has been quite a bit of editing done today.

The two “extra tracks” for two of the programmes had their notes edited and the programmes completed. The first one ended up one minute short and the second one was six seconds over.

None of that is any problem. Where it’s short, I just lengthen the gaps in the speech by pasting in some silence, and where it’s over, there’s always tons of superfluous text that can be edited out without losing any of the meaning.

Then there were the two much longer notes resulting to almost-complete programmes. One of those has been edited and the two halves of the programme assembled. The eleventh track has been chosen and edited and the text written. That will be dictated on Saturday night next week

Had I had the motivation I could have finished the other one but I had a little … errr … relax. This morning took far too much out of me

As well as that, I made some pizza dough today seeing as I’d run out. Two lumps are currently freezing and the third became the base for tonight’s pizza. And the dough was fantastic. It rose even better than the last batch did and that was quite impressive.

So having written my notes I’m off to bed now in the hope that there will be no confusion about the alarm. I don’t want another morning like this. I have my Welsh course next week and need my sleep.

But that dream about me helping the police. I should have been a policeman because I spent a lot of time helping Cheshire Constabulary with their enquiries
One of my friends was hobbling around Crewe Town Centre once when I caught up with him. I hadn’t seen him for a while
"Where have you been these last couple of weeks?" I asked him
"I’ve been helping the police with their enquiries" he said
"So why are you having trouble walking?"
"I’ve helped them so much" he said "that I’ve got two broken toes and truncheon marks all over the soles of my feet."

Saturday 17th August 2024 – I’VE HAD A …

… lovely pudding for tea tonight.

There was half an oven left over after I’d prepared a loaf of bread for baking and so in a wild fit of enthusiasm (and where that came from, I have no idea) I made an apple crumble.

It’s been a long time since I’d baked one of those so I had to look up a recipe for how to make a crumble topping, and I’m glad that I found the one that I did because it was the best that I’d ever made.

Where this mad fit of enthusiasm came from I have no idea and I wish that I’d had it last night. For having crashed out at some point during the late afternoon, I wasn’t tired at al later on (exhausted, yes but tired, no) and it ended up being after … errr … 02:00 when I finally crawled into bed.

Yes, for the usual reasons – too exhausted too haul myself out of my comfortable chair etc – I just couldn’t make that couple of inches that lie between my chair and my comfortable bed. I really don’t know what’s happening to me.

Eventually though I could stagger across the gap between my chair and my bed and fall in underneath the covers.

One thing about it though was that I didn’t need much rocking. I was asleep quite quickly, and seeing how quickly I’ve been falling asleep that’s saying something too.

With it only being such a short night I was expecting it to have been an undisturbed sleep but that wasn’t the case. I was awoken by something a couple of times during whatever night there was and in that respect it was something of a miserable night.

Surprisingly, when the alarm went off I was awake quite quickly and made it into the bathroom without much difficulty. With it being Saturday I washed the shorts that I usually ear in bed. I did have a couple of pairs of these but for some reason I can only find one so I have to wash them as I go.

Back here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I wasn’t expecting there to be anything really so I was quite surprised. I was involved in some kind of women’s football match. Of the two teams of women it’s quite fair to say that some them were either drunk or on drugs because they weren’t at all in this world and maybe wishing that they were in the next but their behaviour was extremely bizarre and certainly weren’t taking an active part in the game at all so I began to take all of their names because I had a feeling that someone was trying something on for some reason and if there was going to be some kind of enquiry I wanted to make sure that I’d done everything that I possibly could to have organised this game and have given them the opportunity to play it without it being postponed for any reason whatever. But I suspected that it was going to be postponed simply because if I started to send players off one team would end up with less than the regulation minimum number on the field

That game actually sounds like one of these games involving Mexican girls. If you’ve ever seen a football game in the Mexican Women’s League you’ll understand exactly what I mean. The winners of a game in that League are not the team that scores the most goals, it’s the team with the most players still on the pitch after 90 minutes. Except for Jocelyn Montoya of course. She can come and dribble around my centre-circle any time she likes

There were some concerns about a girl at work so they made a few enquiries. She’d been off sick but when I’d been parked up in the middle of a lane near Shavington fast asleep, in the lane on the highway in the van fast asleep she walked past with a group of other people including some children. Then I saw her again the next day. I had to explain this to everyone and they asked me a lot of searching questions about these sightings. Then we all went to look at her house, a big detached house somewhere in the countryside near Crewe. There was a kind-of terrace of five of these big detached houses, each one completely different in style and joined together in a kind-of haphazard fashion. I didn’t know which one was hers so someone pointed it out to me. It was the biggest and best of these five. I thought that this doesn’t look right, the kind of house that she could have on her salary. How on earth can she afford a place like this?

Parked up fast asleep in a van in the middle of a lane near Shavington sounds about right to me. But I’m sure we’ve all known workmates who live in houses and have a lifestyle that is totally out of the kind of lifestyle you would expect, knowing their salary. Either they’ve had an inheritance, won the football pools or have something else going on about which no-one knows. Definitely not the taxman and probably not the police.

There was also something about a boy who ran off with a girl, her mother’s car and her mother’s credit card and the dream described their adventures.

There was more to it than this too but you really don’t want to know the rest, especially if you’re eating your tea right now.

This morning, the nurse, having ignored the dressing on my arm for the last few days decided to change it today, the day after I’d asked my cleaner to do it. I didn’t say anything but let him get on with it. If at last he’s showing willing, I don’t want to disrupt his flow. It seems that this enthusiasm is catching.

After he left I had breakfast and then set about making my loaf of bread, seeing as I’d had the last of the current loaf for toast this morning.

But talking of current loaf, does anyone have a recipe for currant bread? It’s years since I’ve had some currant bread and I ought to be thinking about making some of that some time.

While the dough was riding I was hunting down some recipes for making a crumble topping and having decided on a likely recipe, then after I’ve given the dough its second kneading I prepared the crumble topping. It’s basically

2 measures oats
2 measures flour
2 measures brown sugar
1 measure butter
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
cinnamon

and then rub it all together.

There were some sweet apples going to waste in the fruit bowl so I used those. You don’t need to add sugar to the diced apples with those, but some cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, raisins and desiccated coconut went down well.

When the bread was baked I had lunch – salad sandwiches and you’ve no idea how delicious they taste with soft, fluffy bread straight out of the oven. They were absolutely delicious.

By now the lack of sleep had caught me up and for the next couple of hours I was out like a light. Far out too with not the slightest chance of coming back.

When I finally came back into the Land of the Living I spent a couple of hours tracking down the dates of a few more live concerts and then we had the football – Caernarfon v Hwlffordd.

Caernarfon surprised everyone by winning their first-round Europa League match in the close season, just as Hwlffordd had done the season before.

With all of the turmoil at Connah’s Quay with half the team leaving and the manager and club “parting company”, second place in the League is very much up for grabs and both clubs “have aspirations”.

The first half was a cagey affair with no real chances for either side but the game came to life midway through the second period when Hwlfford scored, only for Caernarfon to equalise straight from the kick-off.

The game was destined to peter out for draw had it not been for a mistake at the back that let in Hwlffordd’s forwards deep into injury time.

So surprisingly, Hwlffordd sit top of the table. Not that it will last, but it’s an encouraging sign.

Tea was one of my breaded quorn fillets with baked potato and vegan salad as usual. Followed by my delicious apple crumble.

Tomorrow I have pizza dough to make and I hope that it turns out as well as the last batch because that really was epic.

Right now I’ll dictate some radio notes and then go to bed. Some of these will be edited tomorrow too and the rest during the week. We’ll see how we get on with everything else that I have to do

Stuff is piling up again but it can’t be helped. I really ought to be engaging a secretary

A secretary preferably of the type employed by a friend’s husband once a long time ago.
My friend rang up her husband at his work and his secretary answered.
"Mr whatever his name was?" asked the secretary "He’s just slipped out for the moment"
His wife made him change his secretary after that.

Friday 16th August 2024 – AND THAT’S THE …

… end of the first week of three of my Welsh summer school

And one of the first things that I did after the end of the lesson was to crash out. And for about an hour too. It’s been really tough trying to keep on going through all of this without falling asleep.

Going to bed early would have helped of course but for some reason that seems to be impossible these days. And even when I do, I just awaken earlier than normal so that doesn’t work either.

My target time for going to bed in the evening is 23:00 but I usually miss it. By the time that I’d finished everything last night I was a good half-hour later than I wanted to be, and I’d not done some things that I had in mind, like wash my clothes.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m in the habit of hand-washing my trousers and undies in the sink every so often and hanging them up to dry. That’s a relic of my life on the road when it was the only way of keeping my clothes clean.

Yes, back in the day when I was living out of a van, the lorry drivers’ showers at the motorway service stations were useful places and when I could grab a shower I always took my clothes in with me

But anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

So after I’d finished writing my notes and so on I sorted myself out, wrapped up my puttees and eventually crawled into bed.

As usual these days, I was asleep quite quickly, long before the end of my little bedtime mantra. And there I slept until some crazy time in the morning, not that I recall what it was but it was still dark so I crawled back under the covers and that was that.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom for a god wash and scrub up, a change of clothes and a clothes-washing session for my trousers and undies that I should have done last night.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Then there was something about a rather attractive young girl in Africa who was leading a band of guerrillas in some kind of series of military operations. When I came across her they were raiding a shipyard trying to take away some pieces of heavy metal to make some armour-plating for something. She was there wrestling with this sheet-metalwork and at the same time had somehow managed to hold a machine-gun in both hands so that if she was surprised or attacked while doing it she could fight them off. But it was something to do with a brand-new film that had come out . There had been a well-known prequel to this and the actual film itself was the sequel. It had come out for distribution at a certain specific moment or anniversary like the tenth anniversary of these events. For that reason it was extremely special.

That sounds as if there should have been something before it but if there was, I didn’t dictate it. So fancy me missing something that might have related to a rather attractive young girl. It’s not as if there are too many rather attractive young girls in my life at the moment seeing as I seem to have been deserted by Castor, Zero and TOTGA. The more attractive young girls that I can find, the better.

Following the election of Corbyn as Prime Minister there was a huge destabilisation campaign that was being run in the bully trades-union magazines, the letters columns, to do their best to destanilise the situation. Just about everyone, his right-wing opponents, pro-European Union people, everyone was in there piling heaps and heaps of vitriol on top of him. He was replying quite calmly and enthusiastically but nevertheless the sheer volume of post and the amount of hatred that was contained therein was frightening and had him on the back foot at every conceivable moment. I could see that despite all of his promises the whole of the political spectrum was doing its best to make sure that his policies never came to happen, then they could all turn round and point the finger at him and blame him, regardless of the fact that it was they who had been instrumental in making sure that his policies never happened anyway. But the amount of vitriol was appalling in these communications and I’d hand-written my fair share of the correspondence and sent it off for publication. I wasn’t letting any grass grow under my feet.

That’s someone who was a big disappointment. I try not to be political on this blog but nevertheless what a good Prime Minister he would have made if we had just been talking about Social issues, equality and the like. And then he went and threw it all away and sold out all of his supporters with his ideological support for the Exodus from Europe. With the amount of hatred and vitriol that the Blue Tories and the Red Tories in his party heaped upon him, they must have been scared stiff of him, his position and power. But then, as I say, he thres it all away.

And finally I was doing a folk-dance through the town with a friend of mine. We didn’t actually rehearse it – we just sat down and began it at the appropriate time. With a series of improvised stations it seemed to go OK but at the end when we came into the public view in the big square in the city centre the whole thing went haywire. No-one had told me how the end was going to be . The Master of Ceremonies was dictating the end but it was nothing like what we were doing and nothing like what I was doing and I felt really disappointed that there had been no time whatever to rehearse because we could have done this a million times better even with just one brief rehearsal. It would have looked so good. Instead it ended up looking a complete and utter shambles at the end.

That’s interesting, me doing a folk dance through the town centre. I’ve not really done any folk dancing since 2008 when I was stewarding the camp site at that folk festival in Scotland and there wasn’t anything of a town there to folk-dance through. But as usual, an ounce of preparation is worth a ton of anything else and I really ought to carry out more preparation in my life.

The nurse was in a hurry again this morning so he didn’t hang around very much. He saw to my legs and was soon on his way out of the building.

At breakfast I carried on reading my book for a while. We’ve finally reached the pages where they talk about the earliest administration of justice in Montana and the trials that took place in the old saloon at Hell’s Gate.

What’s interesting is that when the book was written, the judge, prosecuting counsel and several jurymen were still alive so we could have a first-hand account of much of what went on. And none of it is on-line anywhere else.

Back in here I did my homework from yesterday and then went for my lesson.

To my surprise it passed really well and I quite enjoyed it. However I did fall asleep twice in mid-lesson but managed to awaken almost instantly before anyone else realised

We’ve been given some homework to do for the weekend and it looks a right stinker so I suppose that I better hadn’t leave it until the very last moment.

My cleaner came to have a lap around the apartment. She noticed that the plaster on my arm where I’d had the operation hadn’t been changed for several days.

That’s no surprise. The nurse doesn’t think that I need it so I can deal with it myself, except that I won’t, for reasons that regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

And so my lovely cleaner said that she would change it – and she did too. I have some lovely people around me.

After the lesson I made my hot chocolate and then came in here, where I crashed out for a good hour after all of my effort over the last few days.

There was the radio programme that needed finishing. I’d done some of the work during the lunch break but needed to join everything together, find a final track and write the notes therefore

That made me late for tea, which was chips, a vegan salad and some of those breaded quorn nuggets

So now I’m going to sort myself out and go to bed ready for tomorrow. I have bread to bake and probably a few other things too seeing as there will be some room in the oven that I mustn’t waste
Not like back in the olden days when someone once asked Nerina where I was
"He’s at home, baking" she replied
"Will he be okay?" asked her friend
"He’ll be Ok" she replied "That is as long as he doesn’t try to get out of the oven. Then I’ll kill him"

Thursday 15th August 2024 – SO THAT WAS …

… Day Four of my Summer School.

And I’ve no idea what’s happening here but things seem to be going quite well with this course. That’s something that I don’t understand because usually I struggle to get to grips with everything. I don’t know what I’m doing right but I wish that I could do it more often

So while some things seem to be going my way, cà plâne pour moi as Plastic Bertrand once said, I wish that everything else was too.

Like actually being in bed at something like a reasonable hour instead of hours late, as seems to be the case these days. It was another “almost midnight” when I slid underneath the covers last night

Once again I was asleep quite quickly. In fact my little bedtime mantra hardly had time to get underway before I was off with the fairies. And that was that until all of … errr … 04:30.

But no chance of my showing a leg at that time of the morning these days. I curled back up underneath the covers and there I stayed until Billy Cotton ROARED HIS RAUCOUS RACKET at 07:00.

When the World stopped spinning round I made my way into the bathroom for a good scrub up to make myself pretty, but I suspect that it might take more time than I have available to do something like that

Instead, I came back in here to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been hot-rodding around the town, doing doughnuts, things like that and the police had come along and caught me. But there was something important going on and I was waiting for some kind of news about this but all the police were interested in doing was to give me a very long lecture about the perils of careless driving etc. I was perfectly aware of what’s happening and it was all just getting in the way of this ‘phone call that I was expecting. I thought that they’d never ever finish this discussion with me and I’ll miss this ‘phone call if they carry on much longer.

It’s an absolute certainty that if any member of Cheshire Constabulary’s finest were to find me performing stunts with a car, it wouldn’t be a lecture that I’d receive. I remember, back in the olden days, a friend of mine performing a few stunts on a car park in Crewe late at night and actually being summoned under the local council by-laws for “using a car park for purposes other than parking”. Mind you, it was right next to the police station so what did he expect? He should have been more circumspect.

The nurse didn’t have a great deal to say for himself this morning. He was in and out quite quickly, leaving me in peace to have my breakfast and carry on reading my book. I’m quite engrossed in this book and not only that, it’s had me hot on the trail of a couple of other books on the subject of the forts on the Bozeman Trail.

If you followed the link that I posted the other day, you’d had walked with me several miles along the Bozeman Trail to the site of the Fetterman massacre where Lieutenant Fetterman and his soldiers were cut down by Red Cloud’s warriors

That was a brilliant trip, that one in the Summer of 2019 where I visited all of the sites of the major confrontations between the Native Americans and the European settlers and soldiers, including such places as the Powder River, Wounded Knee and Little Big Horn

And, as usual, LITTLE BIG ANTLERS accompanied me.

One of these days I must finish off editing all of these …gulp … 6,000 photos that I took of my trip and post them on line before it’s too late.

There was more homework to do so I tackled that and then went to join my lesson.

As I said earlier, it passed off quite well despite a really flaky internet connection somewhere and I only fell asleep twice. We seem to be making a little progress in this respect although it’s far too early to start crowing quite yet.

When the lesson was over I made myself some hot chocolate and had a slice of chocolate cake, and then came back in here to edit the final batch of radio notes.

That’s all done now and tomorrow morning I’ll finish off everything by joining it all together, choosing the final track and writing the notes for it.

Tea tonight was a burger with pasta and veg – a long time since I’d had something from the European Burger Mountain.

Mind you, it’s not so much of a mountain these days. I’ve whittled it down since it reached the heady heights and overflowed the fridge. That was a long time ago.

So now I have a few things to do and than I’m off to bed.

But talking about performing stunts in cars, I remember hearing of a really hairy drive once where a guy set out to impress his friends and scare his girlfriend.
After screeching around a few corners, with tyres burning and engine overheating he turned to his girlfriend and, indicating the smoking tyres and burning Castrol R oil, said "now smell that!"
"Smell it?" she asked. "I’m sitting in it!"

Wednesday 14th August 2024 – SO THAT WAS..

…the Assessment that was.

And I’m still here to tell the tale after all of that. Not that there was all that to still be here after, because she was here and gone withinghalf an hour and I don’t know what all the panic was about.

Last night would have been another quite early night except for … you guessed it … trying to staunch a flow of blood.

This time it was on my left arm. Somehow I’d managed to knock it just a few inches from where I had the operation and it was bleeding copiously. Putting a plaster on it slowed down the flow and eventually I could crawl off into bed, having done everything that I needed to do.

And once again I was asleep quite quickly, something that seems to be a habit these days.

What else seems to be a habit these days is waking up early. I’ve no idea how early because somehow my watch became detached from my wrist during the night and I couldn’t find it in the bed

It didn’t take long to go back to sleep but I was tossing and turning for the rest of the early morning until the alarm went off at 07:00.

Switching off the alarm I made my way to the bathroom to make myself look pretty and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. At one stage I dictated As I was getting ready to get into bed the original recording leapt out of my hands and darted across the room somewhere and left me standing there looking pretty silly with this piece of live broadcasting stuff being carted about around the room. I didn’t half look silly while all of that was going on trying to calm it down and reunite it with me

Whatever that’s supposed to mean I have no idea at all. I’d been asleep in bed for quite some time when I dictated that so I quite clearly wasn’t “getting ready for bed”. The rest of that dream makes absolutely no sense whatever but there again, it’s a dream so it’s not really supposed to.

Later on I was doing a video of a game between Raith Rovers and Partick Thistle. I let my tongue run away with me when I was criticising Raith Rovers. As a result, Raith Rovers contacted me with several admissions and insisted that I record a separate radio programme to apologise to their club based on the information that they provided me to put the matter right. Football fans are renowned for letting their tongues run away but they should still be governed by the laws of slander and governed by other appropriate laws and rules. Fair play to Raith Rovers who took a very mature and adult way around the affair dealing with the issue. But I wish that I knew what it was that I had said because I’d never commented on a game between Raith Rovers and Partick Thistle in my life. I’ve no idea where this dream was coming from.

These days it’s quite dangerous to let one’s tongue run away with one. Occasionally you might find some incendiary comment or two within these pages but I won’t print anything definite unless either I have the evidence to support it or the remarks have been published elsewhere. Of course, if you ask a question, such as “is it true that …?” , that’s not libellous and as well as that the High Courts have ruled that neither vulgar abuse nor exaggerated hyperbole nor rhetorical hyperbole nor “colourful adjectives” is libellous. But what this has to do with Raith Rivers and Partick Thistle I really don’t know. They won’t be dancing in the streets of Raith tonight, folks!

And then there was something about having to interrogate that woman about that part where he thinks that she has the same name as some other woman who was quite famously associated with some footballers at one time and air traffic control when they called a delayed flight pinged him to say that if the bust with the passengers on board were to drive past him on their way to the ‘plane the driver of the bus would respect him for his decision.

And that’s a mystery to me too, what’s happening there. In fact, I must have spent a totally clueless night with all of this. I’m clearly overlooking the key to all these mysteries.

When the nurse came he tried his best to raise my morale, but that’s rather a difficult thing to do these days. I seem to be in the Slough of Despond again, and for no good reason. Not even a good breakfast cheered me up afterwards

Back in here I listened to the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend and, satisfied, I sent it off to be included in the stream.

When the person from the Government came round she interviewed me for about 45 minutes.

The question of going into a Home never came up. She didn’t even say that I didn’t need to. It was just something that was taken for granted I suppose.

She thinks I ought to have much more help though. She would like my cleaner to come in every day but I drew the line at that. In the end she said that she would tell the Committee that I need help three times per week and hope that they approve it.

She didn’t really come up with any practical points about my life here although she agreed that once I’m downstairs things would be better. She didn’t offer any solutions about being in there earlier.

She did know and recommend a couple of garages that do conversions to cars to make them suitable for handicapped people, so that’s back on the agenda for next year too

One thing that surprised me was a question that she asked. We’d talked about who helps me and is it sufficient or do I need to be taken under the wing of a big organisation who can help with my care. I told her about my helpful cleaner and she asked "do you declare her?" (presumably to the Tax Office).

As it happens, I do. But she asked in such a matter-of-fact tone that it almost seemed to be the normal way of proceedings not to declare her.

After she left I had a coffee and then joined my Welsh class. Once more, it was quite successful which was nice. I’d done the homework so at least I was all clued up

My cleaner came in and skipped lightly around the apartment while I was at my lessons, and she disappeared afterwards just as quietly without disturbing me which was nice of her.

And during the lesson I only fell asleep once, and that was during a break. I soon awoke when class restarted.

After my hot chocolate and cake, I had a ‘phone call. Someone had sent me a message and I needed to call back.

It turns out that another friend of mine in Germany, the husband of another University colleague, has died. He was quite elderly and had several major health issues, but unfortunately he had one issue too many.

When I was in Germany last I visited them and we had a pleasant afternoon out by the local lake. I’ll just have to remember times like that. But this old age thing is terrible. The Grim Reaper is waiting round the corner for all of us.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry and naan bread, but it was a leftover curry with a difference. I still have these jars of Korma that I bought and which need eating at some time so I heaved one into the curry tonight and made enough for two nights. The other lot will be frozen for another time. I need to start up my cooking again.

So right now I’m going to go to bed ready for my Welsh lesson tomorrow. Let’s see if I can manage without bleeding everywhere. It’s no joke, this trail of blood that I leave all over the apartment that my cleaner has to deal with.

Still, it could be worse, I suppose. I don’t know why I’m complaining. At least I’m still here and people are looking after me. Imagine what would happen if I were ill like this and in the UK.

In on eof the hospitals I met a guy who had been a patient in a British hospital. There, the surgeon said "xr have some good news and some bad news"
"OK doctor" said the man. "Tell me the bad news first"
"I’m afraid that in all the confusion we cut off the wrong leg"
"Good grief!" exclaimed the man. "What’s the good news?"
"The good news" said the surgeon "is that your bad leg is getting better".

Tuesday 13th August 2024 – DAY TWO …

… of my Summer School passed by today.

And to my surprise, it all went really well. I’ve no idea what’s happened there, but that’s simply not normal. Things just don’t go quite like that.

So last night I washed my puttees and went to bed in something of a hurry. It was later than I would like – about 23:30 – but that’s not late enough to be worried by anything.

It didn’t take me long to go off to sleep either. Just a matter of minutes. Although I can’t remember falling asleep, I know how far I reached with my little bedtime mantra and it wasn’t far at all. Still, with not crashing out at all during the day I must have been quite wasted.

Once I was asleep, I slept through all the way until about … errr … 05:30 when something outside must have awoken me. I’ve no idea what it was and I didn’t go to find out. I just pulled the bedclothes tighter, and had my RAIN SPLATTERED WINDOWS MADE ME DECIDE TO STAY IN BED I’d have dreamed of summertime instead.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I fell out of bed and once the room stopped spinning round I headed for the bathroom for a good scrub up. I have to look my best for these on-line meetings, even if I don’t feel much like it.

And I managed to dress without falling over of having to sit down and that’s some kind pf progress. And if you think that it’s strange that I’m celebrating something like this as being an achievement, you just don’t understand the state that I’m in.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. That big freshwater lake in South America was due to close so I’d gone down there to hire a boat and was messing about on the water before it all disappears. In the meantime while I was down there it seemed that there had been some kind of incident. A tractor had driven straight through the crowd from some fellow’s field onto the road, scattering everyone. What an insane use of language. There were many words here that I had never heard before in the UK and in some respects I was glad that I don’t because some of these people are really out of control and this is appalling.

There aren’t too many words that I have never heard before. working in a pool of chauffeurs from all corners of the European Union speaking a variety of different languages and having been as popular as I was with my colleagues, you can imagine that I’ve heard them all at close quarters too. But this reminds me of my prevarications a couple of years ago – I was always going to learn to sail “next week” or “next month”, and look at me now. It’s an object (or maybe even an abject) lesson of “never put off until tomorrow any plans that you can do today”.

I was taking a coach trip somewhere. I had to give my passengers an afternoon out and there was a nuclear power station in the vicinity of where we were going so I went round there and tried to speak to someone about the possibility of bringing my coach and tourists around for a look. The guy whom I saw explained that it would be rather difficult because of the organisation of the factory. I said that the factory would be organised into three parts. There would be the equipment, the operation and the security and we would just be interested in the operations, how the thing worked and what it did etc but the guy was extremely stubborn and made the point that with the building and plant not being equipped for this kind of thing we could lead to all kinds of problems about security etc. I was still in the middle of an argument trying to convince him when I awoke.

When I worked for … "he means “employed by”" – ed … Shearings, my coach tours were fun. I never stopped at the usual motorway service stations. I know that on one occasion I even managed to arrange a coffee break in a local monastery. People had their money’s worth. In all seriousness, if I could have taken them for a guided tour and coffee break around a nuclear power station, I would have done without a second thought.

When I was trying to organise myself I dropped a carton of milk that I was drinking into a bucket of cold water that was standing close by me. Of course all the milk and all the water mixed and I was extremely disappointed in that because I was enjoying that carton of milk .

And it wouldn’t be the first time that I’ve done something stupid like that either.

The nurse came around to deal with my legs and to give me my injection. I’m not sure if I’ve told you that the blood test results came bac a few days ago – and they make grim reading.

But I’ve received the message loud and clear about the plaster on my operation from the other day. The nurse is ignoring it completely. He and his colleague think that I no longer need it, and medically they are probably correct.

However, psychologically I’m certain that I do, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and tending to my psychological needs is just as important as attending to any other needs.

After he left, I had breakfast and carried on reading my book. And I’ve finally reached the part that interested me – that of Nelson Story’s famous cattle drive along the Bozeman Trail at the time of the Fetterman Massacre.

One of the reasons why it’s so interesting is that it was written 35 years after the disaster that befell Fetterman’s patrol along the Bozeman Trail near Fort Phil Kearny, which regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WE VISITED IN 2019, and after several public enquiries had been held to establish the true facts and after written memoirs had been published, the old myths, legends and falsehoods were still circulating.

Back in here after breakfast I did my Welsh homework. And to my dismay we weren’t asked for it. It wasn’t even discussed. Nevertheless, I suppose that there’s a point in doing it so I’ll press on

As I mentioned earlier, the Welsh lesson passed off quite well and I only fell asleep twice – but on both occasions there was a dramatic and instant awakening and the second time pumped enough adrenalin around to stay awake for the rest of the day.

At the end of the lesson I went into the kitchen for my cocoa and chocolate cake. The cake was nice and cold, having been in an airtight container in the fridge.

That’s at least one good thing to come out of this – that even though I’m trying to do away with plastic here, I can’t do without them completely and had to rescue a couple of containers from the stock that I’d put to one side

Once I’d wound down I chose the final track for the radio programme that I’d been editing, and written, the notes for it.

There’s one radio programme left of this batch that I recorded so I’ll start on that tomorrow.

But tomorrow I’m having my assessment. Not that it’s likely, but we could be moving into an entirely new ball-game. It wouldn’t be a disaster if I were to be placed in a Home, but it wouldn’t be far off. As long as it’s not a Home where the jacket fastens at the back.

Tea was a delicious taco roll with rice and veg. Plenty of stuffing left so its going to be a lovely leftover curry for tea tomorrow night, with rice and a naan bread.

So that’s me finished for the night. If I’m lucky I might have an early night but I’m not betting on it. There’s still plenty of stuff to do.

But going back to what I said earlier about going to the Monastery, we had a guided tour around the place
"But you can’t go in this room" explained the guide
"Why not?" asked one of the tourists
"It’s the … errr …. laundry" he replied
"What does he mean by that?" whispered another tourist
"He means that it’s where the monks go when they want to deal with their filthy habits" I explained.

Monday 12th August 2024 – AND SO THAT WAS …

… Day One of my three weeks (two weeks, then a pause for Bank Holiday week, and then the final week) Welsh Summer School

And such is the way of the World that this cycle of courses, that has run all through the summer, isn’t a series of repeated courses. It’s one long course that’s been broken up into several segments.

So here I am again, going over the latter part of the course yet again when it was the start of the course that I wanted – the period when I was in Canada and then in hospital.

It seems to me that I’m fated never to do this part of the course.

One thing about it though is that it at least made sure that I was in bed at something like a respectable time last night. Later than 23:00 it has to be said, but not by al that much by the time that I’d finished doing everything that I have to do.

And once in be I was asleep quickly too. I awoke briefly at about 06:15 but went back to sleep until the alarm roused me from my reverie

It was something like a disreputable stagger into the bathroom where I had a good scrub up and sorted myself out for the day to come.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. My cleaner put in an appearance during the night. She was going on about my unkempt appearance, my wild hair, my beard and so on so I resolved to tidy myself up. The first thing that I did was to cut my hair. I was in a hotel room and to get to this room I had to climb up about forty stairs. It was much easier to climb because they were all in a straight line than it was to come into the stairs here so I was in my room in no time. I sat down and took out my hair cutter and began to cut my hair. One thing that I’d noticed was that someone had been in my room. It was supposed to have been tidied but it looked as if a tornado had hit it. There was a half-burnt still-smoking cigar on the floor which I thought was totally strange. I began to shave my head with my hair clippers to try to make myself look more respectable but I thought “I wonder what they are going to say at the reception desk when they’d seen some wild-haired guy go up to claim his room and some neat-looking stranger coming down.

Actually I’d had a shave this morning – the first time for several days – and my hair does need cutting. It’s not quite at the “Wild Man of Borneo” stage but I could certainly put the willies up anyone who comes too close. And fancy my cleaner turning up during the night. This is the first time, I reckon, that she’s put in an appearance on a nocturnal ramble. So what’s going on here?

The nurse and I had a bit of a chat this morning. He wants to wash my feet at some point so I’ll have to wash the puttees from last week. They are currently soaking in the bowl that I use for washing my feet.

With him being early and being quick about it I had plenty of time to revise my Welsh for today, which means that I spent it reading the wrong units.

When the course started we counted heads. There were ten of us pupils, yet a total of fifteen had paid for the course. God alone knows where the others are.

And this tutor is someone whom I know because I’ve had her a few times before in Summer Schools and so on. She’s the archetypal example of South Walians who think that there’s nothing any further north of the Head of the Valleys except sheep and druids

For example, she was telling everyone that LLanelwy is the local name for what the English call Builth Wells, but the Welsh name for Builth Wells is “Llanfair-ym-Muallt”. The town of LLanelwy is what the English would call St Asaph

Not that I would correct her though. I don’t want to lose the goodwill of the teacher on the first day. There’s more than enough time to do that over the next three weeks without going to look for it.

She’s actually set us homework too. I suppose that she’s right. We have to push on with these courses otherwise there’s no point in doing them. I’ll do my homework in the morning and that will refresh me for the lesson tomorrow.

During the breaks I managed to finish off the radio programme whose notes I was editing on Sunday. There’s just the final track to choose and the notes to write for it which I’ll also do in the morning.

When the lesson finished I had my hot chocolate, and a slice of my delicious, soggy, gooey chocolate cake.

There’s enough here for a couple of weeks so I hope that it won’t go off or anything like that. I have it in an airtight tin but I’m going very shortly to move it into a plastic box to store in the fridge

And then I had a chat to Rosemary on the ‘phone. Just a short chat today – only 1 hour and 55 minutes. We seem to be finding our form again which is good news. But I really don’t know what we talk about in these ‘phone calls.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper. With tons of stuffing left over for tomorrow and Wednesday too. The stuffing was different today and I’m not sure why. I don’t think that I’ve forgotten any ingredient. That’s usually why it tastes different.

So having washed my puttees and hung them up to dry I’m going to try to go to bed before there are any more disturbances and without bleeding to death

But talking of Wales reminds me of the Welsh sailor who was admitted to hospital here in Granville the other day
The matron came in and told one of the doctors "that sailor who’s just been admitted. He has the word ‘Ludo’ tattooed on … errr … a certain part of his anatomy"
The doctor was so surprised that he asked the young student nurse to check
She came back a short while later "Matron was wrong, sir" she told the doctor
"Is that so?" asked the doctor
"Yes" she replied. "It’s not ‘Ludo’, it’s ‘Llandudno’"

Sunday 11th August 2024 – SO MUCH FOR …

… my idea of going to bed at “a reasonable time” last night.

"The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain for promis’d joy" as the famous Robbie Burns once said.

However, it wasn’t grief and pain that came my way, but blood. And buckets of it too. In the distance and time that it had taken me to walk from the bathroom to the bedroom, I’d knocked my legs somehow and there was blood pumping just about everywhere

Even as I look, there’s a trail of drops of blood leading from my chair to where the big plasters are. And even one of those wasn’t enough to stop or even slow down the bleeding

However, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, this is what happens when you have all of these blood-thinning products. It’s becoming a rather regular feature, which is regrettable.

So instead of lying down on my nice comfortable bed, there I was, sitting on a chair with a collection of plasters and bandages on an impossible task waiting for the blood to congeal.

For an incident that took place at about 23:45, it was long after 01:00 when I finally went to bed.

Once in bed, I slept all the way through to the alarm going off at 08:00. I don’t think that I moved a single muscle all night.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom and that’s where the nurse caught me. He’d come early and I hadn’t had time to wash, never mind change my clothes (and I still haven’t)

He talked a little about his holiday but otherwise didn’t have too much to say for himself and was soon gone. I could sit down to breakfast and to read my book. We’re talking about the dismantling of the narrow-gauge railway that ran to Wallace in Montana, a event that took place in 1895. That railway didn’t last all that long.

Back in here afterwards I transcribed the dictaphone notes from the night. I’m not sure what I was doing last night but I was with a group of people. There was something going on about a medical issue. We were all being treated one-by-one for some kind of illness, taking it in turns to go to hospital. One of the girls went in quite carefree and happy and we all seemed to make a note “well she’s going to have a good time there in the hospital. They’ll love her”. There was a little old lady who went in. We had to go to her cottage to collect her things in order to send them to the hospital where she would be staying. I was actually at her house collecting her things together ready to go when the alarm went off.

It reminds me of my neighbour. Someone pretty soon will have to come to her apartment and collect her things if she really is going to live in a Home. I always think that for that to happen is a pretty sad state of affairs. From what I know about these Homes, it’s just a place where the elderly go and just wait to die. There’s no dignity or humanity in any of them.

There was football on the internet afterwards – Clyde v Stranraer in the Scottish Fourth Tier. And it was one of those games where Stranraer had 99% of the play, hit the woodwork and did absolutely everything except score, whereas Clyde just had one attack upfield and a lucky ricochet was enough for a sucker punch and send everyone in the crowd home shaking their heads.

Afterwards I made a start on editing the radio notes that I’d dictated before going to bed.

The first lot I had to do again. Somehow I’d managed to miss the first ten seconds of my dictating and I’ve no idea how on earth I did that.

And then I had to re-edit and remix the eleventh track because for some reason it had become mixed up with a pile of dictated notes. I’ve no idea how I managed to do that, but it really was a mess.

As a result, I’d only finished the two “additional tracks” prior to lunch. And it was a very late lunch at that.

Back in here after lunch I sat down – and the next thing that I remember, it was 16:30. I’d been stark out for over two hours and hadn’t felt a thing. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d gone to sleep. But while I was crashed out I was having a whole series of really exciting dreams but as I awoke the hole lot simply evaporated and I remembered nothing. How sad is that?

For half an hour I bashed away at some more radio notes and then went into the kitchen to make my bread for the week. And in a fit of mad enthusiasm, while the dough was proofing, I made a chocolate cake

While the cake was settling down and the dough was rising I rolled out the pizza dough for tea tonight. I’d taken the last lot out of the freezer just after lunch and it had been defrosting all afternoon.

There was football on the internet. Llansawel’s first game for over 25 years in the Premier League, and against Penybont too.

LLansawel had kept the core of their promotion-winning team and, as we know, there’s an enormous gulf between the Premier League and the second tier. It was quite evident and the score, 2-0 to Penybont, surprised no-one.

However, it was really good to watch a proper footballing duel between Llansawel’s veteran centre-forward Luke Bowen and Penybont’s centre-half, Dan Jefferies. A proper aerial combat of the type that reminded me of watching football back in the 1960s and early 70s

So having seen everyone of importance in the league already after just the first game, it’s going to be a long, hard season for Aberystwyth, Llansawel and FFlint. Those clubs are going to need to find some quality from somewhere, and quickly too.

The dough for tonight’s pizza was perfection itself. It had risen beautifully and was really light. And as usual, the toppings (mushroom, onion and olives with cheese, tomato sauce and cherry tomatoes, was second to none.

The batch of dough that I made where I forgot to add the oil has turned out to be the best that I have ever cooked.

The bread is fine too and my chocolate, orange and coconut cake looks delicious and I can’t wait to try that as of tomorrow afternoon when it’s cooled properly.

So right now I’m off to bed. I have three weeks of Welsh Summer School starting tomorrow at 10:30. Time that I was going to bed.

But before I go, Clayton Green has signed for Penybont from relegated Pontypridd United. He was playing today but his wife wasn’t there to watch the game. She was in church down the road where the vicar noticed her.
He turned to his verger and asked "is that Fanny Green on the front pew over there?"
"No Vicar" replied the verger. "It’s just the way the sunlight comes through the stained-glass window"

EPIC HALL

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