Saturday 4th March 2023 – MY CURRIED LEEK …

… and potato soup today was delicious.

In a large saucepan I fried an onion in olive oil until it was almost black, and then tipped in some minced garlic, two chopped small leeks, four small diced potatoes, half a teaspoon of nutmeg, half a teaspoon of cumin and a good dollop of ground black pepper, and fried all of that.

Then I covered it with water, added a vegetable stock cube and left it to simmer for twenty minutes.

Finally, I added some soya cream and whizzed it all up into a purée.

Totally delicious and furthermore, there’s enough left over for tomorrow lunchtime too. I’ll have it with the other half of the crusty baguette that I bought this morning.

While we’re on the subject of this morning … “well, one of us is” – ed … this was another morning when I arose from the dead before the alarm went off. I forget how many consecutive days this is now.

Mind you, it was another miserable night when I had a lot of difficulty going to sleep. My sleeping issues are really causing me a few problems right now.

But anyway, after my medication I went off to the shops – LIDL in fact this morning – and did a rather complete shop. It worked out to be quite expensive too, and for no good reason. There wasn’t much that I bought that wasn’t on the “usual” list.

Back here I made myself a nice strong coffee and then made my soup. Delicious as I said previously.

That gave me time to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was quite a lot of stuff on there going back to when I was in Belgium just now and one of these days I’ll transcribe it. But last night there was something going on about some photos. It led to doing some green-screening overlaps with a girl of about 5 years old

Later on I was watching the football again tonight while I was asleep. The Man of the Match was awarded to a player who didn’t even play in the real game.

Finally, we’d demolished part of an old building and had gone to rebuild it. We suddenly realised that certain key elements were missing. We had to scavenge through the pile of rubbish to try to find these missing bricks and special tiles etc. We found 1 or 2 but a couple were eluding us and this pile was enormous. There was a small girl there jumping up and down insisting that something particular was exactly what we wanted. We couldn’t understand what it was she was meaning. We were actually looking for some roofing tiles that had on them pictures of girls who had been martyrs for some reason or other and been sanctified. This girl insisted so much that in the end someone picked up this tube and unrolled it. Sure enough it was a picture of a girl on a lead tile. It wasn’t the girl we wanted but it was from the right place and the right era so the one that we wanted had to be somewhere in the immediate vicinity unless we’d scattered them much further than we thought. We had to carry on searching. It was strange that she had tried to insist that where we were was what we wanted yet for some reason or other we hadn’t paid any attention at all and she turned out to be although not right, pretty close to it.

That wasn’t all that went on last night either, but whatever else there is, you really don’t want to hear it. Not if you’re eating a meal right now.

And we’re on the subject of football … “well, one of us is” – ed … there was more football on the internet after lunch. The other Welsh Cup semi-final between TNS and Penybont.

This was actually a better game than last nights, with much more skill and not quite as much thunder. TNS were always on top in this game but Penybont kept them at bay for most of the game. However two moments of madness leading to two defensive errors in the Penybont defence just before half-time and that was regrettably that.

It’s hard enough to get a result against TNS as it is, without handing them two goals on a plate.

Later on this afternoon I went back out to Caliburn to bring in some more shopping. I tried an experiment by going out with just one crutch instead of two.

It was easier to carry the shopping but I was quite unsteady on my feet and I can understand now why the physiotherapist insists on me using both crutches. However I had been moving around so much easier this morning after all of the exercise I’ve just had, so it was worthwhile having a try.

Tea tonight was a breaded quorn fillet with a delicious salad and some potatoes baked in the air fryer. And once again the air fryer came up with the goods. I’m now toying with the idea of trying to find some kind of container that I can put into is to that I can roast vegetables in there. I’m really getting the hang of this, I think.

As I said a few days ago, I’m determined to have a try at baking a cake in there too when I can find a cake mould that will fit in there. Exciting times ahead, I reckon.

But that’s for later. Tonight I’m off to bed and hoping for a good lie-in to recover from my exertions. There’s some pizza dough to make tomorrow as well as some fruit buns for the rest of the week. And so it’s not going to be a relaxing day tomorrow. I’ll be busy.

Still, high time I did some work.

Friday 3rd March 2023 – HERE I ALL AM ..

… not sitting in a rainbow but sitting on my comfy seat in my bedroom. I’ve made it back home.

With just the usual problems, such as losing my keys on the train and having to rouse the staff that was asleep in the office at the station. A good job that it was at the terminus and there was still another train to come in otherwise I would have been well and truly snookered.

And that reminds me of the old French joke –
“Frappe! Frappe!”
“Qui est là?”
“Lost”
“Lost qui?”
“Oui”

Anyway, after another miserable night’s sleep, I was awake yet again before the alarm went off. And after the previous night there was nevertheless plenty of stuff on the dictaphone to be going on with

I was out with an American policeman last night driving around California. he was showing me all these mountainous areas where people had moved in and put cabins. These were in some of the routes taken by wolves during their migration and the cabins were blocking the routes. I awoke quickly after that.

Later on I was at one of these competitions on TV about 2 items. There was an explosive shell. For some reason I began to look inside the shell casing. I dropped it and all of the gunpowder went everywhere all over the film set. We tried washing it away with water but of course that didn’t work. It froze immediately. Some girl was about to skate off and go right through it

I took a girl to the airport last night in a taxi. I don’t know who she was but I ought to. We were discussing the airport, saying how handy it was for us. She said that her father ran some kind of taxi service in the airport area. He’d bought a couple of limousines, a black one and a silver one with the idea of trying to get hold of some high-quality airport work. The chat went on for quite a while. We arrived at the vicinity of the airport. I grossly undercharged her for going and I’ve no idea why that would be. I only ended up charging her £6:00 or something like that. Going to the airport cost a lot more than that back in the day. It was an extremely interesting chat about her father and his 2 silver K135 cars

We were in Walsh class last night reading a paper on changing roles in society. It listed probably 10 roles like mending a fence, mending your roof, taking money to the bank etc. The discussion was about how modern people are now changing their way of thinking. The key word here was “remuneration”. We’re all older in our Welsh class. I was saying that I was up on my roof in August. Someone else said that they’d fixed their own fence the other week. It seemed that we were bucking a trend about this question of changing DiY into paid remuneration.

And so I was up and about and ready to go out of the door at 07:00. The train that came in at 07:10 was another push-me-pull-you double decker and I have a hard time climbing on board them. Someone having chained his folding pushbike to the disabled handrail didn’t help matters at all.

At Brussels Gare du Nord I left the train and found my way onto the concourse but the lift downstairs was out of order so I had a very delicate walk down the stairs. I’ll tell you something for nothing and that is that no matter how much better I’m feeling, it’s a totally different kettle of fish with a backpack on my back.

My bus was due to leave at 08:20 but there was no sign of it. All the others were in and gone, and ours finally staggered into the loading bay 40 minutes late. But there’s one thing about being a disabled passenger and that is that even though it’s difficult to climb up the steps into the bus, they let me on first so I can have the pick of the seats.

Between Brussels and Lille I had a very charming young lady sitting next to me and we had a lengthy chat all the way. It’s a long time since I’ve had such an erudite companion so if you read this, Pauline, un grand bonjour.

She alighted at Lille and I had another companion as far as Rouen. He didn’t have much to say for himself but he picked up my phone for me when it fell to the floor.

From Rouen to Caen I was on my own but we did have a moment of excitement when we were stopped in a police barrage and the bus was searched for drugs. Two people were taken off the bus to be interviewed but they were allowed back on afterwards.

It’s no surprise to anyone that I missed the 16:10 train to Granville. But there’s another one at 17:10 so I was able to grab a nice hot coffee. I hadn’t had too much to drink on board the bus, on the basis that what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out. 8 hours on a bus is a long time and the toilets are really inconvenient for people with mobility issues.

As we pulled into the station at Granville I checked my keys and put them into the outside pocket of my coat so that they were handy. When I reached Caliburn on the car park I no longer had them. In the confusion of organising myself to leave they must have fallen out.

It took a while to awaken the people in the station. Presumably they had gone off for a coffee before the next train comes in, but eventually they arrived and we did the necessary so that I could collect my keys. Serves me right for being disorganised.

Back at Ice Station Zebra I made a drink because I had a thirst that you could photograph. And then I watched the football. Connah’s Quay Nomads v Y Bala in the Welsh Cup semi-Final.

The Quay took the lead after just 35 seconds and from them on we had a right full-blooded cup-tie that was played with an extraordinary amount of skill. A really good advert for the Welsh Premier League.

In the second half Bala scored 2 quick goals to take the lead but with 10 minutes left the Quay equalised. We were heading for penalties when Bala popped up with a third and despite Connah’s Quay throwing everything including the kitchen sink at Bala in the dying seconds of the game they couldn’t find an equaliser.

They did actually have the ball in the net right at the end but with Jack Kenny holding down Alex Ramsey in the Bala goal, there was no way that the goal would be allowed.

And how I wish that Jack Kenny, who is one of my favourite players in the WPL, would stop moaning and protesting every time a decision is given against him. He’d be a really good player, one of the best in the league, if only he would stop being so petulant.

On the bus I’d eaten some of my butties so at half-time I fetched the leftovers and demolished them with a pear and a banana. And now I’m off to bed.

Tomorrow I’m shopping, and as I missed my St David’s Day, when I return I’m going to make some leek and potato soup for the weekend to vary my diet a little. I’m quite looking forward to that.

And I’m looking forward to my own bed as well. The hotel bed was comfortable, but it’s not mine.

And just a word before I go. Travelling everywhere on crutches is difficult, yet it would have been much more difficult without all of the help that I received from all kinds of people who showed me some extraordinary kindness as I went around on my travels.

It’s the kind of thing that restores my jaundiced faith in humanity and I am really grateful to everyone who helped me along the way.

Thursday 2nd March 2023 – JUST ONE LOOK …

… was all it took for them at the hospital to send me off for a blood transfusion. it was that obvious. They didn’t even wait for a sample of my blood.

No wonder that I’d been feeling like The Wreck Of The Hesperus for the last week or two.

They asked me a few pointed questions about some symptoms and when I answered in the affirmative that was all it took and I was off dragged to the Day Centre.

It was cold in my room last night and what with that and the general change in situation (because I’m having some real difficulty sleeping right now, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall) I hardly had any sleep at all last night and it was most uncomfortable. There was nothing whatsoever on the dictaphone, and that should give you a clue.

Breakfast was included in the price of my room so when the alarm went off I was downstairs quite quickly. Breakfast was actually quite nice although there wasn’t anything special to eat. And then back up here for a nice shower.

At 09:00 I was out of the door and across the road into the bus station and I didn’t have to wait long for a bus. It was quite crowded but I managed to find a seat.

Registering at the hospital was quite quick but then I had to wait an age to be seen because I’d arrived well in advance of my appointment. The doctor had quite a long chat to me and then went to fetch her professor who had an even longer chat with me.

They weren’t too happy that I hadn’t gone for my appointments at the New Year but I explained all of the issues that I was facing – how I couldn’t walk, how I can no longer go through Paris, how there were no buses running when I needed to leave etc etc.

It all resolved itself with them saying that they will arrange a few appointments for me in 3 months time and they would like me to attend.

We shall see.

It was a different Day Centre to the usual one. It was quite a hike as well so they stuck me in a wheelchair and sent for someone to push me. I had to wait about half an hour for someone to come and then we set off on our marathon hike.

At the Day Centre I had another long wait until a comfy chair liberated itself and then an even longer wait for the blood to arrive from the central repository. They found me some food and a few cups of coffee while I was waiting so it wasn’t all despair.

Everything took so long to organise that it was almost 18:30 when I finally left. Too late to go to the chemist to redeem my prescriptions and too late to go to pick up the spices from the Asian warehouse. Instead, I caught a bus back to town.

On the way back to the hotel I popped into the supermarket down the road and bought some bread and tomatoes. It’s going to be another long day tomorrow on the road and I’ll need some supplies.

And then I borrowed a knife from the restaurant and made some sandwiches here for the journey back home.

There’s a fritkot around the corner from here and you can’t come to Belgium and not have your supply of fritjes so I went down there later on and had my fritjes with some vegan loempjes that they had. One thing about being in Leuven is that with so many students here there’s a good range of vegetarian and vegan food.

So an early start tomorrow, probably without breakfast because they don’t start serving it until 07:00 and I’ll be leaving Brussels on the bus at 08:20 so I need to get a move on.

Wednesday 1st March 2023 – THAT WAS A …

… loooooooooooooooooooong day today.

14 hours I was on the road in total, give or take a few minutes. I left my home at about 07:10 and arrived in Leuven at just about 21:00.

Yes, I’m in Leuven. I’ve heard nothing from the heart people and nothing from the people who are dealing with my cancer, but regardless, the kidney people contacted me for an appointment.

Not that I’m all that bothered, because as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, after the events of October and November I’m pretty-much resigned to the inevitable, but I was interested in seeing, as well as I could, how I could cope with the travelling.

And so having gone to bed rather early last night, I was up with the lark at 06:00 and made some sandwiches and so on, and did a little organising.

Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone last night. My mother was a policewoman last night. She was interrogating a suspect or witness or something similar but was doing it at home. This was dragging on into the night and we as kids couldn’t go to sleep. In the end there was no real point going to bed so we were just sitting up waiting for her to finish. But it just went on and on. We’d go in regularly to ask how she was doing. She said that she wasn’t ready yet. We’d go in to pick a banana or something to eat. In the end one of my sisters went in. My mother said quite sharply that it wasn’t going to be finished before 05:00. This was the final straw as far as we were concerned. That was a ridiculous time for children to be still up and about waiting for their mother to finish her work.

This dream continued later on. We were crying out for toilet paper or tissues etc. Some guy came into the apartment where we were living with his arms full of rolls of toilet paper and just dumped it on the floor in one of the rooms and then left. We kids had to go in there to sort out what he’s just brought and check what we had then organise the bathroom with it.

Plus tard nous avons eu l’idée de reintégrer le chasson dans la famille qu’on a du faire alors le chef s’est adapté assez rapidement et le chat de la famille est poussé en dehos du groupe alors celà a provoqué une investigation comment on a fait commencer et c’est à ce moment-là qu’on a eu la série de la pied d’entre nous

So, a dream in French yet again. And I haven’t translated it because it’s total nonsense that makes no sense whatsoever.

Just after 07:00 I headed for the hills and Caliburn and we drove to the station where I was lucky enough to find a parking space almost right outside the door.

When the train came in, I headed off in the direction of Rennes, but only as far as Avranches where I alighted. Public transport is so messed up here that you end up going all round the Wrekin to get anywhere.

The bus came in at 08:55 and we drove through the snow (yes, the snow!) and ended up in Caen where we had a half-hour wait for the next bus. This was packed to the gunwhales but I found a seat eventually and we roared off to the big underground bus station at Bercy in Paris.

This time a wait of 45 minutes before the next bus came in. This was likewise packed but the driver made sure that I had a comfortable place by the door. We called at the airport and then all the way to Brussels, making a stop at a service station where I grabbed a coffee.

Stuck in the traffic for ages, we eventually arrived in Brussels rather later than planned so I’d missed the train that I wanted and had to catch a later train. The escalator up to the platform wasn’t working so I had a long walk to find the lift.

The train was a push-me-pull-you double-decker and climbing into these proved to be quite difficult as the steps in are quite high. I had quite a bit of difficulty and it was extremely awkward.

Having eaten my sandwiches on the way to Paris, I tucked into my potatoes and lentils on the train and that was a really good plan because they went down a treat.

Leaving the train at Leuven was difficult too but I managed in the end.

The hotel where I’m staying must have been wonderful 100 years ago. It’s certainly seen better days. It’s not one of my usual haunts but it’s right outside the railway station so I don’t have far to stagger. It’s expensive too, hence I’m only staying for two nights and coming home on Friday.

And the verdict?

It’s quite difficult and I’m glad that I did bring two crutches, not just one. When things are on the level I’m fine and I could in theory go for miles but carrying a backpack up hills and steps is quite complicated and I have real difficulty trying to carry a coffee cup too.

At one point I was thinking that I might be ready for another adventure with backpack and airline ticket but having done all this today, maybe I’ll leave it a while before making more plans.

But I got here, and that’s a miracle in itself

Tuesday 28th February 2023 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… there wasn’t anything on the dictaphone from last night.

It wasn’t a particularly comfortable, restful night either from what I remembered. I was tossing and turning around trying to go to sleep for quite a while.

Nevertheless it was a struggle for me to leave the bed this morning, not because I was tired (although I was) but I had quite a dizzy spell and I had to sit down for five minutes to recover.

Once I’d organised myself I spent the morning revising the Welsh ready for my lesson. And to my surprise the lesson passed really well and I was quite pleased with how it went. I wish that they all would be like that.

After the lesson I had a shower and then had some fruit. I’d had one of my air-fried buns for breakfast, toasted with butter and I do have to say that they really are delicious. This batch was slightly lighter than the previous and the air fryer has baked them to perfection.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I’m impressed with my air fryer and it has to be one of my better purchases. I’m tempted – if I can find a cake tin that will fit comfortably in it – to have a go at baking a cake. That should be an interesting experiment, make no mistake.

The rest of the day has been spent selecting the music for the next batch of radio programmes and they are all paired off now. All I need to do it to write the notes, although I’m not quite sure when I’m going to find the time to do that within the next few days.

The physiotherapist came round in the middle of all that. He was impressed when I told him that I’d clambered in and out of the bath earlier today as if there was nothing wrong with me at all, and that for the last two days I’ve been walking around the apartment without my crutches.

In fact, there has been such an improvement with my mobility that I was thinking about going away tomorrow with just one crutch, not the two, but the physiotherapist advised me against it.

However, picking myself up from the sofa, I had another dizzy spell and it was quite uncomfortable. I’m not sure what’s happening here but it’s something that concerns me.

Tea was a taco roll of course; but while I was eating it I was cooking a saucepan of potatoes, lentils and tinned veg. It’s thickened with oats and it’s now in a container ready for me to carry away with me tomorrow to eat in the evening.

So now I’m off to bed nice and early. I have an 06:00 start in the morning and it’s going to be a really long day. I need to be on form.

Monday 27th February 2023 – IT DIDN’T TAKE …

… long for me to finish off the two radio programmes this morning. They were all done and finished and up and running before 09:00.

And had I been more determined than I was, I might even have had them finished well before that too but I wasn’t in very much of a hurry today. I could afford to take it easy.

It had been another bizarre night too. In bed nice and early as is my wont on a Sunday evening but once more it took an age to go off to sleep.

When I finally did, it was another quite mobile night, as I discovered later in the morning when I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I was with someone, although I don’t know who it was. It wasn’t anyone significant though. A bow and arrow set belong to one of my siblings had come into our possession. We’d been out one night playing around with it. We were rubbish because it wasn’t as easy as it might sound. We’d spent a whole night trying to improve our performance but to no avail. In the end we gave it up. Next morning the messenger from work was away so they asked me if I’d run the deliveries between the various offices in Crewe. I worked out where I needed to go and set off on foot. For the final one which was quite a distance away from the others I ran all the way. I femt so much better having done that. Having dropped off what I had to drop off I was back at the house of my sister and her husband which was very close to Crewe town centre in Tollitt Street. I went round the back and gave back the bow and arrow. We were discussing this and my brother came in. He asked in a menacing tone if I’d brought everything back. I told him that I had and I told them all that they aren’t going to find this easy. If they are going out looking for good results quite quickly they are going to be very disappointed.

Later on I was round at the house of one of the people for whom I used to drive coaches. We were chatting in general about the employees. I was saying that it was a good job that all the employees whome he had were nice and friendly. He quoted the name of someone and said “he’s not. He’ll have his face pumped in by some passenger or other before much longer” which made me wonder why he kept on employing him. It turned out to be my father. I was reading a pile of old local newspapers. Some of the stories were extremely interesting to say the least. We were chatting about a couple of them. I was then thinking that maybe it’s time for me to go home as I have to be at work at 06:00 but time was drifting on and I was still lounging around there not doing anything thinking that at this rate I could see myself staying sleeping on his sofa and going away from here straight into work so I really ought to make a move to go home but I just couldn’t summon up the energy to be gone

And then I arrived in Brussels. I was changing trains to go on somewhere else. I had to wait the night so I tried to find a hotel. The first 3 or 4 that I tried had no room. I couldn’t go very far because of course I wasn’t very mobile with my suitcase. One hotel receptionist rang round 3 or 4 different hotels for me. She couldn’t find a room. She made it quite clear that that was all that she would do for me. I replied “right, I’d better go and find a railway arch”. Then I couldn’t find my suitcase. I started to search around the foyer of this hotel among all these people who were there but I couldn’t find it at all. I awoke in the middle of having a panic attack and that was quite uncomfortable. It was actually quite realistic

What else I’ve been doing is something that I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while. I don’t use my 3D program anything like as much as I used to and I’ve probably forgotten a lot of things that I knew how to do. But while I was looking for something else I came across a new image-editing program that’s freeware.

It’s used by the 3D programmers for editing objects because of its good transparency add-ons. I use Paint Shop Pro and have done for almost 30 years but it has its shortcomings when green-screening so I’ve been itching to try something that might work better. Consequently I downloaded this program and I’ve been playing around with it today to try to make it work.

It’s actually quite complicated and the layout and instructions aren’t logical. I found a tutorial but it’s for an older version and the interface is different and doesn’t relate to the version that I downloaded. So I’ll have to continue and see if I can figure it out as I go along

As well as that, I’ve made arrangements for my little trip out on Wednesday – booking my travelling arrangements. Coming back on Friday isn’t easy because there’s not very much time at a connection and if we arrive late I’ll miss it. So i’m not booking the second part of my return until I actually arrive.

And then there’s the music for the next couple of radio programmes. I’m starting to run low on opening tracks and ending tracks now, being at Programme 202, so it takes a while to sort them out. And then I have to make a running time of about 48’30” with 10 tracks and that’s not as easy as it sounds either.

It’s quite an art form to do it properly and it certainly keeps my brain ticking over. That’s quite important with advancing age. I’m within touching distance of my three score years and ten and my brain will seize up if I stop using it.

Tea tonight was one of the best stuffed peppers that I’ve ever made. The stuffing was delicious and the pepper was cooked to perfection. There’s not much stuffing left because after all I won’t be here on Wednesday night for my leftover curry. Wednesday night’s tea will be potatoes and lentils with peas and carrots out of a tupperware-type bowl.

So now I’ll hunt down some more music and then I’ll be off to bed. I’ve a Welsh lesson tomorrow so I need to be on form. As well as the usual preparation there are piles of words that I’ve picked up from the football matches over the last couple of weeks that I need to learn There’s no point watching the football if I’m not going to learn anything.

That’s how I started to learn Flemish when I moved to Belgium in 1992, and I’m not alone in this idea. A woman I know has a daughter who is just 11 and a big football fan. These days she’s only allowed to watch football on the TV if she watches it in a foreign language and she has to take a list of new words to show her mother at the end of every game.

It’s catching.

Sunday 26th Fenruary 2023 – TODAY REALLY SHOULD …

… have been a day off for me but instead, I’ve been working.

In fact I’ve been quite busy, what with one thing or another. Probably even busier than I might be on a normal working day.

It started off quite early too. I was wide awake at 09:00 and try as I might, I coudn’t go back to sleep. By the time it reached 09:30 I had given it up as a bad job and raised myself from the dead.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages I didn’t do too much while I slowly came round into the land of the living. And once I was wide-awake, whenever that might have been, I started work.

First thing that I did was to have a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was back at the time when Nerina and I were still together, but you don’t really want to know about what the dream was about because you are probably eating your tea right now and it’s not the moment.

But later on, Deana, my friend from Norway, was in the UK so I’d sent her a message to invite her to come round to see me while she was here. She said that she might do in the afternoon. Another one of my friends, who might have been Sue said that she might call round so I had a shower. before I dressed I fell asleep on the chair. I awoke with a jolt about 13:45, realised that I wasn’t dressed and had to scamper around to find some clothes. The first few that I found didn’t fit me so I thought that I’d fit a few of Nerina’s but I couldn’t find her clothes. Eventually I found one or two that were discarded in the bedroom. There was a cake in the bedroom as well and we had 2 cats that were asleep on the tray next to the cake. Eventually I found my clothes. I picked them up and looked at the time. It was 14:00. I thought that they should have been here by now. Then I noticed that I’d left the phone upstairs while I’d been asleep for all this time. There was a different screen on the phone which was one of the ancient Nokias that I used to have. I picked up the phone and tried to get back to the home screen to see if there were any missed calls but I couldn’t find my way back to the home screen.

A short while later I stepped back into that dream. I was trying to take some clothes from the tumble drier but they were still rather damp. While I was doing it, Nerina turned up. She’d been at work and had come out with some story about how she had to go to Blackpool to help someone recover a car. Of course I didn’t believe it for a minute. Then she tolld me about something that she had to do on Friday lunchtime at work. I knew that she had to go out to buy her chips but she came out with some other story about going somewhere else. Again, I wasn’t too sure about this at all. She came in and Tuppence (the old black cat that I used to have in the 1980s) came running downstairs and looked as if she wanted to go out. As I went to open the door she somehow jumped off the wall and managed to open the door herself and went out. Nerina said that that’s not a surprise if she’s been in here all day asleep

Did I dictate the second part of this dream about Nerina or did I dream it again after I’d fallen asleep yet again because I awoke in the middle of that part of the dream again.

Finally I was with a former friend and someone else, a girl, tramping through the streets of Stoke on Trent. She was talking about some plans she had. I was interested to find out what it was but she was very coy and kept them to herself for a while. Right at the end we were sitting on this hill overlooking Stoke on Trent with all these weeds and everything lying around which had once been a row of terraced houses. Then she told me that she was thinking about having some kind of plan or project for the kids of Stoke on Trent who had been disadvantaged. Would I like to help her? I said yes, i’d quite happily help her If that’s what she wants. I went off with my friend then, walking through these really shabby, rough streets in the place. Some woman then appeared to disrupt us. She came in and started to talk about changing the purple carpet in her house etc

And as I said, there was much more to it than all of this. It was one of those nights that was really turbulent and disturbing. You really don’t want to know any more about it.

For the rest of the day, the primary task has been to deal with the notes of the radio programme that I dictated last night before going to bed. And not only are they now uploaded and edited, I’ve even assembled both the radio programmes. All that’s now required are the final tracks and the speeches to go with them and that shouldn’t take too long.

Ingrid phoned me too and we had a lengthy chat about all kinds of things. She’s still having her health issues so it’s unlikely that I’ll ever see her up here in Granville, but it is nice to have a chat and keep in touch.

Another thing that I’ve done is to bake four bread rolls. As far as the general consistency and baking goes, the air fryer has done a tremendous job and I’m impressed. But the rolls have come out like balls and that will make it difficult for me to toast them or to make some sandwiches.

In the future I’m probably going to be as well making a large loaf rather than small individual rolls but I’ve no complaint about how the air fryer is working.

After I’d had lunch I’d taken some pizza dough – the last one of the batch – out of the freezer and it had been defrosting. Later on I kneaded it and rolled it out onto the pizza tray. At teatime I assembled my pizza and baked it, in the traditional oven. It was one of the best that I’d made as well and I’ll make a few more like that.

So now I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’ll finish off my radio programmes and then sort out my travel arrangements for later in the week. I configured the apps that I’d downloaded onto my mobile phone the other day so I could do a few things already and it won’t take me long to finish all of that off.

And then we’ll see how we go. Travelling on crutches is going to be quite exciting.

Saturday 25th February 2023 – NOBODY WAS …

… more surprised than me to wake up this morning, bolt-upright, at 07:22. 8 minutes before the alarm went off.

For a change, I’d had a decent night’s sleep. I’d gone to bed at something like a reasonable time and apart from taking a while to go off to sleep, I can’t remember anything at all about the night.

And that’s a big disappointment because one of my favourite visitors came to see me last night. or, more exactly, I went to see her. I went round to Stoke on Trent to see Zero and her parents. They were all there still in bed in their bedrooms so I went up to see them. We had a chat and they all slowly got up out of bed. They talked about going off to a holiday camp sometime in August and asked me if I wanted to go with them. Of course I said “yes”. There was someone else there as well who talked about going somewhere exotic. I said “if you’re thinking of going to North America, go from Casablanca to Montreal because it’s beautiful” remembering the trip that I did a few years ago. A bird flew into the window and later one of the cats was hunting it. I went to grab it but missed. It flew straight past Zero who caught it. She went to put it out of the window. As she opened out her hand it flew back in again so we had to hunt it down again. She stuck her tongue out at me playfully so I scratched the top of her head with my hand like a crane basket. She carried on hunting for this bird.

Fancy missing out on an evening with Zero. You couldn’t make it up.

That flight that I mentioned was quite a good flight. It was when I came back from my encounter with Castor (who has been missing from these pages for far too long in recent times) on board THAT BOEING 787 DREAMLINER. I had no idea of when (if ever) I would be likely to return.

Having gone from Europe to the Far North of High Arctic Canada on board a ship I hadn’t booked a return flight of course, so when I finally decided that maybe I ought to go home, the prices of direct flights were completely out of my pocket so I had to negotiate for a reasonable price. That brought me to Brussels via Casablanca with Air Maroc and I didn’t regret my choice for a minute.

But I shan’t be going back to the High Arctic any time soon. I’ve spent all my mad money on buying this apartment and that will be that for a considerable while.

It wasn’t all that i spent either. I had a rather hectic morning.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages I went out to the shops. First of all, I called at Noz where I was in luck. They had some vegan nuggets, rather like chicken nuggets. 2 different varieties so i stocked up with a couple of boxes of each and they are in the freezer now.

They also had one of these silicone baking moulds that I like. I have a few of them for different things, but this one is cake-sized and I don’t have one of those. When I finally move and have a real oven, I shall put that to use. It will be better than trying to bake in a pyrex casserole dish.

At Leclerc, I struck lucky.

When I’d been there a couple of weeks ago I’d found a lump of vegan cheese and thought that that was lucky. Today though, they had slices of vegan cheese and also some grated vegan cheese. It looks very much as if Leclerc is slowly dragging itself into the 21st Century. I bought some of each because, as I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I have to encourage these places to stock more vegan food.

Back here as I was struggling up the stairs with some shopping I fell in with a couple of neighbours and we had a good chat about not very much at all. I have to be sociable, I suppose, and keep on good terms with my neighbours, even if I don’t feel much like it. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m not what you would call a sociable person.

Having put away as much as I could, we’re now back to the situation of no room in the freezer and no room in the fridge either. I bought plenty of other stuff and I’m not going to miss out on buying the burgers that I like at €1:99 for two with a second packet of two at just €0:67

Just after lunch we had football on the internet. TNS v Penybont. TNS took an early lead and missed a couple of sitters. And that was something that they came to regret as Penybont equalised laste in the game from a penalty. And we had the unusual situation of a referee being substituted. That was quite a swelling that the had on his left ankle.

This afternoon I finished off the notes for the radio programmes and i’ll be dictating them tonight before I go to bed. With the Carnavalers having mostly all gone home, it’s much quieter outside now so there’s not as much danger of being disturbed and having to redictate everything. It’s pretty depressing when you have to do that.

Cooking the potatoes in the air fryer worked really well and I’ll have to remember that for the future. It’s not a practical proposition if I’m cooking veg but if I’m having a salad or something like that it’s ideal.

But anyway, that’s all that I’ll be doing today. Tomorrow is a day off but I need to bake some bread rolls. I’m hitting the road on Wednesday for a couple of days so I’ll need something for breakfast on Monday and Tuesday and then something to make some sandwiches for my journey

it looks as if I’ll have to have the air fryer out again.

Friday 24th February 2023 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY …

… to me.

Another year older and deeper in debt. But there are many people, myself included, who didn’ think that I would ever reach this point, what with one thing and another, and there are many people who help to ake that happen as well, so I can’t complain.

Still alive, but not kicking, although if the muscles in my legs continue to improve, then who knows? I might be kicking yet!

A further night last night where I don’t remember too much. Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone though so I must have been off some lengthy travels here and there. I started off playing in the Welsh Premier Football League. I was bewildered because a club had suddenly disappeared from the league table right at the start of the season. I’d not heard whether it had closed down or what had happened. We were on the car park playing football when a pushchair that people had been using as a football came rolling across the car park. I ran up the hill to try to intercept it. I realised that it wasn’t coming near me so I had to run faster to try to catch it. I realised that I wasn’t going to catch it but then it came up against the kerb. I thought that it would hit the kerb and bounce back in which case I could catch it quite easily. Instead it hit the kerb, went up over it and carried on round in a big wide arc round almost to where I’d been right at the very start of this. If I’d stayed still I would have been able to catch it with ease.

And then I was with 2 other people last night, 2 women. All 3 of us were broke. We ended up at some kind of factory that was run very much on Victorian lines doing hand sewing. We all went in, found a place and blagged ourselves something to do. It was quite clear that we didn’t have a clue what was happening. We sewed something but didn’t know whether it was right or not. Then there was a break while they had to fix a machine that had broken down. The they told us that we would all have to sew “Article C”. Someone pointed me in the direction of where to go for the lace. Someone pointed me in the direction of where to go for the plans. I had to wander down to the front like being in an old Victorian school and collect everything. I wasn’t sure that I had everything and I wasn’t sure that the plans would tell me what to do anyway. I went back to the bench where I’d been sitting with my 2 friends to start to hand out the stuff. It was all very much like a Victorian sweat shop kind of thing, one of the worst ones. At least everything was quite clear as to what time you worked, how you were paid, when and what you were paid etc.

Later on, it was Christmas. We were all finishing work for the holidays. I’d collected up a pile of stuff and been round wishing everyone a happy Christmas then walked out of the building onto the car park. A few jaws dropped to see me walk to Caliburn and put my stuff on board him. By the time that I waslked round to the other side it was the Opel Omega that I used to have. I found that I’d left the door open when I’d gone into work that morning – unlocked anyway. I got in and started up ready to go. There was another Opel parked next to me with a couple of girls in it. That was all iced up. They saw me about to leave. One of them said “I’ll just make sure that the Opel starts before I go”. She started the car and it fired straight away. I said “yes, they are good cars, these Opels”. We had a little chat about how good Opels were compared to Mercedes. Then I pulled away from the office and had to wait a few minutes to move into the traffic so that I could leave the area

Finally, I went out in Caliburn to go to the ferry terminal. I pulled up on the car park there. There was a van there of someone who was lodging with us. He was doing some work somewhere. I went inside the ferry terminal which was in fact a supermarket. There were piles of fruit and veg everywhere, even growing cucumbers on vines in there. There was someone cutting the cucumbers off to sell them. There was a fountain inside the supermarket with probably about a dozen kids jumping up and down in the water in the fountain.

After the medication, mails and medication, I did nothing at all for much of the rest of the day. I’d decided that I was going to have a day off and relax, and sure enough I did, at least for quite a while.

But I couldn’t keep it up. There were some sound files from the days when I was digitalising my record collection and they needed breaking up.

Most of them had been done a year or two ago but some were pretty obscure and finding a track list that actually corresponded with what I had (because studio recordings are done in recording order, not album order) has been difficult. The fire at Universal Studios that destroyed tons of paperwork didn’t help matters very much.

However, over the passage of time more stuff has become available and I could break down a few more from my list, although one of them, the “lost” Traffic album that I have, took some detective work to unravel.

There’s still one by Joe Walsh’s mate Dan Fogelberg that has defeated just about everyone because what I have corresponds to absolutely nothing at all, and there are still a few that I’ve yet to track down.

When I was in Canada I bought a few bags of those vegan wine gums that they sell at Atlantic Superstores and I treated myself to a bag. But as luck would have it, there were only three of my favourite black ones in the bag. I’m definitely having a few First World problems here.

Tea was veggie balls and chips, all done in the air fryer, and a lovely salad. Another nice meal, jjust to prove to the world that my air fryer really IS doing the business. It should be really interesting tomorrow when I have a go at doing some baked potatoes in there. I have some high hopes about that.

And a couple of people who read my notes have sent me some suggestions about vegan sausage mix, one of which happens to involve the bag of chestnuts that she gave me a while ago. We might actually be onto something here.

Tomorrow morning I’ll have to have a look to see what I need. I’m off to the shops first thing and I’ll call in at Noz on my way round because there’s room in the freezer if I see anything there on offer and I’m running low on my Sunday evening alcohol-free beer.

Time to start thinking about building up the supplies again.

Thursday 23rd February 2023 – MY TEA TONIGHT …

… was absolutely delicious.

When I was making my plans earlier today, I wasn’t sure what I fancied for tea. You might not believe this but the freezer is actually emptying at the moment and I’m going to have to start to think about food much more than I do.

So while I was examining the contents of the freezer I came across that bag of miniature vegan sausage rolls that I opened a couple of weeks ago. That seemed like a good plan

In a fit of mad recklessness I decided to cook them in the air fryer. and to my surprise they worked perfectly. That was really good and they were delicious. I shall have to remember that.

But this got me thinking, and that’s always dangerous.

Firstly, why don’t I try to track down a good recipe for making vegan sausage stuffing? I can make a vegan stuffing right enough – I do that regularly for my stuffed peppers but it’s not the same kind of stuffing. I need to make it more savoury. Making puff or flaky pastry is extremely difficult but I can buy it on rolls from the supermarket.

Secondly, why didn’t I cook the potatoes in the air fryer too? That idea didn’t occur to me until just now so I had a look on the internet and found that it’s straightforward enough. Not as quick as in the microwave but much quicker than in the oven and I bet they will be tasty. And if I can find some grated vegan cheese that would be even nicer.

It’s chips for tea tomorrow with veggie balls and salad, so I might have a go with potatoes in the air fryer for Saturday’s tea and see how that works.

What else might have seemed at first to be good news was that I actually had a really good night’s sleep. It did take me an absolute age to go off to sleep, as seems to be par for the course, but I don’t remember anything else at all until the alarm went off at 07:30. And even then it was quite a struggle to leave the bed before the second alarm went off.

Some stuff on the dictaphone too. It was the last day of school for the year. We were all being dismissed for the summer. We’d all been handed some prize or something like that. The intelligent kids had received their prizes first and they had gone down the order from there. I was one of the first outside with a couple of my friends. We were waiting outside when everyone else came out. Some people in this dream I recognised and some names I knew in real life from school but others I didn’t recognise or didn’t know. The funny thing was that no-one actually spoke to us. They just walked down the steps outside the front door and across the street where everyone was congregating. Then the next people leaving came out. No-one said anything, no-one came up with anything at all.

And that really was it. Nothing like the marathon journeys of just recently. Mind you, although I didn’t take down anything I have a vague feeling of going for a long stagger during the night but by the time that I returned I was walking normally and quite quickly as if the walk had really done me a lot of good. It would be nice if that ever were to come true.

This morning I finished off the notes for the radio programme that I’ll be preparing and then throughout the rest of the day I made a start on the notes for the next one.

This involved quite a bit of research and took some time too because a couple of the groups will be making their debuts in my radio programmes and very little is actually known about one or two of them so I had to hunt down the information. It was as well that I did because I found a couple of strange facts and connections about one or two groups and I also found out something rather bizarre about a hit song of the 70s.

However, you lot will have to wait a good few months before you get to find out about my discoveries.

The physiotherapist came round this afternoon, earlier than planned and he caught me unawares. And it’s a good job that he didn’t come round even earlier because despite my better night’s sleep, I’d crashed out again in the early afternoon and was well away with the fairies for an hour or so.

Anyway, this afternoon the physiotherapist has been helping me walk with a weight on my back. I’m going on my travels, would you believe, at the end of next week for a couple of days and I need to take some stuff with me. It’ll be a novel experience and I’ll need all the help that I can get and after all, that’s why the physiotherapist is here – to help me out in my day-to-day tasks.

As I mentioned earlier, tea was delicious tonight and I’ll do that again with the air fryer. As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I’m impressed with that air fryer and I ought to experiment more with it.

Tomorrow I’m going to have a day off. I have something to celebrate so I’m going to have a day of doing nothing at all except what I want to do. I ought to spoil myself more often, I reckon, but it’s difficult to do that when I have so much to do.

One of these days I’ll have to make a start at catching up with my arrears.

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 – MY LEFTOVER CURRY …

… was delicious tonight. And plenty of it too. There was quite a backlog of food building up in the fridge that needed to be eaten and if I were honest, I needn’t really have added in a small potato to lengthen it

In fact, I’ve had plenty to eat today. The other home-made bun from the weekend, just as delicious as the first one on Monday. And then at lunchtime some soup from the container that I’d opened yesterday.

This afternoon I was invited out for a drink by the President of the Residents’ Committee of the building, at which there were a few nibbles, and then my curry tonight.

Being invited out by the President was interesting because even though the final act of purchase of the apartment downstairs hasn’t been signed, it seems that I’ve already been accepted into the inner circle.

Several of the apartments are rented out, several more are second residences so there aren’t too many that are full-time owner occupiers. What cheers up the people here is that the apartment that I’m buying will revert from a tenanted apartment to an owner-occupied apartment and that’s a rare reversal of fortunes for a modern seaside resort.

There are far too many apartments being sold out of private stock and into holiday accommodation and that’s killing so many coastal towns, and that’s mainly due to these casual letting websites that are now being swamped by exploitive casual racketeers.

But that’s a subject for another time. I’m much more interested in what happened last night. And there was quite a lot too because it was yet another night where I didn’t have a great deal of sleep, lying there tossing and turning and hoping that I would drop off at some time.

And I must have done too because there were plenty of travels that must have kept me busy. There was an aeroplane that had a pilot and a small crew on board. For some unknown reason the aeroplane started to dive forward towards the ground. Someone went into the cockpit and found that the pilot was asleep. They awoke him and he carried on flying. The exact same thing happened again. He’d fallen asleep again. The third time when they were trying to shake him awake they found that there was some kind of insect in the cabin. For some reason or other this insect had a power to put people to sleep. They managed to trap this insect and remove it from the cabin. From then on the flight proceeded quite normally just as it should without any problem.

And then there was someone in Jersey who had an agricultural business but had lost it for one reason or another. He had problems with the new purchaser or operator of the business and the business reverted back to him. He was obliged to carry on. I can’t remember any more about this now.

Someone wanted a change of room last night in a hotel or something and insisted on seeing the manager. What had happened was that there were some roadworks on the main road and the traffic had been diverted down a diversion which just happened to go past the front of the hotel which of course would keep everyone awake at night. There was nothing that the proprietor of the hotel could do about it obviously but he received all the blame for what was happening.

Later on I’d been to Shavington, Vine Tree Avenue, to visit my old house where I lived. When I left I was being watched all the way up the street while something was happening. I thought that the easiest way to do this was to nip in via a neighbour’s house and over the fence into the back and disappear that way. In the end I ended up knocking at the door of this neighbour. She was absolutely delighted and invited me in. Of course it was someone whom I didn’t really like and with whom I didn’t really get on but she was there making me welcome. We talked about bees and honey etc. She fetched her husband and phoned her children to say that I’d come round. I could see that rather than having just gone this way for a short cut I’d be here for a week if I wasn’t careful. I just couldn’t find a way of breaking off this meeting and leaving. Interestingly the names of the children weren’t the names of the children in real life. They were different.

Interestingly, when I lived in Shavington there were two families that were rather infamous for their lack of personal hygene and social niceties. And during the night I managed to find the address of one of them that was being occupied by the other.

At another point during the night a girl was presumed hanged herself or being untied by this snake during the song “Delilah”. The snake was slowly reaching its grasp. It looked as if there was going to be miles of arm of this snake left over by the time the snake had finished doing what it was intended to do with her. And if you can make any sense of what that was all about then please let me know because I don’t have a clue.

But when the alarm went off this morning I was having a cup of coffee. Not a real cup of coffee but a virtual one. I was actually back home. My mother had had to go to the shops for something or other. We kids had to get up. I was there with 2 of my siblings. We were looking at some notices that were plastered everywhere about words that we no longer used in everyday conversation. There was something about if Belgium and Italy elect Socialist governments this weekend it will be a first. Things like that. I didn’t have a chance to find out what was going on about it because the alarm went off.

Hardly a surprise that I was totally exhausted after all of that.

After the medication and checking the mails and messages I rounded up the music for another radio programme that I’ll be preparing at some point. I don’t want to get too far ahead with the text of the programme because, as I’m finding out these days, more and more of the artists featured in my programmes are shuffling off this mortal coil and playing in that great gig in the sky which means that I have to keep on amending my programmes.

On the other hand, I need to keep some programmes all written up and ready. They came in handy when I was in hospital last autumn and there’s always the possibility that I’ll be in there again.

There was a pause for my lovely toasted bun, and another pause for the soup at lunchtime. In between, I tidied up a little here and there around the apartment ready for when the cleaner came. I also cut my hair and had a shower. I can climb so much easier into the bath these days so the physiotherapy is obviously working.

This afternoon while the cleaner was here I wrote up a few notes for the programme that I’ll be preparing on Monday and I’ll be doing the rest at some time in the near future. If I’m lucky I might even have the programme done before Monday too and then I can have a day off.

So having been entertained and having eaten my curry I’m off to bed for an early night. I need it too after the events of the last few days. Every now and again I go through these phases of having some really bad nights and by the looks of things I’m in the middle of another one.

Perhaps I ought to go out and about for a walk more often and get some exercise. Then I might be tired enough to go to sleep.

Tuesday 21st February 2023 – MY VEGAN PANCAKES …

… worked really well today and I was impressed with how they turned out.

They weren’t as tasty as I would have liked. They could have done with more sugar and vanilla seasoning than I put in them and perhaps something more than brown sugar and soya cream to liven them up but there was nothing whatever wrong with the principle and the consistency.

The actual making of them and how they turn out was as close to perfect as I could make them and so I am not in the least downhearted. Quite the reverse in fact and I’ll remember this for another time.

But after the events of last night I’m considerably downhearted because it was yet another miserable night and I took a whole age to go off to sleep. I didn’t go all that far on my travels either so I can’t understand why I was so tired this morning.

Mind you, I was awake long before the alarm went off and at 07:30 when the alarm went off I was actually up and about, not having been able to go back to sleep.

After the medication it took me a while to gather my wits together and then I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was on board a British warship last night. We’d engaged the enemy and been badly shot up. It was clear to everyone that we were sinking. Although the Germans had stopped firing at us – we thought that the Germans had enough problems of their own – we suddenly realised that the ship had been at rest for 10 minutes or so. The captain was furious. If he had known that he would have ordered an evacuation and we could all have taken to the boats. We wouldn’t have been in this pretty helpless situation. Eventually another ship turned up to rescue us and the boat. It managed to takt hold of the boat by passing a cable through a couple of the portholes and through the portholes of its own ship so that it would hold the hulk of our ship upright and could then sail away. When we were back on dry land there was some important material that needed moving. I was detailed with someone else. It was all in this huge holdall that the 2 of us had to carry. Of course I couldn’t carry it down the steps because my legs weren’t strong enough. I had to insist to the guy with me that we dropped it on the floor step by step so that I could go down. When I was on the lower step pull the bag down one stair behind us. He didn’t quite understand and I was in agony going down these stairs. As we got onto the pavement an ancient Japanese pickup pulled up, as rotten as a pear in purple. Someone said that someone called Dickinson was driving it. We couldn’t work out what he wanted and why he’d stopped right alongside our house where we were with this huge holdall. That was where we’d need to put our car so we could put this holdall in it and drive away. We wondered what he was doing and why he was doing it.

Later on I made a start on my pancakes. It took a while to make them because I was careful to sieve the flour to eliminate the lumps and to mix up the sodium bicarbonate. With 150 grammes of flour and 200 ml of soya milk together with all of the other bits and pieces it made 4 reasonably-sized pancakes so that filled a little hole in my stomach.

The rest of the day has been spent choosing the music for future radio programmes. Not that I’ll be preparing them this week but I’ve decided that I want to work on having a stock of music ready for whenever it’s going to be necessary.

No physiotherapist today because of Carnaval so I’ve had the afternoon off. and I’ve been doing something that I haven’t done for years, and that is to play around with a bit of greenscreening – superimposing images onto backgrounds. I’m not very good at it because my hands aren’t steady enough but occasionally one works out and they look quite impressive when they do.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice, and with plenty of stuffing left over there will be a delicious leftover curry tomorrow for tea with all of the stuff that’s hanging around in the fridge.

But that’s tomorrow. Right now though I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I have a bit of tidying up to do because the cleaner will be here and I have to try to make the place look some kind of basically respectable.

And I’ve been invited out for coffee tomorrow afternoon too and that will be quite nice. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall telling me that I need to get out more.

Monday 20th February 2023 – AND IN WHAT IS …

… turning out to be a desperate run of dreadful nights, last night was probably about when I reached the nadir.

Although I was in bed quite early bearing in mind my 06:00 start, there was no possibility of going to sleep.

Hordes of people swarming up and down the street outside at all kinds of hours on their way back to the caravanettes parked on the car parks around here. Even at 05:00 they were still coming back from whatever was going on down in the town.

And when I did manage to go off to sleep at some strange time of night, I went on so many travels that I’m surprised that I ever made it back home again afterwards. A girl from school came to see me last night. I can’t remember who she is now. We were both learning Welsh together. During the lesson she’d been exhibiting photos and writing captions for them. We had a translation to do and our teacher was wondering why it took us so long. I explained to the girl first of all that we have to identify the words and then translate them and then arrange them into some kind of lucid sentence. I showed her 3 or 4 books that I’d bought recently that didn’t seem to help me at all with any grammar or any vocabulary. I remember one that I showed her and said “that was 50p wasted wasn’t it?”. We had a bit of a laugh. She said “I don’t think the teacher understands exactly how difficult it is for non-native speakers to grasp the principles of a foreign language”. I wish that I could remember who she was.

There was someone else at some point trying to import a Moldavian diesel engine for a project that he was building that had been interrupted by the war. He described everything that he had to do, such as take out Moldovan nationality etc. But as I started to dictate this I had the stabbing pains in my foot again so I missed an awful lot of most of what he was saying. I know that it was an incredibly complicated procedure.

This next one was a dream where many students at a school in a class had to find a Will because someone had allegedly died. They found a Will but after investigation it turned out that it didn’t belong to that person at all. There was also a tv remote there that wouldn’t change the television. They found out in the end that it was the wrong remote. There were all kinds of strange things going on about removal and substitution of documents and things. These students turned out the classroom but couldn’t find what they were looking for so they started hunting down through the school. I made a few suggestions. I doubted that the document had been destroyed because it had value other than for what they were trying to use it etc. It was a really weird supernatural kind of dream involving all these children and went on for what seemed like hours while they searched for everything and tried to make sense of what was going on with these substitutions

And later we were back in that dream again. There was something about the discovery of a motorbike in the forest and something to do with the casserole lid off the huge casserole frying pan. I can’t remember what was going on in this second part of the dream very well either.

Then I had a garage somewhere on the Pointe du Roc where the zigzags are that climb up the hill. A little yard on the right where you can park 3 cars. It wasn’t very convenient but that was where I was. In this particular dream i’m left the carpark outside this particular building. There was a police car there dealing with a pedestrian and another vehicle. I went off in the Senator, discussing with someone about the yard, saying that it was very small but it was all that was available etc. When I came back into the car park the policeman was still there but one of these guys was wandering around. I asked him what the policeman was doing. He replied that he was waiting for someone else to come. I was wondering what was happening about this with the policeman being outside our building trying to sort out whatever was happening.

And we’re still going onwards. It was late at night. I had to go to do some shopping. The only place was the petrol station so I did some shopping there, a few bits and pieces. I didn’t think much of the pears. They also had banana bread but it was sold in packs of 10 or 20 loaves which was far too many for me. I collected what I wanted. To check out you had to go to a window and hold up your products while she scanned them. I asked her if she found it extremely difficult, which she did because she was never sure if she’d scanned everything that the customer had. I moaned about the bananas and this bread. In the end I cashed out and started to go home.

Finally I was in my apartment building. It was a completely different building and a completely different apartment than this, much more modern. I had to go down and out again. When I came back I lost my way. I couldn’t remember where the lift was. Eventually I found it and went upstairs. I suddenly remembered that I had Marianne’s apartment that she’d left to me. I’d started to decorate it a while back but had somehow run out of energy. That was still waiting to be worked on. I could be doing that instead of messing around. Then it was the Annual General Meeting of the House Owners’ Association. There had been arguments about people weairing striped shirts and a few other things so there was a huge rebellion at this meeting. Everyone was coming along to overthrow some of the ridiculous rules about what you could and couldn’t do. It was so busy that I put my coffee down on this seat and couldn’t find it again because there were so many people all around. I was chatting to someone about my coffee. They said that I should be careful because I’m likely to be sued if it burns someone. I remember having to go to fetch endless cups of coffee because I was so thirsty. I had about 3 or 4 cups of coffee during this meeting.

How about that lot for a series of nocturnal rambles?

The crowds going past here at 05:00 awoke me (I must have been asleep at that point) and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep. So by the time the alarm went off at 06:00 I was up and about, medicated and working on the radio programmes to finish them off and get them out of the way.

And when I’d finished them I made a start on choosing the music for the next radio programme or two but at some point I dozed off to sleep again, which was no surprise given how much sleep I didn’t have during the night. I was away with the fairies for about an hour or so and I was surprised that it wasn’t for any longer.

However, before I dozed off I managed to have my toast and coffee for a late breakfast. And I do have to say that the break that I baked in the air fryer on Sunday, although it wasn’t as aerated as it might have been, was absolute perfection. The best that I have ever made, I reckon. I was really proud of that.

There’s another bread roll as well but I’ll be having it on Wednesday because tomorrow I’m going to have a bash at making pancakes for breakfast and see how they work out.

So with the music for one programme chosen, remixed and paired off already I turned my attention to the dictaphone notes, and that wasn’t the work of five minutes, as you can tell. It took quite a while to type them all out. But what was interesting was that no-one from my family came to visit me in all of that.

But there again, neither did any of my favourite characters and that’s a disappointment. Still, you can’t have everything. Mind you, I wish that I knew who that girl was. The name “Simpson” rang a bell but I can’t remember any girl with that surname whom I might have known at school.

Tea tonight was another stuffed pepper. Quite delicious as well. I’m getting to be quite good at making the stuffing for these. It was only a small one, so I was rather glad that I’d had some soup with pasta at lunchtime. It had been a very long day today and I was actually quite hungry.

There are a couple of things that I have to do right now and then I’m off to bed. To dream about making pancakes and hoping that they turn out as well as I would like them to.

But before I go to bed, I’ll just leave you with a woman who has just posted in a “Shipping” group on my Social Network that her father worked for Cunard. I replied that my father put a great deal of effort into his work as well.

Sunday 19th February 2023 – CONSIDERING THAT I …

… was supposed to be having a day off today, I haven’t ‘arf been busy. In fact, it’s been one of the most productive days that I’ve had for quite a while.

Yet you wouldn’t think so after having yet another turbulent night when I didn’t seem to have all that much sleep. The fact that I was actually up and about not long after 10:00 (and on a Sunday too) tells you all that you need to know about that.

After I’d had my medication and checked my mails and messages, the first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night, of which there weren’t all that many. We started off with the taxi business last night. We were discussing the people working for us and why they seemed to be sticking to the job instead of going off and doing something more exciting and exhilarating. I mentioned that even 2 more employees were hoping to wangle full-time jobs with us and we couldn’t really understand that because the business didn’t really support it. We had a huge discussion about it. Then we had to go somewhere. We were in a Cortina estate that broke down somewhere. We left it overnight and came back. While Nerina had to go to do something she dropped me off there. It started up straight away so we got into it and set out to drive it back. The roads were very wet and the car didn’t feel at all comfortable on the road. It not long fitted brand-new springs on it so I thought that it would handle much better than it did. That was something of a mystery. There was much more to it than this but I seem to have forgotten a lot of it.

Later on I was driving through rural France somewhere. The roads were extremely difficult. The Cortina estate was going quite well but you would come to these extremely steep hills where the car in front of you would suddenly slow down. You would basically run into the back of it and nudge it along. We’d had 1 or 2 encounters like that. Then I came to a place at the side of the road by an old railway station. It had a couple of motorbike frames outside so I went in. It was a pushbike place and there was a young girl there with a pushbike having her bike serviced by this guy. I apologised for wasting his time but told him that it was the motorbike bits that had caught my eye. He showed me 1 or 2 of the bits and then I went back to the road. I came into a big city somewhere in Alsace. I went to turn up a side street which was extremely steep and the same thing happened again with an Austin A70 saloon that suddenly came to a stop and I pushed it up the hill. I came into a town square where there was this old woman. By now I was on foot. I did the same to her while I was on foot. She had a few things to say so I pretended to ignore her. I was walking up a hill. There was a lorry parked in the road so I had to walk round it. There were crowds of people coming down which stopped me from walking up. I fell down onto my knees and couldn’t pick myself up. When I finally did pick myself up again there were these 2 little boys there. I wanted to go to the toilet but they wanted to follow me. They just wouldn’t leave me alone, pestering me all the time that I was trying to go to the toilet. In the end I abandoned it as a completely bad job and set off on my travels again.

Another thing that I did was to add some new Apps to my telephone.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that recently I changed my phone following the one that I use having a broken charging socket. I resurrected the previous one that I had “lost” and didn’t recover until a few months later. There were some Apps that I had on the old phone that I need to use at some point or other, such as within the next few days for example, so I had to add them on.

This afternoon after food I edited the two dictaphone notes that I’d dictated last night before I went to bed and then in a mad fit of enthusiasm I assembled them into the two radio programmes that I need to make. All that remains to do is to add the final track and the text to bring everything up to one hour each in length.

As well as that, I had another play at baking some bread in the air fryer. And to my surprise, this was the best that I have ever made. My two bread rolls rose up exactly as they should and I’ll be looking forward to eating those, duly toasted and with tons of butter, at some point during the week.

While I was at it, I picked Liz’s brains for a recipe for pancakes. It’s Pancake Tuesday next week and Eric wants to be busy baking. I need to be a little more adventurous with what I cook and try to do a few more things. Certain things, like Hot Cross Buns, are probably a little too complicated and crucial but pancakes are quite simple and straightforward and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t have a go.

And I have plenty of vegan soya cream too. That should be delicious.

After I’d finished my lunch earlier I’d taken some pizza dough out of the freezer and had left it to defrost. Later on I gave it a good kneading and rolled it out onto my pizza tray. When it had finished rising I assembled my pizza and it really was delicious today, one of the best that I’ve made.

A problem that I encountered today was this question of transferring money. apparently the daily limit is only per working day, which means that the money that I transferred yesterday won’t go until Monday and I can’t send off the next lot until Tuesday. That’s going to disrupt my plans but it can’t be helped. They’ll have to give me at least a week’s notice to sign the final purchase so even if they notify me on Monday there will still be plenty of time to finish the transfer.

And no, I didn’t go out today for Carnaval. I saw a few photos of the crowds assembling and that was quite enough for me. Everywhere was absolutely heaving and I had no intention of being swept up with my crutches in a mass of crowd like that. They’ll simply have to do without me.

Saturday 18th February 2023 – THAT FOOTBALL MATCH …

… this afternoon was actually quite entertaining.

Considering that the teams were second-bottom and third-bottom of the table, it was quite a skilful match, all thing being considered and I quite enjoyed watching it.

But you can see why Aberystwyth are struggling down in the basement. Leading 3-1 going into injury time, Pontypridd pulled two late goals back to equalise by the final whistle.

As well as that, midway through the first half they had two gilt-edged chances within a minute to score but one shot went wide and the other one went over the bar. And the first goal that they conceded was the result of a careless error.

It’s stupid things like this that has dragged them into the relegation maelstrom and unless they stiffen up at the back and cut out the silly errors they will be out of the league for the first time since the league was formed in 1992 and that will leave Y Drenewydd as the only ever-present.

While we’re on the subject of dragging … “well, one of us is” – ed … I had a hard time dragging myself out of bed this morning. I’d had a pretty rough night yet again, taking hours to go off to sleep and then going off for quite a few travels that must have disturbed my sleep. I started off at some kind of farm or somewhere like thatg with someone who may have been my father. Someone bought a pile of shopping which had been stacked up outside. We were having to wait until about 20:00 when something would happen or someone would come so we were loitering around outside. I was trying hard to find something to do. In the end I went to put the shopping away but found that my father had beaten me to it. Then I thought that I’d go into the washhouse and see what was happening in there. He said that our sister had her boyfriend in there so maybe it wasn’t a good idea. At that point she opened the door and asked if anyone knew how to fix the little light that was in there. I went in there, trying to figure out what light she meant. She had one of these tea lights inside a glass lantern type of thing. She passed the latches to me. When I opened the box it was smoking so I told her about putting used matches back in the box. It was dangerous. I lit the tea light for her inside this lantern. She’d covered the lantern in black plastic so I told her that that would need to be removed too or it would all melt and make a mess.

The next was, according to what I dictated at the time, a dream that produced one of the best nights that I’ve ever had. I was with a friend from Cheshire. I’d been playing around with my 3D programs. Someone else had come along. It might have been Nerina who was talking about designing dresses etc. I began to tell her about the 3D programs for making 3D objects. She suggested it herself so I tried to give her some information about it without letting on that I knew too much. Suddenly my friend from Cheshire became rather belligerent. She tried to pretend to everyone that the two of us were a couple. Then my friend from Cheshire and I ended up on the floor. She had fallen and I’d fallen with her or something but this discussion with half a dozen people went on all around. Then we decided that we’d have to go. Someone asked my friend from Cheshire if she wanted to have some maths lessons to improve her position. She snapped back in a manner that really offended me and probably offended a lot of other people too. We all set off to walk. I tried to hold on to my friend from Cheshire to stop her doing anything rash but as we made our way from one lift to another to go down this building she wrestled away from me and pushed herself forward after someone who was with us. As we all crammed into a lift some of us were left behind including me and another person and a small child who belonged to someone. That was bound to disrupt all kinds of proceedings now that a small child had become separated from her mother. I tried to take hold of the child. This led to all kinds of confusion about getting into the lifts. We were disrupting the other passengers. I could immediately imagine a scenario where I’d be taking the child down in one lift and the mother would be coming back up in another lift to pick up her child again. I could see that this whole evening had descended into total chaos.

But why I would say that this was one of the best nights that I’ve ever had I’ve really no idea.

And then I was with a couple of other people in a house somewhere waiting for my father to come round. I knew that he was due any minute so I thought that we’d go to stand outside but I couldn’t attract their attention enough to make them stop what they were doing and come out. Then I saw Caliburn in the distance turning into the drive that led up to this house so I tried to round them up again. They didn’t move until Caliburn pulled up outside the door. It took them so long to be ready that by the time I’d set foot out of the door my father had become fed up and had driven away. They were all furious but I tried to explain that that was just how my father was . So what happens now? I said “if it’s left to me I’d easily walk after him but you lot go back in the house and I’ll be back in a few minutes”. They seemed to take this as some kind of personal insult. You could tell by the determination on their faces that they intended to go marching down after him, catching up with him and giving him a piece of their mind, maybe more. I thought that that was something that would only inflame the situation even further and make things even worse than they already are. I was extremely unhappy about how this was going to unfold.

Later on there was a dream about Sherlock Holmes who was going back to college to study something. Lestrade was taking the mickey out of him for doing that. I awoke just as I was about to dictate and everything was immediately wiped away from my mind about what was going on in this particular dream. I couldn’t remember anything at all.

At one point Hercule Poirot was undertaking an investigation. He’d invited everyone to a meeting. Someone made the point that maybe in mentioning the past it was his aim to enquire about the present. I told them that it was usually the other way around. When people have a meeting and start to enquire about the present, usually it’s because they want to know something about the past. Someone is trying to put everyone at ease by asking the question about the present.

Finally, I was in work, and not threatening to retire either which makes a change. It was time to go home so we all flooded out of the place into the car park underneath. I went to find my car but in the position where I’d parked it was a Ford Anglia 100E hearse. I’d actually come in the same but a saloon. The hearse was black and all mildewy with dirt and cobwebs whereas mine was at least black and tidy. I spent a good 10 minutes prowling around trying to find mine and wondering what on earth was going on. The I came across the Senator. I thought to myself “did I come here in the Senator instead?” I was confused about the car. In the end I got into the Senator and set off to drive. Going down the road was a car parked at the bottom, a gold Ford Cortina MkIII. It left practically no room to get through. It was a real squeeze for me to get the Senator through. I brushed down the side of this car with the Senator. When I looked there was someone actually sitting in the passenger seat. I thought that this will lead to a few problems now because there’s no insurance on the Senator but then the guy shouldn’t have been sitting there anyway. When I went round the corner some woman flagged me down and muttered something. I wondered what she wanted. After about 3 or 4 times it turned out that what she was asking for was whether the speed limit in here was 30mph or 40. I couldn’t understand why she wanted to know that. What I’d been doing in the office was writing an essay for my University course. I’d actually finished as much as I wanted to write except for the conclusion. I wanted to check that I had enough words. When I turned over the page to write the conclusion I found that I’d already written stuff in about something completely different. It seemed that I’d been writing out this essay in my notebook so I was going to have to go home and copy it all out onto some fresh sheets of paper and add my conclusion at the end before I could submit it.

With all of that, it’s hardly any surprise that I was totally exhausted this morning. But nevertheless, I did manage to beat the second alarm.

After the medication and checking my mails and messages I pushed on and completed all of the text for the two radio programmes. And before I go to bed tonight I’ll dictate them. It’s not been possible to do that as yet because with Carnaval and the crowds in caravanettes on the car park, it’s been too noisy to dictate anything. I’ll have to wait until the noise outside dies down.

After the football I didn’t really do very much. After all it took me long enough to type out all of the dictaphone notes. But then I’m entitled to take things easy every now and again.

Tea tonight was quite late. I was chatting to someone on-line and let the time run away with me. But when I finally managed to go for it, it was delicious. Baked potato and salad with one of those breadcrumbed soya fillets. They are really nice and as luck would have it, they had some more in LIDL yesterday so I bought a couple more for the next few weeks.

Tonight I’ll be having a lie-in. It’s Sunday tomorrow and all of my work will be done so I can take it easy. I might even have a go at baking some bread in the air fryer to see what happens. That will be interesting and no mistake.

EPIC HALL

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