… when I’ve been nothing like as productive as I ought to be.

And that’s a shame because it all started so well too. I comfortably beat the third alarm to my feet and after the medication I attacked the dictaphone.

Once again, the excesses of the couple of nights just recently seem to have been curbed. But while the quality seems to have been cut down, it’s done nothing the stem the emotion.

Last night I was in hospital and that I was going to have an operation. It was an appendicitis operation but it was on my throat of all places. Af course these were strange times with all kinds of different people having all kinds of different things wrong with them because of this virus and I couldn’t get into the hospital at all, but in the end they let me in. I’d been on board a ship which may or may not have been The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour going round the Far North of Scotland and they had given me some gas anaesthetic. They clamped it over my nose and mouth and started to feed me the anaesthetic and I wasn’t going under. I was just sitting there looking at them, that kind of thing. They got a teddy bear out and started to play with this teddy bear to try to distract me but that didn’t work. In the end they simply turned up the gas until the gas was full on. Eventually I managed to pass out. Even though I was unconscious I could hear them moving all the knives, equipment and everything around. I was absolutely dreading what was going to happen next and this was another occasion where I actually awoke myself in order to avoid it.

There have been one or two like that just recently where the situation has been such that I’ve been obliged to awaken myself to avoid it. I’ve often said … “on many occasions” – ed … that the whole idea of hospîtals and surgery and all of that kind of thing is something that I can’t stomach.

What I’ve been going through this last four years or so, with hospitals, operations, tubes and pipes and all that kind of thing is my worst nightmare and there are medical actions that have been proposed to me that I’ve turned down flat because I couldn’t even stand the thought of them, not the action.

It’s the law in France that any surgical intervention, no matter what, has to be explained in precise detail to the victim and his or her consent obtained. When they wanted to do stuff to me I flatly refused to hear what they wanted to tell me and there was something of a stand-off.

In the end they had to prepare a document to the effect that I would give my consent to the operation but I didn’t want to hear anything about it. They weren’t sure just how that would stand up in Court if it came to that, but that’s all that they were getting from me.

After breakfast I made a start on the digitalising of my album collection. No major issues today except that one of them took a good while to deal with. And Rosemary rang me up in the middle of it all for a good chat.

As a result of all of this, I was late going for my shower and even later going out to the shops. No queue when I arrived (there was when I left) and I was able to buy most things that I needed.

No small tins of kidney beans and still no pizza bases. No pizza flour either, so I bought some ordinary flour and I’m going to have a go, once I’ve used the last base in my stock this weekend, to make a pizza base. I have yeast, salt and oil and I can’t think what else I might need.

But years ago, I used to buy flat round bread in Belgium, slice it horizontally rather than vertically, and use that as a pizza base. There’s always a way, and I seem to remember that the bread base worked quite well.

There was ice cream that needed to be bought but I baulked at the price that LeClerc wanted for the Alpro stuff. However, they had a tub left of that delicious banana sorbet.

Back here, Laurent had returned to me his comments on our project so after a little bit here and there I could send it off for consideration. We then ended up in a discussion about the audio diary that we are keeping.

In between all of this, I was speaking to someone on the internet. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the hi-fi that’s connected to the computer is in the process of giving up the ghost. 18 or so years, 6 of which were being stored in a damp shed, hasn’t done it any favours.

I’m not going to waste my money on any cheap stuff, seeing as how much time I spend here and the kind of work that I do, so I’ve been talking to a specialist place in Germany about what I need to have some really decent desktop quality.

Eventually I was able to turn my attention to my own radio projects, but not as much as I could because I ended up … errr … relaxing for a while. And a proper, deep relax it was too and that was quite depressing.

As a result I ended up not even finishing one, never mind both of them. So although it’s against my principles, I’ll have to work tomorrow – my day off.

After the session on the guitar, I made myself some tea. Saturday night so it’s usually a meal out of a tin, but the way things are, I’m not doing anything with my tins right now.

But I have plenty of vegan burgers which are quick to cook and anyway, I believe that some vegan burger mix is heading my way in the post sometime. So pasta, veg and tomato sauce with a vegan burger it was too.

The last of the apple pie and the last of the Alpro soya ice cream. Tomorrow, it’s the day that I cook a dessert and I haven’t had rice pudding for a good while, so I reckon that we’ll have a rice pudding for the next few days.

That was the cue for me to go off for my evening walk.

It was still light out there, but the sun was quite low in the sky. I ended up with this beautiful image across the day of the sun shining directly into the windows of this building on the hilltop across the bay at the back of town.

It would have been a beautiful sunset tonight, but we had a good one last night and I don’t want to clutter things up with too much of the same photograph.

It’s hard enough as it is for me to find things of interest in the time that I’m allowed out. I mean – we haven’t had a “pathetic parking” photo for weeks.

But returning to the sunset, there were all kinds of people out there enjoying it. Almost every secluded nook and cranny had a couple of people in it, keeping out of the way of their neighbours and, I imagine, out of the way of any surveillance.

What a state in which we are living. We are told that it is for our own good, which is probably correct right now, but it’s also correct to say that it’s usually been a war or a violent revolution that has been required to take back control from a fascist once he’s laid his hands on it.

The easiest way to control a population is to frighten it. It was a principle of the Nazis expounded by Goering. At the moment, the people don’t need any more frightening in order to let themselves be controlled, but it’s going to be interesting to see what steps the Governments will be taking in the future to control the population in this measure.

How many more virus scares will we have once this one is out of the way?

Talking of scaring people, anyone who had the wind put up them by the Hitchcock film THE BIRDS won’t have enjoyed what’s been happening in the old walled town just now.

Whatever is going on I really don’t know, but the seagulls are becoming a lot less nervous of people and are clamouring around so much more. In fact there was quite a flock of them this evening circling around above the old town this evening.

Whoever was out there walking this evening, I hope that he was wearing a hat. These gulls have an accuracy that would put Bomber Command to shame

And keeping up with the routine, I managed all four runs tonight and, much to my surpise, they weren’t difficult. In fact, I overran the first by about 30 metres and had it not been uphill I could have carried on..

And I’m glad that I’m doing it because of that 800 grammes that I had gained, I’d lost 400 since Thursday.

And that reminds me of the time That Nerina told me that during a certain two-week period she had lost 2kgs.
“Keep it up, darling” I urged. “At this rate, by Christmas you’ll be gone completely”.

On that point, I’ll clear off. It’s Sunday and I can have a lie-in. But I’ll have to work, I suppose. These things don’t get done themselves, do they?