Friday 13th January 2023 – IT JUST GOES …

… to show that I can do it when I really try and what’s going wrong with me right now is inside my head rather than anywhere else.

When the alarm went off at 07:30 I was already up and about dressing and when the second alarm went off at 07:45 I’d already had my medication and was sitting down working at the computer.

And if that’s not extraordinary behaviour, it should be borne in mind that I didn’t go to bed until 01:00, I was wide-awake again at 06:45 and I didn’t crash out at all at any point today.

There was however something or urgency to be done, and that might explain things. Having done a lot of work on the radio programme for Jeff Beck by the time that I wrote up my notes last night, I stayed up and finished everything that I had on hand – dictating the notes, editing them, pairing off the music and then joining everything together.

No wonder that it took me until 01:00 this morning!

And this morning, I wrote out a few more notes to conclude the programme, dictated and edited them, and then joined them in with the final tracks. I’d finished everything and listened to it to make sure that it was OK and it was all ready to go by 10:00 this morning.

And it was broadcast this evening.

Having been done in a hurry, it would have benefited from some further editing, but the joints for the tracks were perfection.

That was the cue to sit down with a mug of strong coffee and a fruit bun and relax for an hour or two. It’s not like me to work like this, especially these days.

At some point in the morning I had a ‘phone call. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have a little project simmering away on the back burner. The gist of this phone call was that in about 10 days or so I may have some news to impart to you in this respect.

Not before, though. There’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.

At some point I was intending to go off down into town to try out my new crutches. When I felt like going out I looked out of the window and saw that instead of the bright sunny weather that we had had earlier, we were now in the middle of a tropical downpour.

That was the cue to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was on a holiday somewhere, one of these walking holiday things where you stay in a hotel for a week and go to different places for walks around interesting sites. We’d just been on one and were on our way back. Someone mentioned something about a walk that they had done that was extremely interesting. I told them about my trip to the High Arctic. As the lift thinned out someone said to me “hey Reverend, where’s your dog collar today?”. I made some kind of joke about that. The question of cars came up. I said that I had 2 cars, rather a car and a van. I left the lift and to my surprise I could walk up a step with my left foot, something that I haven’t done for ages. I thought that this walking is certainly doing me better. I was expecting a letter for a radio programme that I was doing. I thought “the post has come this morning so it should be in our pigeon hole”. I went to the post room and picked up my key to go to look inside my pigeon hole. There were envelopes everywhere, all over all the tables, the reception counter, piles of post that hadn’t been sorted as yet. I thought to myself “I won’t find my envelope here”. Then I put the key in the key hole in my pigeon hole so that I could open it to make sure that it hasn’t arrived and found that the key wouldn’t fit. For some unknown reason I was trying with the wrong key.

And then I was at another holiday hotel with a lot of people my age or maybe younger. I decided that I wasn’t really going to do any of the optional trips. I’d just sit there and relax. Somehow I was swept along, chatting to a woman here and another one there etc. We all were going on a car-sharing ride. I ended up with a woman who I was convinced that I’d been with yesterday. We were chatting ever so friendly. We reached this car park and the first thing that we saw was piles and piles of dwarves who were all going somewhere. The woman with me made some remark about how nice it was to see them all there obviously in a group with friends etc. We pushed on and reached where these cars were parked. I was dithering about finding a seat. I couldn’t make up my mind which seat in which car to take. I was sure that I must have been frustrating this woman. In the end we found a car with 2 empty seats. We got in and began to chat with the people with it. I looked across and in the car parked next to us, there was the woman with whom I’d been the previous evening. I wondered who on earth this woman was with whom I’d palled up and what she had to do with anything.

It looks as if I have the wanderlust again and I’m ready to go off on another journey. But that’s out of the question right now, and for a variety of reasons too. Health is one of them, and money is another. I shall have to give up my wanderings for a good while while I get myself on an even keel.

At least the crutches seem to work as they are supposed to. I finally made it out to the bus and ended up in town. And from getting off the bus to getting back to the bus stop with my shopping took me less than half the time that it did when I tried it previously. At least I have the fresh stuff that I wanted to buy

It was much easier, even if it was very tiring, and I’ll have another go at travelling into town on the bus next weekend, I reckon. I might even try to go for a little walk tomorrow if I can.

But regardless of anything, I was glad to be back and have a mug of hot chocolate. Coming back up the stairs with the shopping was hard work and provided all kinds of entertainment to one of the neighbours.

Tea tonight was chips and veggie balls with a salad. The lettuce was starting to look rather sad to I was glad to attack it once again. There’s enough good stuff left in the lettuce for tomorrow too. A salad every now and again is really quite nice

So that’s that for now. I’m going to bed, having just had a nice long what with a friend of mine on line. I don’t know what i’ll be doing tomorrow but it won’t be shopping. At some point I have to bake some bread and some fruit buns so we’ll see how I get on with that.

But that’s for another time. I’ve done enough for today.

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