… my hands on whoever rang my doorbell at 07:09 this morning they won’t ever do it again. I can’t even imagine why anyone would want to do that.
There I was, in the middle of an interesting dream too. That’s what was so disappointing about it all.
Even worse, I hadn’t gone to bed until late. After I’d finished my notes I dictated the dictaphone notes for the next radio programme and then loitered around for a while trying to tire myself out. It’s not easy to be tired when you’ve spent most of the afternoon fast asleep.
Regardless of the rude awakening I managed to go back to sleep again and it was a much more realistic and reasonable 10:30 when I finally saw the light of day.
After the medication and checking the mails and messages I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And to my surprise we were going through talking about people and describing people -in Welsh. I was describing someone and somehow I made them to be 500 years old. Someone asked me if that was what I really meant. Then someone rang the doorbell of the apartment so I awoke at that point.
Later on I was with my friend from Holywell in North Wales. We were in a city somewhere. She had a list of places to visit to do various thinks like pay her taxes etc. I took her to a place where she could see every building. I pointed them out to her one by one but she must have been confused. When she saw that the Rates Office was a ruin she had a panic attack. In the end I took hold of her and brought her down to the rates Office. I helped her through the rubble and steps. There was a young guy there who made a few light-hearted comments about his building. My friend began to thaw. I told him that I thought that the building was magnificent but that my wife didn’t like it one bit. I didn’t realise that I’d said it until I said it. I expected her to throw a fit on hearing that but she didn’t. In the end we organised her rate payments for her then I set out to take her to the next building on the list. I thought that if I go with her to all of them it’ll be dome much quicker than her standing on a street corner panicking.
Actually, a similar thing happened to me when I went with Marianne to Rome. She didn’t speak Italian so it made no difference when I referred to her as mia moglia to whoever we met, but I was talking to an Indian guy and forgot myself so much as to mention “My Wife” to him.
And then there was the time that I took my Greek friend to the airport in Brussels. Standing by the gate seeing her off and she was telling me “make sure you eat decent meals” and stuff like that, and a woman standing behind her said to her “that’s right – we have to make sure that our husbands look after themselves when we aren’t there”
She was another lovely girl whom I liked very much and I even went to learn some Greek so that I could speak to her family, but she was another one who had far too much sense to be involved with me
Meanwhile, back at the ran …errr … bed I went back to a ship carrying my duffle bag and a pile of other stuff. I met a girl who was going in the same direction so we walked together for a while. We came to the traffic lights to cross the road into the port. She said that she was just going to run across regardless of traffic. I explained that that was rather a strange thing to do because for a start I was heavily laden down and I wouldn’t be able to cross. We waited for the lights. I told her that they change quickly so we couldn’t dawdle but we crossed with plenty of time to spare and walked down to the docks. We ended up on a cliff top quite high up looking at the sea. There was a large group of us there waiting for the ship. We could see all the way up and down the coast. The tide was well in and the promenade was under water but there was no sign of the ship. She began to organise the passengers. Someone asked “how come you’re doing that,” She said “I’m going to see the Captain about having this job”. They laughed and said that that would be most unlikely. She reminded them that someone had been taken on to do a job simply because he’d enjoyed doing it before he’d been appointed. I said “it seems to be the only qualification around here”. That made everyone laugh. But we were up there on this cliff in the dark. We couldn’t see our ship at all the entire way up and down the coast. We began to wonder what on earth had happened to it
Much of the rest of the day has been spent in a desultory kind of fashion making a radio programme and that’s all now finished, up and running and ready to go sometime at the start of next year.
There was some time off to make some fruit buns. And they actually came out really well which is a nice surprise. I’ve not tasted them yet but I’ll tell you all about them tomorrow.
On the subject of baking, tonight’s pizza was as good as usual. They seem to be doing OK now. The dough in the base didn’t rise quite as high as it has done in the past and that was surprising but it didn’t change the taste at all.
So in a few minutes I’m off to bed. An early night will do me good and tomorrow I can crack on with Canada. I have a whole two weeks to back something out before my next Welsh course and I have to make the most of it.
