… another one of those days where I have emulated my namesake the mathematician by doing three fifths of five eights of … errr … nothing.

It’s probably not strictly true when I look a little more closely at it, but in a context where I don’t seem to be accomplishing anything at all in the usual run of events, I seem to have managed to do even less than usual.

In fact, I was so busy doing nothing at all last night that it was actually after midnight and I was still letting it all hang out instead of going to bed.

What had happened was that in these papers that I’m currently browsing that have just come into the Public Doman there’s a hitherto-unpublished first-hand account of the events of 1956 as the crisis unfolded on the western border of Jordan

In everything else that I’ve ever read about the situation, I’ve never seen anything as detailed as that which I was reading last night. It’s a fascinating account and I was lost amongst its pages for hours.

It’s actually hard to believe that I originally started all of this by looking for another topic completely in a totally different era.

That was one of the major problems with my University Degree – I was so absorbed in what I was doing and what I found that I was ending up researching and writing stuff that interested me and which usually had no bearing whatever on the subject matter that our tutor wanted us to do. I just couldn’t keep on track

At the end of the day I’m sure that they just gave me my degree to get rid of me.

Anyway, I hauled myself off to bed eventually.

And do you know what? We all had a lie-in today. There was no 06:15 stampede through the rooms, no diabetes test at 08:00, nothing whatever. I opened my eyes myself, totally undisturbed, at 08:30.

Had I known that the sleep would have been this good, I’d have gone to bed earlier to enjoy more of it.

Eventually breakfast was served and then I wandered off for a shower and a clothes-washing session. Even though I’ve been told that I’m going home, I’ll believe it when I’m sitting in my comfy chair in my office and not before.

While I was in there, there was a knock on the door. "Mr Hall?"
"I’m playing hide-and-seek" I replied. "Come and find me"
"I’ll come back" said a voice.

Unfortunately it wasn’t Emilie the cute consultant come to scrub my back but one of her side-kicks.

She wanted to look at my oedemas and when she was satisfied that they were still there, to tell me that I’ll be going home on Monday
"Don’t you mean “Tuesday”?" I asked, reciting the timetable that Emilie had given me yesterday
That confused her.

As I have said before… "and on many occasions too" – ed … the issues of the Binocrit injection and the Vitamin D capsule tell me that they don’t have a clue what day of the week it is here.

Consequently I rang up the taxi company after she’d left to make sure that the hospital had given the company the correct information about my trip on Monday. It’s a good job that I did too because the despatcher couldn’t find the trip registered on his list.

They are someone else who don’t know what day of the week it is either.

While we’re on the subject of not knowing what day of the week it is … "well, one of us is" – ed … there’s this issue about the lack of protein because of my vegan diet. This morning, they gave me a bottle of some kind of concentrated protein drink with my breakfast.

Smelling a rat, I checked. And sure enough, it’s made of concentrated cows’-milk. You really couldn’t invent stuff like this.

It’s definitely time to be moving on.

First though, it’s time to find out what I was us to during the night, so I had a listen to the dictaphone. A United Nations B-17 took off with a multi-national crew to go to bomb somewhere in North Korea. It was shot down over the Demilitarised Zone. As we know, it’s the aim of the different branches of the military there not to let anything at all survive of the opposition’s military equipment. It’s the aim of the country itself or the passengers not to let anything survive of its equipment that could be examined and/or used by the enemy. So with this ‘plane landing there, there were still several survivors who were desperately trying to contact the South to say that they were there and were still alive, but instead the South Korean grand artillery obliterated the ‘plane and of course the survivors with it. Then there was the usual talk about “the enemy, our allies etc” on a very impersonal basis that still didn’t change the outcome that the southern United Nations forces had been content to kill several of their own persons whom they knew were alive, quite simply to prevent the machine falling into North Korean hands

Not of course that a Flying Fortress would be going anywhere to bomb anyone by the time the Korean War broke out. They had all long been moved from the front line in favour of the B-29 Superfortress. And while in modern warfare artillery would have better things to do, pounding crashed aircraft and their crew to pieces was quite an artillery sport in World War I. Modern aircraft would have some kind of demolition charge to dispose of sensitive equipment

And then I went back to reading. Trawling my way through pages of the stuff, and being side-tracked as usual. Such as by reading the Reykjavik “Daily Post” of 7th September 1940 that describes an “exchange of prisoners”.

This was brokered by Sweden, who had a considerable number of interned soldiers from Germany and from the UK who had strayed over the border at some point during the invasion of Norway, some British volunteers from the Winter War in Finland, some civilians swept up in the turmoil and a random Red Cross detachment from the UK that no-one, not even them, I suspect, know what they were doing or where they were supposed to be.

They were exchanged on a like-for like basis, the British and the Germans and the latter, I imagine, were sent directly to Germany whereas the British part was sent to Iceland which had recently been occupied by the British to keep it out of the hands of the Germans after the Germans had occupied Norway, Iceland at the time being a Norwegian colony.

The stuff that turns up in these old papers is fascinating

As well as that, I’ve been doing some radio stuff (not very much, it has to be said) and talking to Rosemary on the ‘phone. She wanted a chat this evening.

Tea tonight was potato with carrot purée and green beans. I won’t be going too far on that, that’s for sure. I’ve forgotten what protein looks like, especially when it’s not made with cows’ milk.

But before I go, the stuff that turns up in these papers as fascinating, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …

After one particularly brutal encounter with night-fighter and flak an Australian bomber pilot rang up Ad Astra House, the home of the RAF and asked to be put through to Bomber Command Headquarters.
When he was finally put through, he told his respondent what he thought of him, his organisation, his route-planning, everything, in a fashion that only an Australian can
"Do you know why you are speaking to?" barked the voice
"No" answered the pilot
"I am Sir Arthur Harris" barked the voice, "Commander in Chief, Bomber Command"
There was silence for a moment while the gravity of the situation sank in
"And do you know who you are speaking to?" asked the pilot
"No" barked “Bomber” Harris
"Good" said the pilot, and hung up.