Yes, again!

And even worse and more tired than the other day when I was so tired that I really hoped that the World would end.

Once again, it was being in the kitchen that did it and once again it involved food. I’m pleased to say that it was a worthwhile exercise as the table is now groaning with victuals and I won’t ever starve again.

In fact it’s been an extremely busy 24 hours. Before going to bed I dictated a pile of radio stuff. Not all of it because there’s more there than any one man can handle in one sitting, but it’s part of the backlog out of the way.

And as for the new ZOOM H8, I wish that I knew where the tone controls are. When I’m dictating it sounds as if I have my head in a bucket.

What I did took me up until midnight and it was about 00:30 when I crawled under the covers. It didn’t take me long to drop off, that’s for sure.

There was another phantom alarm this morning at about 06:15 and I was halfway out of bed thinking that it was the real alarm before I worked out what it was. Someone had sent me a text message and it was the “alert” on my phone that had awoken me this morning.

What a way to start the day on a Sunday! I climbed back into bed for a couple of hours extra sleep.

When the alarm finally went off I fell out of bed, washed and dressed and proceeded to await the nurse. He didn’t have much to say for himself today but he seems to be more friendly all round so I’ve no idea what’s happening.

Hr sorted me out with my puttees and so on and then cleared off. I sat around for a few minutes to catch my breath and then went to make breakfast – porridge and nice, strong coffee.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. And it’s rather ominous. I was back in Bomber Command but for some reason or other I ended up in hospital. You could tell by the long faces of the nurses that it was pretty serious. One day they announced that they were having to move the hospital. Most of the patients would be evacuated but some patients would have to stay behind as being too ill to move like that. I found to my horror that I was actually one of those being left behind. We were just going to be left in the battle zone and everyone else would clear off out of the way. This was what made me realise now that this was going down the final stretch of my illness and this would be it

And then later on I slipped right back into that dream. It kept on recurring two or three times before the alarm went off

It’s the idea of it being a recurring dream that’s unsettling. I mentioned yesterday that some people seem to think that I’m more ill than I think that I am (if that’s even possible) and this dream seems to underline it. With a visit to the surgeon during the week, it’s not really the correct time to have dreams like this at all.

The rest of the morning was spent relaxing, “saving my strength for the struggle that lies ahead” as Professor Janssens at Castle Anthrax mentioned. I’m sure that she didn’t mean “the kitchen” but that’s where I’ve spent most of the afternoon.

Having been slaving away over a red-hot stove all afternoon, I now have in the kitchen …

• a loaf of bread, nice, big, soft and fluffy just like bread should be
• a vegan flapjack, ready in case I have to go back to the hospital
• 24 raisin and orange biscuits that should have been cranberry and orange but I had no cranberries
• the pièce de resistance – the usual Sunday pizza

With not having much room to work, with only a small oven and being on crutches, it involved quite a juggling act in order to make it all and then fire it up in the oven. It was so exhausting that at one stage when I sat down I crashed out and it was only Liz texting me that saved a disaster in the oven, awakening me just in time.

But while I was asleep I was away with the fairies again There was something about the turret of an Avro Lancaster but instead of four guns it only had one fitted. This sounded as if it might have been an interesting dream but I’m glad that I awoke anyway.

In between all of this there were other fish to fry.

Firstly, during one pause I listened to and edited the notes that would finish off one of the radio programmes. It ended up over-running by 19 seconds but there was 18.993 seconds of music that could be over-dubbed as it happened

Later, we had football. I mentioned the other day that I was glad that I wasn’t hospitalised during the football season. That would have been a disaster.

Mind you, as the Duke of Wellington said after the Battle of Waterloo, it was "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life". Pre-season friendlies are now slowly springing into life and this afternoon we had Stranraer v Larne, the old “Seasick Derby”.

It was a quiet game without much excitement but Larne scored a belting goal after 61 minutes, only to concede an even better one 5 minutes later.

1-1 in a game where neither side broke out into a sweat was about right. Larne are playing in the Champions League next month and they are going to have to play much, much better than this if they want to go anywhere and do anything.

When I recovered my form and strength I went back and carried on in the kitchen and then once it was clean, tidy and all washed up, I could sit down to my delicious pizza.

and now that I’ve eaten my pizza I can sit down and finish my notes before going to bed. And won’t I be pleased to finally call it a day today? I mean – I’m surprised to be retired and supposed to be dying. Yet I don’t think that I’ve ever worked so hard in my life as I have these last few days.

The kind of people I used to know (with one or two exceptions) were summed up by the guy who; told me that he really liked work
"Is that so?" I asked him with a trace of bitterness
"Ohh absolutely" he replied keenly. "I can sit and watch it for hours"