… of days where I haven’t crashed out at all, or nearly so, during the day, I made up for it today.

It wasn’t quite as bad as last Saturday where I spent all afternoon crashed out until teatime, but it wasn’t far off.

That’s quite a disappointment, as I’m sure that you can imagine. I thought that I was getting over this spell of dramatic tiredness, but apparently not. I’ll just have to keep on plugging away and hoping that somewhere, somehow, I’ll find a solution.

It’s not as if I was particularly late in bed.

It wasn’t 23:00, that’s for sure, but it was near enough to make no difference, and I slept right through until … errr … 04:15.

No danger of my leaving the bed at that time though. I curled up under the quilt and went back to sleep until the alarm went off at 07:00.

The ‘phone was plugged into the computer, charging up, so it was a scramble across the bedroom to switch it off when it rang. And then it was an ungainly stagger into the bathroom.

After I’d washed I had to sort out the puttees. Moaning Minnie had wanted them washing so they had been soaking overnight. This morning I gave them a good hand-washing and hung them in the bathroom to dry.

There already was a pair that I’d washed a few days ago so I took those down and rolled them up ready for use today.

Next job was to tidy up the LeClerc shopping bags that are all over the place and put them one inside another. There’s a consigne or “deposit” of €0:20 per bag that I receive back when I turn the bags in to the deliverer on his next trip so I don’t want to lose or damage them.

There was time then to come in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. My father was working for a company in transport again. In the garage they had an old, disreputable type of van-thing that they used to go out to breakdowns on. It was always my father and his friend who went. I noticed that my father was becoming rather sullen and sulky so I asked him why. It turns out that he’d had a row with his partner at work. The guy was being difficult about putting on his seatbelt. Anyway the next day the two of us were out in this old van. I was trying to make the seatbelt fasten but it didn’t work and it left an oily stain on my clothes. My father said that now his friend had stated quite flatly and frankly that he’s no longer putting on his seatbelt under any circumstances and that had rather soured their relationship. We were talking about it and trying to find other things for my father to do in his spare time. He did some taxi driving at one point but said that with his friend being difficult now and he drives for another company and has friends here and there, my father is going to have to stop driving as my father doesn’t want any unpleasantness if he confronts any of these people while they are out doing the evening taxi driving so we were having to think of other things that my father could do to pass the time.

At my father’s place they had a series of big Mercedes vans and he and his colleagues were off all over the UK sorting out breakdowns on the lorries, all mostly old Foden and ERF glass-fibre cab stuff. Anything else would fall apart in weeks due to the effects of the salt, but they and their contractors had Fodens that were 20-odd years old and still doing a heavy day’s work. Nothing luxurious about them at all but they would go for ever

But it looks as if my family’s intervention in my night-time travels will go on for ever. It beats me why this would be the case. During the day I don’t think about them at all yet here they are. On the other hand, I can think about Zero, Castor and TOTGA all I like but do they put in an appearance in my dreams? I should be so lucky.

Later on, I was called out for my bad singing by a group of readers of a Scottish rock magazine so I thought that I’d better do something to defend myself. I began to debate whether to announce to the world the fact that I’m suffering from this illness, whether it would be a good idea and what would be the consequences if I did, going on a circuit of concerts to reassure the fans was hardly the correct thing to do if I’m going to claim to be too ill to sing properly so I’ll have to think very carefully about what to do to restore my popularity with my rock fans in Scotland.

This dream is actually an allegory. It relates to an incident involving Scotland that took place in 2007-2008 and from which certain issues are still reverberating around even today, with one or two unfortunate and unwilling victims swept up in the chaos. Still, that’s a pretty good description of real life. There are innocent victims swept up in the chaos of everyone’s story. And as for my singing, well, the less said about that the better.

The nurse was going to wash my feet today so I had to have everything ready, including a clean towel and flannel. He had a moan about the towel not being clean enough, but that’s as clean as it gets with my washing machine.

He has a point of course, and I can see it. If I catch an infection, he’ll be blamed regardless of what he has done, so he needs to cover himself. But it’s still quite depressing all the same.

The puttees weren’t particularly clean either, despite the good wash that this set had had at the beginning of the week, but he bit his tongue about them.

After he left I made myself some breakfast and read for a while my book on the siting of churches in Medieval times. We’re onto an interesting chapter about burials where a chariot and horse, and presumably a charioteer or two, were interred with the deceased. It’s all good stuff.

Later on, after a very slow start to the day, I began to think about this radio programme.

It’ll take place early – very early – in the New Year and it has a certain theme, but that’s as far as I’d gone with it. Today, I set about choosing the music.

As usual, after my efforts yesterday, I have far too much. It would be much easier if I only had a dozen, but today I had to pick 10 – or 8 longer ones – from a selection of at least 21. Anyway, eventually, after being away with the fairies for a couple of hours I have 8 sorted out plus a reserve supply of a couple in case I need them.

Once I’d organised this much I set down to think about what I’m going to write. And I made a little stat when Rosemary rang me up for a chat, which was nice. I can’t go working all the time.

This was just a short chat this time – a mere hour and eleven minutes.

But I teased her by saying that she’s becoming a crazy cat lady. Not only is she regaling me with tales of Myrtille’s latest activities, she’s also told me that Myrtille is bringing a friend round, a scrawny, half-starved black and white cat.

Anyone who knows anything at all about cats will know that there is nothing surprising about any of this. It won’t be long before Rosemary has half a dozen cats winding their bodies around her legs.

Tea tonight was one of my lovely breaded quorn fillets with salad and baked potato. My air fryer is doing a great job but I’m sure that it can do much, much more than I’m doing with it.

That’s something that I’ll be doing when I move downstairs – having a decent oven, a decent microwave and plenty of space to work. And I can’t wait. This 10 months will seem like 10 years.

In a mad fit of enthusiasm I even found the time to dictate a huge pile of arrears for the radio notes. I’ll start editing those tomorrow after I’ve watched the highlights of today’s football matches. I’m now up to February next year which is where I want to be

It’s the Olympics here in France now, and nothing can be further from my mind than that. But we’ve had a team of Olympic athletes being shown around the old walled town today and they came by here. My cleaner told me to go to the window to look.

Whoever they were, they were dressed all in blue track suit stuff but I didn’t recognise anything. I don’t have a clue who they were.

But it did remind me of an incident at the 1986 European Championships at Stuttgart where Fatima Whitbread won the Gold for Britain in the Pentathlon with an absolutely magnificent throw of the javelin that broke all records and even cleared the safety fence at the far end of the stadium
Ten minutes later, the news was announced, followed by "and the gold medal in javelin-catching has been awarded to Herr Heinz Schmidt, who was walking his dog in the park in the background".
Ten minutes later there was another announcement. "Please cancel that last message. Unfortunately, there is no provision in the rules of the European Championships for medals to be awarded posthumously."