… was the best that I’ve ever made.

And having made some good ones just recently, that is certainly saying something.

In fact, all in all, it was rather a good day today, helped by the fact that I had something like a decent sleep last night.

It might have been after 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed but it was before midnight. And with a lie-in until 08:00 promised, that meant that at long last I was in line for a eight-hour sleep. And how I’ve needed one of those after all of the events just recently.

After I’d finished writing my notes last night I had some dictating of the radio notes to do. And after dictating the notes for the additional tracks for the two programmes that were half-prepared, I found that … errr … that was all. As far as dictation goes, I’m bang up-to-date at long last.

There are half a dozen or so programmes that need the notes writing, so that gaps in the sequence are filled in, but that aside, I’ve now prepared programmes up to 25th April next year.

If I can keep ahead like this, or even maybe extend the distance at which I’m in advance, I’ll have a nice head of programmes to keep going after I shuffle off this mortal coil.

And so at 23:45, having managed not to knock myself or cut myself or bleed anywhere, I crawled into bed, wrapped the quilt around me and that was that.

With the alarm set for 08:00 it was a big disappointment to awaken at 07:20. But even though I couldn’t go back to sleep there was no danger of my leaving my stinking pit at that time of morning. as the old song goes,
"REMEMBERING MORNINGS, SHILLING SPENT
IT MADE NO SENSE TO LEAVE THE BED
THE SAD OLD DAYS THEY CAME AND WENT
GIVING WAY TO FRUITFUL YEARS"
and while you’re at it, listen to Glenn Cornick’s magnificent bass line.

So at 08:00 I arose from the Dead and headed off to the bathroom. And at 08:20 I was washed and dressed and back at the computer listening to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were having an expensive meal at a hotel. There were quite a few of us and we were on several tables. The boss seemed to be micro-managing the meal, telling people what they could eat and what they couldn’t eat, which was extremely annoying, leading to quite a lot of confrontation. When it came to the dessert, one of the desserts was “profiteroles”. There was a plate of eight mixed profiteroles and there were eight people at each table. When the server began to deliver the food he turned round ad said “huit profiteroles” and pointed to one of the tables. I heard someone at the table say “why is he allowed to choose the dessert for us?”. They said “there are eight profiteroles. Can you not choose your dessert. It makes no difference that he said which dessert this table could have. He’s nothing to do with this table”. Basically, we were told “this is what we were going to have, and like it!”. I stood up and told the server to take that away, come back here to interview each one of us and find out what each one of us wants”. He became extremely aggressive so I took two paces towards him, he took two paces towards me so that was it! It was a confrontation that had him in the end running away through the kitchen and outside with me chasing after him. I thought to myself “I’m going to get him organised and then once I’ve sorted him out I’ll be coming back here and getting hold of the boss to tell him what I thought of all of this” because I was now in one of these fighting moods that actually take quite a lot of stopping.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a dream where I’ve really been enraged. At one time they were a regular feature, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but I thought that I’d calmed down since the last time and that it would be permanent. But it’s obviously not to be. However, I’m continuing to be impressed that I can remember big and complicated words, like “profiteroles” for example, when I’m asleep. And not being too afraid to speak my rather colourful mind when it comes to addressing my boss is a regular feature that occurred more than once in the real World too.

Isabelle the Nurse was quite chatty this morning and we had a lengthy chat about nothing whatever while she sorted out my legs. She was telling me that it was the annual Melon market today. I can’t say that I’m too disappointed to miss it.

While I was making breakfast afterwards, my former neighbour who is now in a Home ‘phoned me. I think that she wanted her morale pumping up because she doesn’t seem to be coping too well with her new situation. We chatted for about 15 minutes and I hope that she felt a little better afterwards.

After breakfast we had football – Stranraer v Elgin City. And that was a game of two halves if ever there was one. It finished 1-1 but the first half was all Elgin on the attack and the second half was all Stranraer.

There has never been such a dramatic change in a game. I don’t know what Stranraer’s manager put in their half-time cup of tea but I wouldn’t mind a pint of it.

Later on I tacked the recordings that I’d done before going to bed. They are now edited and the programmes are completed.

While I was at it, I had a look at the back-up. There’s a big USB key permanently in a USB slot in this computer and I back up to it at least once a day. It’s pretty nearly full now but there’s a lot of stuff on there that’s superfluous so I went through and weeded out everything that has since been overtaken by events

Over the past few weeks I’ve been collecting music – soundtracks and the like – that I’ve downloaded to the computer. I’ve been going through it this afternoon, converting it to an acceptable format listening to it and chopping up some of it into sound-bytes.

There are tons to go at that have been collected for quite some time so this is a long-term project but I have a feeling that it’s a losing battle. I seem to be downloading it quicker than I can process it.

Something else that I did was to go one better than Dave Crosby – maybe because I had the ‘flu for Christmas. Although I’m not likely to be looking in my mirror and seeing a police car any time soon.

The pizza was, as I mentioned, totally delicious. The dough was really light and fluffy and this new vegan cheese that my cleaner found the other week seems to melt better than the last stuff.

So let’s hope that she can find some more of it for next time

So running rather late yet again, I’m going to bed ready to Fight the Good Fight on Monday.

But while we’re on the subject of haircuts … "well, one of us is" – ed … there was the story of the one-legged man who went for a haircut at the barber’s.
The barber unfortunately snipped the man’s ear and the man began to complain
To try to ease the tension the barber began some light-hearted chat. "I don’t think that I’ve seen you here before …" he began
"You haven’t" said the man. "I lost this leg in the War"