… crisis in the Dialysis Centre this evening. The hole in the implant in my arm refused to close up after they pulled out the needle and we ended up with the place looking like a slaughterhouse.

“That’s the kind of thing that happens occasionally” said the nurse. And they want me to do the dialysis procedure myself at home. They must be joking. There is no chance whatever of that ever happening.

There was however a good chance of my going to bed last night at some kind of respectable hour. It wasn’t 23:00 by the time that I finished everything that I needed to do and crawled into bed but it was pretty close. There wasn’t much in it at all

Soon enough I was asleep, hoping to catch up on the sleep that I had missed the previous night, but it wasn’t to be. It was another one of these turbulent nights of which I’ve been having far too many. When the alarm went off Nerina and I were sitting in one of these plazas and were surrounded by food courts somewhere in Italy. We couldn’t make up our minds in which place to eat. We were being harassed by a couple of waiters from one establishment who wanted us to eat there. They were obviously making suggestions all the time. Nerina wanted to look at all the other menus so I had to stand up and go to the next restaurant, pick up a new menu, bring it back, read it, take it back, take the next one, all the way round the food court, all the time that these two waiters were harassing us about this and about that. In the end we decided, or rather, Nerina decided that the pizzeria in the corner would be the place where we’d order our meal so these two waiters went over with me to this restaurant to tell them that I was their best friend, all this kind of thing, but I suspected that there was something going on here that wasn’t quite right, about them receiving a commission or bumping up the bill or something like that. It all seemed to be extremely strange to me.

In the past we sat at plenty of places like that all over Europe. We’d wait for our holidays until the brats were back at school because the weather was usually nice, everywhere was still open and we’d have all the time in the World without being harassed by impatient waiters trying to clear us out ready for the next lot of tourists.

In one restaurant in Brest in Finisterre I remember that we were the only diners. They put us in a window seat to make the place look busy from the outside and then took their time serving us so that we stayed put. No-one came to clear away the table or give us the bill so we stood up. Still no-one came, so I worked out roughly how much the meal was, put the money on the table,, and walked out. And still no-one came.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment I staggered into the bathroom, had a good wash and scrub up, had a shave and applied the deodorant in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then loaded up the washing machine, forgetting to put my gants de toilette in there.

Once the washing machine was off on its way I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone notes, of which there were more than just a few. I was working a school holiday job down in the South of England as a teacher of some description. I can’t remember too much about this unfortunately but I know that there was something to do with a small child being carried by his mother into the showers. We were talking about trees, how deciduous trees all go to sleep in the autumn and the leaves fall off. I showed him another tree, which was a kind-of wire brush screwed to the wall of the shower which people would use to clean their football boots etc before rinsing them off. It was all extremely surreal and I can’t remember very much of it but that was it.

Me? A teacher? I think not. I wouldn’t be any good. I don’t “do” preparation but work it out as I go along and that would never work with a classful of screaming brats

Later on I had a nightmare about a whole pile of glass bottles on the table that was just on the point of falling off. I had a panic-stricken awakening to try to grab hold of them but what was actually happening was that my feet were sliding out of the bed at that point and just about to fall on the floor. Luckily I stopped that quickly enough.

That’s much more like my kind of dream, falling out of bed. I’ve fallen out of a few of them in my time, sometimes with no help at all and sometimes with some help from someone else.

So the alarm went off at 07:00. I left the bed and went to wash and dress. I happened to look at the watch and I was still in bed. It was 05:00 and all of that had been a lively, exciting, vivid dream.

Judging by the timestamp of the audio file it was actually 05:15 and it goes without saying that I didn’t actually leave the bed. But by the sound of things we had another phantom alarm during the night.

And finally it was in the immediate post-war period and I was wandering around Crewe. We’d seen a few tanks go through. As I went round a corner there was a motorcycle shop there, Paul Wolf Motorcycles. Outside was a Triumph Tiger Cub 200cc, one of the very early ones with the footboards and the accelerator pedal. It said “good home needed” so I thought “I wonder if this is for sale? Does he have anything else interesting?”. I went in, and it was a labyrinth inside, steps up and down into the bowels of the earth all the way down. There must have been thirty or forty flights of stairs to the level of the river where he had his kind-of garage and workshop. There was a huge row going on between him and a few other people about someone who should have come in to see something but hadn’t but he ws going to come in now. I saw a guy come in from the side door which was actually on the level of his reception desk about eighty feet below. I thought “that must be an easier way in”. Then I looked back behind me and realised that there were just as many steps back up as there were down. It was easier to go down than it was to come up. But then what if I couldn’t find my way back up from the ground level where his office was? I was beginning to have another one of these disturbed quandaries during the night.

It’s been a while since we’ve had one of these dreams littered with indecision. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that at one stage it was a regular feature like the cars scattered all over the town, so I wonder what’s bringing it back. I wish that someone would bring back Castor, Zero and TOTGA and even The Vanilla Queen.

And there was a Paul Wolf Motorcycles, in Market Street in Crewe in the old Co-op store years ago.

Isabelle the nurse didn’t have much to say for herself today. I think that she said it all yesterday. But after she left I hung up the washing on the clothes airer and went to make my breakfast.

The WANDERINGS OF AN ANTIQUARY have taken us to Bignor Roman villa today. Thomas Wright gives us probably the best account of how it looked when it was discovered and states that it was the largest Roman villa in the UK. But that’s before the full extent of the Fishbourne Roman Palace was known

Back in here I had a chat with Alison on the internet and reviewed the work that I’d done during the week ready for dictation tonight. I need to take more care of what I type but it’s difficult with my vision these days and so wfvr wzpq. Last time I dictated some notes I found myself in a frightful muddle because a mistype presented another word that completely altered what it was that I was trying to say.

My cleaner turned up to fit the anaesthetic patches for me to and the taxi turned up a little earlier too. This was a vehicle from the other side of Avranches that had dropped someone off at the Centre de Re-education and was no on its way to pick up someone from the hospital at Rennes to take them back home. I was apparently something to make the empty journey pay. Not that I mind, of course.

There were very few of us there today, both patients and staff. It was a weekend team and while they were efficient they were far from sociable. And it goes without saying that I didn’t get to see Emilie the Cute Consultant.

Once they’d plugged me in, I was left totally alone except for the doctor who asked if I was OK – five seconds of attention. I had plenty of time to study my Welsh, now that I have uploaded the correct book, and almost reach the end of the biography of Lewis Carroll

It’s difficult to know what to make of him. With the benefit of hindsight many of his remarks could be taken in the wrong way that would be quite alarming but in the late Victorian era were probably quite innocent. They certainly aren’t on the same level as remarks made by someone like Frank Harris.

And then when they took the needles out we had quite the drama. Compresses, anti-coagulants, you name it, we had it. It quite wore me out and I was just sitting there with my eyes closed.

It took so long that my taxi went with the other passenger and I had to climb into a later one that ended up going all around the back of beyond to drop off someone else. Not that I minded because it was one of the nicer drivers who had taken me to Paris once and I quite like her.

My cleaner was there waiting and she watched as I hauled myself up the stairs. Today I managed six steps without lifting my leg up with my hand. I’d lost another 1.3 kg today so that might explain it.

Tea was a burger on a bap with salad and baked potato, and I was ready for it too. So now I’ll dictate my notes and go to bed.

But the dreams tonight and the hospital remind me about the patient with a broken leg.
A new arrival asked him "what’s the matter with you?"
"Appendicitis" he replied.
"But all the plaster?"
"Ohh, that" he replied. "I fell off the operating table".