… agony right now. I’ve been on my feet for four hours between 16:30 and 20:30 and I don’t think that I have ever hurt so much so continually.

It was agony when I was standing still but when I tried to move, my legs were locked up and even moving them one centimetre sent a searing pain through all my joints

All in all, it’s been something of a depressing day, and it started out so well too.

Last night, although I missed my 23:00 bedtime yet again, I was still in bed before midnight which means that with my little lie-in to 08:00 I was going to have a good eight hours sleep.

In principle, that is. Although I was asleep quite quickly I awoke a few times and on one occasion I was actually planning to leave the bed. However I thought that an 02:15 start to the day was probably being over-optimistic.

Nevertheless, when the alarm went off at 08:00 I was already up and sitting on the edge of the bed. I’d been awake for about 20 minutes and thought after about 15 minutes or so that I ought to have a go at breaking the 08:00 barrier. So there I was.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and then came in here to dress and begin to listen to the dictaphone.

Not that I made much progress though. The nurse came by early today and disturbed me. He didn’t stay long though. He seems to be working quicker and quicker these days, or maybe he doesn’t like me any more. Probably the latter.

After he left I made breakfast and then continued to read this thesis on the Lords of the Marches.

Written by an American whose contact with the UK seems to have been quite “limited”, it’s quite amusing.

We’re at the stage where he is shaking his head, completely puzzled and bewildered, as to why William the Conqueror hasn’t used the same tactics of devastation against the Welsh that he used in the “harrying of the North” where the Domesday Book records such lovely entries as “Earl Harold formerly held this. It had land for three ploughs, 16 serfs and 4 slaves. Today it is waste”.

For an American, that is quite understandable. His answer to the Welsh raids would have been what every other American would have done, gone ahead and invaded them, smote them mightily and made them sell Coca-Cola

To a European though, the answer is quite simple. Having (he thought) been unjustly deprived of his heritage, William went across the Channel to claim his inheritance. Wales was not at this stage part of England and so was not in his inheritance and he had no reason to go there.

Border raids were at that time a normal state of affairs everywhere and there was no reason for this to be any different, but try explaining that to an American whose only thought, despite what the Bible tells him, is vengeance.

There’s going to be a lot of mileage in this thesis.

Back in here I carried on with the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I was in a town in the suburbs of Liège and wanted to go to the swimming baths. The nearest swimming baths were in the suburbs of Aachen so I prepared everything. It took me three or four goes to prepare everything – I’d set out from the house without my sac banane and everything in it, I set out without my towels and trunks etc but eventually I had everything together and I set out to walk. I found myself at Aachen railway station, a really busy junction, and I couldn’t remember which line it was as I wanted to go to the baths. Try as I might, I couldn’t identify it. The only thing that I was certain that I’d have to do was to take the train back to Liège and set out to walk as I usually did. That seemed like a whole waste of time to me. I was intrigued by the definition of this walk along the river through the forest to the swimming baths. It was called “The Nun’s Walk”. When I’d asked about the name I was told that it was a nun walking on the hot tar back to her convent was so hot that she took off her shoes and walked back through the river that follows the path. I thought that that was most unlikely to have been the case but that was the only explanation that I’d heard

If I can walk from Liège to Aachen just for a trip to the swimming baths, I’m doing really well. I’d have to get a move on because it’s quite a distance. But I remember the scenery and it reminds me of when I was IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO walking to Karlovy Vary. That’s something that makes me quite sad though. I won’t ever walk like that again and it upsets me.

Later on I was with my elder sister and her husband, which was a surprise (and wasn’t it just? I can’t think of too many people whom I’d be less willing to see). We had been discussing what had gone wrong with our family. We threw various suggestions around. My sister’s husband came up with the idea that one part of the family is now married off. They all had children so there were grandchildren and that’s really all that’s interesting for one person, isn’t it? I said “I couldn’t agree with you more on that”. We were in Aachen again (so I must have stepped back into the first dream). I’d arrived there on foot and had gone round the shops looking for the railway station back and ended up in a big hotel. I found myself in the basement. There was a concièrge there asking everyone who came past if they wanted to use the toilet. I didn’t answer but wandered away. That was when I met up with my family. I was asked if I wanted to go to have a look around the sales but despite everyone’s insistence I declined. My niece’s daughter said that she was going to eat her cornflakes with bath water. I said “bath water? How horrible”. She said yes, but one of her aunts did it. I replied “God! They must be out of their minds! Eating their cornflakes with bath water?”.

It doesn’t take much to work out exactly what was wrong with our family. The fact was that we weren’t a family, just a lot of strangers living under the same roof, with a philosophy of “every man for himself”. It’s no surprise that I have relationship issues after eighteen years of that.

And next, I watched Stranraer throw everything, the kitchen sink included, at Elgin City and still manage to come away from the Highlands with a 1-0 defeat. It was an object lesson in “it doesn’t matter how much possession you have and how many shots you have on goal if you can’t put one past the keeper”.

After that I had work to do. I’d dictated two of the three programmes in the pipeline, and sat down to edit the first dictation. And I was doing really well until the programme that I use crashed and I lost all that I had done.

That called for a break for lunch, a salad butty with the last of the air-fried bread followed by fruit. The bread was delicious and I resolved to try another air-fryer loaf.

Back in here I began again, and eventually ended up with a programme that was one hour and twenty-three minutes long. Some ruthless editing was called for and that took an age to sort out, but eventually I finished with exactly one hour of talk and music.

No time to do the second one though because it was hot chocolate time.

Having drunk that it was then baking time. First task was to make some dough for bread. I gave it a good kneading and then left it on one side.

The flapjack was next. The food processor was involved in that task and I actually found the mixing gear which I coupled up when I’d finished chopping up the nuts and banana chips.

With the mixing attachment it made the mix so much better. It took longer of course, but it was worth it. The finished result was much more like it was supposed to be.

So much so that I did the same with an oil cake. I decided on a spicy ginger cake and used the chopping attachment to chop up the ginger and the mixer attachment to mix up the rest of the ingredients – the dry ingredients first and add the wet ones next.

By now the bread was ready for its second kneading and I put it in one of my silicon air fryer liners, flattening it well down in case it rose up and touched the element again.

At lunchtime I’d taken out some pizza dough from the freezer and it was now defrosted so I rolled it out and put it in the pizza tray, leaving it to rise up

The flapjack went into the oven and the cake into the air fryer while I assembled the pizza. The flapjack was lovely but the cake was a problem yet again. I can’t seem to make the air fryer work with cakes

The bread went in the air fryer next while I put the pizza in the oven. And they were both done to perfection. This idea of baking bread in the air fryer is looking like a success, Hans.

After the pizza I finished off the washing up. There was a mountain of it and I’d been doing it here and there while I was waiting for things to happen.

So now I’ve finished my notes and I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I’m going to look on the internet for a kitchen stool because I can’t go on like this.

Talking about the swimming baths … "well, one of us is" – ed … reminds me of the ones that they opened in Crewe in the town centre a couple of years ago. Over the entrance door was the sign "PSWIMMING BATHS"
And so I asked the caretaker "how come the place has been spelled like that?"
"Ohhh; it’s not like the old Municipal Swimming Baths here" he said. "In these baths the ‘P’ is silent."