… late night tonight. Mind you – this time it’s for a very good reason. Hwlffordd, third in the table, are playing Penybont, second, and need a win quite badly if they are to take second place. Normally, these days, I wouldn’t watch it until tomorrow afternoon at dialysis but this is a crucial match that I can’t really miss.

It’ll probably end up being later than last night’s, anyway. For a change, I was in bed not long after midnight once I’d finished everything that I had to do. And although I was asleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long.

It was another freezing cold night and I was chilled to the marrow. In fact I grabbed hold of my dressing gown and put it on in bed and went back to sleep, feeling a little warmer.

And that’s surprising me. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the very recent past I’ve been sweating buckets and feeling so hot in bed that it’s unbelievable. Right now though, for the last couple of days it’s been exactly the opposite. So what’s happening here then?

Once I was asleep, there I stayed until the alarm went off and then a very weary me staggered to his feet and wandered off into the bathroom.

After a good wash and tidy up I went for the medication, and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see what had happened during the night. Some woman was talking to someone from the northern part of the USA about things that had been going on in a chat group. The person replied that it wasn’t actually things in general but a few specific occasions where people had been adopting some kind of strange attitude and coming out with some unusual comments. He couldn’t explain anything about them but he did mention that he was very friendly on line with a girl from Oregon. She was possibly the latest person to take part in this strange way of talking and using strange words and so on. He gave a couple of examples of things that she had said but they weren’t particularly complimentary.

That reminds me of a group of people with whom I used to hang around back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when we all talked in clichés. You would never ever hear someone say "it’s over there" without someone else replying "what? Behind the rabbit?"

Or when someone needed to find out how heavy something is the answer would always be "we shall use my largest scales"

There were thousands of quotes like that that filtered all the way through everyday conversation back in those days, and many of them still hang around today but for the most part, it’s a form of communication that has become very exclusive because there are fewer and fewer people who remember it.

These days, in general, a sense of humour is non-existent. I remember a fellow student, in despair after an “exchange” with an American, created a spoof web site with the University logo on it for a course entitled, “Understanding Irony” and pushed it into the USA. Not only did he have several applicants, his point was proven rather more dramatically than he intended because the University, which also didn’t have a sense of humour and would have benefited from his course, threatened him with all kinds of sanctions if he didn’t take down the site.

Later on in the night I had Crewe Alexandra v Barrow. Barrow, who were bottom of the league, put up a really stubborn existence but Crewe ended up overwhelming them and scoring in a late goal. As a result, Crewe won the championship, probably the first actual championship that they have won, and Barrow were relegated to the National League. Even so, many of the commentators were in admiration of Barrow’s determined style of play and their determination to hold on to win a point at all costs

Earlier in the season Crewe Alexandra were pushing for the leadership of the table and Barrow were down in the depths. But a look in the table just now shows that the Alex have slid down somewhat and Barrow have found some form and climbed up. So this is one dream that won’t be coming true – just like all the rest, I suppose.

The nurse is off to a funeral this morning so I told him to pass on my condolences to the family of the deceased. It’s for one of the guys with whom I used to travel to dialysis. He passed away last Saturday.

After he left I made breakfast and read some more of MY NEW BOOK. We’re still in the introductory basic astronomy lesson, discussing the various calculations of different New Years and, would you believe, mistletoe

Nevertheless I sat rather bolt-upright when I read his remark "It was absolutely essential for early man, including the inhabitants of Britain as it was then—townless, uncivilised — that the people should know something about the proper time for performing their agricultural operations".

Surely, if man had stopped being a hunter-gatherer and had settled down to a sedentary life to pursue agriculture, that must mean that they have stopped competing with each other and are learning to co-operate. And is it not the embracing of co-operation between human beings a sign that humans have become civilised?

Back in here I made a start on the Woodstock programmes and by the time I’d finished I had all of the music for Friday and Saturday, all edited, remixed and ready to go. Mind you, I’m not quite sure how I’m going to manage to fit one hour and twenty-two minutes of music plus all of the accompanying speech into a one-hour time slot on the Saturday

Tomorrow, if I have a moment spare, I shall have to do the music for the Sunday and see how much I have for that.

Some of the notes have already been written and I can work my way through the rest as I go along.

My cleaner turned up today and between us we have still not managed to find my medical card. This is going to become a problem if I’m not careful. I can’t think where it might be. I’ve put it somewhere safe and so that will be that.

That reminds me of life down on the farm. I’d see something on special offer and think that i’ll need that for a renovation in six months time, but it’s such a good price that it’s well worth buying it now. So I’d buy it, put it somewhere to keep it safe and when I came round to need it, I could never ever find it again.

Tea tonight was a very quick salad, veggie nuggets and chips, and then back here for the football.

Hwlffordd took off at a very rapid rates of knots and scored an early goal, but then Penybont roared back upfield and scored an equaliser almost immediately.

Having played at 100 mph for the first 20 minutes or so, Hwlffordd seemed to run out of steam and they became less concerned with attacking and more concerned with retaining possession, to such an extent that it became embarrassing at times. It goes without saying that Penybont scored a second late in the game and even so, Hwlffordd still didn’t show any sign of urgency

You don’t score goals if you don’t attack and Hwlffordd are one of the lowest-scoring teams in the league. Their defence is (usually) excellent but their lack of effort to move the ball quickly upfield and to find a striker who can score goals is going to cost them in the long run.

So now I’ll do the washing up and then go to bed. Washing clothes, making orange juice, and dialysis are on the agenda tomorrow.

But yesterday, we were having a discussion about light bulbs … "well, one of us was" – ed …
This morning a friend of mine in Germany asked me "how many Germans does it take to change a light bulb?"
"I don’t know" I replied. "How many does it take?"
"None" she replied. "German light bulbs are engineered correctly and so never ever need changing. And anyway, Germans don’t have a sense of humour."