… absolute disaster at the dialysis centre today.

Over the past three days, from Monday until today, I have accumulated so much water that not only did they make me stay for four hours, and not only did they have the machine set at the max, it still didn’t clear all of the excess water.

No-one has much of a clue as to what that signifies because everything else is as normal, or as normal as can be. There are no unexpected results at all from any of the tests that they carried out.

Brooding on the infinite is something on which I seem to be spending so much time these days, especially when I thought that I was doing so well too. I seem to be going two paces forward and then three steps back.

Take last night, for example. I might have been late finishing, but not as late as all of that. And I was backing up the computer when it stalled. I seemed to have caught it right in the middle of an upgrade so I had to wait for it to finish what it was doing and then restart. And system upgrades these days are not things of five minutes

Eventually I crawled off into bed when everything was finally finished, horribly late of course. But once in bed, there I stayed until the alarm went off, pretty much without moving, although there was the occasional twinge from the stabbing pain in my heel that awoke me every now and again.

When the alarm went off I was fast asleep and it was a desperate stagger to my feet before the second alarm went off, and thzn I toddled off in an undignified fashion to the bathroom where I even had a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was off driving taxis again last night. I’d begun to drive for someone for whom I used to drive when I first began driving taxis. He ran through the procedure of what I needed to so I’d gone off to the rank for my first shift. When I awoke I was in the middle of cashing up at the end of the shift next morning.

How many nights in succession is it now that I’ve been dreaming about driving taxis? Whether or not it is my subconscious telling me something, there’s nothing whatever that I can do about it now.

Later on I’d gone back to sleep again and gone back into that dream again. I was just starting my first shift after having played in goal for the football team for a while in the afternoon. It was a pretty slow start and in fact we were 4-0 down at one point but one of our players won a penalty and managed to score it to make the score 4-1. That way we were able to at least try to keep in touch with the other team rather than be cast adrift at the bottom already because it was going to be very tough for some teams this season with all of the new controls to make sure that they are doing OK and progressing so I was sorting myself out at the start of my first shift at this game of football.

This is a complete mess of a dream … "just like all of the others" – ed … that flits about from one subject to another. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I enjoyed playing goalkeeper but I didn’t think that I was much good because I was always the third-choice. But apart from the lack of height, I was cheered up a few years later when I discovered that our first-choice keeper had become a professional playing for Wycombe Wanderers and our second-choice keeper had signed semi-professionally for Northwich Victoria in the Conference League. Mind you, I still might have been rubbish.

Finally, I’d been to Leicester because our little travel group was having a meeting there. When I arrived I was wandering around waiting to meet my friends but found out that the meeting had actually been cancelled because one of them had something rather important to do and she couldn’t make it. As I was walking around I bumped into him. We had a little chat and he excused himself and said that he had to go. He asked me how things were. I told him that I was still looking for Lincoln Road in Leicester because I’d seen a map that there were several streets off it with names like “Ley Street” etc. That had to be extremely interesting with regard to these books that I’d been reading. Why would they name a street after a ley line? He had a vague idea of where it is. he also mentioned one or two other streets with similar prehistoric types of names with them. After he left, I carried on walking. I came to the big supermarket. As I walked onto the car park I saw my van. The rear door was open and someone was looking inside it. I walked up to the van, grabbed the person, threw them into the van, closed the door and locked it.

It looks as if I’ve been reading too many of these late Nineteenth-Century history books, what with ley lines and all of that, prehistoric monuments and neolithic stone circles. And I haven’t really seen my friends for so long.

Interestingly though, when I was typing out the final dream a vision came into my head, and I have a very vague memory of being inside the supermarket looking at these combined telephone holder/charger things that we used to have for the car back in the olden days and trying to buy one for the new ‘phone.

When Isabelle the Nurse came in, I had a present to give her. However, if you are eating your tea right now, you don’t want to know what it was. I suspect that she knew, because she wasn’t at all grateful.

After she left I made breakfast and read some more of MY NEW BOOK. We’ve interrupted our whistle-stop tour of English and Welsh castles for a good ramble around the castle at Guildford.

It’s the full guided tour today, having pointed out to us all of the architectural features. But that’s “architecture” – it’s not the “military” that I was expecting, judging by the title of the book.

After breakfast I had some tidying up to do and then a few things on the computer needed my attention. I was still so engrossed when my cleaner arrived to fit my patches.

After she left I had a disgusting drink while I waited for the taxi to arrive and then we set off in the lovely weather to pick up someone else on our way to Avranches.

Our driver was one of the very chatty ones so we had quite an animated discussion all the way there. And then I had the bad news about the water retention.

If that wasn’t bad enough, we’re back to the “hurting like hell” again. It was a new nurse who presumably hasn’t heard of the new procedure and stuck my needles into the previous location.

Everyone was flapping around me today trying to identify what was going wrong with my body. Everyone except of course Emilie the Cute Consultant who kept her distance.

With the machine on maximum power, I was totally exhausted by the time that they unplugged me and dismayed by the fact that all of the liquid hasn’t gone. It was a very weary me who fell into the arms of my taxi driver.

We had a nice chat too on the way home, and then I had to face the climb upstairs, and I really was in no mood for it but I managed it all the same. Having been late leaving, going to pick up someone else, the four hours in the centre, it really was late this evening.

Tea tonight was a stir-fry, and this time I remembered the bean shoots. It was probably very nice but I was in no mood for it.

In fact, I was in no mood for anything and right now I’m going to bed, I reckon, and sleep until Armageddon.

But in news that will come as quite a surprise, Prince Andrew was admitted to the hospital in Avranches with some kind of complaint.
After a thorough examination the doctor told him "we have some good news for you. We’ve checked your prognosis and the symptoms are quite minor"
"What a pity my mother has died" replied the Prince
"why is that?" asked the doctor
"Well, I had a similar problem in the USA once but my mother paid her millions to go away"