… to be one of the easiest sessions of dialysis that I have ever had, with only 1.6 kg of fluid to be removed. However, it’s totally exhausted me and in a few minutes I shall be off to bed.

It probably wasn’t the early start that did it – after all, being up and about at 06:20 is pretty much par for the course these days. And as well as that, it was a comparatively early night last night – in be by 23:30.

What with one thing and another, I had had a good session at the work that I needed to do after tea last night and I didn’t hang around at all. I suppose I could even have been in bed before than had I applied myself.

Once in bed though, I remember very little of the night until, once more, I had rather a dramatic awakening for no good reason at about 05:55.

Try as I might, I could not go back to sleep and, checking the time once more, I nipped out of bed just before the electric water heater switched off.

After a wash and shave (in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon) I went for my medication, sitting at the table when the first alarm sounded at 07:00.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a group of us, including my father, in a car driven by some young lad whom we knew. We’d come by Leighton Hospital and on the old road cut-off there was a Sherpa minibus. It had a taxi radio aerial on the roof and another one bolted onto the back door. I had a quick look but couldn’t see a taxi plate on it so I suspected that this one was operating illegally. We carried on down the hill towards Pym’s Lane, and this Sherpa caught us up. It was probably half an inch from our back door but we were probably doing about fifty mph. As we reached the bottom and began to come back up the hill the Sherpa became even more aggressive. We told the driver “take your foot off the throttle”. The driver took his foot off the throttle and the Sherpa drove straight into the back of it. Of course, we stopped and he stopped and we all alighted. We could see the driver of the Sherpa beginning to panic. He tried to escape but my father reached in through his window and took the keys out to stop him driving off. We made him alight from the vehicle to talk to us about the accident. In the meantime the young lad who owned the car had set up some kind of workshop at the side of the road with all his tools. He was busy preparing stuff to make a running repair of the damage. I was impressed by all of this. He said “well, I have nowhere else to keep it except in my car”. I replied “it won’t be long before you have your own place, and then you’ll find somewhere”. I’d been to the new place that he had bought. It was a tiny two-bedroom flat much smaller than mine. He would have a great deal of difficulty putting stuff into it. He took the top off a tube of something or other but dropped the top and someone nearly walked on it. We were all there, becoming busy while my father and one or two of his friends were stopping this guy from driving away.

This was an extremely realistic dream. The road layout was just as I remember it from when I lived in Crewe and Winsford and travelled that way regularly back in the 1970s and 80s. But once again, someone from my family seems to be involved in one of my dreams, even though there was nothing at all from which I might have needed saving.

Then later on, there had been a group of us. We had been for a walk in the hills over by Macclesfield. We were walking around there looking at all the mountains on the horizon, trying to identify them, which was which, which were the fields beyond it. We were trying to identify where the Salt Way, the ancient road over the hills between Cheshire and Derbyshire went. We were all pointing out amongst this group of people what we’d seen and where we’d seen it. I’d had a really good view five minutes earlier and I told everyone about it. They all came back but we couldn’t see it, or I couldn’t find it again. We ended up on a pub car park, looking. Just then, a group of five motorcyclists and their pillion passengers pulled up. The riders alighted and we noticed that one of the riders had the most enormous feet you have ever seen. They parked their motorcycles anywhere, one of them in the middle of the road. We thought that it wasn’t the best place to leave it. They went in but we were all sitting around a table outside. The manageress came out with the notepad and wanted to take our orders. She ran through the menu. One of the girls with us said that she would have a “Vegan Delight” but she would be horrified if she knew how much it was going to cost. The woman said that the devilled kidneys alone were £31:00. nevertheless the girl ordered it. I ordered the “Vegan Delight” but without the kidneys.

A few of those people I recognised – members of my Welsh class. What we were all doing walking over the moors at the back of Macclesfield I really don’t know either. But the biggest puzzle about this, something about which I am still shaking my head, is whatever would devilled kidneys be doing anywhere near a “Vegan Delight”. It’s no surprise that I eschewed them.

The nurse didn’t have too much to say for himself this morning, although he was not at all happy when I told him that he needed to be here at 06:45 on Monday morning at the latest. He told me to go to bed in my compression socks, which was what I suspected that he would say.

After he left I made breakfast. And my new mini-loaf is really, really nice, just as it should be. As far as MY BOOK goes, we are still in the Tower of London having the guided tour. I’ve long-since abandoned any hope of having any military architecture explained to me.

Back in here, I had a few bills to pay. There’s still no earthly reason why this monthly standing order won’t go through. Whenever I go to pay it manually, it automatically inserts my bank details so it must have them on file somewhere.

There was also a sum of money to transfer from my Canadian bank account for my great little niece (or little great niece)’s graduation from University, which is tomorrow.

There was time to start writing the notes for radio programme 260403 but I didn’t go very far before my cleaner came round to fit my patches.

After she left, I waited (and waited, and waited) for the taxi to turn up. Eventually it arrived and we set off, picking up someone else along the way. I was the last to arrive and so was the last to be connected. But there was only 1.6 kg of fluid to lose today so it was a session of three and a half hours. Imagine how early I could have been out had I been first to be connected up.

For a change, it wasn’t me who had a crisis in there. It was someone else. The nurse explained to me afterwards that she had been coming for several years and was now on the final downhill slope.

No-one bothered me and the machine behaved itself. I revised my Welsh while I was waiting.

Julie the Cook uncoupled me and while she was compressing me, she showed me some photos of a cake that she had baked. It looked lovely, a kind-of flan with fresh summer fruit on a cream base.

The boss came to pick me up this evening, and the poor woman who had come down with me had had to wait half an hour for me to finish. I felt awful, even though it’s not my fault.

After the taxi driver drove away, I realised that he had taken my jacket with him in the boot of his car. He brought it back later on, full of excuses. I told him that my cleaner was most upset about it and wanted a word with him so he made a quick getaway.

Tea was a baked potato with vegan salad, delicious vegan mayonnaise and breaded quorn fillet followed by vegan chocolate cake and soya dessert.

That was followed by a lovely chat with my niece and her three daughters who are in Antigonish ready for the Graduation Ceremony tomorrow. How I wish that I could be there. Antigonish is a lovely little town – I went there on several occasions when her elder sister was studying here – and it would be a lovely day. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I remember bouncing Amber up and down on my knee as a tiny baby (Amber, not me) when she was just a couple of months old in 2003 that winter that I spent in Canada. It’s hard to believe that she’s graduating from University.

Right now though, I’m feeling pretty miserable so I’m off to bed. It’s a good job that there’s nothing to dictate because I would not have felt much like doing it.

But seeing as we have been talking about Julie the Cook … "well, one of us has" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish will recall that she appeared a couple of weeks ago in one of my nocturnal rambles.
So this afternoon I told her "I dreamed about you the other night"
"Did you?" She asked
"No" I replied. "You wouldn’t let me"