… a very busy boy today, and have accomplished quite a lot. It’s not often that I have days as productive as this, so it’s worthy of note.

Not that last night was any indication of how things might have been. It was another one of those nights where things dragged and dragged, and I seemed to be struggling to do the simplest of things.

Even though I’d started my notes at some kind of reasonable time and looking forward to a reasonably early finish, instead it was almost 23:30 when I finally crawled into bed.

Mind you, I was soon asleep, and I can’t remember anything at all until I had another dramatic awakening at 06:05 this morning. So much for my lie-in until 08:00, and does anyone else apart from me remember my legendary lie-ins until midday and later on Sundays prior to dialysis?

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … being awake is one thing. Being up and about is something else completely. It was actually 06:20 when I finally staggered into the bathroom to sort myself out for the day.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I ended up buying an old lorry and was looking for work for it. In the end, a place down near Audlem was a tar centre and they were disposing of some of their tar so I bought ten tons of it and put it in a tanker. Then, I was wondering what to do with it because I couldn’t think of how I was going to dispose of it. My father told me that they put it mostly on the roads. I asked him how far he thought that ten tons would go, but he didn’t think that ten tons would go very far. After much thinking about it, he suggested that I head north out of Audlem and look for some of the salt mines that rare around there and see whether their roads need upgrading etc because there were other places in the vicinity where I could have my tank washed and prepared for whatever, a different kind of load. But I was totally bewildered by what I was going to do with this ten tons of tar and couldn’t think why I had bought it. It was just a weird decision to do that but I didn’t know what else I could do

One thing that I could easily have imagined myself doing in the past was owning a lorry. It wouldn’t have been a tanker though – too many safety certificates and the like to obtain, and I certainly wouldn’t have gone out to buy ten tons of tar on spec without having a ready market for it. Mind you, I have done wilder things …

Later on, I’d met a couple of Americans who were in the UK doing business. I wondered whether there might be some kind of opportunity for me with them so I had a little chat and talked about my business, puffing up my affairs a little. They told me that they had two representatives in the UK at that particular time, one of whom was in the area and the other one was in Lincoln, so I was chatting to them. I had to set off in a car and ended up stopping at a motorway service station where I was talking to a lorry driver about all of the changes in the service areas over the years and how he was saying that he would continue having trouble finding the right kind of place. He and I tried to leave the building but even with his pass key it was still a struggle to leave. I told him about the times that I’d been down on a motorway service station driving lorries. I climbed into my car but I drove off the service station without looking. I thought “that was a lucky escape”. I then had to decide where to go. I was heading somewhere down the M1 but I wondered if I should go to Lincoln instead but I thought “what am I going to do when I’m in Lincoln?”. I carried on driving to my destination and when I was there, I created a website and set it up in a foreign country, then sent a link to these American people with the idea that with my business being registered in a foreign domain, it would confuse them. But they were in the middle of the street in Nantwich Road – the middle of the pavement – having a huge discussion. I dropped my coat but even with a big shovel, I still couldn’t pick it up. I was just pushing it farther and farther into the road.

“Commercial puffs” are well-known in business and I think that just about every businessman has engaged in them. Some were so convincing and overwhelming, in the cases of companies like Enron and WorldCom, and individuals such as Bernie Madoff, that when they were finally exposed, they collapsed whole economies. Not, however, that any puffing up that any sole trader on my scale of business could do would ever damage an economy. Chance would be a fine thing.

Isabelle the Nurse was late today, having overslept this morning. consequently she was in and out in a flash and I could carry on and make breakfast.

There was also MY BOOK to read.

Our author is still on the prowl around the churches of London and it looks as if he’s going to be there for quite a while. He does, however, make some interesting remarks about various bequests that were made by the rich in order to aid the deserving poor, finishing by saying "how this … was performed I have not heard, for executors of our time having no conscience (I speak of my own knowledge) prove more testaments than they perform.".

Back in here, I watched Stranraer away to Edinburgh City, and almost fell asleep in the middle, such was the game. I have been to funerals with a more lively atmosphere than the atmosphere at the Meadowbank Stadium during the game.

Next task was to tackle the “Sunday Woodstock” radio programme. I had ten minutes and seventeen seconds to lose so that meant “goodbye” to two groups, whose style doesn’t really fit into our programmes, and a rewriting and editing of certain vocal parts. I’d anticipated some exclusions and had dictated some notes to cover them. There was plenty of applause amongst the tracks too and so I had some room to manoeuvre … "PERSONoeuvre" – ed … in there.

It took an age to do all of that and line up the various sections of the programme afterwards, but it’s now all done and it sounds quite good Even the bad mistake that I had made and which I identified yesterday was patched over.

So that’s a huge weight off my mind, because it has been the most difficult radio task that I have ever performed. The research alone took a couple of months all told.

There was an interruption – I had to pause for a while to sell some furniture. I’m slowly having a clear-out and have advertised some stuff on one of these websites. Today, it was the turn of the four cheap kitchen units, those that I bought a few years ago just before I fell ill and so never installed here, to go out of the door.

Well, they were out of the door already – on the landing outside where they have lived for three or four years – but anyway, they aren’t there now, the ground’s all flat.

After a disgusting drink break, I had another task to perform.

There has been a huge accumulation of paperwork around here that I haven’t filed away for eighteen months and it was completely out of hand, so I sorted it all out into date order and it’s now all neatly filed away in various folders.

At one point I had several piles of papers on the floor and it reminded me of the good old days when Nerina and I were sorting out the paperwork for the taxis. We’d have several piles of paperwork on the floor, and then the cats would come in. They would make a very intelligent and correct guess about which pile of paperwork we were actually working, and then go to sit on it.

And that reminds me – I shall have to think about trying to find a cat for when I move downstairs. I am determined to have one.

Something else that I’ve done is to pack a couple more boxes with things to be taken downstairs. I shall let my faithful cleaner take charge of that.

There was bread to make this afternoon, as well as a pizza base for tea. And that all worked well, except that the bread needed much longer than usual this afternoon to bake. I’ve no idea what was the matter with the oven today.

So now that I’ve had my delicious pizza and tidied up a little, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow, I’m going to be busy. There are my bags to pack, food to make, and then I’m off to dialysis in the afternoon. When dialysis is finished, I’m going straight to Paris for chemotherapy so it will be unlikely that there will be a blog entry for tomorrow night. You may have to wait for Tuesday to read it.

But seeing as we have been talking about wills and testaments … "well, one of us has" – ed … a very true story is that someone was left a sum of money in someone else’s will "on condition that he could prove that he was not dead."
The heritee had to present himself before a Commissioner for Oaths who asked him "Are you Mr …..?"
"Yes I am" replied the heritee.
"Are you dead?" asked the Commissioner
"No I am not"
"Are you prepared to swear an oath to that effect?"