… had one of those days where nothing at all has gone right? I’m in the middle of one right now and I’m going to have a major sense of humour failure before long. It just isn’t my day at all.

Last night was quite nice though. After everyone had left after tea I sat down, wrote my notes, did what I had to and even managed fifteen minutes of tidying up. It was quite late when I eventually went to bed, but I didn’t mind at all. I was enjoying myself in my new abode.

Once I finally made it into bed, I was asleep quite quickly, but unfortunately not for long. At 05:05 I was wide awake and by 05:30 I’d given up all hope of going back to sleep, so I called it a night and left the bed.

Unfortunately, there was nothing whatever on the dictaphone. I know that I must have been tired after my marathon 48 hours of the last couple of days with just a few hours sleep, but it really must have been a very deep sleep into which I slipped.

So instead, I had a good wash and scrub up, trying to avoid mentioning Emilie the Cute Consultant in case the boss of the dialysis centre finds out and blows a gasket, had my medication and then did some more tidying up. The kitchen was now looking quite tidy, which was lovely.

When the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master in, we had coffee and a chat, and then I made yet more strides with the tidying up while the two of them went out for a walk.

While I was at it, I rang up about the internet. It doesn’t seem to be a fault on the line, so they think that it might be a bad connection here. They will send out a technician to check it, but he can’t come until Saturday afternoon. In the meantime, we managed to arrange some kind of temporary internet that might keep us going for a day or two

When everyone came back, we had a very late breakfast, where I discovered all about just how powerful my new microwave oven is when I went to make my porridge. Consequently, I had to spend ten minutes cleaning the oven, which did not make me feel any better.

Once breakfast was finally finished, the tidying up restarted and I began by trying to make enough space to bring my bass stack down from upstairs, on the grounds that it will be farthest away from the door and so much easier to bring in without there being any obstructions. However, everyone else had other ideas of what needed doing next, so while I was busy putting away the stuff that I’d taken off the floor, everyone else was filling the space with other things.

Nevertheless, we soon managed to work out a rhythm of how we were doing to work out everything, but with a very late start, the cleaner came in to sort me out, ready for dialysis long before I was ready.

Once she’d left, I began to prepare the stuff for the washing up of what had accumulated but the taxi driver beat me to it, so I left a mountain of stuff all over the kitchen ready to do when I returned home.

My arrival at Avranches coincided with the arrival of five other people so as usual, I was the last person to be coupled up. I almost had heart failure when they told me that I had gained so much weight that I needed to stay for four hours, especially as I’d starved myself and hardly drunk anything at all since Monday.

However, they realised that they had miscalculated, and reset the machine for three and a half, which eased my plight somewhat.

The dietician came to see me about an expired prescription, and the doctor came to see how Paris went, but one glimmer of good news is that The University Hospital of Rennes ‘phoned me. It is indeed licensed to administer Bandamustine, and I can go there on Tuesday 16th September rather than to Paris. That sounds extremely optimistic

While I was there, I made good use of the internet right through until it was finally time to go, but as you might expect, not only was I the last to be uncoupled, there were so many problems with the people being uncoupled before me that I had to wait nearly half an hour before the nurse could attend to me.

When I was finally free to go, the taxi was there waiting but there was someone else to travel with me, but we had to wait ten minutes for her to finish and be ready, and then she lived fifteen minutes down the road in the opposite direction.

Consequently, it was 19:30 when I arrived back here, far too late to do the washing up, the pile of which had grown considerably during the afternoon.

Still, out we went and met up with the girls who had come down from Brussels and Cologne to help out for the weekend. I’d booked a table at a restaurant, completely forgetting that there were several steps down into the building and no handrail, so I almost fell in, and then spent the whole of the meal being stressed out about how I was going to climb back out again.

The meals that the other three had were delicious. My first salad came with ham on it, and the second one came with eggs in it so by this time I had long since given up all hope of anything going my way at all.

With some help, the climb out of the restaurant wasn’t as bad as I was fearing, but the hundred yards up a steep hill to the car was far too much and that stressed me out even more. I should never ever have considered trying it. I made it though, but I won’t ever make it again.

Back in here yet again, I just took one look and the huge mess in the kitchen, that seemed to have grown even more, and I gave up in despair. This was exactly what I had been trying to avoid. My one pet hate is waking up in the morning to a pile of dirty dishes, and this huge heap in front of me has depressed me beyond all measure.

Calling it a night, and hoping that I’ll feel better in the morning, I came into my room to write my notes. I picked up a bag of things that had been left on my desk, and knocked off a huge pile of other stuff that had been abandoned on there.

There are several other things that I could mention but it would just depress me even more, and probably depress you lot too. So I’ll call it a day and go to bed, in the hope that I’ll feel better in the morning. Although how I’m going to cope with all of this washing-up I really don’t know as yet.

But I shall really have to stop being so stressed out. It’s a really bad week for me, with chemotherapy, the trip to Paris and everything. It’s hardly surprising that I’m just totally out of it all right now. But that doesn’t make me feel any better. Perhaps a good night’s sleep will help. Who knows?

But seeing as we have been talking about my bad luck today … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of being in Sheffield when the boiler at the vegan tomato soup factory exploded as I walked past.
"That was your lucky day" said a friend.
"Not really" I replied. "The only implement that I could find was a fork."