… what happened at dialysis this afternoon, but there are a couple of things that just aren’t correct.
Take the diabetes reading, for example. My blood sugar level is usually around the critical minimum level of 0.8, but today, according to their machine, it was at an excessive 1.29, and it’s never been that high.
And then there’s the blood pressure. I’m plagued with low blood pressure, usually around 9.0, often down to 8.0 and even sometimes down to 7.0 when they have to call for help. It needs constant monitoring at dialysis so they check it automatically every half-hour and if it’s less than 9.0 an alarm sounds, which it does with monotonous regularity.
However, today the alarm didn’t sound at all and the blood pressure hovered around the 11.0 mark.
So what on earth is going on? It’s not like me at all, any of this.
It might be something to do with the night that I had last night. I was in bed by 23:30 – not early by any means but earlier than some have been just recently – and I slept right through without interruption all the way through to 06:23 – one minute earlier than yesterday.
That was when I awoke. It was not necessarily when I left the bed, but let’s not argue about that. But once I was up and about, I went for a good wash and brush up, and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.
After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We had some kind of project going to re-equip an old supermarket with new shelving, racking etc. We had a lot of the stuff already so it meant going up to our warehouse and sorting out what we had. The trouble was that there were bits and pieces everywhere and it took a while to sort it all out. There was about half-a-dozen of us doing all this. It involved collecting everything together and making a start, but because of the difficulties of finding the stuff, we’d been working on one particular range of shelving for quite some time, and I thought that the people in the supermarket would be fed up, so we should prioritise having that finished. It meant collecting together all of the stuff that was lying around for that particular range, so I began to collect everything together. I had to find a box in which to put it all so I went into the storeroom in which someone was searching through, to ask if there was a box. However, one of the girls who should have been helping us was there fitting a new speedometer to her motorbike. I thought that this isn’t really helping the situation of pushing on with this job. This goes back to some kind of situation where I’d been shopping, trying to collect everything that we needed but I’d only ended up going round half the supermarket before I ended up somehow at the checkout, so the following day I had to go back and do the other half. That’s where the story of this renovation came in.
There is nothing that I have done recently that ties in with anything in this dream, except maybe to look for a few cardboard boxes, so this is a puzzle.
There was also something about driving my old red Cortina estate around the back roads and dirt tracks near the North Wales coast in the Prestatyn area, and at the end of one dirt track was a big abandoned building with a castellated roof, that I recognised as the headquarters of the old local electricity company so I took a few photos of it. The road stopped abruptly there but in the distance directly across the fields I could see the North Wales Expressway near Rhuddlan and the huge spire of the marble church near Bodelwyddan. Back home I went to show the photos to some of my friends but they all seemed to have failed, showing only a portion of the building in close-up instead of all of it.
Yesterday I was reading up about the Kinmel Bay riots in 1919, the camp at Kinmel Bay being just a short distance from Bodelwyddan. But again, I’ve no idea where the reference to some fictitious building supposed to be the MANWEB (Merseyside And North Wales Electricity Board) head offices (which were actually at Rhostyllen) fits in. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall however much discussion about my red Cortina estate, currently languishing in my warehouse in Montaigut en Combraille with a 2000E saloon and a Traction Avant for company.
The nurse was once again much more like his cheerful self this morning, which is good news. He didn’t stay long, and after he left I could make breakfast and read some more of ADVENTURES ON THE COLUMBIA RIVER.
In fact, I’ve read all of it now because our author has arrived in Montréal, which is where his story ends. But he finished it with a delightful anecdote. Discussing the “conjugal” arrangements between some of the Native American women and some of the officers of the fur-trading companies, he tells us that "Mr. J was transferred that autumn from the Columbia to the Athabasca department, to replace a Mr. C who was about quitting the country, and leaving behind him a handsome" Métisse "wife. J succeeded him both in bed and board".
Tomorrow, I’ll be starting on a new book, which looks as if it might be Colonel Carrington’s testimony in relation to the Fort Phil Kearny debacle. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the summer 2019 we went into the Powder River country to visit THE SITE OF FORT PHIL KEARNY and the battle site where Lieutenant Fetterman led an absolutely reckless pursuit of a group of Native Americans who led him and his men straight into an ambush where they were wiped out to a man, all eighty-one of them.
We spent a good couple of weeks roaming around Northern Wyoming, North and South Dakota visiting many of the sites of conflict between the Europeans and the Native Americans, including places like LITTLE BIG HORN and finishing up at SOUTH PASS where the emigrants on the Oregon and California Trail in the 1840s passed from the Atlantic basin to the Pacific basin and where you can still see the wagon ruts today.
Back in here, I carried on with the next radio programme. All of the music has been chosen, edited, paired and segued, and I’ve made a start writing the notes. With a little luck, I might be finished tomorrow.
My cleaner came round to apply my anaesthetic cream, and then I had to wait for the taxi, which was late. Not that I minded because it was the cute young driver who came to pick me up and we had a lovely chat all the way down to the dialysis centre.
Although it was a late arrival, I was attended to straight away so the connection was even earlier than some have been. But despite the lack of interruptions, I couldn’t concentrate on anything and it was rather a waste of an afternoon.
My Belgian friend brought me back home, so we had another good chat and I gave her the number of my plumber, because she needs some bathroom work doing. And although he was more expensive than I was hoping, he did a magnificent job and I’m well-satisfied.
Tea tonight was a leftover curry but it’s given me a wicked indigestion, so I’ll be glad to go to bed tonight and sleep it off.
But seeing as we have been talking about Colonel Carrington’s expedition into Native American territory … "well, one of us has" – ed … on one occasion he went to smoke the pipe of peace with one of the local chiefs.
The chief began to introduce his entourage to Carrington
"My name is Chief Running Buffalo"
"How" replied Colonel Carrington
"This is my brother, Laughing Spirit"
"How" replied Colonel Carrington
"This is my mother, Flying Eagle. She came from the Comanche Tribe"
"How" replied Colonel Carrington
"And this is my squaw, Shining Moon. I bought her for three buffalo skins."
"How" replied Colonel Carrington
"Never mind ‘How’" said Colonel Carrington’s aide-de-camp. "Where?"
