… the dictaphone this morning.
However, although that may be a surprise to some, the fact is that last night I had probably the best night’s sleep that I have had for a long, long time.
What with the football and everything, I had quite a late night again. By the time that I’d written my notes, taken the stats, and backed up everything, it was after 23:30 when I finally crawled into the bed underneath the covers.
Once I was warm and comfortable, I went straight to sleep, and the very next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29. I was so surprised that I sat bolt upright and slid sideways out of bed in a panic.
Usually, during the night, there’s some kind of very vague memory of something, either me turning over in bed or having a coughing fit, but last night, there was absolutely nothing. It really was the Sleep of the Dead.
Sitting upright on the bed with the feet on the floor is one thing. Standing up and heading to the bathroom is something completely different. It took me a good few minutes … "as usual" – ed … to summon up the energy to leave the bedroom again this morning.
However, I was early into the kitchen after my scrub up, and I made my hot drink with which to take my medicine. And back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone, I checked my mails and so on.
The nurse was early today — actually before 8:00. He asked how things went in Paris, so I told him the news. He had the air of being disappointed, but then again, so am I. He sorted out my feet, and then he cleared off. It didn’t take him long.
Once he’d left, I made breakfast and began to read A ROMAN FRONTIER POST AND ITS PEOPLE again.
It’s been so long since I last read it that I’d forgotten where I was in the book, so I started all over again. At the moment, we’re walking along Dere Street, the Roman road that leads from Hadrian’s Wall up to the Antonine Wall in Scotland, and we’ve just arrived in the vicinity of Newsteads.
James Curle is at the stage of wondering why the Romans didn’t build their fort on the promontory commanding the area, instead of halfway up the slope. However, once his excavations make a start, he’ll find out why. And it becomes much more exciting when he does find out why.
Back in here, I began to install the office correctly. I’m now just using the new laptop as a desktop work unit, with the desktop screen plugged in. Some of the external drives are plugged into an adapter that is plugged into one USB port of the machine, and there’s another adapter in the second USB port with the mouse and keyboard from the desktop plugged into it. And that’s a much better way to work.
After all of that, I had a footfest with the highlights of all of the matches from last night, including Y Bala’s most improbable win against Y Fflint. That kept me busy for a while, and then there was some post that needed my attention.
Eventually, I could push on and do some work.
The next radio programme is going to feature a rock festival, so I had to track down the groups that played there, try to find their setlists for the festival and then see if I actually had any of the songs in my collection.
That took much longer than it ought, but then again, as usual with these festivals, many of the groups are quite unknown outside their orbit, and their music is unavailable by conventional means.
However, I eventually managed to round up enough music, including at least one very rare track that the group concerned only ever played live once and never ever recorded on an album. That should be of interest when it crawls into the public domain. But then, having a friend whose son was once sound engineer for the Pink Fairies has conjured up all kinds of rarities in the past.
So now, all of the music has been selected, converted to the correct format, remixed, re-edited, paired and segued, and I’ve even started to write the notes for it all.
That took me up until teatime tonight (a rather late teatime, it has to be said). I had peas, carrots, a mash of sweet and ordinary potatoes and gravy with a slice of my new vegan pie, followed by a slice of Christmas cake.
The vegan pie is wonderful, and I shall be looking forward to trying the other seven slices. I cut the pie into eight, and the other seven are now in the freezer ready for later.
But right now, late again, I’m off to bed. Dialysis tomorrow, and I expect that Emilie the Cute Consultant will ignore me again. She definitely doesn’t love me any more.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the frontier … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me "how many ears did Davy Crockett have?"
"Three" I replied. "His left ear, his right ear and his final front ear. Now you tell me how many ears Captain Spock had"
"I don’t know" he replied
"He also had three" I answered. "His left ear, his right ear and Space."
"Space?" he asked
"Yes" I answered. "Space, the final front ear."
