… things seemed to go my way at dialysis and I was back home by 18:20 – a good fifty or so minutes earlier than usual. And if it were like that every session, it wouldn’t be so bad at all.
Mind you, it was rather embarrassing. When the taxi came for me, a good twenty-five minutes early, I was … errr … busy riding the porcelain horse and the driver had to wait a few minutes for me.
In fact, I’ve had many a worse twenty-four-hour period than this last one, that’s for sure.
Things brightened up a little last night, for once. For a change, I managed to complete everything that I needed to complete without being drawn too far out of my way by some kind of distraction, and I was actually in bed just before 22:30, and I wish that I could do that more often.
And once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly, and although I had one or two vague recollections of being less-than-asleep at certain points during the night, I was still flat-out when the alarm went off at 06:29.
As is usual these days, though, it took me a good while to summon up the force to stagger off into the bathroom, where eventually I had a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon, and then I headed off into the kitchen.
After the hot drink and medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.
Whatever this was about, I have no idea. It’s hardly surprising that I was in a deep sleep in the middle of it because it makes very little sense at all.
The part about training for espionage relates to a book that I’ve been reading on and off about the creation of the British Secret Service, and the schoolboy living in a mobile home is presumably a reference to a John Le Carré book that I read years ago about a teacher at a public school who was living in a caravan at the back of the school playing field.
However, there was not much likelihood of our school having a huge reorganisation during the period when I was there. Steeped in tradition going back centuries.
There were a couple of other dreams too, but you don’t need to know about them, except that in one of them, I was still working a couple of years after retirement age, something that seems to be a regular occurrence in a dream these days.
The nurse turned up as usual but he didn’t stay long. He had his blood kit with him so I imagine that he must have had a queue of patients at his office waiting to give blood samples.
Once he’d left, I could make breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6 by Niall Sharples.
Not that I advanced very far, though. I came across an interesting report that told us that last year, advances in radiocarbon dating techniques revealed that the battle-scarred dead in what Mortimer Wheeler called “the War Cemetery” didn’t all relate to one incident. It seems to show that there were at least three, and maybe more distinct phases of warfare, only one of which might possibly fit in with Wheeler’s theory of a Roman attack.
Incidentally, the new report doesn’t fit in completely with Sharples’ interpretation either. Nevertheless, he’s not above taking another sly dig at Wheeler, commenting that he was making "a subjective impression which conveniently suited the historical interpretation applied to the evidence."
Back in here, I revised my Welsh, even though there’s no lesson tomorrow, and then began to track down the music for the next radio programme.
My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic, and as I mentioned earlier, the taxi was really early to come to fetch me for dialysis.
The wind outside was such that I had to leave by the back door, where the cars can pull up right outside the building in the alley reserved for the fire brigade. That’s much more convenient for me than being bowled over by a gale-force wind.
We had to pick up someone else along the way but even so, I arrived at dialysis at 13:25. There was quite a queue of cars but luckily I was in the small room with only four beds, of which three (including mine) were occupied.
The nurse was busy finishing off the first arrival when I went in, but the lady who was second wanted more time to prepare so I was seen straight away, which was nice. There was no time for me to apply the ice pack, but I didn’t care. The sooner I start, the sooner I finish, even if it was one of my favourite nurses.
Once I was up and running, I was left pretty much alone, although the doctor on duty turned up to see me just as I was about to be unplugged. Of course, I wasn’t going to stay around to talk.
The taxi was waiting for me, which was also nice, so I was back here really early.
But once more, there’s chaos in the building. Yet another proprietor, fed up with the inability of the House committee to organise this fibre optic installation, has gone ahead and had his walls drilled, even though, in a historic building such as this one, it’s streng verboten. I decided to throw some oil onto the flames by writing to the committee. It probably won’t galvanise them into action, but we can live in hope.
Tea tonight was the rest of the pizza, followed by jam roly-poly and vegan sorbet. That will keep the lupus from the porte for a while, as they might have said in Ancient Rome.
So right now, I’m off to bed, early, I hope. A good sleep will do me some good if I can manage it, but this decent twenty-four-hour spell can only last so long.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the nurse and his blood-sample kit … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of back in the old days in Transylvania –
"Blood samples should be taken at the office between 08:30 and 09:30. If you are unable to attend, please let us know and we will send a bat."
