… excitement, it’s been a much more calm day today and I haven’t really done all that much.
Up to now, though, I have managed not to fall asleep … "although the night is young" – ed … and that’s already an achievement.
Especially when it was about 23:30 when I finally crawled into bed. But once in bed, apart from waking up briefly on a couple of occasions, I managed to sleep through until the alarm went off at 06:29.
Now THAT was what I call a strange dream.
The stadium reminds me of a time when a friend and I went to Caen to see Granville’s cup tie with Olympic Marseille just before I fell ill, although there was no third person with us.
And what with babies on the scene, talking babies, goods trains running down the streets and all of that, I’ve no idea what must have been going on that had provoked all of that. And who was my wife if it wasn’t Nerina?
As well as all of that, as for my brother getting lost, well, he can do that as much as he likes, and in more ways than just one too.
In the bathroom, I had a good wash and scrub-up and then went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.
Back in here, I began to write up the missing notes from the previous evening but I didn’t manage to go all that far as Isabelle the Nurse turned up.
She was in a good mood, and we had quite a chat as she sorted my feet, and then she cleared off. I went to make my breakfast and to read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.
Today, we’ve been reading about the series of invasions of Greece, from the Bulgars in the north, the Venetians and Lombards from the west and the pirates of North Africa from the south, who all ravaged the country for a couple of hundred years round about the turn of the first millennium.
But now, the dark clouds are gathering, and so is the Fourth Crusade, ready to set off from Italy on its way to the Holy Land. Unfortunately for Greece and the Byzantine Empire, most of the Crusaders took rather too much of a fancy to the wealth of the various Greek and Byzantine cities and the Crusade escalated out of control, as we shall see over the next day or two.
Back in here, I finished off my notes, backed up the computer and took the statistics that I should have done last night. And then, I was free to listen to the dictaphone to see what else was on there.
She wouldn’t have had much of a respite with me. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m useless with all affairs of a medical nature. I had to go to see her in hospital once, and I lasted less than ten minutes.
And while it’s true that the taxi times are all up the spout some times, I don’t keep records and I don’t complain. After all, as I’m terminally ill, it’s all free to me and I don’t intend to bite the hand that feeds it. But TGVs from Dublin to the South of France are an interesting concept too.
After that, there were a few more things to do and then I began to mess around with some more artificial intelligence stuff. I began to work on a few programs with which I’d experimented last time, and I noticed that a few of the more undesirable features have been tightened up, which is good news.
However, I managed to find a few rat runs into a couple of the programs and what was interesting was that they seemed to employ an artificial intelligence probe detector that did really well to close up one rat run while I was still exploring it. Maybe a few more sites of this nature ought to adopt this probing detector and close a few more that are known to exist while they are at it.
But at least, things seem to be tightening up a little in this respect, which is good news.
After a disgusting drink break, I carried on writing the notes for the radio programme on which I had been working, and now they are all complete and ready for dictating.
Tea tonight was a slice of vegan pie with vegetables, mashed potatoes and gravy, followed by an apricot half and home-made ice cream. The ice cream had set far too hard so I had it out for half an hour and then mashed it vigorously with a fork before putting it back into the freezer. I hope that that works.
Anyway, I’ll find that out tomorrow because right now, I’m off to bed, hoping for a good night before dialysis tomorrow, although I doubt whether it will be as good as I would like.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Lombards … "well, one of us has" – ed … a friend of mine and I were discussing those acronyms that people used forty years ago to describe social groups of people.
"What was a Yuppie?" she asked.
"A Young, Upwardly-Mobile Professional Person."
"And a Dinky?"
"Dual Income, No Kids Yet."
"And a Lombard?" she asked
"I’ve no idea about that" I replied. "Was there anything?"
"Ohh yes" she replied. "A Lombard was ‘Loads Of Money But A Right D**khead’!"
