… comfortable. I’ve never felt anything like it. There I was, busy choosing the music for the next radio programme and I must have fallen asleep in mid-work. When I awoke, not far short of 20:00, I was so comfortable and relaxed in my chair that I didn’t know who I was, where I was or even when it was.

One thing that I knew though was that it was so pleasant, rather like a walk in a Japanese garden, that I was determined not to miss any of it so I wrote a terse note on my blog, rolled off my chair onto the bed, threw the covers over me and that was that.

It was something most unusual and most unexpected, particularly after last night. It wasn’t as early as I had hoped it would be when I finished everything, but I can’t complain about being in bed at about 21:45.

As usual, it took a while to go off to sleep. The constant coughing didn’t help, but once I’d gone to sleep, I was gone completely until about … ohh, I dunno. I didn’t look at the clock. I lay there for ages, so it seemed, but I must have dropped off again at some point because when the alarm sounded at 06:29 as usual, I was fast asleep.

We lived in our council house in Vine Tree Avenue from 1957 to 1970. “All quite modern”, they said, with just the fire in the living room, a back boiler for the hot water and a kitchen stove heated by the fire in the living room. Dashing up to bed at night with our hot water bottles into ICE STATION ZEBRA upstairs, and scraping the ice from the insides of our bedroom windows in the morning.

Anyone who talks to me about “the good old days” will get a smack in the mouth.

It took several minutes … "as usual" – ed … to summon up the strength to stand up and head for the bathroom, and then, in the kitchen, I tried this energy drink thing again with which to take my medicine. I’ve no ida if it’s working or not, but anything is worth a chance.

Back in here, there was plenty of time to check the dictaphone notes to find out what I’d been up to during the night.

There’s a story behind this too, and whilst the World is not yet ready to hear it at the moment, it’ll all become apparent in a few months.

But reworking hits from the 1950s and early 1960s with modern production techniques and sound would be quite an interesting project for someone.

The nurse turned up early again and we had quite a discussion about dialysis and my constant coughing fits that were driving him to distraction too. On leaving, he urged me to “rest and take it easy”. If only I could.

Once he’d gone, I made breakfast and started my next book, THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY AT MONKTON by the Kent Archaeological Service.

It’s not really a book – it’s more a forty-one-page brochure, I suppose, and it describes the examination of twenty-two Anglo-Saxon graves that were unearthed during the laying of a gas pipeline through Monkton on the Isle of Thanet in Kent.

However, I couldn’t resist a smile, or even a laugh, when the author tells us that several graves "had evidently been robbed in antiquity" and a couple of pages later, he tells us that the finds that they themselves made "are now in the museum at Maidstone."

A well-known phrase involving a pot and a kettle springs to my mind here.

Back in here, I followed the advice of my nurse and settled down in my chair. And that was that for about ninety minutes. For much of that time, I wasn’t really asleep but in one of those situations where I was drifting around somewhere in a different plane of existence.

Eventually, I managed to pull myself together and I began to write the notes for the radio programme that I’d begun yesterday. It wasn’t a particularly quick exercise and took me much longer than it should, but the constant coughing, which had caused me to vomit a few times, really was annoying me.

When I’d finally finished, I went for a disgusting drink break and my afternoon medication, and then back in here, Rosemary called me for a chat. It was another marathon where we talked about nothing much for ages, but we did chat about how her vegetable garden was going on. If there’s one thing that I really, really miss from my time in the Auvergne, it’s my vegetable patch and all the fresh vegetables that I used to grow.

After that, I began to research the next radio programme and to look for all the music that I needed. That was taking a positive age too, and it was during all of this that I slid into dreamland on my chair.

When I awoke, I did nothing of what I needed to do at the end of the day. I was determined to carry on with this wonderful feeling that I was experiencing, so I just went to bed and that was that. I can’t even remember my head hitting the pillow – that’s how far gone I was.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the ineffectiveness so far of my antibiotics … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a doctor I know who bumped into one of his patients in the street.
"Did those suppositories that I gave you ease your piles any?" asked the doctor.
"No, doctor" replied the patient. "In fact, to tell the truth, for all the good that they did me, I may as well have shoved them up my a*@e"

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