… alone!!
Currently asleep on my comfortable sofa in the living room is my friend from Munich, and on the rug by his side is the Hound of the Baskervilles, both of them snoring away quite happily.
Yes, at lunchtime, I received a message – “arriving at about 16:00”. I thought to myself “blimmin’ ‘eck – I’d better get a move on!”.
It made me wish that I’d got a move on last night, really. As usual, after having no tea yet again, I came in here to type up my notes, and as usual, things seemed to take much longer than they ought to have done. However, it was about 21:50 when I finally managed to slide into bed.
During the night, I awoke once or twice, one of which was about 01:00 once more, although this time there was no hailstorm or anything going on that might have woken me. The second time, and I have no idea what time it was, I had to leave the bed to go and walk the parapet. However, quite luckily, I managed to fall asleep both times fairly rapidly.
When the alarm went off at 06:29, we had the usual struggle to my feet, which seemed to take hours, and then I went off to organise myself in the bathroom and then take my medication. The LeClerc order the other day had included some liquorice and mint tea, which, I’m told, will ease my throat somewhat, so I used that to wash down the pills and tablets. We’ll see if it works.
Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.
When I had my taxis, I had both kinds of cars – former reps’ cars with high mileage and little old ladies’ cars with almost nothing on the clock. Surprisingly, the reps’ cars were so much better and worked a lot harder than the other, having been used to a hard life and plenty of work.
But if this Escort were merely scabby around the edges, it should have tidied up quite nicely, so I’m surprised that, even in the dream, no-one seemed to be interested in it.
Every now and again, I have to fit my own socks when I have an early start, and with them being these compression socks, it really is awkward. However, walking around on a cold wood floor in the bedroom feels really nice to me – it’s the cold tiles everywhere else in this apartment that annoys me. That’s the only thing that I don’t like about my apartment. I would really have liked to have had a wooden floor, but you can’t have everything.
It’s no surprise though. If you asked me to name the top five Chinese cars on the market these days, I wouldn’t have a clue.
Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, and we talked about the Hound of the Baskervilles as she sorted out my legs and feet. I told her not to fight with my cleaner over him – they can take turns to stroke him.
After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of Charles Roach Smith’s THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT.
At long last, we’re getting down to the excavations at Reculver. However, not his excavations but excavations that took place earlier in the nineteenth century by other people. One day, soon I hope, we’ll start on his work and see what he found.
Back in here, I finished off the notes for the radio programme that I’d started yesterday, and then I had a huge surprise.
A few years ago … "2017 to be precise" – ed … I hired a boat and went UP LABRADOR’S NORTHERN COAST to what I consider to be the Furdustrandir or “Wonderstrand” … "or Wunderstrand" – ed … the magnificent stretch of white sand that the Norse explorers saw when they touched land after sailing from Greenland.
Also there are the scanty, rotting remains of North River, a settlement that was abandoned during the clearances of the 1950s when everyone from these isolated spots was removed to towns like Cartwright and a few others farther south. North River is famous, or infamous, because of a child’s grave in the cemetery. A Finnish anthropologist called Viano Tanner explored these settlements in 1937-39 and noted the grave of a child “killed by dogs”. Everyone disputed that this gravestone exists and claimed that no such event ever happened, so I wanted to see for myself. And it is there!
But while I was there, I photographed a few other gravestones.
Someone wrote to me in astonishment, saying that one of the graves was that of her grandfather, and what did I know about him. So I spent all morning researching all of the papers that I have on Labrador, and in the end, I sent her what I could find, which actually was quite a lot.
At that point, I decided that I’d better go and make bread, but my cleaner arrived to do her stuff, so I had to settle for a disgusting drink and my midday (hours late) medication.
Once she’d left, I began the process of making bread rolls and a loaf, but my friend and the Hound of the Baskervilles turned up while I had my hands full of dough.
It’s lovely to see him again. We first met on our first day at grammar school back in September 1965 and, like me, he’s a big music fan. When I was able to do so, I went down to Munich on many occasions to visit him, but these days, people have to come to see me here, and it’s nice when they do.
While I was making bread, we talked about old times and people whom we knew at school who are now pushing up the daisies somewhere, and once the bread was left to rise, I blanched some broccoli and made a broccoli stalk soup with pasta for tea.
To my surprise, I found myself eating some soup and bread – the first evening meal that I’ve had for months. However, my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I ended up being a miserable failure towards the end.
By the time that we’d finished and I’d washed up everything … "where did this energy come from?" – ed … it was after 23:00 so we decided that it was bedtime. And when was the last time that I was up and about at this time of night? Obviously, having people here is doing me good.
Anyway, I sorted myself out in the bathroom and then came in here to sleep. Crawling into my nice comfortable bed is really wonderful at any time. I threw the quilt over my head and that was that.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about snoring … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time when I was driving for Shearings on a coach tour somewhere and one of the passengers, a youngish female, asked me "if I fall asleep and begin to snore, will you wake me up?"
"Certainly" I replied. "Shall I shake you, or give you a nudge?"
