… feeling much more like it today, even if I have crashed out a few times.
But then again, that’s not surprising … "the crashing out, not the feeling much more like it" – ed … because when I finally crawled into bed after finishing my notes, etc., it was after 00:30. And considering that the alarm goes off at 06:29, there’s not much time for sleep.
So I was in bed at 00:30 but it took me quite a while to go off to sleep, which is a change. And then at some ungodly hour, I awoke and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was slipping in and out of this strange kind of situation where I wasn’t really awake and I wasn’t really asleep either.
That gave me an opportunity to continue with my experiments, and sure enough, on most occasions where I dozed off lying on my side, I “awoke” to find myself lying on my back again. All except the final time when I went to sleep on my side and when the alarm sounded, I was still on my side. All that I can say is that I can’t have been asleep for very long at that point.
It took longer than usual this morning to stand up and leave the bedroom, but once I was up and about, I went to unlock the front door and then head into the bathroom to sort myself out.
Back in here, the first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes for yesterday and then today. Yesterday’s notes have been amended and went on line quite quickly, and here are today’s.
The story of the local newspaper’s reaction to these two girls as compared with the reaction of the national press reminds me of the famous Yokohama earthquake in 1923, when the city was almost completely destroyed and as many as 140,000 people died. The headlines in a local paper in the Midwest USA were "Mr and Mrs (whatever) safe".
The rest of the dream doesn’t mean much to me, but the idea of throwing away my crutches and walking has been the subject of quite a few dreams in the recent past. They stopped at one point, but now, they seem to be back.
The nurse turned up as usual to sort me out, and he didn’t have much to say today. He took my health card and passed it through his little machine so that he could be paid for the month of September. It took him ages to establish a connection, but eventually, he managed it.
After he left, I went to make my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1870.
Today, we are discussing funguses, or ‘funghi’, found on the Longmynd and Clee hills. However, I was sidetracked as usual and ended up on Lord Howe Island with the other 400-odd inhabitants.
It’s a typical South Sea Island in between Australia and New Zealand with lots of endemic, unique fauna and flora that have been studied by scientists ever since the island was discovered.
The island will change dramatically in the coming years as modern ways of doing things and modern technology will overwhelm the nineteenth-century skills of the current generation of islanders.
Back in here, I finished off a few things that needed doing, and then I began to segue the pairs of songs in the radio programme that I’m preparing. They went together really well and on one or two of them, you can’t tell where the join is.
That took me up to lunchtime and my disgusting drink break with my midday medication.
Once that was out of the way, I began to write the notes for the music that I’d been preparing. I’d hoped to write about half of them, because some of the musicians are making their debut and that always takes much longer. But in fact, I managed to write all of them, don’t ask me how. I seemed to have worked really hard today.
And that was despite falling asleep a couple of times along the way. Even a can of one of these energy drinks seemed to have no effect. However, I began to liven up a little as the afternoon rolled on.
My cleaner turned up at one point. She’d been to Leclerc for some ink for her printer and I’d asked her if she could find some onions and if they had any British baked beans.
She’d brought the onions, but as far as she could see, baked beans … "or, at least, British ones" – ed … are definitely not on the menu in Leclerc. But she also found some vegan lentil crisps with much reduced salt and sugar content. She bought two packs of different varieties for me to try to see whether I want some more. We shall see.
There was tea tonight too – I’m definitely feeling better. It was potatoes mashed with spinach and fried in butter, and vegetables (peas, carrots and beans), falafel, onions, garlic and mushrooms. It was totally delicious, especially when it was followed by one of those posh soya yoghurts with fruit at the bottom.
So now, when I’ve finished a few more things, I’ll be off to bed. Later than usual, I suppose, but I’ll just have to make the best of it. I can always sleep at dialysis if they let me.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about mushrooms … "well, one of us has" – ed … in 1938 in Moscow, there was a party given by a general. He invited many other generals and in total, there were seventeen generals there.
They all had lunch too, but in the early afternoon, they were all found dead.
A Russian doctor performed autopsies on a couple of selected corpses, and he could see that they had died of mushroom poisoning, so he blamed the mushroom soup that had been the starter.
After all of the bodies had been taken away, the doctor came to report to Stalin. He said "After I’d performed the autopsies on a couple of the corpses and came to my conclusions, I watched the corpses being taken away, and I noticed that two of them had bullet wounds in the skull."
"That’s probably right" said Stalin
"Why was that?" asked the doctor.
Stalin replied "I’d heard that two of them didn’t want the soup."
