… seem to be given the perishing room-mate who snores? There I was at 05:30 still not able to drop off to sleep.

But I must have gone off at some time or another because I was on my travels again. I started off trying to make some sandwiches with white bread but every time I went to spread anything onto the bread, it tore the bread away from the crust and after a while that started to annoy me greatly. I decided to go out for more bread but I needed someone to do some baby-sitting for me while I was out (don’t ask me why) and just at this moment a young girl – someone who has featured once or twice in our nocturnal rambles – came along. My idea was to grab hold of her to stand in for me but she was rather uncatchable, discreetly drifting away every time I tried to ask her to help out. But in the end off I went, in an old early base-model Mark I Ford Cortina 2-door, dark blue. MY route took me up a track at the back of some houses, through the daffodils, only to find my way blocked by an old car that I hadn’t noticed, so I had to retrace my steps.
A while later, I found myself in France again and I’d been following this trailer with an old car on it – a Peugeot 203. This was taken off the trailer and pushed up an overgrown lane to where there were another two of them. I couldn’t stop there as it was on the side of a hill, quite exposed and with bad bends, so I parked up in the nearby village and set out to walk back. even though it was a Sunday, there were hordes of people about and I wanted things to be much more quiet than this but I just couldn’t escape the people. I lost my way in the village and was surrounded by curious onlookers and I couldn’t find my way to these cars. Most of the people were British and there was clearly something going on of which I didn’t like the look at all – a drugs deal or other criminal activity maybe and this was an uncomfortable place to be. And somewhere along the line, this girl appeared in it again.
And yet another while later, I was in a car with, having made a dramatic reappearance, this same young girl. We were watching these British people and they were making a film – something like one of the 1970s “Cops and Robbers” dramas on British TV. This involved a car chase – the part in which she was interested – and so was I when I saw that the car being chased was a gorgeous Daytona Yellow Ford Taunus – the model from 1973-76. It was the most beautiful car of its type that I had seen for years and I had my heart set on it but I knew in my bones exactly what was going to happen to it – and I was right too. They slammed it right into the external corner of a wall and put a huge V-shaped dent in the front of it. I was furious and leapt out of the car calling them all kinds of names and in the end, after the chase had passed by, I man-handled the Taunus onto my trailer, which just happened to be attached to the back of my car. I asked this girl what her plans were for tomorrow and she told me that she “had to go to check out a scene for the Sweeney” – one of the aforementioned “Cops and Robbers” programmes and I took it to mean that she had to go and look at a location to see if it would be suitable for filming. I thought to myself that she isn’t half having some interesting and important tasks for a girl of her age.

But it’s amazing in a way that the same person can appear in all three parts of my little voyage during the night, and that I was of the opinion that it was all interconnected in some way. It’s not the first time that I’ve stepped out of a little nocturnal ramble only to step right back into it later at more-or-less the same place.

Anyway, after this, I did finally go back off to sleep and I remember being off again, but being awoken at 07:30 so that they can take a blood sample, well before you’re back in the land of the living, means that wherever I went has gone forever.

We had the cleaner coming along quite early and she showed quite clearly that she must have studied under Hattie Jacques. It must have been the turn of our room to have “the works” because she went over it from top to bottom, to such a thorough extent that Hattie Jacques would have been quite impressed. I kept to my bed while she was at it. That seemed to be the safest course.

I had a whole stream of visitors – nurses, doctors, Professors and the like. And each one told me a different story about my stay here. But one thing became clear, and that was that my blood count isn’t so good. The transfusion that I had the other day brought the count up to just 8.1. That’s close to the critical amount of 8.0 and so they are proposing another blood transfusion to bring it up to something more like it.

First off though, was to have more chemotherapy. They’ve decided that I’m fit enough to have a second helping of that before they give me more blood and so they made the necessary arrangements. And remembering how things unfolded last time, they took it slowly. That meant that they didn’t finish it until about 18:30, by which time it was too late to do the blood transfusion and throw me out.

That disappointed me – it means that I’ll have to stay here for yet another night and go without sleep once more. It’s ruined my day completely, the effects of last night without sleep because I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep all day and I’ve not really been able to accomplish anything that I’ve set out to do. How I dream for a good night’s sleep and a proper day of some kind of effort.

Not only that, OH Leuven were at home to White Star Brussels this evening. I’ve never seen Leuven play, but the last time that I saw White Star, they had about 200 supporters and a brass band. I was looking forward to going this evening, but I’ve had to rule that out which has annoyed me greatly.

Alison came by the visit too. Her cousin had some over for a short stay so she had been to pick her up at the railway station. On their way back, they came to visit, bringing a few edible bits and pieces with them and they will go down quite nicely.

So now everyone has finished what they are doing and we are supposed to be settling down for the night. But fat chance of that with my neighbour rattling off like he is. I’m thoroughly fed up of this, I can tell you.

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