Tag Archives: rosemary

Tuesday 13th December 2022 – WHAT A STATE …

… to be in! Downstairs on the front door there’s a notice “if anyone is going to the shops, could they take me with them?” Can you imagine how things have worked out for me over the last few months?

This afternoon I went out to try to start Caliburn and eventually after much coaxing, he staggered into life. I set off for a drive and probably went about 30 kms trying to warm him up and charge up the battery.

However it didn’t seem to do much good because when I pulled into LIDL car park to see whether I could stagger over to the trolleys, I tried the starter and it was a desperate moment as I almost ended up walking home.

That was enough for me and I decided that if I didn’t leave the engine running and go home now, I never ever would get home. I can’t believe that I’d gone so far and the battery was even more dead than when I started.

As well as that I had to park where there was a kerb because I don’t have the strength to haul myself into the cab off the ground.

And so you can see, there’s a very fine line to walk between discretion and valour and God knows where it is right now.

Last night was another miserable, depressing night with me tossing and turning and I really don’t know what’s happening here either. When the alarm went off at 07:30 I was in no fit state to leave the bed and it was a real struggle for me to sort myself out.

The Welsh lesson though went reasonably well because I managed to prepare for it and I feel so much better when I can do that. However I’m not making the kind of progress that I would like. I’d be the first to admit that.

After the lesson I went for my run around in Caliburn and then came back to listen to the dictaphone. And there was tons of stuff on there from the night. There was a group of us packing to go somewhere. The conversation drifted round to all sorts of things. Several of the people were being extremely difficult in my opinion. One woman was really taking her time filling out a form. Everyone was explaining the difficulties that she was having but I didn’t think that they were anything at all. A few of us were talking about insurance and how it was sometimes quite catastrophic. I told them about how I worked in an insurance company (… and I did too …) and someone a few years later had T-boned my car. They actually worked for that insurance company and had their insurance there and how it was an endless tale of delays. We were discussing this. Suddenly I remembered the girl’s name who I worked with who this girl who was talking knew. I said her name and of course it cut the conversation. I felt extremely guilty about this. We were all sitting there trying to organise this and that one woman was taking so much time filling out a simple form. I was of the opinion that we weren’t ever going to get away at this rate
This meeting where there were people on about this insurance company and everything like that was where that guy stood up to make that announcement that his girlfriend was pregnant or they were getting married or something. That was really raining on everyone else’s parade at that particular moment. They were all disappointed that their thunder had been stolen.

There was some kind of tropical storm hitting the Carolinas and everyone had taken shelter. I’d gone with a news party to have a look at the situation inside one of these bunkers because the roof was damaged and water is getting in. I found several women, one of whom I knew very well, busy rolling up tissue and cloth in order to make some kind of something or other that would pass the time. This particular girl was working so quickly that she was way ahead of everyone else. While I was talking to her I looked up. A young girl who had come with her into the shelter was walking past on her way to the corner to lay down. I drew this woman’s attention to it. She invited the other one over to come along and join her to fold up tissue. Of course they started chatting like a couple of people in this situation would.

It was Friday night. I’d finished work and gone home. There was a story on the radio about how business was suffering from big bankruptcies and P-registered Cavaliers were being sold for as little as £3,000. I was wondering whether to go round to see a friend of mine and his wife, and of course Zero but thinking that I’d been round there every night this week I imagine that they must be becoming pretty fed up. The last thing that I wanted them to do was to stop me going round at all. So much as it hurt me, I decided that I’d stay at home tonight and start to sort through my toolbox. While I was doing that the TV was on. There was something happening about relief supplies involving DiY equipment. A whole pile of Opposition amendments were taking place to ensure that the Queen paid VAT on everything. They were all being passed so obviously there was some kind of mini-revolt going on in the House of Commons. Ordinarily that would have been just the kind of thing that I would have talked about with my friend but with having made a vow not to go round tonight I decided to keep to it and stay at home. I started to go through my toolbox making up kits of things that I might need in the future like electric sockets and so on

But imagine that? How many times is this that during the night I’ve turned down an opportunity to go and see Zero. I must be ill or something.

Tea was falafel with pasta and veg. I was hoping to have some potatoes so that I could have sausage, beans and chips tonight but that was something of a failure due to the issues that I had at LIDL. I hope that some good comes of my sign because I can’t go on living on my stocks of food. Rosemary and I talked about that on the ‘phone earlier and this was one of the things that galvanised me into making my sign.

And so we’ll see. It’ll be nice if it works and I can get some stock back in. The cupboard will be bare before I know it if I’m not careful.

Monday 12th December 2022 – YOU MAY NOT …

… believe this, but Caliburn actually started up this morning on the battery that was on the van. And that’s astonishing, especially as he hasn’t run for over 11 weeks. There’s a small leak in the electrical circuit somewhere that slowly drains the battery so I was expecting it to be dead by now.

What wasn’t nice though was that I’d left open the window in the driver’s door. It had rained in somewhat but one of my neighbours had stuffed a black plastic bag in the door and taped it up to keep the worst out.

Nevertheless, fancy Caliburn starting. I gave him a couple of laps around the block to warm him up and charge up the battery but I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that driving him in my condition is a nightmare.

And so as you can imagine, I’ve been outside this morning, and in the freezing fog too. I had to take some rubbish to the bins across the road and even though it is just “across the road” it took me an agonising 25 minutes to do it, going in baby steps. I thought that having had a good relax and a gentle easing off of the stiffness would have made things better, but far from it.

This trip to Leuven for 2nd January is therefore looking less and less likely.

In other news, Strawberry Moose is back home. On eof the reasons why I put a battery on charge last night and then went to start him today was that a couple of guys from the radio had told me that they would be around today at lunchtime.

It was my intention to ask them to help me carry the battery downstairs and to couple it up in order to start him but that wasn’t unnecessary. But they brought back my suitcase completr with His Nibs.

It was interesting too because they work for the local council and they were able to give me some useful hints about dependent living. Having had some kind of impromptu interview, they told me that someone would be in touch.

And I’ll need it too after last night, which was another awful, horrendous night. I kept on waking up, went for one or two walks down the corridor and so on. I was also on my travels quite considerably during the night in another sphere as well. I was with my friend from the Scottish Borders last night. To my surprise she was heavily involved in Black Magic and Spiritualism. She had one of the original books from that period and she had lent it to me. Every time I tried to make a start on reading it someone came past and I wasn’t comfortable about reading this book in full view of whoever it was so I kept it hidden below the desk or down the bed or something until that person had gone. After a while my friend became frustrated and quoted some phrase in the book about “whoever has taken me from my possessor” or something like that. I explained that I hadn’t actually done that. I’d explained what I was doing but she thought that I had to be a lot more forthright about reading the book even though I was uncomfortable. In the end there was always a piece of music that I played that stopped us arguing. She handed me my guitar and asked me to play this piece even though I hadn’t played for quite a while. My performance was bound to be suspect but I thought that I’d give it a go, although I felt that this was just a sticking plaster over a wound and wasn’t actually solving the problem of me getting down to actually reading this book. Whether or not I has an interest in Spiritualism I had an enormous amount of curiosity and I was intrigued just as much as anyone else to see what was in this book and how everything would unfold. However just glancing through a couple of pages made me seem to think that she had at one time or another said something about almost everything that was in there

There was something in there as well about working in the suburbs of Brussels, how some people were complaining that it was expensive. The question was then asked “why don’t they move even further out? That way they could find somewhere more affordable”. The reply came back about the cost and time of commuting which would put them back to Square One even if they were to do that.

Percy Penguin sent me a text to ask me if I could run her to a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon. I replied “yes I would” but then I had a realisation that there was no MoT or tax on the car. I had to send her another e-mail straight back. She said that she had cancelled her transport at work so now I was pretty-much obliged to take her unless I could find someone else or someone else would volunteer. Then I was with friends walking around Middlewich. I was pushing something like a pram or a push-chair or whatever. We came off the street around some kind of semi-circle parking place to try to get through to where Walgrens and Marks and Spencers was. We’d been talking about the traffic problems being caused by people turning into their car park. I said that they should get all the nouveau-riche pretentious people, put them in Marks and Spencers and Walgrens and then drop a bomb on the place. That didn’t go down too well with my friends. We were trudging round this semi-circle car space with a cinder base thing. I suddenly wondered if we could get through to Walgrens from here. They replied “no, we should have gone through somewhere else”. On the skyline 100 yards ahead of us were these most peculiar buildings, tall and really narrow. They looked most unsafe. It turned out that these were single-bedroom flats for single occupancy. We were thinking that maybe Percy penguin could find a place there. Then we thought that they looked so delapidated that they would be bound to be closing down these places and demolishing them soon. Nevertheles we went in. There was only a small ladder on the ground floor on the inside. I thought that we had to climb up this ladder, look out of the top by poking our heads through the roof to look out over the top to see how we could get to where we wanted to go. If this ladder wasn’t tall enough for us to be able to do that then we would have a great amount of difficulty. I didn’t fancy leaning too much against the wall of one of these buildings in case we pushed it over because it was really unsafe.

I was also having a dream involving Rosemary. A Government had arbitrarily cut some kind of rate on bankruptcies. She couldn’t see a problem except that someone else had noticed and pointed out to me that it had wiped out the whole market for Insolvency Practicioners. This led to a big discussion about the acounts already agreed with Brussels. The only difference was that the dissident who was supposed to have been held in Moscow at some time but turned up eventually in China. She had a talk that they had a benefit concert for this guy in China but the two people who contributed most in bringing his name to the forefront never actually turned up for it. That name rang a bell with me.

When the alarm went off at 06:00 I felt absolutely awful and I was all ready to stay in bed but I forced myself out. I’d already written half of the notes for my radio programme so I finished the rest, recorded and edited them and then assembled everything.

For a change, I was working backwards so I fell about a minute short so I had to expand my notes and re-dictate some of them. Therefore I didn’t really save as much time as I might otherwise have done.

Then I had Caliburn who required attention, and then my visitors.

Once everyone had gone I had a play around on the computer but fell asleep on my chair. That prompted me to go to bed, something that I have been trying not to do but there was no alternative as I have never in my life felt so tired, as all of … errr … 7% of my daily target will testify.

When I finally crawled out of bed (due mainly to a need to go and take a ride on the Porcelain Horse otherwise I’d probably still be there now) I ended up doing … shock! Horror! … some tidying up. Not much but just enough to take me up to tea time.

So now I’m off to bed. I have a Welsh lesson tomorrow so I need to be on form and then I’ll (hopefully) take Caliburn for another spin. See how I feel and maybe in a few days I’ll pluck up the courage to go to the shops.

Monday 5th December 2022 – SO THAT’S THAT THEN.

On Wednesday I shall be out on my ear. Complete, presumably, with the dressing on my left shoulder but without the virus, without my mobility and without an answer to the dozens of questions that I have asked.

And without the possibility of going for this physiotherapy thing either. Apparently there are strict criteria about who is and isn’t permitted to go and I don’t fit.

So what are the possibilities of going home?

having an ambulance (actually a Voiture Sanitaire Legère) to take me to my door – at a cost of €3600
having an ambulance of the hospital deposit me anywhere I like within the borders of Belgium
being shown the door here and left to fend for myself

Quite obviously, the first option is out of the question. It’s an absurdity.

The second option is out of the question too. Being deposited at Quévy or Doornik where I don’t know anyone or anything, don’t know where the railway stations or the hotels are – those kinds of options are out of the question too.

And so n°3 it is. I’ll stagger to the bus stop if I can, take the bus to the railway station and then head for the Ibis Budget at the back of the station and plan my next move.

Of course, going home and arriving as quickly as possible is my goal and I can’t wait to to be in the comfort and safety of my own four walls. But if I have a fall I’ll find myself in the Casualty department. The hospital isn’t the only thing that can play at going round and round in circles and eventually disappearing up its own catheter.

The doctor took quite a delight in telling me this. You could see her trying to suppress a smile as she spoke. She actually said “although we know that you’re not in any fit state” to make my own way home, or something like that. You can imagine the guffaw that that brought forth.

The Social Services woman just sat in a corner trying to pretend that she wasn’t here so I took a great deal of delight trying to drag her into the chat, much to her dismay.

Of course you can imagine how this developed. I told her that if this had happened 40 years ago no-one would have believed it. But what would have been satire 40 years ago is now very much the norm these days and no-one bats an eyelid any more.

Half an hour after they had left, bang on cue, the priest turned up – the one who saw me a while ago. He asked how I was so I told him the situation. He was appalled as you probably are by the whole situation.

So seeing as I had his attention I rather bent his ear with my problems. I concluded my rant by saying that the Byzantine administration is totally divorced from reality. He described it as an administration disjoncté (we were talking in French) and that’s a phrase that I’ll remember for future use.

In the end he wandered away. Somehow I’d managed to beat him down. I don’t think that anything will actually come of this but as I have said before, “throw a lot of whatsit onto a wherever and some of it might stick”.

Actually, I’m rather lucky. Their plan was to heave me out tomorrow morning and then I’d have to come back in the afternoon for my appointment with the Oncology department. But they agreed to let me stay until Wednesday and the Oncology department will come to me on Tuesday.

In actual fact, what I bet will happen is that instead of coming to me, the oncology department will send a messenger with the plasma and a nurse will couple me up. No-one from the Oncology department will set foot in here.

That would be in accordance with usual practice from the departments involved in my (lack of) care.

On the good side though, once more my friends have rallied to the flag. I was chatting to Rosemary later on the ‘phone and she said “why don’t you come and stay with me? Get the train down here”.

This is on a par with Rachel’s offer to fly over from Canada to look after me. As I’ve said before, I don’t have many friends but those I have are the best in the world.

Unfortunately I had to decline Rosemary’s offer. If I’m going anywhere, I’m going home. I need to have my things around me, regroup my forces, and make plans for the future. if I’m going to stay at home and let nature take its course, I won’t be able to negotiate the long journey home from Rosemary’s whenever it becomes necessary,

Last night I needed to regroup my forces because I had something of a rough night. I went to sleep late but awoke at about 03:00 with the computer and the Old-Time Radio going and my headphones on. I switched everything off and tried my best to go back to sleep. But that wasn’t easy.

It was a very tired and exhausted me who dragged himself out of bed when the alarm went off at 06:30. I was playing about on the laptop when the student came to see me. She told me that my breakfast would be delayed as they needed a blood sample.

When she came back with all of the equipment she told me that she’d heard that there was a lot of trouble trying to find one of my veins and that they moved about quite a lot.

Nevertheless she crawled all over me inspecting my arms until she found something that she thought would do. “Be brave” I urged, so she dived in with her needle. It was the most painless that I have ever had and she cried “look, it works!” and I was so pleased for her.

When she’d finished I asked her how she’d managed to do it so well if it was so difficult and my veins moved around so much.

“Before I come to work” she said “I practise skipping with a rope to keep myself fit.”

She also tells me that she has a deep-sea diver’s licence and has been scuba-diving around the odd wreck or two. Here’s a girl who has a lot to say for herself.

Before she left she took my blood pressure etc. And after all of her mountaineering it’s hardly a surprise that half an hour later a qualified nurse came by to take my blood pressure again.

“Your blood pressure was rather high just now” she explained.

“Ohh really?” I asked. “I wonder why”

The rest of the day has passed between falling asleep and being shaken awake for something or other.

There was a new physiotherapist who took me down to the door at the end of the corridor. It was the usual stagger down there and a rather undignified stumble back here. It’s clear to almost everyone that never mind the 600 metres to the bus stop – I can’t even make 60 metres right now.

She had me doing a couple of exercises afterwards and I managed to tear a muscle in the side of my thigh. This bodes well for Wednesday, doesn’t it?

The doctor passed by during the morning too, presumably to soften me up for the meeting this afternoon. There are very strange things happening in this place, to be sure.

At some point I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I dreamt that all the nurses were trying to do something to me, pulling me about some on one side of the bed, some on the other so I couldn’t actually roll over into a comfortable way for them. I suddenly awoke and found that it was 02:15 and I still had the headphones on and the radio on the computer was still going. It was a programme about doctors and nurses coming to the bedside. I had something of an imaginary fight trying to deal with the skeleton of this situation before I realised what was going on and decided to go to sleep.

I’m not sure if I recorded this but somewhere during the night I dreamt that there was probably 20 people sleeping with me last night, all officers in different army regiments who had somehow come down to see where I was and what I was doing, and who I was doing it with, and ended up sleeping all around me. What I’d done was that I’d awoken early and switched everyone’s alarm clock around so that they would all be awoken at the wrong time, or each person would be awoken at the wrong time so that I could have a lie-in that particular morning

While I was asleep in the morning I was dreaming that I was Ali Baba. I was actually at an office and we were having a Christmas party. It was a fancy-dress parade and I’d bought everything for the people who worked for me, some little presents. When they’d all left after this party in this room that the office was throwing I changed into someone who was half-naked and climbed into some kind of silver sack kind of thing, a mesh sack, and went into the room where the party was taking place as Ali Baba in his laundry basket. I went to have a look and there were all kinds of stalls over at one end of the room with flowers and Christmas wreaths etc. There was some kind of stall selling DiY tools, all old kinds of stock that you’d typically find in a market stall including liquid easing oil at £2:99 a tin, like a reasonably-sized spam tin size. It was all quite interesting, this old stall selling these tools that were there. The strange thing was that no-one too any notice of me. I thought that my costume of Ali Baba was extremely ingenious but no-one made any kind of comment about it whatever. I was quite disappointed about that.

So right now I’m off to bed I’ve had enough for today and with the Oncology department becoming involved it’s going to be a tiring day.

And then there’s Wednesday and leaving here too. I’m not looking forward to that but even so, I need to be on form.

Sunday 4th December 2022 – I WAS RIGHT …

… yesterday when I said that Sunday would be pretty much the same as Saturday. But then, it was no surprise, was it.

One of the minor differences though was that when the doctor came to see me, I was in bed. I hadn’t had my morning wash yet.

She didn’t have anything new to tell me and I didn’t have anything new to tell her. However I did have a lot to say for myself (as you might expect) which was cut short by her saying “Mr Hall, we’re just going round in circles”.

As indeed we are but until she (or anyone else for that matter) answers the questions that I raise, what did she expect?

Anyway she cleared off mid-discussion and I’m sure that you never expected anything else.

They are still intent on expelling me, even though my blood count, that rose from 6.6 to 8.8 after the blood transfusion the other day, had fallen to 8.5 by Friday.

For the benefit of new readers, the accepted blood count for a healthy individual is between 13.0 and 15.0. The lower the blood count, the faster my heart must beat to convey the necessary oxygen to the various parts of the body. The critical limit is 8.0 by the way.

And as is pretty evident, my heart can’t keep on beating at this rate for ever. Vous avez le coeur du champion – “you have a champion’s heart” said a doctor at the beginning of all this back in 2015 and it’s only that which has kept me going. If it begins to fail, then I will have real problems.

And so now you know why I’m so concerned when my heart and my breathing start to show signs of breaking down, and why I’m on the warpath when they seem to be ignoring my concerns.

There were a few concerns about the events of the night.

The computer and Old-Time radio was still running at 23:15 so I switched it off and tried to go to sleep. I was still awake at 02:00, having spent some of the time surfing the internet on the mobile phone because I couldn’t go off to sleep. It’s really hard to sleep, light sleeper or not, when nurses and patrolling doctors have meetings right outside your open door.

Something else was that I allowed my imagination to run off on its own for a while and that will be important later.

I was having a really bad night. I was awoken at about 05:15 by a nurse who asked something like “where did I get something or other?”. I really can’t remember anything about it but I remembered what it was that she wanted to know but I’d forgotten now but I can remember when she said it what it was.

I was also at one time thinking or talking to a girl whom I knew from school and asking her next time why doesn’t she wear a skirt instead of jeans or trousers?. But where that came in I don’t know. I’d actually been thinking a lot about her before I’d gone to sleep while I was tossing and turning, as I mentioned earlier, so that was possibly something to do with it too

There was also something more than this too but if you’re eating your tea right now you don’t want to know about it.

After all of that I didn’t go back to sleep. When the alarm went off I made it to the bathroom, weighed myself on my return (I’m still below my upper target weight) and settled down with my laptop.

“You’re starting early” said the doctor who came in at that point. And I don’t think that she was prepared for the torrent that that comment unleashed.

Breakfast was late again and from then on the day just drifted. Much of it was spent either being asleep or shaken awake, which is no surprise after the catastrophe of last night.

Later in the afternoon Rosemary rang me for a nice chat and I had a lovely internet chat with Liz, although I think that I took her by surprise.

What must have been an even bigger surprise was my niece Rachel. She’s appalled, really appalled, by what’s happening and she asked me whether she should come over from Canada to look after me. And that’s the nicest thing that anyone has said to me for quite a while.

Of course I declined. I can’t drag someone a quarter of the way around the world. I’m pretty sure that as long as I manage to make it home I can manage to look after myself with a bit of help from the neighbours.

But right now I’m going to look after myself in bed. There’s a meeting about me tomorrow, to which I’m not invited of course, when they will discuss my future. I bet that they’ll vote to expel me on Tuesday morning.

And seeing as I have an appointment at the Haematology Department on Tuesday afternoon, will I have to come back for the appointment or will they simply cancel it?

We are living in interesting times.

Wednesday 30th November 2022 – I MIGHT JUST HAVE …

… solved the problem of doctors wandering off on phantom ‘phone calls just as I start laying into them

During the day today I’ve had no fewer than three “official” visits from various doctors and specialists. And each time that they have set foot in here I have gone on the offensive.

And believe me. If it’s “offensive” you want, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney, “I’m your man”.

What I’ve done is to set the stopwatch on my ‘phone to start. And then I explained to the doctor or specialist concerned that my world-wide friends on the internet and I are having a sweepstake to see how long the interview lasts before there’s a ‘phone call.

And surprise! Surprise! The interviews have played out to a conclusion without a single ‘phone call.

Of course, tomorrow is another day. And today might have been a pure coincidence. Nevertheless it was still rather hilarious.

More of that anon. Last night I was asleep by 22:00 or thereabouts and wide-awake by 00:45. I’d been on my travels too during this little window. I was at a Spacerock festival. There was a lot of time between the groups. They had nothing whatever arranged so I fetched my CD and tape deck from home from my old hi-fi unit where I had a CD unit, a triple tape deck etc. I brought it down and wired it into the PA of the band and blasted out all my Hawkwind records. I was there with a girlfriend of mine, it might have been Percy Penguin, I dunno, but it was someone who knew nothing about it. She was giving me all the help she could. Quite a lot of the fans were disappointed with the quality and output but the DJ in charge explained that this was the best we had. It was all Hawkwind and this was what they wanted to hear if only they would hear it. One of the groups suggested another way to broadcast instead of using *.mp3 off the tapes etc. I knew that that would take a lot of work but the punters were in no mood to wait for me to configure anything. I just had to continue blasting out CD after CD and tape after tape. The guy from one of the groups said “go on! You have a chance to make music history here. You’ll be famous for ever if you do it”. I was sitting there thinking “I’ll be more likely lynched if I don’t”. I had really no option but to carry on with this because at least something was working and some music was going out and calming the fans. I didn’t know what to do. All I knew was that if I kept on doing what I knew what to do then at least something would work. This girl was helping me bringing the CDs, helping me plug in decks to the PA etc. I felt really sorry for her because she had nothing whatever to do with this. Neither had I, yet here we were.

There was a guy who had the care of two children, girls aged about 7 and 11. I was bringing them up in some kind of environment where there were a great many other people who didn’t like or appreciate the way in which he was bringing up these two girls. However it was clear to most people that he was doing his best considering he’d never been parenting before he’d had these two girls dropped upon him. It was a slow battle of trying to win the other people round to his way of thinking while at the same time trying to be fair with these girls, in particular the older one. He had to give her some lessons in basic subjects like Maths, Geography etc. It was clear that he was completely out of his depth. He was doing his very best as far as he could to make sure that in particular the older one had some kind of education. There was much more to it than this but I can’t remember – a whole lot more than I’ve described.

This morning started off with the blood pressure tests and the like. And my blood pressure was surprisingly high.

So much so that the Senior Ward Nurse came to see me a short while later.

“We need to redo the blood pressure test” she said. “It seems to be unusually high.”

Actually, I didn’t like to tell her that the cute little student nurse is back on duty and she had already taken it this morning.

And it’s a good job that the Senior Ward Nurse came to redo the blood pressure test BEFORE the cute little student nurse came back to climb all over me to change my dressing from Sunday.

It was quite interesting watching her do it in a textbook fashion rather than in the ad-hoc way in which the trained nurses do it. I had to help her through one or two procedures and to remind her of things that she’d forgotten. But she IS cute.

Not long after I’d gone back to sleep I had the physiotherapist round. I was right about the rocket that he must have had inserted into his nether regions because he had me out of bed and setting off for a stroll down the corridor before I was even properly awake.

It was a rather aimless shambles of a scramble down the 20 metres of corridor to the doors at the end that we only just about managed, and the trip back was even more exciting.

He kept on asking me “are you okay?” and “would you like to sit down?” every couple of paces and believe me, I was ready to slosh him before we’d gone five metres

The first of the official visitors was a guy from cardiology – or was he from the pneumonology? – department. He spent a great deal of time running over the history of my case and then told me that they had a few tests lined up for me – a couple of weeks after I’ve been expelled.

Of course I asked if these were tests that I’ve already undergone on my two or three previous visits to his department, but he replied that he didn’t know. He thought that they might be new ones so I asked him why they hadn’t been undertaken when I was there on one of my previous visits.

It goes without saying that his response was that he wasn’t there at the time and wasn’t involved in the decision-making back then. I asked him if he realised just how much of a cop-out that sounded and would he really be satisfied with such a weak excuse?

At least he stayed to the end of the interview and cleared off in his own time without a phone call.

Next up was someone from the physiotherapy department. He asked about my mobility so I told him to consult his own department and in particular the guy who comes to see me every working day.

He replied that he had done so but wanted my own opinion. I told him that I was struggling to go 20 metres but the hospital wanted me to go 700 kms at the beginning of the week. I reckoned that I would be in the Casualty department long before I was at the bus stop.

After much discussion and debate he asked me whether I would be interested in going to the clinic out at Pellemberg for an intensive course in therapy – a couple of weeks of two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been to physiotherapy in Granville for almost a year – one hour per week for about 30 or 40 weeks. What they are offering me is 40 hours of intense therapy in two weeks that is going to be tailored much more to my individual needs.

There needs to be a place to come free of course but having thought about the matter during the discussion I decided that if the opportunity presented itself I would accept it.

It won’t do anything to ease the trapped nerve but I may be able to climb steps and to pick myself up if I fall over.

The third official to visit me was the house doctor who seemed to be several weeks behind the time and hadn’t updated her notes. She hadn’t, for example, noticed that I’d been in the Stargate thing or that I have a trapped nerve and a couple of slipped discs.

It seemed to me that she realised it too because her visit to me, without a ‘phone call to disrupt it, lasted all of 4 minutes and 57 seconds and that was that.

The rest of the day has been dealt with being fed medication by various nurses. And Rosemary telephoned me too. Just a short conversation too – only one hour and seventeen minutes today.

There hasn’t been much else of any interest but that was enough to keep me going for a day.

Mind you, if this re-education thing comes off, it might be well worth a go. It will put on hold many other plans that I have but I think that this might be an opportunity too good to turn down.

We’ll have to see how things unfold.

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 – FREE AT LAST!

This evening while I was trying to eat my evening meal someone from the cardiac unit turned up and said that she could take out the drain in my heart.

Not exactly the easiest thing to do while I has trying to eat my hummus rolls but nevertheless she did her best.

You’ve no idea how much it hurt but as they said in Macbeth, “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly” and sure enough even with it done quickly, it hurt like hell.

So right now I’m free. There are some antibiotic perfusions too but they are on a portable patient stand, not tied to the foot of the bed like the sac of the drain in my heart.

Anyway, I’m sure that you are wondering how I celebrated my new-found freedom. The answer is that I went for a good ride on the porcelain horse.

You’ve no idea how much of a relief it was to go as well. This chair thing that I managed to negotiate has a considerable amount of drawbacks that only become apparent when you are half asleep and in some other parallel universe at 05:00.

That kind of thing is a recipe for disaster, as events were to prove. For the rest of the day I quietly abstained. I didn’t want another repeat.

It’s quite true to say that i was deep in the arms of Morpheus last night. I was tucked up in bed early, round about 21:00 and went straight off to sleep. When I awoke at 03:00 I still had on the headphones and was listening to the radio. I just about managed to summon up the energy to take off the headphones.

And then there was the 05:00 disaster but we won’t talk about that.

All of my meals were absolute disasters today. Breakfast was interrupted by the Professor in charge of the Training School telling me that the students would be on the ward this morning.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m one of the first to offer myself to a bunch of students in order to be poked and prodded about. Consequently I agreed to be examined and at 10:05 a pair of students appeared at the door.

Third-year students they were, and for the next hour or so they poked me and prodded me, sometimes with the Professor looking in, and eventually the went away quite satisfied with their morning’s examination.

We had quite a laugh though at one point.
Student A “I need to look for your spleen”
Our Hero “I hope that you have good eyes. Last time I saw it, it was in a jar in a hospital in Central France”

While lunch was being served, the assistant dietician appeared. She’d seen my recent blood test results and made the point that there’s still far too much potassium in my blood. She wants me to give up all fruit and salad.

That’s only a temporary measure, she told me. The chief dietician will come to see me at some other point in the near future. Presumably with some even more draconian measures.

This afternoon the physiotherapist stuck his head into the room with an assistant. They ended up by giving me some exercises to do but it’s not easy when I can only move half a dozen paces from the bed if that.

There was the person from Cardiology to disrupt my evening meal at teatime but apart from that there’s not been a whiff of a doctor coming to see me. It seems that since my somewhat … errr … frank discussion with the Priest yesterday (which he has doubtless reported back to the authorities and which was part of my plan) the senior medical staff has gone to ground and are in shelter waiting for the whirlwind to pass by overhead.

Consequently I reckon that I need to be a bit more frank with the Priest next time I see him.

All through the day I’ve been having some lovely chats with Liz, Rachel and Rosemary. It’s nice to know that I have such wonderful family and friends.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … I don’t have many friends but those I do have are the best in the world.

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 – I WAS WRONG …

… about having a good night last night. All kinds of things were going off.

But never mind that – something much more important and unusual happened this morning.

In fact, a priest came to see me.

The timing makes me think that it’s to do with my request for euthanasia but he never mentioned the subject. He listed to all of my complaint. He even made me ages late for my Welsh class but I wasn’t all that bothered because I enjoyed his visit, strange as it it to day it.

However the antics of last night were hilarious.

Having an urgent need to visit the bathroom and tied to the bed by the sac of fluid from my pericardium, I asked for a bottle.

Sitting in bed trying to use a bottle was psychologically impossible so after a while I changed position and sat on the edge of the bed to try again

Just then a nurse came in and asked how I was doing My reply of “nothing yet” brought forth a lecture about the dangers of a full bladder

She measured it and found that it was indeed full so she went to find another nurse who subjected me to yet another lecture on the subject of full bladders and insisted on fitting a catheter. Naturally we had quite a stand-off on this point and the argument raged for quite a while.

At some point a third nurse joined in the fun. and with three nurses now watching me, however was I supposed to use the bottle under these circumstances?

In the end I chased them and their catheters away and once they had gone it took about 10 minutes to make use of the bottle.

The upshot of all of this is that they brought me a “toilet chair” that I can use in comfort and taunt whoever it is who is interested in my “output”.

Eventually I finally managed to drop off to sleep. There was something about being in a cricket pavilion last night. I was there with Nerina. There was something about people had to register and register the clubs from which they had come and where they were signing for. After 3 or 4 entries it all became very confused. There was some kind of issue about Derbyshire but nevertheless I wrote “Derbyshire” on the form and thought that I’d deal later with any flak about it. It was raining outside. I thought “how are they going to start this cricket match?” but anyway they did, as far as I knew. Later on I was standing on a bank at the side of the road when a large lorry pulled up, a farm cattle truck-type of thing. It was Sherman Downey with a couple of rubber edgings for doors or windscreens. I was surprised and said that I hadn’t actually ordered anything at the moment. That took him by surprise too. he was there with these 2 rubber edges that I didn’t want.

So with the priest making me late for my Welsh lesson I joined in the class somewhat later. And I wasn’t there for long before an endless stream of nurses kept on interrupting me. In the end I logged out.

This afternoon I went for a couple of tests and examinations. The last one of this bunch was an echograph performed by a doctor with an assistant who looked as if she was about 12.

After he finished with his examination with the echograph I asked the little girl if she’d like a go and so with a big smile and with help from me and from the echpographist she used the echograph to examine my heart

The net result is that here is no more water around the heart for now – just a bit of sediment that causes no problem

After the echographist went to make his report, I had a chat with his little assistant. I asked her how long she’d been a student and she replied “2 days!”.

She’s actually a schoolgirl on a work placement and she was ever so pleased because I was the first patient she’s ever examined. But as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m all in favour of letting the students practise on me.

They have to learn somehow.

So right now I’m off to bed. I’ve finished my notes, had a good chat with Alison and Rosemary and have everything prepared just where I need it.

And I’ve had a fever too – a temperature of 38.7°C. They’ve packed me in bed with a few ice-packs and it’s down now to 37.9°C

After falling asleep yesterday evening and having all kinds of issues during the night, I want a peaceful evening and a good sleep. I wonder how someone might come along and disrupt me again.

It goes without saying that they won’t let me have any peace and quiet. This crew in the ward this week are nothing like the kind souls of last week.

Friday 18th November 2022 – SCHRODINGER’S PATIENT …

… is still in his hospital bed and is likely to be here for the weekend as well. It seems that wiser counsels have prevailed at last.

And Schrödinger’s patient? That’s a patient who is simultaneously too ill to go for a 2-minute bicycle ride and a 6-minute walk but at the same time is well enough to be signed out of the hospital, travel 700 kms and then come back 700 kms 2 weeks later.

Last night I was in bed quite early and slept right the way through until all of 02:45. After a trip down the corridor I went back to bed and it took an age for me to go off to sleep. And once I fell asleep that was that until the alarm went off at 06:30. I must have slept right the way through the early morning racket.

We had some stuff on the dictaphone. I was with Rosemary at some point last night. We were somewhere on some big industrial estate somewhere. There was a dispute between a lorry driver and another tenant of a property. The tenant accused the lorry driver of driving over his land when he had to make a tight left turn. This led to a great deal of acrimony and fighting. There was a situation there were video films being recorded etc. The lorry was attacked etc. In the meantime our boss died. I caught up with Rosemary who was cleaning a teapot in the garden. I was on my way to fetch a cup of tea so she asked about the significance of the boss dying. I said “in that case there will be thousands of cases just automatically cleared rather than worked”. She asked why. I replied that no-one would go out to make an enormous pile of work for themselves at a moment like this. We had quite a lengthy talk and eventually I went to make my tea. She passed me the rag that she’d been using to clean her teapot and asked if I could take it in. I replied “no – not while I’m going to make my tea. The rag is disgusting”. And it was, because her teapot had been totally filthy before she’d cleaned it.

Later on I was with someone else. I was ill and being weighed in some kind of centrifuge. I was told beforehand that this was where we sort out the intelligent people. They were puzzled about my weight when it was read out. There was something to do with wars and battles. I’d actually won an important battle with my miniature soldiers and troops. They went to put me in this centrifuge to weigh me again. I realised that all along I’d been wearing my wellingtons. That was something that would be bound to distort the proceedings and give the incorrect weight

After breakfast they came to collect me with a wheelchair. They took me down into the basement of the hospital where eventually a young girl came to see me. She had on a beautiful dress under her housecoat and I told her how much I liked it.

She had my scan from yesterday and talked to me about it. There’s a trapped nerve that seems to be causing a lot of problems and she seems to think that physiotherapy might solve the problem.

Having had a year’s worth of ineffective physiotherapy I expressed my doubts but she did her best to reassure me that there are some special exercises that she can prescribe that a skilled physiotherapist could follow, and that I need to go to a specialist, not one of these mainstream boutiques of the kind that I’ve been visiting.

Back here the physiotherapist came to see me. We did a few of the exercises that we have done before but we didn’t do some others. Instead he had me doing one or two others so maybe word has already filtered down.

However on leaving, he said “see you Monday” and that at least is optimistic.

After lunch the dietician came to see me. She asked “why are you ordering bananas and kiwis? You have a very high potassium content and these aren’t doing you any good.”
“Well” I replied, “as long as these are the only options for a vegan dessert on some days, I don’t have a lot of options”.

We discussed my diet at great length. I told her that the food was boring and monotonous but being on a vegan diet I can’t expect too much. At least it’s nutritious and filling. And I made sure to tell her of the two slices of courgette that I had for a main meal in hospital in Riom.

In the end we agreed that if she put soya desserts and soya yoghurts on the menu, I’d refrain from ordering kiwis and bananas. That sounded like a good deal to me.

While we were chatting, the doctor poked her head in and when she saw what was happening she withdrew. I expected to see her shortly afterwards but she didn’t appear and I dozed for most of the afternoon, being shaken awake by a variety of nurses.

The doctor came back later in the evening. And I was right in that wiser counsels have prevailed and I can stay here until at least Monday. They are trying to find a room for me in a half-way house but that’s unlikely. If they fail, a social worker will come to see me on Monday.

Another visitor that I’ll have on Monday is an euthanasist. It seems that at least ONE of my complaints is being taken seriously. Maybe this will be the catalyst that will start things moving, although I have said this before in other circumstances

The bad news is that this doctor is moving on to a new ward next week. That’s a shame because I happen to quite like her as a person. It’s just a shame that she’s had to be the one who has borne the brunt of my moaning.

It’s just a shame that no-one of the hierarchy of the hospital has been to see me while I’ve been here. I bet that, having been made aware of my discontent they are keeping well away.

However she did say that she would look in on me at some point over the weekend as she’s the on-call doctor. That will be nice.

So now I’m off to bed. I’ve had a chat with Liz and Alison on-line, and one of the trainee nurses said that she would look in on me later. I seem to be “flavour of the month” right now.

So if I’m having a nurse come to see me later, I’ll have to try hard not to fall asleep. I’ll have to be careful if I curl up under the bedclothes with my headphones.

Wednesday 26th October 2022 – STRAWBERRY MOOSE …

…. is missing!

He and the rest of my luggage failed to meet up with me in the baggage claim area of the airport this morning.

The fact is that he’s probably aware of the fact that this was our last great adventure together and seeing that Canada has always been a happy hunting ground for him, he’s stolen all of my equipment, made good his escape and gone off adventuring on his own account.

Anyway, even as we speak, enquiries are being made.

Mind you, strange as it might seem, in the peculiar circumstances of the moment my luggage not arriving at the airport is something positive. It means that I don’t have to maul that huge suitcase around with me for the final stages of my journey.

To be honest, I’m totally done in. This was one journey too many and one journey too far in my state of health right now.

It was another night when I had had no sleep whatsoever. How many is this now over the last week? I coughed and spluttered through every minute of the long flight, and it was long too because despite leaving only a handful of minutes late, we were 1:20 late landing in Paris.

And shame on Air Canada who wouldn’t pay for a proper terminal but wanted to decant us in the middle of the runway. And on a greasy, slippery set of metal stairs too.

There was no chance whatever of my making that with my backpack full of heavy electrical equipment. I sat inside with the other disabled people (this is how I’m seeing myself now) waiting for the wheelchair lift.

That promptly broke down so in the end I was helped down by one assistant while another carried my bag.

My helper passed me through the express route into France, where presenting my carte de séjour at the same time as presenting my passport means that I don’t need my passport to be stamped. And then the eternal waiting in vain for STRAWBERRY MOOSE

Eventually I filed a lost luggage complaint and then crawled wearily the entire length of the airport (and you’ve no idea how long the airport is) to the railway station.

Here was just about my only bit of luck for today. The TGV from Rennes to Brussels was running over an hour late which meant that it would be here in 7 minutes. Just time enough for me to buy a ticket and get to the platform.

Sure enough, just as I made it down to the platform, it pulled in. One of the Tri-volt PBA (Paris – Brussels – Amsterdam) trainsets that leaves Rennes at the crack of dawn to to go to Brussels direct without passing by Paris.

Once or twice I’d thought about catching this train from Rennes. It would certainly be more convenient for me except that it departs too early for a connection with trains from Granville. But I never thought that I’d be catching it from here.

Once on board the train, I had a beautiful, blissful sleep of all of about 5 minutes.

At Brussels-Midi I bought some banana-fjavoured soya milk, a couple of bricks, and then walked to my hotel. It’s 400 metres from the railway station yet it took me 20 minutes and I almost fell over twice.

It’s a different hotel than usual. Slightly more expensive but much more luxurious and better finished. I stayed here one a good few years ago. And I’m not disappointed either. Luckily even though I was early, my room was ready for me, and it’s a nice room.

First thing was to have a shower and wash my clothes. The only clothes that I have with me are the ones in which I’ve been travelling and I’m very mindful of something Rosemary once said to me. After I’d been on the road for a couple of days once she told me that I looked like a tramp. And to be honest, today I knew that I did. With my hospital visits tomorrow I have at least to make a pretence of civilisation.

Having done that I came in here, crashed out on the bed and went away with the fairies for three hours.

When I awoke, I had a packet of crisps and then got into bed ready to wait until tomorrow morning.

Talking of eating, do you want to know what I’ve eaten since Thursday lunchtime last week? well, 2 bananas, half a baguette, 2 slices of pizza, one airline meal and a packet of crisps

My appetite has gone completely, and so will I if this carries on much longer.

Friday 7th October 2022 – MEANWHILE, IN THE …

… kitchen –
Our Hero – “where’s the tin opener?”
Rachel – “with the utensils”
OH – “the what?”
Rachel – “knives forks and spoons”
OH – “Oh yes! But don’t use big words with me. I come from Crewe”

Yes, I’ve been cooking again. Tea tonight was a stir-fry. Mine had black beans in it whereas Rachel’s and Darren’s had chicken.

Interestingly, the only shop-bought vegetable that went into the frying pan was the onion. All the rest were harvested out of Darren and Rachel’s vegetable plot except for the mushrooms which were picked locally.

Darren has decided to “go back to the land”. With no tractor-pulling over Covid, he spent his spare time developing a large vegetable plot and buying another freezer, and he’s now well away. I was going to say “reaping the fruits of his labour” but in actual fact, it’s “reaping the vegetables of his labours”.

Last night I was certainly reaping the fruits of a really good sleep. I must have travelled miles according to the dictaphone, and even Zero came to visit me too.

Once again I waited until everyone had gone off to work before I arose from the dead, and then I had the medication followed by a shower and a washing of my clothes. I need to keep things up-to-date. And with it being a bright, sunny day and plenty of wind to go with it, the clothes would dry quite quickly.

Then I turned my attention to the dictaphone. I started off working in a hotel room and for some unknown reason the only way that I could leave the room was to go out of the window and crawl along a ledge literally no more than 3 inches wide up to a kind-of roof balcony thing where I could climb over the wall and onto the lower part of the roof. That meant climbing up to the window, kneeling down, hanging onto the window frame, inching my way round. There was a key in the window that I could grab and hold on to. Then I’d have to find 1 or 2 other handholds while I shuffled along on my knees in order to get to this stone wall over which I needed to climb. I had to do this a dozen tiles during this dream and each time was a nightmare. The final time though, somehow the key had become disengaged and had fallen on top of the ledge along which I had to shuffle. It meant that one of my handholds was missing so I had to shuffle along with one less handhold, grasp other handholds which of course weren’t there. All in all, even in a dream it was nerve-wracking and frightening when I considered how high up it was and I was still trying to do it.

And then following the success of our Anglo-French group in France we thought that we’d start an Anglo-German group in Brussels. We’d learnt from out mistakes that this one would be a lot better. I was on my way out to Germany, to Achern, to do something. I thought that while I was there I’d look up a library to find some information about the town, how many people lived there etc. It would make a nice introduction to this Anglo-French group. I was in a car from the office so I asked one of my colleagues if parking would be reimbursed. She told me that it would be reimbursed so I decided that I would just park up in the centre of town where I could walk to the library and do what I needed to do there.

And finally I was with Zero last night, and so a big “hello” to her. It’s nice to see a friendly face on my travels. She came to see me last night somewhere in Europe. I had 2 bottles of whisky, some strange pink whisky that I was going to take back to her father. She decided that she would play a joke on her father by hiding in these bottles of whisky. We rigged up some kind of interior chamber in there, she climbed into it and we closed up the bottles. To carry them, I strapped them to my legs. I had to do a lot of skiing that day, a lot of climbing and then gradually turned up at his house. I said that I’d lost his daughter somewhere. I wondered where she’d gone to. I put these 2 bottles on the table-top. You could see her in there. We opened the first bottle but there was such a vacuum inside there that it broke the bottle when we opened it. The second one was OK but at first there was no sign of life at all. I was extremely worried. Gradually she came back to life again and started to breathe when she had some fresh oxygen. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. She told me that she didn’t want to do that again. I said “I don’t ever want to do that again either. I was so worried when we took off the tops and saw that you weren’t moving. For all the will in the world I wouldn’t have let you get in those 2 bottles if you hadn’t wanted to do it so badly”.

Anyway, I had to wait for a couple of hours until Rosemary re-contacted me. It’s the rear sunroof that’s broken so I had to drive down to Woodstock and Corey Ford. And we’ll have to have a bigger vehicle because by the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong so we were rather crowded in the cab.

Ordering the sunroof was quite straightforward, and then I had to go and do a little more shopping before coming home.

The trip to and from Woodstock took much longer than usual.

On the road down to Woodstock there’s some kind of commercial vehicle repairer. Sometimes he has some interesting things in there so I took a little detour to see if there was anything there today.

And I was in luck, because he had this beautiful beast in there – a Mack Thermodyne B51 articulated lorry tractor unit.

This was a model that was built between 1953 and 1966 and while elderly ladies in films can tell the difference between a 1955 and a 1956 saloon car at just a glance in films, I would have no idea at all about the actual age of this lorry

Looking at this one from this angle, it looks as if it might be the version with the longer rear wheelbase than the standard one.

That was quite common in Canada at the time because it enabled a greater weight to be carried in the trailer than with a normal configuration.

For someone like me, it’s really hard to say but what I can tell you is that this is the traditional “Mack” that everyone would imagine in truck-driving film of the cult years of the 1950s and 1960s.but, surprisingly, I can’t recall seeing one in CONVOY, good buddy.

They were the first Mack lorries in which a diesel engine was offered, and altogether, of the various models of B-series lorries, over 125,000 of them were manufactured, although I haven’t seen one about for ages.

What did for them was that they had a narrow power band, which was right at the top end of their RPM and so you needed a lot of gearchanges to keep the power going if you had a heavy load, and there was a tendency to over-rev the engines which drastically reduced their lifeespan

Climbing out of Lakeville we reach the top of a rise where the views over the surrounding countryside are quite spectacular.

Over there on the left in the distance is the USA and the State of Maine. We are so close to the USA here that my niece’s husband once said "you can spit into the USA from our house" – and so I did

On the horizon straight ahead is Mars Hill and that’s where I have my little piece of Canada. And as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the southern boundary of my property is the International frontier with the USA

Over there to the right, or east, is the valley of the Saint John River.

This afternoon we can’t see the valley too well but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, if we come past here early in the morning at this time of the year there’s a thin ribbon of mist over there.

That’s a good indication of where the river might be , and we can follow its course for miles.

It’s rather uncomfortable when you’re driving at the riverside because sometimes you’re up on a hill where the air is clear and then all of a sudden you drop into a dip where you’re enveloped in a thick mist and you can’t even see your hand in front of your face.

We haven’t finished our encounters with interesting vehicles yet.

Parked under a hedge at the bottom of a garden in the settlement of Jacksonville is this old Ford pick-up..

Not that I know very much about them, but that looks like one of the first-generation F-series vehicles with the “million dollar cab” designed in the late 1940s. And judging by the appearance of the radiator grille this is an earlier one rather than a later model. The radiator grille was redesigned at the end of 1950.

And the poor thing has seen better days, but I hope that it’s here under the hedge destined for some kind of restoration.

On the other hand, this isn’t destined for restoration at all but is going for breaking.

It’s an International Harvester Scout pick-up dating from the early 1960s and it actually was pulled out of a hedge in the vicinity, according to its owner with whom I had a little chat. It’s here in Woodstock on a forecourt waiting for space in the workshop when it can be pulled in and work started on it.

But also in the workshop is another one of these that is midway through restoration and parts taken off the one here are going onto that one. It seems such a shame, really, but that’s the way of the World with vehicles like this.

It was a good idea to stop here and chat to the guy at the workshop because there’s a view over the Saint John River Valley that I’ve never noticed before.

It’s a shame about the mist hiding the view but you can still make out the mountains in the centre of the Province away in the distance. We’ve driven over those mountains ON A COUPLE OF OCCASIONS on our way to and from the coast

By the time that I returned home it was threatening rain (it’s actually pouring down right now) so I took in the washing and came in here to edit the photos. Regrettably, instead I fell asleep for a short while.

Tea was a stir-fry with rice and now, having had a good play with a cat, I’m going to bed. It’s holiday weekend here so no work tomorrow. I suppose though that there will be plenty to do all the same.

So there were a couple of nightmares in that lot, especially with trying to drown Zero in alcohol. What a sad story that was. Nevertheless it’s interesting to speculate about what happens if someone dies in a dream? Do they write themselves out of any subsequent dream? Or do we only only encounter them on the second plane? Or do they keep on coming back all he same.

With plenty of people, it would really be interesting to find out, but definitely not with Castor, TOTGA or especially Zero.

Saturday 1st October 2022 – THAT WAS HORRIBLE

I awoke this morning with my right foot swollen up like a balloon and with pain the like of which I haven’t felt before. I’ve no idea what has happened because despite all of my meanderings yesterday there wasn’t a hint of this happening.

As a result, most of the day has been spent in bed with my foot up, doing not very much at all. It’s a good job that I went to the shops for food supplies when I arrived because at least, I have stuff to eat and drink even if it means staggering around in the room a little

There was some stuff on the dictaphone too from last night. This dream concerned someone who was driving a car and came to an area where there was a strike. He understood that when he reached the strike he had to leave the road and re-join the road where this strike was over. He didn’t realise that he could do things differently. People started to call him names about it being stupid so he went to tell the Police. He met a policeman at the traffic lights where he had been at the start. He got into his car and drove to this policeman while he was telling this policeman his story. The policeman was surprised and asked this guy what he wanted him to do. The guy said that he was annoyed at people calling him names and being stupid. The policeman said that there wasn’t an awful lot about that that could be done but this guy was rather insistent. He’d been driving around for quite a while while this guy was telling the policeman his story.

There had been some kind of kidnapping. A couple of people had been taken. The gang that did it – I managed to track them down. I was about to make some kind of arrest. They had a secret code number which was 2568. How I knew about this I really can’t remember. There was a sudden knock at the door. Someone wrote something down on a pad so I had the burnt tip of a match and rubbed it on the pad and it came up with the number 2568 so I opened the door wide but stepped right back. It revealed a guy whom I knew but I hadn’t quite connected him with this kidnapping affair. He came in but in the confusion I was hit on the head and knocked out. In the meantime these people disappeared and ended up on a deserted World War II airfield hidden between bales of hay in a tent or two. Their plan was to move people out early in the morning. I had the impression from what they were saying although I wasn’t there that “moving them out” meant that some of them would be flown away, the valuable ones, and the others would be quietly liquidated

Later on I was back at home again in a kind of bunk bed with instead of being a bed there was a shelf over the top. On my bed were a load of files all in red filing covers. I started to arrange some o the shelf but very slowly. I thought “this is going to take for ever. What I need is a wild fit of enthusiasm” so I suddenly leapt up and started to grab these files with the aim of filing them all on the shelf quite rapidly but I awoke instead.

Something else that I did was to go through the 40 or so photos that I took yesterday and to carry out a little research on what I’d seen.

Later on in the afternoon, in extreme agony, I hobbled out and on the metro to the Bonaventure railway station. Tomorrow evening I have to be at the Central Railway Station so I needed to work out a plan and to check the route.

The agony was indescribable so I won’t try to describe it and the walk was ridiculous. It’s one thing that I’ve said so many times about the Metro in Montreal is that it goes where it was convenient for the planners to put it, not at all convenient for where the passengers want to go. As I result I had to drag myself through a labyrinth of corridors, making several wrong turns because the signposting is awful.

It’s not built for disabled people either. There are several escalators in there, that’s true, but for one at least of the escalators you have to walk up half a dozen steps to reach it and that totally defeats the whole purpose of the escalator.

At the station I found a very helpful member of staff who told me everything that I needed to know and gave me a few tips and hints too, so it was well-worth the effort to go there.

The stagger back home was no less painful and I was glad to collapse on the bed again. Rosemary rang and we had another one of our marathon chats. These internet-based telephone services are worth their weight in gold.

Later on I made another coffee, had another bowl of muesli and a bagel with jam and went to bed. I’d done enough today. Let’s hope that there will be an improvement tomorrow

Monday 26th September 2022 – GONE!

And never caled me “mother”!

Thee have been wholesale changes in the chantier naval today and I seemed to have missed them all!

The only boats that are still there from the five that were lined up at the side are Briscard and Chant des Sirenes. And add to that the fact that Gerlean has now moved over there too, and you can see that they have been really busy.

Everyone else that we have seen in there over the last couple of days has now gone back into the water.

So what’s going to happen next?

Also gone! And never called me “mother!” either are the crowds of people

Autumn has certainly arrived, and arrived in spades too. As a result, despite the fact that there was plenty of beach to be on, there wasn’t a single person – or a married person either – taking advantage of it.

By the looks of things, everything is quietening right down ready for winter to arrive. All we need to do now is to clear out the caravanners and we’ll be back to our normal sleepy selves, and I won’t ‘arf be looking forward to that!

The beach isn’t the only thing where winter is a-cumin in.

Over there at the ferry terminal we now have two of the ferries parked up. Belle France is over there at the front of the queue and behind her is one of the Joly France boats.

We can tell from the windows in “portrait” format and the lack of step in the stern that it’s the newer one of the two. Chausiaise is in the inner harbour so all we need now is the other ferry and we’ll have a full house.

In the foreground, nothing to do with winter, is the little Le Roc À La Mauve III whom we saw for a while in the chantier naval

The final event that has underlined the arrival of winter relates to the Channel Island ferries.

Victor Hugo has been moored in the harbour for quite a few days but she’s now been joined by her sister, the single-hulled Granville that plies between some of the smaller ports up the coast and some of the ports on the minor Channel Islands like Alderney and Sark.

The fact that they are now both here seems to imply that they aren’t going to go anywhere until next Spring. And I hope that next year when everything starts up again we’ll have a much better service than we had this year.

But while we’re on the subject of going anywhere … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’ve been going places today.

So while you admire some of the photos that I took while I was out and about I’ll tell you all about it.

And the first thing that I wanted to say was that I actually went out on the bus. The event that I attended was taking place at the rear of the Agora Centre on the edge of town and as the bus passes by there, I reckoned that I would leap aboard instead of going in Caliburn.

Especially as travelling on the bus around the town is free. I should really do more with that.

Mind you, I was lucky that I went.

The bus was due to leave at 09:10 and the nurse was also due as well and he can come at any time. I was half-expecting him not to come until after the bus had left but he turned up with 10 minutes to go.

Having had a shower earlier in the morning I was ready and so immediately after he left I grabbed my things and was out of the door. I made the bus in seconds flat, which you must admit is an amazing piece of engineering.

It was pouring down with rain this morning, and I had to wander around in the wet to find the place that I wanted.

It’s the old Ecole Pierre et Marie Curie that closed down last year. The town has bought it so that they can bring into one place all of their outlying offices instead of having them scattered all around in various buildings.

It’s been refurbished, so they tell me, which I find surprising – it must have been in a dreadful state before – and some of the services have moved in. Today was the formal, official opening and I’d been invited.

There’s plenty of room in there. I must have counted as many as 20 old classrooms, of which only a handful were occupied.

Consequently they have made a lot of the empty rooms into “communal rooms” where the various associations can rent a space to hold meetings, and several “likely tenants” were there. I spent a lot of time talking to someone who runs a ballroom dancing class.

Interestingly, they have ploughed up what I suppose used to be the school playing field and that has been converted into some kind of communal garden rather like an allotment site. Now doesn’t THAT have possibilities?

But why I was there was that one of the rooms has been seized by the organiser of our radio station.

We’ve never had a studio. Everything is always done at the home of whoever is presenting the programme and that can sometimes be inconvenient. But right now we have staked our claim and thinks can only (hopefully) improve.

It’s nothing like the type of studio that I would like to have, with a separate control room, sound insulation and absorption material all around it, but from small acorns large oaks grow and they’ll begin to realise the shortcomings and do something about it.

Thierry drove me home afterward so I didn’t even have to wait for the bus, and I could then carry on with my work.

As it happened, I’d already done quite a lot of work. With the alarm going off at 06:00 I was out of bed immediately even if I hadn’t gone to bed until after 23:00 and had a bad night, all of which just goes to show that I can do it when I really try.

After the medication, having a shower and checking my mails I made a start on the notes for the radio programme that I’d be preparing today. And not only did I finish writing the notes I’d actually dictated half of them when the nurse interrupted my progress.

Back here later I had a very late breakfast and then carried on with the work.

And it took an absolute age to do because it was rather a different way of doing it today. Usually I just trawl through my databases when I’m choosing the final track and pick one that matches the available timeslot less 45 seconds for a closing speech.

Today though was a themed programme and I didn’t have the same choice that I would otherwise have. I had to choose a track from a very small selection and adjust the length of the speech to fit.

And then in an error of calculation I was 10 seconds short so I had to re-dictate the final speech with some extra stuff in it and then re-edit it.

As a result it was a very late walk around the headland. At least the rain had stopped for a moment but there was a howling gale that had sprung up. I was the only one out and about and I could understand why.

You’ve seen the beach already, and there was nothing else of any note on the north side of the headland.

The storm was keeping everyone else in today except for a few brave souls such as those people in the little boat out there sailing … “dieseling” – ed … past le Loup, the light on the rock at the entrance to the port.

You can see how much she’s struggling against the wind in this photo, and although I wasn’t in the best position to take it, it was too good an opportunity to miss as it would soon be in the shelter of the headland.

This boat is having even more difficulty coming into port.

This is Calean whom we have seen on many occasions in the past. And I’d seen her way out at sea fighting her way past the waves and she had taken an age to come into the bay.

In fact she didn’t have it easy coming into port either because as you saw in one of the earlier photos there wasn’t a lot of water in the harbour so she’ll have to ride outside in the storm for a while until the tide comes in a little more.

Surprisingly, there was someone on the rocks at the end of the headland.

THis fisherman was having plenty of fun fighting the storm but he didn’t last long. He evidently heard me coming because as soon as I arrived he folded up his gear and cleared off.

There was someone on the bench at the cabanon vauban as well but as soon as I arrived he did likewise. I really ought to change my deodorant.

Crossing the road was rather a bad time as I hit the school buses going home. A whole fleet of them. Discretion was the better part of valour so I stayed on the pavement until they’d all gone by.

On the way home I took a few photos that you have already seen, but there was this one too.

Actually it’s cropped out of another one and although it is missing some of the hull of Cap Pilar, it’s of interest because it shows quite a lot of her distinguishing features.

One of the things to do eventually is to make my own fishing boat database for the port with photos of all of the boats showing their name and registration number so that I can refer to it in future.

No time like the present.

Back here I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. And then later (“later than what?” I asked myself) I was walking around an island. I started off in the company of Zero but we met other people. Gradually they wandered off and I was on my own. Because I’d had no orange juice I went to look for a shop that would have them. There weren’t many shops on this place. There used to be 3 but now there were only 2. Now the hotel had a few possessions as well, things to sell. I went to the first one but I ended up being side-tracked. I bought something else but completely forgot about the orange juice. Later on, when I was wandering around waiting for someone I remembered the orange juice as well. By this time I was a long way from where the shops were and I didn’t want to go to the hotel to see if they had one to fill so I had to go all the way back to the shops and have a look in there. But there was much more to it than this. It was a dream that went on and on and on as I was walking around this island and it lasted for ever.

I couldn’t go back to sleep after this but I must have done at some point because there was some kind of office meeting taking place. I was having to question a couple of people at this meeting. It concerned an interview between 2 people that had taken place on Monday. One of them was management. Some meetings between more members of staff who were senior grades and representatives of employers. There was a third topic too but I can’t remember that. I had to ask that question at 4 or 5 separate meetings. The first 3 or 4 went fine but in the final one I lost my plot, lost where I was. That was because in the first question I asked about this meeting with one member of staff, someone whom I believed was a member of staff shouted up and shouted “yes” in answer to a question. Of course no-one was even supposed to know about it except me. Anyway I awoke again and couldn’t go back to sleep after that

When the alarm went off I was somewhere in a hotel with a group of people. We’d been driving somewhere and going down this steep hill it was pretty dark. Some guy kept shouting “no, no, no! You’ve gone the wrong way! Stop, stop stop!”. In the end we stopped and had to retrace our steps then turn to the right. We followed a canal for a while. There was a sign for an abandoned railway station and we passed through some kind of derelict abandoned village. That was where I dropped something that I was carrying over the side of the jeep so we had to do a U-turn but the jeep behind us picked it up and gave it back to me. Someone in the jeep asked if I really enjoyed camping. “No” I replied. “I’m a hotel person myself”. And this really was an extremely realistic dream too that shook me rather when I awoke and found that it was a dream.

But at least Zero had come to see me during the night, although not for long. But let’s just be thankful for small mercies.

Tea was a delicious stuffed pepper, interrupted by a phone call from Rosemary, so I called her back later.

1 hour 45 minutes we were on the phone talking about this and that, and especially how Miss Ukrainian is enjoying going to school even if it is just part-time for a crash course in French. As a result, I’m running horribly late today.

And a Welsh lesson too so I need to be fully fit and raring to go. Still, we can all dream, can’t we?

Monday 19th September 2022 – WE ALMOST HAD …

… a new record for the completion of our radio programme this morning. So while you admire several photos of the marine activity out on the water today I’ll tell you all about it.

Actually, I’m not quite sure what happened today but at about 10:10 this morning I was about to start dictating the final speech for the last track, and once that it would be edited, it would be done.

For some reason though, probably an error of mathematics, I ended up with 10 seconds too much of speech. That was quite disappointing because I’d taken great care to make sure that the length of speech was correct. One like of text in my text editor is about 290 characters and that equates to about 17 seconds when it’s edited down so I have a reasonable idea of how long a piece of text takes to dictate.

So finding 10 seconds of speech to “lose” from what I’ve already dictated and merged into the programme so far isn’t as easy as it might be. Sometimes there’s a nice piece of speech that is ripe for editing out but there might be the introduction of the track of music to which it relates that overruns it.

Anyway, while it finally saw the light of day at about 10:50, which is still quicker than quite a few that I’ve done just recently.

But almost as soon as I started to listen to it to make sure that it was OK, Rosemary rang me up. I’m convinced that she hid a camera in here when she came to visit a few years ago. Anyway, we had one of our lengthy chats again.

But the good news is that Miss Ukrainian has started school today at the High School in the nearest town to where Rosemary lives. I’m sure that that’s a good idea.

Even if she can’t speak French and follow the lessons, she’ll be mixing with kids of her own age. Where she’s living right now there’s no-one around at all of her age and a young teenager needs to socialise

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, last night was something of a mess.

It was later than intended that I went to bed, and then I didn’t have much sleep because I must have travelled miles during the night. To start off there was a lady-friend of mine. I don’t know who she was but she started to date someone who was a cross between Boris Johnson and Bill Bailey and only had one leg. he was a famous politician and would sneak away from meetings etc to be with her. On one occasion the two of us had booked somewhere to stay but there was only one double-bed so we thought that we’d just have to make the best of it. Biy he turned up as well so it ended up with three of us in the bed. I went out to go to the bathroom ready to go to bed. He and this woman were in there so I said to them on parting “don’t forget later on in the night that your partner is the one on your right. When I prepared to go to bed his security team was there. They were looking for him so I didn’t say anything. I went back to another room after I’d had a wash in order to leave them to it for a while.

Back in the same dream later I was up and about. Those two were still in bed. Meantime the house was filling up with people. Eventually the woman got up and came in to join us. I asked her if she knew what “discussing Uganda” meant. She replied that she didn’t. I said that if I come out with the phrase, do me a favour of bursting out laughing and I’ll explain it to you later”. She wondered what I meant by that. Eventually he came out of the room. I explained that Zero (who must have put in an appearance somewhere but shame as it is to say it, I can’t remember her being there)’s mother had been to collect her, implying that we had a young child in the house at the time last night etc. After about 10 minutes of embarrassed chatting from their side I said that I’m going off to wash my hair so I’ll leave them alone and they can “discuss Uganda” or something like that. The other people in the house knew exactly what that meant and burst out laughing. I went into the bathroom, used the bathroom and went to wash my hands and found that someone had coupled the shower up to the tap and hadn’t undone it afterwards. As soon as I turned on the tap the water went everywhere and soaked the bathroom. I managed to stop it, opened the bathroom door and hurled a huge volley of abuse about the person who’d had a shower and left the shower attachment attached to the sink and not removed it at the end. Of course you can guess who that probably was but it was an impressive volley of abuse all the same. I started to look for something to clean up the mess.

Back in this dream for a third time. I said that Zero had gone home and the kids who had been on the trampoline were leaving. I gathered that those 2 had gone back to bed again so I made some remarks about “ships that pass in the night” etc while they were there and various other things to give the game away that I knew exactly what had happened although I said them in a manner that implied that I knew nothing.

Moving on from there, there was a big party in the office. The office was absolutely filthy. There was stuff all over the place. There was only one girl and I think that it might have been my elder sister who was attempting to tidy it up. I wasn’t going home as I had something arranged in the town so I stayed behind and helped her as best as I could. I did several huge bowls of washing up. Then it came to be 19:10 so I went to put back everything that I’d done so far. She asked how the room was so I told her that it was still a mess. I told her what I’d done. She said “OK, you’d better wander off now and do what you have to do. I’m going to be late in the morning” she said. “I’m not going to be in at my usual early morning time”. I said “never mind. I’ll try my best to be there myself something early and see what happens”. I was really disappointed that all our colleagues, none of them would stay behind and help and none of them were interested in coming along to open up the office tomorrow either.

When the alarm went off I was in the middle of a meeting with the owners of this building but they were only just setting up the bottles of water for people to drink and I never found out what went on. It was all about some abandoned farmhouse and buildings on the side of a main road that they were talking about demolishing even though it was nice, old Victorian stuff. It would have made a really nice conversion to flats and houses etc rather than being just swept away.

Anyway so when the alarm went off I did manage to leap to my feet quite quickly even though it was early, and after the medication I cracked on with the radio programme, as I mentioned earlier.

There were a couple of interruptions. Firstly for an early morning coffee and secondly to answer the door. The nurse had finally printed out my vaccination certificate from last June. Just one or two things that I need to do now.

Having listened to the radio programme and also the one that I’ll be sending off for this weekend, I went for my lunchtime fruit And then I had the notes on the dictaphone to deal with.

So I stepped back into a dream not just once but twice last night. And a mention of Zero too. What a shame I can’t remember her being about although I know that she must have been there.

After all of that it was time for me to go out for my afternoon walk around the headland.

And once again, it seems that the Nazguls were waiting for me to step outside the door again. I hadn’t gone more than three feet outside the building when one of them came swooping over the roof of the High School and heading in my direction.

A solo outfit too, but not to worry. There were several others waiting around in the distance, some of which were two-seater Nazguls. So at least there’s still an opportunity to go for a flight around.

And I haven’t forgotten …

So dodging the diving Nazguls I wandered over to the wall at the end of the car park to see what was happening down on the beach.

But first, my attention was focused on the events just offshore. yesterday we had a zodiac watching events unfold on the beach. Today, we have a paddle-boarded paddling past.

There were a few people down there as well for him to watch. Probably a dozen or so scattered about all over there.

No-one in the water as far as I could see, but then again the paddle-boarder hasn’t fallen in yet. There’s still plenty of time for that.

Lots of other stuff down there for me to watch as well.

As I made my way along the path amongst the people who were wandering around, I noticed that out there on a rock just offshore was a whole colony of birds.

Cormorants, I reckon, but what do I know? All that I do know is that they aren’t any kind of bird which I would be interested in watching. I should have paid much more attention, because when we were married I had several long lectures from Nerina about bird-watching.

What I could do I suppose is to go on and on about how I don’t particularly like those birds, but it would just be another cormo-rant.

and so on that note I suppose that I’d better carry on with my walk and see what’s hapening with the aeroplane that has just taken off from the airfield.

It’s one of the aeroplanes that we see quite regularly as we are walking along the cliffs around here. She’s F-GCUM, a Robin DR400-180 that belongs to the local aero club.

My photo is timed at 16:01 (adjusted) which corresponds with a flight that she undertook when she took off at 15:15 and flew northwards. That’s not a usual flightpath for an aeroplane out of the airfield. usually they go out to sea and then down the coast to the south.

However there was something bizarre about the flight that she was undertaking just now.

As I watched her, she did a U-turn and headed back towards the airfield, almost as if when she had taken off but the pilot had forgotten his sandwiches.

Her actual flight plan though was she went north, as I said just now, and then flew back south, back over the airfield and out to sea but after just a couple of miles she performed a rather dramatic U-turn and flew back towards the airfield.

Once back over the airfield she carried on inland, performed yet another U-turn and back to the airfield where she landed at 16:09.

My route along the top of the cliff and across the car park was pretty much without incident today. Just a few craft out at sea that you have already seen, and no change either in the inner harbour or in the chantier naval.

Now that the heaving masses have headed back home at the end of the holiday season, we have the next generation of visitors.

The town and the cliffs are crawling with the pensioners out of the caravanettes or day-tripping on the fleets of coaches that are now arriving.

The poor little Iveco that waits to take the Homework Club schoolchildren back home at 17:00 is sandwiched between two rather large Mercedes Tourismo coaches, and thanks to Duncan Payne on the “Bus and Coach” group for identifying the bodywork.

It’s a good job that he did too. The driver of the brown one with whom I had a lengthy chat didn’t know and the driver of the green one drove off when he saw me approaching.

Unfortunately I’m out of the loop these days. I was left behind on Van Hool Alizees and Plaxton Premieres. I can’t believe that it’s almost 28 years since I last drove a coach after all the miles that I did in the past.

Back here I had a coffee and then I had a few things to do which took me up to teatime.

My stuffed pepper tonight was a really good one. I have really grasped the principle of those now. Plenty of stuffing left over for a taco roll tomorrow and maybe even some more to add into Wednesday’s curry.

But right now that’s that. Tomorrow I have a Welsh lesson and I hope that there will be more than four of us. But to be on the safe side I shall have to have a good night’s sleep and do some more revision tomorrow.

That is, if I can remember.

Wednesday 14th September 2022 – PECCAVI WASN’T BACK …

… in the water for very long, was she?

A couple of days ago we sw the portable boat lift hovering around her like a bird of prey, and yesterday she had gone.

But this afternoon as I wandered around the headland on my walk, I noticed that she’s back in the cradle of the portable boat lift, either looking for a berth or else having ha da quick touching up and waiting to be lowered back down again when the tide comes in later this afternoon..

We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what’s happened to her. But whatever is going on, it was rather a short stay in the water.

Just for a change my stay in bed last night wasn’t all that short. I was (for once) actually in bed at something like a reasonable time and it’s been a while since that’s happened.

Quite a few little voyages during the night too. I can’t remember who I was with now but I was at a fishing port somewhere. I had a daughter who lived here. My partner asked me about her so I made a couple of excuses and said that she’s just been sent to bed because she’s misbehaved. Just as I was saying that, round the corner she came along wiht the nurse or nanny who looked after her. I thought “that’s my story blown, isn’t it?”. I said to her “hello. What are you doing?”. She replied that she had indeed been sent to bed but for a different reason to the one that I just gave. I asked her if she wants to see me when I’m here, she obviously has to be on her best behaviour because if she keeps on being sent to bed she won’t be able to see me at all. The two of us, my friend and the child’s nurse or nanny, we had a little chat together about everything.

And later, Marianne and I were in the Metro or Underground on our way to a theatre to watch a play or a cinema. We were passing through different Underground stations talking about groups whom we’d seen performing at concert halls nearby. As we closed to our destination Marianne said suddenly that she didn’t have her handbag with her. She’d left it at one of our stops. She had to leap off the train and go back. I carried on and got off at our stop and took up a place where I could watch the train arrive. It wasn’t many minutes afterwards when she arrived, saying that she didn’t have her bag, didn’t have her purse etc. I looked a bit suspicious about everything. She came up with some small change to leave the Underground etc. We went over there and I bought the tickets to go in, all the drinks, sweets etc. We decided that we’d go somewhere else but I can’t remember now where that somewhere else was.

Finally I was unloading a load of Rowntrees products from Strider when I awoke. I thought that he was saying that that company would haul anything if the price was right. They had a couple of large containers with their food on board that was destined for Taylor’s to share out at Christmas. The rest of it was shop deliveries. Even though it was all mis-sorted all over the place it had to be delivered to individual shops. We were going on about our relationship with the shop, about how sometimes it was very good, sometimes it was very bad depending on the particular issues. Before that I’d been somewhere or other from town. We’d been wandering around and there had been this 6-cylinder Harley Davidson parked up at the side of this building. It had been there for a while. Everyone would come to look at it, Harley Davidson aficionados from all over the place. One day a Harley Davidson club turned up to see it and decided that they would take some of us for a ride so somehow they managed to disconnect the lock on it. Someone else bought a trailer of the type that this Harley Davidson would pull when it was working. I was unlucky enough that I had a lift on a traditional Harley. They went north out of Crewe through the lanes. It was a wild experience. He was playing an LP of A NEIGHBOUR OF MINE like THE TALE OF SIR ROBIN but it was the tale of the guy who was actually driving the motorbike and I can’t remember now his name.

For the benefit of any new reader, anyone who knows anything about LORD OF THE RINGS will know exactly what make and model of vehicle Strider is. He’s on my mind at the moment because he’s just been for his safety inspection in Canada and I’m told that he needs some welding. That’s bad news of course but he is 14 years old and is left outside during the Canadian winters, so it’s not a surprise.

It’s high time that I made up my mind about what to do with him.

Having dealt with all of that then most of the rest of the day has been spent with dealing with my Jersey photos. I’ve not done too many of those because most of the time has been spent researching.

And most of that time was trying to find out when a couple of buildings were erecting. It’s always puzzled me that there’s much more information available about older buildings than there is about newer ones

There were several breaks during the day of course, the afternoon walk being one of them.

As usual I went over to the wall at the end of the car park to see what was going on down on the beach. And today, it was a case of playing “spot the human being”. I certainly couldn’t see one in this photo.

Not that that’s really surprising. The weather has turned yet again and the temperature has dropped. It’s quite cool there and pretty much overcast. Winter won’t be long in a-coming, I reckon.

Looking out to sea was pretty much a waste of time this afternoon as well.

There was quite a sea mist and you couldn’t see the Ile de Chausey this afternoon. I’d almost given up hope of seeing anything out at sea when this zodiac came into view from around the headland. So at least that was something.

There was a guy on board who had in his possession a couple of fishing rods. So there’s no surprise as to where he’ll be going.

However I’m more concerned as to where he’s come from because in the kind of range in which a zodiac travels safely, there’s no port with a ramp into the water right now. It’s only people like us who’ll travel 30 miles in open water on a zodiac trying to find our ship.

But be all that as it may, about 30 seconds after this zodiac came by, another one came around the headland. It looks as if there’s quite a lot going on as far as they are concerned.

A little further on, I came across another marker buoy with a flag.

Having seen quite a few of these, I’m even more convinced that they mark the position of lobster pots that have been dropped overboard in the hope of making a catch.

And just in case I hadn’t seen enough of them already, there were several all dotted along the coast here.

They were all flying the same colour of flag so that seems to be pretty conclusive that the same flag belongs to the same owner, and a different flag belongs to a different owner.

With not too many people out and about this afternoon I wasn’t expecting to see anyone down at the bench at the cabanon vauban.

Nevertheless there were two people down there this afternoon. One of them went and hid out of sight behind the cabin when they saw me coming, such has my fame spread these days. But the other person took no notice so he fitted in quite nicely to my photo.

One or two people down on the lower path too but they didn’t hang around waiting for the bench to clear so that they could take their turn at sitting down.

And neither did I hang around. I cleared off down the path on the other side of the headland towards the port.

And plenty of excitement today in the chantier naval.

We’ve seen Peccavi back in town, but it looked very much as if we had yet another trawler in there that wasn’t in there yesterday.

To be on the safe side I took a photo of it with the aim of examining it back at base but when I did so, it turned out to be Pierre de Jade who was in there yesterday.

They must really be cracking on with that because they have already painted out her name with some undercoating. And with all of the workmen swarming all over her in contrast to how the work is progressing on the other boats, it looks as if they have a pressing engagement for her.

Meanwhile down at the far end of the inner harbour it looks as if we have a full house.

Not only is Marité there but it seems that Shtandart is back in town as well, tied up in her usual place. So what’s the story with her then? For how long is she staying?

Chausiaise is down there too in the loading bay underneath the crane. Now that things are quietening down at the end of the summer, maybe she’s thinking about going out with another load to the Channel Islands.

Meanwhile what I am thinking about is going home for a coffee. I’m really struggling, going round my circuit and I certainly can’t do it in 15 minutes as I used to. Fings ain’t looking so good.

For a while I carried on with my photos and later on ended up having a chat with my neighbour. This things isn’t happening this weekend, as I said, but we were talking about a few more opportunities. However, they are increasingly unlikely from my point of view.

Tea tonight was another delicious, magnificent curry and then Rosemary rang so we had another one of our marathon chats. Hence I’m running rather late tonight yet again. There’s no end to it.

Tomorrow I’ll be carrying on with my photos from Jersey. At least I’m ashore now having a coffee – about a quarter of the way through the images. It’s going to take another age to finish it, and then I can restart on all of the other hundreds of outstanding days when there was so much to do that is as yet undone.

It never ends, does it?

Thursday 8th September 2022 – THIS WEATHER …

… has certainly changed dramatically over the last week or so and I’m glad that I went to Jersey when I did.

While I was out there this afternoon on my post-prandial crawl, there was another rainstorm out in the bay. It was missing us by quite a few miles and battering the Pointe de Carolles and Jullouville.

But not to worry. We had had a considerable numbers of showers throughout the day. One moment we had bright sunlight and the next moment we were knee-deep in the rain.

What has happened today, if you haven’t guessed it from watching the rain cloud, is that the wind has turned round.

Instead of blowing from the south-east it’s now back in its usual direction of north-west. That has stirred up all of the waves and as you can see, Le Loup, the marker light on the rocks at the entrance to the harbour, is taking something of a battering.

Not as much as it might have done though because the wind has dropped slightly today. Had we had yesterday’s wind, we wouldn’t have seen it for the spray.

but at least the local vegetation is enjoying it.

As we have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed … the local vegetation is extremely resilient. As you can see, the weeds that grow around here have sprung dramatically into life already.

You would have thought that after 47 days without a drop of rain they would have been dead and buried but that’s far from the case. You can see now how it is that after a rainstorm in the Sahara, animal life suddenly makes a dramatic reappearance after having lain dormant for so long.

Unfortunately, last night I didn’t remain dormant long enough.

While you look at a couple of photos of the waves breaking on the harbour wall I was tossing and turning in bed trying my best to sleep.

The number of times that I awoke for no good reason is something that I can’t understand, but there we are. It’s not as if there were masses of notes on the dictaphone.

And once again, leaving my stinking pit was something of a challenge too, just as it has been for the last few weeks or so. I might be feeling a little better these days and not falling asleep during the afternoon but I’m obviously not that much better.

after the medication I came in here and checked my mails.

And to my surprise there was a message from that garage in British Columbia. But only to say that the VIN that I quoted was wrong.

What I had to do then was to contact Rosemary to ask her to take a photo of her friend’s Carte Grise so that I can forward it on. A photograph can’t lie.

But I seemed to have dropped myself right into the middle of some “events” down there and we’ll have to see how that transpires.

So while you look at few more photos, this time of boats, which in this one might be Spirit of Conrad I put everything behind me and started work.

The morning was spent on my trip to Jersey last week. And despite all the time that I spent on it, I’m still standing at the ferry terminal waiting to board Victor Hugo in order to set off for the Channel Islands.

That’s about photo number 5, and when you realise that there are 94 altogether that need things doing to them, you’ll understand that it’s going to be a very long job. Especially when you consider that I’m not as young, fit and enthusiastic as I used to be.

This afternoon … well, shock! Horror! I’ve cleaned the bathroom.

It goes without saying that I had a shower first so that I wouldn’t dirty it afterwards, and then I stripped out all that I could. The floor has been brushed, vacuumed and mopped, the carpet has been cleaned, and so has absolutely everything else.

What I haven’t done though is to empty and clean the cupboards. There are limits to what I’m prepared to do when I’m not feeling too well. That’s going to be a job for another time.

But really, I’m swamped in unused medicine and so on and I really don’t know what to do with it. The best plan will be to speak to the chemist next time that I’m down there and check with her.

Eventually I could call a temporary halt to the proceedings in the bathroom because it was time for my afternoon stagger outside.

As usual I wandered over to the wall at the end of the car park to see what was happening down there on the beach.

Just a handful of people down there this afternoon wandering about in the sunshine. No-one sunbathing, which is no surprise, and no-one in the water either. It seems that the summer is now over as far as that is concerned.

Mind you, they wouldn’t have far to run each time the weather broke because they couldn’t be any wetter standing in the water than they would be standing in the rain.
“The boy stood on the burning deck
While all around had fled
But for the rain
I’d examine his brain
a passing psychiatrist said”

The weather further out to sea was quite hazy but closer to home there were some surprising views today.

One of the best was the Ile de Chausey. It’s not every day that we see it looking as nice as this. It was quite clear and we could see the colours of the island quite distinctly

Interestingly, you can see some white vertical lines over there on the island. Many of the houses down there are all painted white and what you are actually seeing is the the sun catching the end walls of the houses and the light reflecting therefrom.

And you can see how rough the sea is as well today. That’s probably one of the reasons why there are no swimmers.

Having seen all that there was to see over on this side of the headland I crawled down to the viewpoint on the other side of the headland where I could overlook the port.

Yesterday we saw Le Coelacanthe and le Tiberiade moored down there, but they have cleared off today. In their place, and obviously compting in a new series of “Musical Ships” is La Grande Ancre

She has one of the harbour lighters on board, as well as a pile of fishing equipment.

There’s another boat behind her – a small inshore shell-fishing boat but at this distance I’m not able to see who she might be. Anyway, she didn’t stay long and was soon on her way.

Meanwhile, more excitement in the Chantier Naval.

Trafalgar, the white trawler with blue and pink stripes, has now gone back into the water and her place has been taken by an unidentified shell-fishing boat.

Also back in the water today is Charlevy. She’s been replaced by Le Styx whom we saw moored in the inner harbour for a few days.

There’s another change too. Le Poulbot has moved from her position in front of Le Soupape and she’s now up on blocks in front of Le Styx.

Plenty of people down there working too. It’s quite a hive of activity down there this afternoon.

A little earlier you might have noticed a photo with a yacht and a cabin cruiser in it.

This is a better photo of the cabin cruiser. It looks quite old and I bet that it’s a beast of a thing and just the kind of boat that I would like to own.

It’s quite a shame really but had things been very different, I might have ended up living on a boat in a harbour. But then again, had things really been different, I would still be living in the Auvergne. sigh

Still, this isn’t the time to be all broody

Just in case you are wondering where Trafalgar is, she’s over there just about to tie up in front of Les Bouchots de Chausey

There’s a large pile of fishing net just there where she’s about to tie up, so I imagine that’s her net and they’ll be fixing it back on this evening ready to go out fishing tomorrow.

From there I headed back home where I had an “unusual” encounter with a rather inebriated motorist who wanted to engage me in conversation

This afternoon I walked quite far considering everything. But it showed that I’m still far from having recovered from the events of last week. And even if I were to be moving around easier, I’d still be quite wary about trusting this right leg in the future.

Back here I had some more ginger beer and then listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was taking an exam for the Open University. There was one subject with 3 parts to this question, each of which was an essay all done under the heading of one question. It was quite complicated. The first part I did without too many problems whatsoever. The second part was much more difficult but the third part seemed to be straightforward so I simply dictated that answer then went back to do the second part. At one point I stood up to walk around and stretch my legs just as one of the main invigilators came into the room. He was astonished to see people up and about walking around. He ordered us to sit down and carry on. It was 20 past something already and we only had 10 more minutes. I was suddenly in a panic then. Not only had I to dash down the rest of the answers to this second part, I realised that the third part being dictated won’t fetch any marks. I’d have to write that out again. Then my handwriting had disintegrated and became more like a doctor’s handwriting. I thought to myself that really this is going to be an absolute and total fail before I even started anything. I could see that happening here..

Later on I was working for the Resistance. It was being completely shaken up by the French government. Ally my hippie friends were being pursued. I was trying to keep out of the way but at the same time give them what support I could. There was a group of them fleeing down Crewe Road towards Goodall’s Corner in Shavington. I followed them down there at a safe distance. Most of them had been dispersed. There was just a couple there. They’d gone on a flight in a light aircraft. I joined the flight and it went to Paris. We all piled out at Paris in the suburbs and the plane went off to land somewhere for the night. We would make our way on foot to that place so as not to attract attention by arriving by plane. We started to walk. This young girl who was in charge was extremely nervous. An older person was rather more steady so I found myself walking with him or her for much of the time. I noticed that the lens hood of my camera had gone. It must have fallen off either in the plane or when we were running around. We came to near the Gare du Nord to catch our train. There were three statues at the side of the road. The other guy went to take a photo of them so I did too but my camera decided not to work for some reason no matter how much I tried (and that’s a recurring theme during my dreams, isn’t it?). By now this girl was in a real state because there had been €1400 taken from her bank account “to pay crash fees”. There had been another deduction for crash fees that she’d not seen how much it was yet in respect of this light aeroplane. apparently when it landed it was detained for e few minutes and the pilot questioned before he could go on his way again. They linked it to this girl and somehow with having access to her bank account they’d debited her with crash fees, which were the fees for the officials to turn up at the site. I was thinking jamais deux sans trois but I hope that this aeroplane will be OK when we meet it and that it hasn’t really crashed because she’d really have something about which to complain if they take away the money from her account for the real crash of an aeroplane.

There was some curry left over after yesterday’s tea and I wanted to do something different with it.

Consequently I made some pastry with the aim of making something like a Cornish pasty with it. But my pastry didn’t turn out too well, there wasn’t enough filling and generally speaking it wasn’t a great success from the making point of view.

But from the eating point if view, it was everything that you would want from an impromptu meal, along with baked potatoes and veg cooked in a really thick gravy.

There were really no words to describe how nice this was. It made quite a pleasant change from the usual diet.

So bedtime now. Not much to clean now and I’ll finish that tomorrow with a bit of luck. And then I can speak to the woman who I’ve lined up to come and clean for me.

It was a step that I thought that I would never take but it’s taken me almost 3 weeks to clean this place and it’s still not very good. But I can’t keep on going like this. Something needs to change, although I’m not quite sure what.

But I’ll worry about that another time. Right now I’m off to bed.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: rosemary

Tuesday 13th December 2022 – WHAT A STATE …

Monday 12th December 2022 – YOU MAY NOT …

Monday 5th December 2022 – SO THAT’S THAT THEN.

Sunday 4th December 2022 – I WAS RIGHT …

Wednesday 30th November 2022 – I MIGHT JUST HAVE …

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 – FREE AT LAST!

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 – I WAS WRONG …

Friday 18th November 2022 – SCHRODINGER’S PATIENT …

Wednesday 26th October 2022 – STRAWBERRY MOOSE …

Friday 7th October 2022 – MEANWHILE, IN THE …

Saturday 1st October 2022 – THAT WAS HORRIBLE

Monday 26th September 2022 – GONE!

Monday 19th September 2022 – WE ALMOST HAD …

Wednesday 14th September 2022 – PECCAVI WASN’T BACK …

Thursday 8th September 2022 – THIS WEATHER …

Your reactions

Excellent

Useful

Interesting

Weird

Surprising

Boring