Tag Archives: welsh

Monday 19th August 2024 – AND SO THAT’S …

… Day Six of my Summer School. Just four more to go before I can have a break, and catch up on the mountain of correcpondence that has built up over the last couple of weeks

There’s a week off to cover the August Bank Holiday week, and then there’s the final week of the three before the next year’s course gets under way.

The final week is actually to cover the year that I’ve just had. This two weeks is to catch up on the time that I spent in Canada and then in hospital a couple of years ago. However I seem to have miscalculated in that this is actually the second half of a continuing course and I really needed the first half.

Ahhh well … These little things are sent to try us, I suppose.

So last night it was another late night before I could drag myself out of my comfortable chair and into my stinking pit. This gap of several inches is like a yawning gap with all of the effort it takes for me to haul myself across.

But once I was in bed I didn’t need much rocking. My night-time mantra had scarcely begun before I was drifting away into the Land of Nod.

And there I stayed until the alarm went off – the correct alarm this time too. It was like awakening someone from the Dead when it finally range. Whatever had gone on during the night, I knew nothing whatever about it.

IN the bathroom I sorted myself out, washed and dressed, and then came back in here to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where ‘d been during the night

And to my dismay, there was nothing on it. That’s a real disappointment because, as I have said before… "and on many occasions too" – ed … what goes on at night is the only excitement that I have these days.

So with no dictaphone to distract me, I uploaded this coming weekend’s radio programme to the office for them to fit into the live stream

When the nurse came he was his usual chatty self but he didn’t have all that much to say for himself. This shopping list though is growing and if we carry on like this we’ll need a lorry to bring it all home

But seriously, that’s the one thing that’s worrying me about moving. How’s it all going to work without a band of willing volunteers?

Like most things these days, it’s something just to ignore and hope that it all goes right on the night.

As I said earlier, the lesson passed quite well. We were doing the Genitive case today, “the bag of Sian” and all that. It’s quite complicated because in Welsh it’s all written in archaic form, there are contractions that don’t follow any rules and some other contractions have rules that just aren’t logical

But this is the problem with a language where its development and evolution was suppressed for over 70 years, from 1894 to 1967, and this was a time when a lot of linguistic evolution was taking place.

The French Community in Québec had similar issues but even so they had “la Hexagone” in Europe on which to fall back. Nevertheless, you’d still be surprised at the difference between Québecois French and thenFrancais de Paris. The Welsh had no similar benchmarks.

There were the usual pauses during the lesson, during which I made a start on editing the radio programme that remained from the batch that I’d dictated on Saturday. And by the tie I’d reached the end of the day I’d done about a third of it. I’m not doing too well with my editing right now. I need to put my foot down.

But I had several pauses, including one for my hot chocolate and slice of chocolate cake that still seems to be doing well in the fridge in its airtight container.

Tea tonight was, as usual, a stuffed pepper. And there’s piles of stuffing left for a taco roll and for a leftover curry on Wednesday.

This batch really is excellent and quite spicy. It’ll probably put hairs in places where I didn’t even realise that I had places.

So now I’m all tidied up, washed up and finished I can do what I need to do and then go to bed

But talking about Québec reminds me of the two guys living in Trois Rivières where there’s that great big sundial on the side of the church tower.
"What time is it?" asked one of the guys
"No idea" replied his friend
"Go and look at the Sundial then"
"Don’t be silly" replied the guy. "It’s dark outside"
"Well" said his friend. "Take a torch with you!"

Friday 16th August 2024 – AND THAT’S THE …

… end of the first week of three of my Welsh summer school

And one of the first things that I did after the end of the lesson was to crash out. And for about an hour too. It’s been really tough trying to keep on going through all of this without falling asleep.

Going to bed early would have helped of course but for some reason that seems to be impossible these days. And even when I do, I just awaken earlier than normal so that doesn’t work either.

My target time for going to bed in the evening is 23:00 but I usually miss it. By the time that I’d finished everything last night I was a good half-hour later than I wanted to be, and I’d not done some things that I had in mind, like wash my clothes.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m in the habit of hand-washing my trousers and undies in the sink every so often and hanging them up to dry. That’s a relic of my life on the road when it was the only way of keeping my clothes clean.

Yes, back in the day when I was living out of a van, the lorry drivers’ showers at the motorway service stations were useful places and when I could grab a shower I always took my clothes in with me

But anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

So after I’d finished writing my notes and so on I sorted myself out, wrapped up my puttees and eventually crawled into bed.

As usual these days, I was asleep quite quickly, long before the end of my little bedtime mantra. And there I slept until some crazy time in the morning, not that I recall what it was but it was still dark so I crawled back under the covers and that was that.

When the alarm went off I staggered into the bathroom for a god wash and scrub up, a change of clothes and a clothes-washing session for my trousers and undies that I should have done last night.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Then there was something about a rather attractive young girl in Africa who was leading a band of guerrillas in some kind of series of military operations. When I came across her they were raiding a shipyard trying to take away some pieces of heavy metal to make some armour-plating for something. She was there wrestling with this sheet-metalwork and at the same time had somehow managed to hold a machine-gun in both hands so that if she was surprised or attacked while doing it she could fight them off. But it was something to do with a brand-new film that had come out . There had been a well-known prequel to this and the actual film itself was the sequel. It had come out for distribution at a certain specific moment or anniversary like the tenth anniversary of these events. For that reason it was extremely special.

That sounds as if there should have been something before it but if there was, I didn’t dictate it. So fancy me missing something that might have related to a rather attractive young girl. It’s not as if there are too many rather attractive young girls in my life at the moment seeing as I seem to have been deserted by Castor, Zero and TOTGA. The more attractive young girls that I can find, the better.

Following the election of Corbyn as Prime Minister there was a huge destabilisation campaign that was being run in the bully trades-union magazines, the letters columns, to do their best to destanilise the situation. Just about everyone, his right-wing opponents, pro-European Union people, everyone was in there piling heaps and heaps of vitriol on top of him. He was replying quite calmly and enthusiastically but nevertheless the sheer volume of post and the amount of hatred that was contained therein was frightening and had him on the back foot at every conceivable moment. I could see that despite all of his promises the whole of the political spectrum was doing its best to make sure that his policies never came to happen, then they could all turn round and point the finger at him and blame him, regardless of the fact that it was they who had been instrumental in making sure that his policies never happened anyway. But the amount of vitriol was appalling in these communications and I’d hand-written my fair share of the correspondence and sent it off for publication. I wasn’t letting any grass grow under my feet.

That’s someone who was a big disappointment. I try not to be political on this blog but nevertheless what a good Prime Minister he would have made if we had just been talking about Social issues, equality and the like. And then he went and threw it all away and sold out all of his supporters with his ideological support for the Exodus from Europe. With the amount of hatred and vitriol that the Blue Tories and the Red Tories in his party heaped upon him, they must have been scared stiff of him, his position and power. But then, as I say, he thres it all away.

And finally I was doing a folk-dance through the town with a friend of mine. We didn’t actually rehearse it – we just sat down and began it at the appropriate time. With a series of improvised stations it seemed to go OK but at the end when we came into the public view in the big square in the city centre the whole thing went haywire. No-one had told me how the end was going to be . The Master of Ceremonies was dictating the end but it was nothing like what we were doing and nothing like what I was doing and I felt really disappointed that there had been no time whatever to rehearse because we could have done this a million times better even with just one brief rehearsal. It would have looked so good. Instead it ended up looking a complete and utter shambles at the end.

That’s interesting, me doing a folk dance through the town centre. I’ve not really done any folk dancing since 2008 when I was stewarding the camp site at that folk festival in Scotland and there wasn’t anything of a town there to folk-dance through. But as usual, an ounce of preparation is worth a ton of anything else and I really ought to carry out more preparation in my life.

The nurse was in a hurry again this morning so he didn’t hang around very much. He saw to my legs and was soon on his way out of the building.

At breakfast I carried on reading my book for a while. We’ve finally reached the pages where they talk about the earliest administration of justice in Montana and the trials that took place in the old saloon at Hell’s Gate.

What’s interesting is that when the book was written, the judge, prosecuting counsel and several jurymen were still alive so we could have a first-hand account of much of what went on. And none of it is on-line anywhere else.

Back in here I did my homework from yesterday and then went for my lesson.

To my surprise it passed really well and I quite enjoyed it. However I did fall asleep twice in mid-lesson but managed to awaken almost instantly before anyone else realised

We’ve been given some homework to do for the weekend and it looks a right stinker so I suppose that I better hadn’t leave it until the very last moment.

My cleaner came to have a lap around the apartment. She noticed that the plaster on my arm where I’d had the operation hadn’t been changed for several days.

That’s no surprise. The nurse doesn’t think that I need it so I can deal with it myself, except that I won’t, for reasons that regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

And so my lovely cleaner said that she would change it – and she did too. I have some lovely people around me.

After the lesson I made my hot chocolate and then came in here, where I crashed out for a good hour after all of my effort over the last few days.

There was the radio programme that needed finishing. I’d done some of the work during the lunch break but needed to join everything together, find a final track and write the notes therefore

That made me late for tea, which was chips, a vegan salad and some of those breaded quorn nuggets

So now I’m going to sort myself out and go to bed ready for tomorrow. I have bread to bake and probably a few other things too seeing as there will be some room in the oven that I mustn’t waste
Not like back in the olden days when someone once asked Nerina where I was
"He’s at home, baking" she replied
"Will he be okay?" asked her friend
"He’ll be Ok" she replied "That is as long as he doesn’t try to get out of the oven. Then I’ll kill him"

Thursday 15th August 2024 – SO THAT WAS …

… Day Four of my Summer School.

And I’ve no idea what’s happening here but things seem to be going quite well with this course. That’s something that I don’t understand because usually I struggle to get to grips with everything. I don’t know what I’m doing right but I wish that I could do it more often

So while some things seem to be going my way, cà plâne pour moi as Plastic Bertrand once said, I wish that everything else was too.

Like actually being in bed at something like a reasonable hour instead of hours late, as seems to be the case these days. It was another “almost midnight” when I slid underneath the covers last night

Once again I was asleep quite quickly. In fact my little bedtime mantra hardly had time to get underway before I was off with the fairies. And that was that until all of … errr … 04:30.

But no chance of my showing a leg at that time of the morning these days. I curled back up underneath the covers and there I stayed until Billy Cotton ROARED HIS RAUCOUS RACKET at 07:00.

When the World stopped spinning round I made my way into the bathroom for a good scrub up to make myself pretty, but I suspect that it might take more time than I have available to do something like that

Instead, I came back in here to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been hot-rodding around the town, doing doughnuts, things like that and the police had come along and caught me. But there was something important going on and I was waiting for some kind of news about this but all the police were interested in doing was to give me a very long lecture about the perils of careless driving etc. I was perfectly aware of what’s happening and it was all just getting in the way of this ‘phone call that I was expecting. I thought that they’d never ever finish this discussion with me and I’ll miss this ‘phone call if they carry on much longer.

It’s an absolute certainty that if any member of Cheshire Constabulary’s finest were to find me performing stunts with a car, it wouldn’t be a lecture that I’d receive. I remember, back in the olden days, a friend of mine performing a few stunts on a car park in Crewe late at night and actually being summoned under the local council by-laws for “using a car park for purposes other than parking”. Mind you, it was right next to the police station so what did he expect? He should have been more circumspect.

The nurse didn’t have a great deal to say for himself this morning. He was in and out quite quickly, leaving me in peace to have my breakfast and carry on reading my book. I’m quite engrossed in this book and not only that, it’s had me hot on the trail of a couple of other books on the subject of the forts on the Bozeman Trail.

If you followed the link that I posted the other day, you’d had walked with me several miles along the Bozeman Trail to the site of the Fetterman massacre where Lieutenant Fetterman and his soldiers were cut down by Red Cloud’s warriors

That was a brilliant trip, that one in the Summer of 2019 where I visited all of the sites of the major confrontations between the Native Americans and the European settlers and soldiers, including such places as the Powder River, Wounded Knee and Little Big Horn

And, as usual, LITTLE BIG ANTLERS accompanied me.

One of these days I must finish off editing all of these …gulp … 6,000 photos that I took of my trip and post them on line before it’s too late.

There was more homework to do so I tackled that and then went to join my lesson.

As I said earlier, it passed off quite well despite a really flaky internet connection somewhere and I only fell asleep twice. We seem to be making a little progress in this respect although it’s far too early to start crowing quite yet.

When the lesson was over I made myself some hot chocolate and had a slice of chocolate cake, and then came back in here to edit the final batch of radio notes.

That’s all done now and tomorrow morning I’ll finish off everything by joining it all together, choosing the final track and writing the notes for it.

Tea tonight was a burger with pasta and veg – a long time since I’d had something from the European Burger Mountain.

Mind you, it’s not so much of a mountain these days. I’ve whittled it down since it reached the heady heights and overflowed the fridge. That was a long time ago.

So now I have a few things to do and than I’m off to bed.

But talking about performing stunts in cars, I remember hearing of a really hairy drive once where a guy set out to impress his friends and scare his girlfriend.
After screeching around a few corners, with tyres burning and engine overheating he turned to his girlfriend and, indicating the smoking tyres and burning Castrol R oil, said "now smell that!"
"Smell it?" she asked. "I’m sitting in it!"

Wednesday 14th August 2024 – SO THAT WAS..

…the Assessment that was.

And I’m still here to tell the tale after all of that. Not that there was all that to still be here after, because she was here and gone withinghalf an hour and I don’t know what all the panic was about.

Last night would have been another quite early night except for … you guessed it … trying to staunch a flow of blood.

This time it was on my left arm. Somehow I’d managed to knock it just a few inches from where I had the operation and it was bleeding copiously. Putting a plaster on it slowed down the flow and eventually I could crawl off into bed, having done everything that I needed to do.

And once again I was asleep quite quickly, something that seems to be a habit these days.

What else seems to be a habit these days is waking up early. I’ve no idea how early because somehow my watch became detached from my wrist during the night and I couldn’t find it in the bed

It didn’t take long to go back to sleep but I was tossing and turning for the rest of the early morning until the alarm went off at 07:00.

Switching off the alarm I made my way to the bathroom to make myself look pretty and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. At one stage I dictated As I was getting ready to get into bed the original recording leapt out of my hands and darted across the room somewhere and left me standing there looking pretty silly with this piece of live broadcasting stuff being carted about around the room. I didn’t half look silly while all of that was going on trying to calm it down and reunite it with me

Whatever that’s supposed to mean I have no idea at all. I’d been asleep in bed for quite some time when I dictated that so I quite clearly wasn’t “getting ready for bed”. The rest of that dream makes absolutely no sense whatever but there again, it’s a dream so it’s not really supposed to.

Later on I was doing a video of a game between Raith Rovers and Partick Thistle. I let my tongue run away with me when I was criticising Raith Rovers. As a result, Raith Rovers contacted me with several admissions and insisted that I record a separate radio programme to apologise to their club based on the information that they provided me to put the matter right. Football fans are renowned for letting their tongues run away but they should still be governed by the laws of slander and governed by other appropriate laws and rules. Fair play to Raith Rovers who took a very mature and adult way around the affair dealing with the issue. But I wish that I knew what it was that I had said because I’d never commented on a game between Raith Rovers and Partick Thistle in my life. I’ve no idea where this dream was coming from.

These days it’s quite dangerous to let one’s tongue run away with one. Occasionally you might find some incendiary comment or two within these pages but I won’t print anything definite unless either I have the evidence to support it or the remarks have been published elsewhere. Of course, if you ask a question, such as “is it true that …?” , that’s not libellous and as well as that the High Courts have ruled that neither vulgar abuse nor exaggerated hyperbole nor rhetorical hyperbole nor “colourful adjectives” is libellous. But what this has to do with Raith Rivers and Partick Thistle I really don’t know. They won’t be dancing in the streets of Raith tonight, folks!

And then there was something about having to interrogate that woman about that part where he thinks that she has the same name as some other woman who was quite famously associated with some footballers at one time and air traffic control when they called a delayed flight pinged him to say that if the bust with the passengers on board were to drive past him on their way to the ‘plane the driver of the bus would respect him for his decision.

And that’s a mystery to me too, what’s happening there. In fact, I must have spent a totally clueless night with all of this. I’m clearly overlooking the key to all these mysteries.

When the nurse came he tried his best to raise my morale, but that’s rather a difficult thing to do these days. I seem to be in the Slough of Despond again, and for no good reason. Not even a good breakfast cheered me up afterwards

Back in here I listened to the radio programme that will be broadcast this weekend and, satisfied, I sent it off to be included in the stream.

When the person from the Government came round she interviewed me for about 45 minutes.

The question of going into a Home never came up. She didn’t even say that I didn’t need to. It was just something that was taken for granted I suppose.

She thinks I ought to have much more help though. She would like my cleaner to come in every day but I drew the line at that. In the end she said that she would tell the Committee that I need help three times per week and hope that they approve it.

She didn’t really come up with any practical points about my life here although she agreed that once I’m downstairs things would be better. She didn’t offer any solutions about being in there earlier.

She did know and recommend a couple of garages that do conversions to cars to make them suitable for handicapped people, so that’s back on the agenda for next year too

One thing that surprised me was a question that she asked. We’d talked about who helps me and is it sufficient or do I need to be taken under the wing of a big organisation who can help with my care. I told her about my helpful cleaner and she asked "do you declare her?" (presumably to the Tax Office).

As it happens, I do. But she asked in such a matter-of-fact tone that it almost seemed to be the normal way of proceedings not to declare her.

After she left I had a coffee and then joined my Welsh class. Once more, it was quite successful which was nice. I’d done the homework so at least I was all clued up

My cleaner came in and skipped lightly around the apartment while I was at my lessons, and she disappeared afterwards just as quietly without disturbing me which was nice of her.

And during the lesson I only fell asleep once, and that was during a break. I soon awoke when class restarted.

After my hot chocolate and cake, I had a ‘phone call. Someone had sent me a message and I needed to call back.

It turns out that another friend of mine in Germany, the husband of another University colleague, has died. He was quite elderly and had several major health issues, but unfortunately he had one issue too many.

When I was in Germany last I visited them and we had a pleasant afternoon out by the local lake. I’ll just have to remember times like that. But this old age thing is terrible. The Grim Reaper is waiting round the corner for all of us.

Tea tonight was a leftover curry and naan bread, but it was a leftover curry with a difference. I still have these jars of Korma that I bought and which need eating at some time so I heaved one into the curry tonight and made enough for two nights. The other lot will be frozen for another time. I need to start up my cooking again.

So right now I’m going to go to bed ready for my Welsh lesson tomorrow. Let’s see if I can manage without bleeding everywhere. It’s no joke, this trail of blood that I leave all over the apartment that my cleaner has to deal with.

Still, it could be worse, I suppose. I don’t know why I’m complaining. At least I’m still here and people are looking after me. Imagine what would happen if I were ill like this and in the UK.

In on eof the hospitals I met a guy who had been a patient in a British hospital. There, the surgeon said "xr have some good news and some bad news"
"OK doctor" said the man. "Tell me the bad news first"
"I’m afraid that in all the confusion we cut off the wrong leg"
"Good grief!" exclaimed the man. "What’s the good news?"
"The good news" said the surgeon "is that your bad leg is getting better".

Tuesday 13th August 2024 – DAY TWO …

… of my Summer School passed by today.

And to my surprise, it all went really well. I’ve no idea what’s happened there, but that’s simply not normal. Things just don’t go quite like that.

So last night I washed my puttees and went to bed in something of a hurry. It was later than I would like – about 23:30 – but that’s not late enough to be worried by anything.

It didn’t take me long to go off to sleep either. Just a matter of minutes. Although I can’t remember falling asleep, I know how far I reached with my little bedtime mantra and it wasn’t far at all. Still, with not crashing out at all during the day I must have been quite wasted.

Once I was asleep, I slept through all the way until about … errr … 05:30 when something outside must have awoken me. I’ve no idea what it was and I didn’t go to find out. I just pulled the bedclothes tighter, and had my RAIN SPLATTERED WINDOWS MADE ME DECIDE TO STAY IN BED I’d have dreamed of summertime instead.

When the alarm went off at 07:00 I fell out of bed and once the room stopped spinning round I headed for the bathroom for a good scrub up. I have to look my best for these on-line meetings, even if I don’t feel much like it.

And I managed to dress without falling over of having to sit down and that’s some kind pf progress. And if you think that it’s strange that I’m celebrating something like this as being an achievement, you just don’t understand the state that I’m in.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. That big freshwater lake in South America was due to close so I’d gone down there to hire a boat and was messing about on the water before it all disappears. In the meantime while I was down there it seemed that there had been some kind of incident. A tractor had driven straight through the crowd from some fellow’s field onto the road, scattering everyone. What an insane use of language. There were many words here that I had never heard before in the UK and in some respects I was glad that I don’t because some of these people are really out of control and this is appalling.

There aren’t too many words that I have never heard before. working in a pool of chauffeurs from all corners of the European Union speaking a variety of different languages and having been as popular as I was with my colleagues, you can imagine that I’ve heard them all at close quarters too. But this reminds me of my prevarications a couple of years ago – I was always going to learn to sail “next week” or “next month”, and look at me now. It’s an object (or maybe even an abject) lesson of “never put off until tomorrow any plans that you can do today”.

I was taking a coach trip somewhere. I had to give my passengers an afternoon out and there was a nuclear power station in the vicinity of where we were going so I went round there and tried to speak to someone about the possibility of bringing my coach and tourists around for a look. The guy whom I saw explained that it would be rather difficult because of the organisation of the factory. I said that the factory would be organised into three parts. There would be the equipment, the operation and the security and we would just be interested in the operations, how the thing worked and what it did etc but the guy was extremely stubborn and made the point that with the building and plant not being equipped for this kind of thing we could lead to all kinds of problems about security etc. I was still in the middle of an argument trying to convince him when I awoke.

When I worked for … "he means “employed by”" – ed … Shearings, my coach tours were fun. I never stopped at the usual motorway service stations. I know that on one occasion I even managed to arrange a coffee break in a local monastery. People had their money’s worth. In all seriousness, if I could have taken them for a guided tour and coffee break around a nuclear power station, I would have done without a second thought.

When I was trying to organise myself I dropped a carton of milk that I was drinking into a bucket of cold water that was standing close by me. Of course all the milk and all the water mixed and I was extremely disappointed in that because I was enjoying that carton of milk .

And it wouldn’t be the first time that I’ve done something stupid like that either.

The nurse came around to deal with my legs and to give me my injection. I’m not sure if I’ve told you that the blood test results came bac a few days ago – and they make grim reading.

But I’ve received the message loud and clear about the plaster on my operation from the other day. The nurse is ignoring it completely. He and his colleague think that I no longer need it, and medically they are probably correct.

However, psychologically I’m certain that I do, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and tending to my psychological needs is just as important as attending to any other needs.

After he left, I had breakfast and carried on reading my book. And I’ve finally reached the part that interested me – that of Nelson Story’s famous cattle drive along the Bozeman Trail at the time of the Fetterman Massacre.

One of the reasons why it’s so interesting is that it was written 35 years after the disaster that befell Fetterman’s patrol along the Bozeman Trail near Fort Phil Kearny, which regular readers of this rubbish will recall that WE VISITED IN 2019, and after several public enquiries had been held to establish the true facts and after written memoirs had been published, the old myths, legends and falsehoods were still circulating.

Back in here after breakfast I did my Welsh homework. And to my dismay we weren’t asked for it. It wasn’t even discussed. Nevertheless, I suppose that there’s a point in doing it so I’ll press on

As I mentioned earlier, the Welsh lesson passed off quite well and I only fell asleep twice – but on both occasions there was a dramatic and instant awakening and the second time pumped enough adrenalin around to stay awake for the rest of the day.

At the end of the lesson I went into the kitchen for my cocoa and chocolate cake. The cake was nice and cold, having been in an airtight container in the fridge.

That’s at least one good thing to come out of this – that even though I’m trying to do away with plastic here, I can’t do without them completely and had to rescue a couple of containers from the stock that I’d put to one side

Once I’d wound down I chose the final track for the radio programme that I’d been editing, and written, the notes for it.

There’s one radio programme left of this batch that I recorded so I’ll start on that tomorrow.

But tomorrow I’m having my assessment. Not that it’s likely, but we could be moving into an entirely new ball-game. It wouldn’t be a disaster if I were to be placed in a Home, but it wouldn’t be far off. As long as it’s not a Home where the jacket fastens at the back.

Tea was a delicious taco roll with rice and veg. Plenty of stuffing left so its going to be a lovely leftover curry for tea tomorrow night, with rice and a naan bread.

So that’s me finished for the night. If I’m lucky I might have an early night but I’m not betting on it. There’s still plenty of stuff to do.

But going back to what I said earlier about going to the Monastery, we had a guided tour around the place
"But you can’t go in this room" explained the guide
"Why not?" asked one of the tourists
"It’s the … errr …. laundry" he replied
"What does he mean by that?" whispered another tourist
"He means that it’s where the monks go when they want to deal with their filthy habits" I explained.

Monday 12th August 2024 – AND SO THAT WAS …

… Day One of my three weeks (two weeks, then a pause for Bank Holiday week, and then the final week) Welsh Summer School

And such is the way of the World that this cycle of courses, that has run all through the summer, isn’t a series of repeated courses. It’s one long course that’s been broken up into several segments.

So here I am again, going over the latter part of the course yet again when it was the start of the course that I wanted – the period when I was in Canada and then in hospital.

It seems to me that I’m fated never to do this part of the course.

One thing about it though is that it at least made sure that I was in bed at something like a respectable time last night. Later than 23:00 it has to be said, but not by al that much by the time that I’d finished doing everything that I have to do.

And once in be I was asleep quickly too. I awoke briefly at about 06:15 but went back to sleep until the alarm roused me from my reverie

It was something like a disreputable stagger into the bathroom where I had a good scrub up and sorted myself out for the day to come.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. My cleaner put in an appearance during the night. She was going on about my unkempt appearance, my wild hair, my beard and so on so I resolved to tidy myself up. The first thing that I did was to cut my hair. I was in a hotel room and to get to this room I had to climb up about forty stairs. It was much easier to climb because they were all in a straight line than it was to come into the stairs here so I was in my room in no time. I sat down and took out my hair cutter and began to cut my hair. One thing that I’d noticed was that someone had been in my room. It was supposed to have been tidied but it looked as if a tornado had hit it. There was a half-burnt still-smoking cigar on the floor which I thought was totally strange. I began to shave my head with my hair clippers to try to make myself look more respectable but I thought “I wonder what they are going to say at the reception desk when they’d seen some wild-haired guy go up to claim his room and some neat-looking stranger coming down.

Actually I’d had a shave this morning – the first time for several days – and my hair does need cutting. It’s not quite at the “Wild Man of Borneo” stage but I could certainly put the willies up anyone who comes too close. And fancy my cleaner turning up during the night. This is the first time, I reckon, that she’s put in an appearance on a nocturnal ramble. So what’s going on here?

The nurse and I had a bit of a chat this morning. He wants to wash my feet at some point so I’ll have to wash the puttees from last week. They are currently soaking in the bowl that I use for washing my feet.

With him being early and being quick about it I had plenty of time to revise my Welsh for today, which means that I spent it reading the wrong units.

When the course started we counted heads. There were ten of us pupils, yet a total of fifteen had paid for the course. God alone knows where the others are.

And this tutor is someone whom I know because I’ve had her a few times before in Summer Schools and so on. She’s the archetypal example of South Walians who think that there’s nothing any further north of the Head of the Valleys except sheep and druids

For example, she was telling everyone that LLanelwy is the local name for what the English call Builth Wells, but the Welsh name for Builth Wells is “Llanfair-ym-Muallt”. The town of LLanelwy is what the English would call St Asaph

Not that I would correct her though. I don’t want to lose the goodwill of the teacher on the first day. There’s more than enough time to do that over the next three weeks without going to look for it.

She’s actually set us homework too. I suppose that she’s right. We have to push on with these courses otherwise there’s no point in doing them. I’ll do my homework in the morning and that will refresh me for the lesson tomorrow.

During the breaks I managed to finish off the radio programme whose notes I was editing on Sunday. There’s just the final track to choose and the notes to write for it which I’ll also do in the morning.

When the lesson finished I had my hot chocolate, and a slice of my delicious, soggy, gooey chocolate cake.

There’s enough here for a couple of weeks so I hope that it won’t go off or anything like that. I have it in an airtight tin but I’m going very shortly to move it into a plastic box to store in the fridge

And then I had a chat to Rosemary on the ‘phone. Just a short chat today – only 1 hour and 55 minutes. We seem to be finding our form again which is good news. But I really don’t know what we talk about in these ‘phone calls.

Tea tonight was a stuffed pepper. With tons of stuffing left over for tomorrow and Wednesday too. The stuffing was different today and I’m not sure why. I don’t think that I’ve forgotten any ingredient. That’s usually why it tastes different.

So having washed my puttees and hung them up to dry I’m going to try to go to bed before there are any more disturbances and without bleeding to death

But talking of Wales reminds me of the Welsh sailor who was admitted to hospital here in Granville the other day
The matron came in and told one of the doctors "that sailor who’s just been admitted. He has the word ‘Ludo’ tattooed on … errr … a certain part of his anatomy"
The doctor was so surprised that he asked the young student nurse to check
She came back a short while later "Matron was wrong, sir" she told the doctor
"Is that so?" asked the doctor
"Yes" she replied. "It’s not ‘Ludo’, it’s ‘Llandudno’"

Monday 15th July 2024 – SO H-HOUR …

… is 13:00 tomorrow. At least, that’s what time I’m expected to be present and standing by my bed. The operation will presumably be rather later than that.

and that’s a shame. I was hoping for an early start, while the knife is still sharp, but it’s not to be. The taxi is coming for me at 12:15 and then it’ll be “panic stations” for the next God-knows how long.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a horror of hospitals, tubes, pipes and the like. Since all of this began in 2015 I’ve been living my nightmare almost every single day and believe me, it’s not made me any more accustomed to it.

Something else to which I am not accustomed is “going to bed early”. It won’t be happening today but it did last night. Being in bed before my target time of 23:00 is a very rare event these days indeed.

And I slept the Sleep of the Dead too, all the way through until 06:15 when the glass lorry came to collect the glass from the recycling bin across the road.

And if you want to know a good definition of “noise”, stand outside here when he drops the contents of the bin into the back of his lorry.

He made such a racket that I was thinking of getting up to face the day but discretion is the better part of valour and I curled up under the quilt again to have my money’s worth

When the alarm went off I headed to the bathroom to sort myself out and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were having some kind of holiday, people who were handicapped or disabled in some way or other had gone to a holiday camp. There was a compere there trying to introduce everything. He was dressed in sandals and socks, and his sandals were far too big for him. He was generally crooning away there and I thought to myself “look at the state of him”. I happened to mention it to a couple of other people who wee in one of the rooms that they should have gone to look at him but they thought that there was nothing happening in the other rooms so I told them that they’d be surprised. There were about 20 people altogether milling around in the three or four different rooms. Things looked as if they might be starting to liven up, and not before time. While I was back there with my head stuck in the door looking at what was happening in that room someone noticed me and said that they had an invitation here for the Duchess of Claibourne. I told them to pass the invitation to me because I knew all about it. She’s being asked to prepare to appear on a TV programme, something like “Tomorrow’s World” or something like thzt and I know all about it. Even so it was still surprising that they’d asked these people to look after the Duchess of Claibourne when their own meeting was pretty poorly attended and there wasn’t a great deal of anything going on with the proceedings and last night it wasn’t until 23:00 that they could go to bed (… fell asleep here …) so in one of the rooms with some of the people in it there was a room with a drinking container with a handle on it for people who needed it. There was something going on in there but I fell asleep while I was trying to line it up to see what was happening so I missed the beginning of what was going on with all these uninspiring people being here and being in charge of the organisation.

As for who the Duchess of Claibourne is, she’s a character in a series of books written by someone called CS Harris and I can safely say without fear of contradiction that I’d absolutely no idea that there ever was such a person, real or fictitious, and I’ve never read a book by the aforementioned author. Where the name has come from in my dream I have no idea. But there was a lot of talk about 15 years ago about these holiday camps for disabled people, so it’s taken quite a while to come round to feature in a dream. Quite frankly, I can’t think of anything more ghastly. I’d rather stay at home, I reckon, the presence of the Duchess of Claibourne notwithstanding.

When the nurse came round she bandaged me up, had a little chat and then left. I have the impression that she’s trying to raise my morale right now which is nice of her. I could certainly do with it. It’s a shame she won’t be there in Avranches to hold my hand.

After breakfast I came back in here, and then had to track down the details about my next Welsh course. I have to sign up before the end of the month so I thought that I’d do it today.

With a little help from one of my friends I managed to find the correct course (at least, I hope that it’s the correct one) and while I was at at, I found a week’s course with another provider that starts when my next Summer School finishes and goes over what we (should have) learned this year.

One of my plans was to redo this year because I’d missed most of it with my various appointments and to do it with another provider to save embarrassment, but this seems to be the best of both words. Not to mention that it’s only going to cost £15:00 and I even have 50% discount from that.

In the future I’ll be looking out for a few more short courses like this. I’ve probably done half a dozen or so at least and it keeps me off the streets.

My cleaner put her sooty foot in the door too. She’d been into town this morning and they had the disinfectant stuff that the nurse needs so she dropped off a packet. I need to keep the nurse stocked up with supplies. But this place, there’s so much in the way of medication around here that I could open a pharmacy.

The hospital rang up at this point. They want me there standing by my bed at 13:00 and they gave me a whole list of “do’s” and “don’t”. But frankly I’m past caring. They want me to have a shower, but that’s out of the question of course.

They want me to not only bring my medication but to bring it in its boxes. For God’s sake, I’m going in a taxi, not a blasted lorry.

And then they want me to shave my arm ready. I don’t even know where they are going to make the incision.

My general, habitual lack of preparedness means that I’ll probably get it in the neck when I arrive, especially if the Beast from the Hôpital in the Baie is on duty but I don’t care.

This afternoon I was dealing with the fourth lot of radio notes that I’d dictated. They are all edited now, the final track has been chosen and I was on the point of writing the notes when Rosemary rang for a chat.

She’s back now from gallivanting around Italy and wanted to tell me how she got on so we had another one of our phone calls. Rather a short one today – only one hour and twelve minutes. We’re losing our touch.

After the call I stretched out for a minute and as a result was way late for making tea tonight; hence my lateness tonight.

We had stuffed pepper for tea again, with plenty of stuffing left over for the next few days. So for those of you who say that I want stuffing, I now have plenty, thank you. It’ll do for later in the week.

But not tonight, Josephine. I’m off to bed, ready for my appointment with destiny tomorrow. I mustn’t forget to pack my things, for I’m supposed to be staying the night. But as for that, we shall see.

One of the things that Rosemary and I discussed was adoption. We have some very strange conversations sometimes.
But it did remind me of the little boy who asked his dad "daddy, am I adopted?"
"Of course not, son" replied the father
"Really, daddy?" insisted the boy
"Absolutely" assured the father. "Why, out of a whole orphanage full of abandoned children, would anyone have chosen YOU?"

Friday 12th July 2024 – ONLY HALF AN …

… hour after my cleaner had my kitchen looking as clean and tidy as a new pin, it’s ended up looking like an absolute tip yet again.

And that’s no surprise because I’ve had a huge delivery of supplies from LeClerc.

More than usual because it’s been three weeks since I last had a delivery, and add to that, they had the olive oil back in so to be on the safe side I ordered two litres rather than just one.

There was also yet another addition to the range of vegan products on offer at the home delivery site – a second type of vegan sausage. I had to order a packet because LeClerc’s vegan range is quite minimalist so they need to be encouraged. And the easiest way too encourage them is to buy the product.

It all comes in brown paper bags which I have to save up and hand back the following time otherwise they charge me for them, so they are strewn about the place at the moment. But that’s because I simply run out of steam after a while and can’t carry on. I’ll have to finish tidying up in the morning.

And hope that I have as good a sleep tonight as I did last night. It was horribly late when I finally made it to bed but I slept the Sleep of the Dead and didn’t feel a thing until the alarm went off. And I could do with a few more nights with a sleep as deep as that.

There was in fact a phantom alarm at some point (we seem to be back with those) but I remember recognising it as such and ignoring it. Not like the time a few weeks ago when I actually arose from the Dead for a phantom alarm.

But when the real alarm sounded I made it to my feet and wandered off for a wash and brush up etc.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and (more importantly) who had come with me. It was the European Cup matches. All of the teams were busy, there had been lots of changes to styles and formats. The new competitions, new rules and everything that people had to learn. Teams were changing place and changing position . There were a lot of other things to do, rather like instead of just being a football match it became some kind of circus with all kinds of entertainment taking place before and afterwards, and different things at half-time with the aim to get as many people as possible into the ground as early as they could to avoid crushes and squashes , things like that, to make sure that everyone was safe, and something to do at the end of the game so that they didn’t all rush home and clog the streets, and here’s hoping that it works and makes a huge success and the teams can go on to do well in it.

Times are changing rapidly and quite often these football club committees of elderly dinosaurs aren’t changing quickly enough. I’ve been to football matches in Belgium where they’ve had cheerleaders and dancing girls entertaining the crowds before the kick-off and at half time, and seen kids’ football tournaments taking place at half-time. Anything to bring in the crowds and keep the fans amused. But it’s the simple thing at grassroots level that’s important. If I want to watch a football match and it’s raining and one ground has covered accommodation and one doesn’t, where will I go? And if it’s a cold winter night and one ground has a pie hut where you can get a hot coffee and the other one doesn’t, which one will have my custom? The days of fans standing on cinder banks in the open air in a torrential downpour dressed in just an overcoat are long gone. And good riddance. I don’t miss the “good old days” one minute.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment Isabelle the nurse came round, her usual cheerful self. She gave me my injection, changed my plasters on my legs and bandaged up my puttees.

There’s a blood test tomorrow morning, so she reminded me, and I need to give “another sample” for which she gave me a small pot.

But heaven alone knows what this blood sample will be like. I haven’t looked at the last couple. Firstly, they make really depressing reading and secondly, what can I do anyway? If there’s an emergency they’ll let me know. If not, I’d rather not find out.

After she left, we had some Welsh homework to do. We had to write a publicity announcement to attract tourists to the place where we are living. It was easy for me, living in a tourist town. Imagine if I’d still been living in The Land That Time Forgot.

The Welsh lesson passed quite quickly today. We had a different tutor and I’m sure that I have had him before somewhere.

We had a little chat about last night’s football

"My friend’s son plays for Caernarfon" said the tutor
"What’s his name?"
"Morgan" replied the tutor
"Morgan who?"
"I don’t know" said the tutor "but he delivers our fruit and veg. We call him ‘Morgan Tatws’"
and that’s the most Welsh thing that I’ve heard for a long, long time.

And if you want to see “Morgan Tatws” in action HERE ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS of the Cofis’ famous first-leg win. Let’s hope that they can hold out in the second leg next week.

Towards the end of the lesson I slipped out of consciousness and hadn’t noticed that it had ended. I came to and found myself staring at an empty screen. I really have to do better than this.

The cleaner was here too. I’d heard her come in but she must have been very quiet. Actually, she’s cleaned the windows in the living room and you can actually see outside now which is nice.

After she left, the delivery guy from LeClerc turned up with the supplies. Tons of stuff all of which has to be put away.

And then there was 1kg of carrots to wash, peel, dice and blanch. I should have bought 2kg but there’s no room on the freezer.

There were peppers to prepare for freezing, other food for freezing and, as I said, in the end I simply ran aground. I can’t keep on going like I used to

Tea was the leftover curry that I should have had on Wednesday but have been putting off ever since. The naan bread that I was going to eat was looking rather suspect so that went into the bin which was a shame because I’d been looking forward to that.

Tomorrow I have the washing machine to organise and then I’ll finish off tje tidying up. But it’s nice to have full shelves again, and plenty of olive oil

In fact, I’ve plenty to do between now and going to the hospital on Tuesday. And I’m not looking forward to Tuesday one little bit as I’m sure that regular reader readers of this rubbish will recall
The last time I was admitted, the cry went down the ward "there’s a case of cancer just come in"
And someone was heard to comment "well, it’ll make a change from lucozade"

Thursday 11th July 2024 – I’M LATE AGAIN

and if it carries on like this they’ll be calling me “the late Epic Hall” long before I officially earn the title.

And for a change, I don’t mind being late at all for I have very good re son. It’s “Europa Cup” night tonight and while Connah’s Quay travelled to Slovenia and Y Bala to Estonia to follow on from the game that TNS played against some Albanians, Caernarfon made the long trip down the road as far as Nantporth Stadium on the outskirts of Bangor to take on those giants of European football … errrr … Crusaders from Belfast.

Late nights seem to be the norm these days and instead of moaning about them, I’ll just have to say nothing and celebrate the early nights instead, so there was nothing to celebrate last night.

In fact it was long after midnight when I hit the hay and I settled down for sleep for what was left of the night. And I awoke in the middle of it and took an age to go back to sleep again

Mind you, I was dead to the World when the alarm went off and it was a rather ungainly stagger into the bathroom to sort myself out.

There was blood on the floor too, but I’ve no idea where it came from. It could be anywhere.

Back in there I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were all going flat out in pursuit of this monster . We had a good idea of where it would be and where it would strike next so we put a cordon round with people just doing ordinary things, nothing suspicious, hoping that whatever it was would pass within this cordon to pick a victim and we could all close in behind it. I was in charge of course but there were lots of other people who were quite willing to take responsibility. My job was the big tree that was the focal point of this little community, which was where probably the most important person would expect to be and that was where you’d expect the final battle to be so they left that responsibility to watch that area to me. And now we just waited around for things to begin.

This looks as if it’s a continuation of the dream from the other night when we were chasing monsters around. And it’s quite rare to have two episodes of the same dream so close together like this. Usually they are months, if not years apart.

And later on I’d gone down to Virlet for a look around and for something. While I was in the house I heard a noise as if a couple of people were searching around in te lean-to. I picked up a blunt instrument and just as I was going to go outside to catch them in the act a guy came through the door into the house. He looked so shocked to see me so I just said “can I help you?”. He just stood there totally open-mouthed as if I was the last person he was expecting to see.

And it would be a shock too if it were to happen, but I’m not likely ever to go down to Virlet again. That’s a chapter of my life that is well and truly completed unfortunately. Someone else can take over down there when the time comes.

Finally I was making a salad. I didn’t really have all that much to go in it but I was listening to the local radio and there was a bring-and-buy sale taking place at the church at Audlem. Someone was selling picked courgettes. I thought that that sounded interesting for a change but I couldn’t really summon up the enthusiasm to go all the way to Audlem. They kept on talking about one or two other things that they had and it all sounded perfectly tempting to me but there were all these excuses popping up about why I shouldn’t go but I kept on finding out answers to these questions and still pointing out (… fell asleep here …)

For the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few recently, when I say that I “fell asleep” I am actually asleep when I’m dictating. I’ve been working as part of this project for almost 30 years. But when I say that I “fell asleep” what actually happens is that whatever I’m dictating tails off into a mumbled silence and then sometimes you’ll hear a little snore or two and I’m sorry for doubting you about that, Percy Penguin.

But courgettes in the Auvergne – they were the only things that seemed to thrive down there. You’d check your courgettes over, think “they look nice, I’ll pick them in the morning” but you’d have a downpour during the night and end up with half a dozen enormous marrows.

Everyone was sick to death of courgettes after a while. We used to pass around recipes (and courgettes) and I for one don’t ever want to see a courgette ever again.

It’s Isobelle the female nurse for the next week or so and she usually brings the sunshine and warmth with her (although I have seen another side of her once or twice that I didn’t realise existed). She nicely and cheerfully informed me that on Saturday she’s going to take a blood sample.

There’s another sample to be take too, so she’ll leave me a little pot on Friday. I have a feeling that she’ll be taking the p*ss too.

After she left I had breakfast and then a look through the notes for today’s lesson. Unfortunately I didn’t get as far as I would have liked and so my enthusiasm tailed off towards the afternoon.

The hospital rang me up about registering for my operation on Tuesday – right in the middle of a crucial point and so towards the end of the lesson my concentration (such as it was) was broken and I was all at sea.

Mind you, nothing new there. I’ve been all at sea for years, up a creek without a paddle for most of the time.

After the lesson finished I sorted out the music for the next radio programme and began to write a few notes. And then we had the football.

Y Bala didn’t do too well, going down 2-1 to Paide Linnameeskond but Connah’s Quay performed brilliantly, winning 1-0 in Slovenia and being set up nicely for the return match next week.

Then we had Caernarfom playing in front of a packed house at Nantporth. And the Cofi Army burst into song after just four minutes when Morgan Owen picked up a pass 20 yards out from the Crusaders goal and walloped it home

They had even more to sing about after 35 minutes when Danny Gosset found Darren Thomas whose delightful through ball was inch perfect for Zack Clarke to pounce on and slot home for the second.

The game though wasn’t a particular spectacle. It was rather agricultural at times bordering on the desperate at the end as the Crusaders threw everything, including the kitchen sink at the Cofi goal but Caernarfon held out to record a famous victory in their first ever match in European competition.

But these results are really good news for Wales because the more successful they are, the higher their coefficient will be which means that they could have more teams in club competition and maybe even enter the tournaments at later stages.

Not to mention of course the money that’s on offer for doing well in Europe. The prize money from UEFA is well-worth having for a small club. A team that’s defeated in Round One will receive €150,000 and if they make it through to the next round they’ll receive at least €350,000.

And then there’s sponsorship, TV revenue, all of that kind of thing.

After the final whistle I threw some pasta into a pan with some frozen veg and tomato sauce. That will keep the lupus from the porte as they used to say in Ancient Rome.

So on that note I’m off to bed ready to kick off nice and early tomorrow morning.

But talking of courgettes reminds me of the guy in the Auvergne who was determined to protect his courgettes at all costs so one night he slept with them. And instead of the fine weather for which he was hoping, it snowed instead.
They found him next morning and he was frozen to the marrow.

Wednesday 10th JUly 2024 – WHAT A PERFORMANCE!

Swimming around the apartment in a sea of blood last night, up first thing in the morning washing the floors. I’ll tell yuo something for nothing, and that is that I won’t be going on much longer like this. It’s simply not sustainable.

There I was last night, getting ready for bed, and it was late enough already, when in the bathroom I happened to catch my leg against some protruding object.

And that, dear reader, was that. The effects of the Kardegic and the Injection of the Last Resort mean that my blood is thinner than water, and it just erupted.

From the bathroom I had to go to the corner of the living room where all of the medical stuff is, clean the would with some sterile solution and gauze and then apply a plaster. And the time that it took to go from the one to the other, we were knee-deep in gore.

Well, maybe that’s something of an exaggeration, but nevertheless it was a horrible sight. I can’t even stand looking at blood at the best of times, never mind when it’s pumping out out my leg.

There was no point trying to clean up the apartment at that time of night. I’d just be moving wet blood around from one place to another, so I left it and went to bed, very very gingerly. I didn’t want the plaster coming off while I was in bed, with the mess that was likely to follow.

And so as you can imagine, I didn’t have much in the way of sleep last night. I was far too much on tenterhooks.

However I did at one point fall asleep, only to awaken at about 05:00 with an urgent need to go and walk the parapet.

But what was surprising about that was that when I awoke, I was singing Traffic’s JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE to myself for some reason or other.

It’s true that I’ve been playing a lot of “Traffic” just recently but even so THIS TRACK is much more appropriate right now.

Back in bed, I must have fallen asleep again because it was the alarm that awoke me when it rang at 07:00.

Falling out of bed, I switched off the alarm and headed for the bathroom, and once that was all organised and completed I fetched the mop and bucket.

And I’ll tell you another thing for nothing, and that is that it’s not easy trying to mop a floor when you can’t even stand up or walk about.

Nevertheless I did what I could as best as I could and then came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And apart from going for a walk on the parapet, I must have gone nowhere because the dictaphone drew a blank.

However, even though I didn’t dictate anything I have a very vague recollection of something about Llansawel playing their first game after promotion into the Cymru Premier League and being heavily, and embarrassingly, defeated.

The nurse came round to sort out my legs later and was most unimpressed with me using “his” plasters, even though they are supplied on prescription to me. He had the usual moan about it but cheered up when he saw the two boxes that my cleaner had brought back from town the other day.

He wanted to know how my shoulder was doing, so he ripped off the plaster that the cleaner had fitted to my shoulder to stop the bleeding the other night. "That’s healed quite well" he said

Five minutes after he left, the fountain from the shoulder started up again and we were back to where we were earlier this morning. So he’s another plaster short, my apartment is even cleaner and I’m totally fed up.

With all of this performance today I was late for my Welsh class and then I was totally and completely unprepared.

In fact, I’ve been totally and completely unprepared for the rest of the day. The cleaner thinks that I’m looking quite well, so I’ll have a pint of whatever she’s been drinking because I don’t feel it.

In fact, I haven’t even bothered to make any tea tonight. I’m just not in the mood at all.

There was football on the internet later, Gresford Athletic of the Second Division playing Llanrwst from the Third in a pre-season friendly. The match went pretty much as everyone expected, with Gresford running out 5-0 winners, but there were some excellent chances missed at either end.

But one thing is evident, and that it that the gulf between the Premier League and the Second level is enormous, and mybe LLansawel will be on the wrong end of a couple of embarrassing scorelines before the curtain comes down on next season

But right now I’m going to go to bed if I can without bleeding eveywhere. It’s quite important, because there is what is called the “bleeding time”. That’s the time that it takes for blood to clot once it starts to flow.
It’s important to know it when you’re operating on someone, for obvious reasons
Mine of course being so thin, it’s totally different from everyone else’s so while they were discussing my case and comparing notes the surgeon asked the nurse in attendance "what’s the bleeding time?"
"Quarter to ten, doctor" replied the nurse.

Tuesday 9th July 2024 – ANOTHER LATE NIGHT …

… but for once, I’m not bothered at all because it was for a good cause and in the end it was worth every minute of it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I will support any team in the Welsh Pyramid, regardless of where they are from, if they are playing against TNS in any competition you might care to name.

But when it comes to European club competition however and TNS is flying the Welsh flag against an other team in Europe, then we are all ardent TNS supporters to a man (or woman), or we ought to be.

So tonight it was a mad scramble to make it to the computer in time to watch TNS take on FC Decic, champions of Montenegro, in a Champions League match, the first of a two-legged affair to see who wins the right to play Ferencvaros of Hungary in a couple of weeks time.

It’s all that I seem to be doing right now – sleeping and writing out my notes. There doesn’t seem to be much time for anything else at all.

It was another late night too last night by the time that I’d finished doing everything, and it was something of a desperate stagger these final few inches that takes me from my chair to my bed. You can’t imagine how much effort it takes me.

But anyway once STRAWBERRY MOOSE had tucked me up in bed there wasn’t all that much time for him to read me a story because I seem to have managed to fall asleep quite quickly.

Surprisingly, I was awake again at 06:00 – I’m sure that there’s something happening that’s awakening me then – and by 06:30 I was up and about having a wash, a good (or not-so-good) half-hour before the alarm went off.

Back in here a little later I had a listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night. The situation at work was getting out of hand. I owed a lot of money for no reason other than the fact that for some reason there had been an estimate made of my income and it was totally wrong so I’d tried to have the estimate revised. Instead, it was revised upwards and that was totally incorrect but I had no way of supporting my claim and no way of defending myself against them. Things were just getting more intense and the demands were becoming more and more intense. I was totally overwhelmed by everything and tried to make people stop and listen to what I had to say but no-one seemed to be interested and it seemed to be going from bad to worse. People were doing all kinds of crazy things such as coming out with food recipes for kids of foods that were horrible and disgusting, calling them the types of foods that I would be eating because of all of this. What was so concerning about this was not so much the fact that this was happening but the fact that I couldn’t find the way to get out of it and bring it back into some kind of normality and some kind of realistic situation. But instead it was simply going worse and worse. Absolutely everything was adding to it. Each year it was becoming worse and with each place that I was living and there was nothing that I could do to stop it or slow it down or divert people’s attention to somewhere else.

I can’t remember whether I’ve had a panic attack in a dream for a while. I was having them quite frequently at one time, and that was certainly one last night. But it’s really crazy. It’s bad enough being stressed out during the normal run of events during the day but the idea of sleep is to calm down and recharge your batteries, not to be wound up even more than you are during daylight hours

This is another one of these science fiction things about appliances and things that stopped working etc and then suddenly there was a huge devastation in the area. All kinds of things had been blamed for it. The Saint was brought in and he managed to catalogue a few events. Eventually of course there’s the big house on the hill where the scientists are working away. In the end what he found was that they had developed some kind of matter gun that when it’s switched on it sucks the power and electricity from the immediate area and paralyses everything, then a couple of seconds later that electricity is released in an enormous discharge that electrocutes everything, flattens buildings and trees etc within quite a radius. Of course its potential for war was immense because it would disable an army before destroying it. The Saint of course catches up with it and managed to destroy the machine or snake or monster or whatever it is that you want to call it that’s doing all of this sucking electricity and blowing it back out again.

As it happens, at teatime I’m watching an episode of The Saint where there is a group of mad scientists dealing with mutated creatures and giant insects. But nevertheless, I’m completely impressed that I can think of a powerful weapon like that in my sleep. It’s a shame that I can’t invent stuff like this when I’m awake. But I don’t have the self-discipline to be a scientist, as I have proved so often in the past

And finally I was selling some stuff on Ebay – it should have been three car tyres. Instead, it turned out to be the contents of my warehouse and garage after I’d swept up, including things like dead animal bodies, things like that in it all. I’ve no idea what happened – whether someone who turned up took away the wrong lot instead of the lot that he bought but they were inspecting it on a train when they came across this dead body. Of course, a huge panic, everything like that. In the end the person came back to complain as you might expect. I refunded him all of his money except for the value of three tyres which was £30:00. All I could think of was that I’d swept out my garage and warehouse ready to leave and put everything in one pile. The stuff to be taken away was in another pile next to it and whoever turned up took away the wrong one.

It was really most embarrassing. I bet that the people on the train had a shock too. And God knows what people are going to find when they sweep out my barn at Virlet and the warehouse at Montaigut. There will be more than a few ghosts unearthed and spirits uplifted, I should think

When the nurse came round he had a moan about the state of my fridge. I told him where the injection was kept but apparently when he opened the fridge door, something inside reached out and closed it again. I had to go to look for it.

But I wish that he’d stop complaining. It’s all that he ever seems to do. I know that there’s a lot wrong with what’s going on in here but all of the criticism is not helping matters

So I’ve had the first of the two Injections of the Last Resort, and I’ve organised him about his parking in Brussels for next weekend.

After he left I had breakfast, including toast with my nice fresh bread baked yesterday evening, and then checked over the radio programme for this weekend before sending it off for feeding into the stream for broadcast.

As an aside, next weekend it’s my Hawkfest, my Spacerock Festival to mark the anniversary of the first of the Hawkfests – an event not to be missed. You can hear it at THIS LINK every Friday and Saturday evening at 21:00 CET (20:00 UK, 15:00 Toronto time)

It was the Welsh Summer School next and once again I found myself drifting away again in the middle of it when I was supposed to be listening. I really must pull myself together.

But luckily I just about managed to cling on until the end of the lesson today. But when I finally let go, I let go and was gone away with the fairies for a couple of hours. I even managed to miss out on my afternoon hot chocolate

And as I sad earlier, it was a mad scramble to make myself tea and be back in time for kick-off.

In fact, I was two minutes late and much to my surprise, TNS were already 1-0 up

And for a team that seems to be able to wipe the floor with any domestic opposition but blow up spectacularly once they step out onto a bigger stage, not only did they manage to hold on to the lead they increased it and the final score, which they’ll take to Montenegro for the second leg, was 3-0.

Mind you, they rode their luck and judging by what I saw of the Monetenegrins, it won’t be so easy over there next week. Leaving aside the well-knows propensity for TNS to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, this match is not over by any means.

So on that note I’m going to go to bed and think of ways in which I can improve my self-discipline. I really must learn to discipline myself, especially since Miss Whiplash put up her prices.

Monday 8th July 2024 – IT’S GOING TO …

… be another horrible, miserable, depressing late night going to bed tonight.

But at least it’s not been a waste of time and something good has come of it because I whizzed through this evening and not only edited the remaining sound file from those that I dictated on Saturday night, I’ve assembled the programme.

All that remains to do is to choose the final track and write the notes for it, and that’s a job that I can do tomorrow morning.

It’s quite strange really, because the sound file was one of the longest that I’ve ever dictated yet when I’ve edited out all of the umms and ahhs and the bits that were rubbish, it edited down to be one of the shortest. There are some things that are quite difficult to explain.

It was a late night last night too. I wasn’t in bed much before midnight and that’s not much good at all. I awoke at about 05:15 too and valiantly resisted the temptation to raise myself from the dead at that time.

When it came round to about 06:00 I thought “give it another five minutes ….” and the next thing that I knew, the 07:00 alarm was going off. And that was a mystery too. What happened there?

After I’d had a good wash and complete change of clothes I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night and, more importantly, if any of my favourite young ladies had come with me.

But no such luck last night. “Swansong” in the Sports pages refers to the goalkeeper who was selected for the national team – the women’s national team, with selection issues about form etc, loss of form, new brooms sweeping clean and all this kind of thing it was necessary to find another keeper to join the National squad as first choice and she was it. At 38 years of age it was only a temporary solution while other players sort themselves out. But it was the best available at the time. It might have been unpopular but sometimes popularity is the wrong thing to do. You don’t do things for popularity you do things for success. Sometimes, for success, you have to do things like this but we’ll see where she is in two seasons and see who’s taken her place amongst this crowd of people who are almost there but not quite at the moment.

And what do I know about women’s football? My first encounter with it was AT BURLINGTON IN VERMONT IN 2015 and I might have seen the odd match since then, but I’m hardly an expert. However, Jocelyne Montoya of one of these Mexican women’s teams can come and take a throw-in with one of my footballs any time she likes.

And then later we were all at work discussing the working arrangements for the next week or so. I’d been driving a snooker player around for a week. He was someone who had been very famous but had fallen on hard times and had been extremely wayward but had slowly been dragged back onto track again. I’d been driving him around but I’d not had any instructions for the coming week so we were all in the office waiting for things to happen and for someone to come along with a work schedule. A couple of my colleagues came in and asked me why I wasn’t at the top end of the town. I asked why so they replied “your snooker player is up there looking for someone or other”. They had a huge discussion about this snooker player. I mentioned that I’d driven him last week and tried to keep him on track for all his appointments, matches etc. One or two people said “yes it’s a shame that he didn’t think about engaging you earlier because you’d been sure to have made him at least conscious of these things” which I thought was probably one of the nicest compliments anyone in that place had ever paid me. So even though no work schedule was down I had to quickly discuss where this snooker player was and then decide to nip in the car to catch him to see what his plans were for the week and maybe fit in with his anyway and do the work that he wants doing, especially as he seems to be so keen to see me around according to my colleagues, which again I thought was a pretty nice comment from someone like that.

Yes, compliments were rather thin on the ground in that place. Everything was done on the basis of “dead man’s shoes” gallantly resisting all attempts to bring things kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. Trying to reorganise things there to be more efficient, I was met with "and what do you know about it?"
So saying nothing, next time that I was out I stopped at a stationer’s and bought some picture frames. That night I framed all of my taxi operators’ licences and my Certificates of Professional Competence (issued, would you believe, by my Employer) to operate a Road Passenger Transport business in the UK and in Europe, and next morning, hung them on the wall over my desk.
No-one in that office spoke to me again after that and a few months later when my boss’s office was moved to a different building it was "wouldn’t it be a good idea if you went to be based in ‘Kortenberg’ with him instead of down here?"
"Suits me fine, thanks."

But what I don’t understand is why there is a snooker player in the middle of all of this.

When the nurse came round he sorted me out and bandaged me up and then asked for my advice. He’s off to Brussels to see a concert t the Stadion Roi Baudoin and wanted to know where to park. Where I lived was about 20 minutes from there and there’s plenty of parking. And if he plays his cards right, there’s a bus that runs between the hospital at Jette and the Metro Station at the Stadion Roi Baudouin that goes along the road where he’ll be parked. Where I lived in Jette was really good. 200 yards from an exit on the Brussels by-pass and surrounded by public transport going just about everywhere, bus, tram, train, you name it.

After he left I had breakfast and then began to prepare for my Welsh Summer School that starts today. We are 10 students and a tutor, a tutor whom I’ve had before on some summer school or other. He’s sent us a little booklet of his plans but I bet that we’ll be a long way from there by the time that we finish.

It’s actually a level below the one that I was studying in the year just finished but it doesn’t hurt to go over stuff that I’m supposed to have learned and to know. And I’m not the only one doing a “revision course”.

The way I see it, if you throw a lot of whatsit at a wherever, some of it might stick at some point.

No prizes by the way for guessing who fell asleep at one point and sat there staring into space when he should have been in a break-out room. D’ohhh!

After the end of the lessons today I cracked on with the radio programme. I wanted to at least finish the editing. I could have done more too but I ran out of bread and had to make another loaf. I took full advantage of the oven being on by baking tonight’s stuffed pepper and making a pasta-bake, although that wasn’t very successful

That took me back a while. A friend of mine and his wife in the USA were so hung over one New Year’s Morning that they stayed in bed all day and their two kids were starving. I was there giving instructions over the internet on a messenger program to Tina, the 11 year old, on how to make a pasta and tuna bake in the oven

Anyway, that’ll have to do for now. I’ve been another busy boy today, following on from being rushed off my feet yesterday. Can I go for the hat trick tomorrow or will I be spending most of the day flaked out and recovering? It remains to be seen.

But thinking of Tina trying to awaken her parents reminds me of the girl who once asked me "do you wake up grumpy in the morning?"
And I replied "actually, she’s usually awake before me"

Tuesday 25th June 2024 – SO IT’S OFFICIAL.

The anaesthetist “wants to see me” and has set aside 16:45 on Wednesday 3rd July for the purpose.

And then the operation will take place on 16th July. I shall be there overnight because given my opinions of hospital, operations, blood and gore as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have elected for the “General anaesthetic” rather than the local anaesthetic.

There’s no way in this World that I’ll be lying there watching a local anaesthetic slowly wear off and catching sight of what is going on.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall my adventures in Castle Anthrax a few years ago where they turned up unannounced in my room, whisked me and my bed off to the cellar clamped a gas mask over my face, said “smell this” and the next thing that I knew, it was four hours later and I’d had a surgical operation.

Even today, I still don’t know what they did, and that suits me fine. If all operations went like that, I’d have more of them. But this modern 21st-Century society where I have to be informed of each step and each procedure in graphic detail and formally agree to them.
"But it’s your right!" they wail.
But what about MY right not to want to know? No-one cares about my rights.

As long as the operation is in the morning. TNS are playing in the Champions’ League that evening. That time in Castle Anthrax I missed Newtown v Caernarfon

Meanwhile, abandoning another good rant for the moment, last night was again horribly late by the time that I went to bed. I just don’t seem to be able to make the time go any slower

Yes, when we were kids, our six weeks of summer holiday used to last for ever. Now six weeks goes in the blinking of an eye.

And once in bed, I didn’t need much rocking yet again. It’s lovely and warm and comfortable in there, just me and STRAWBERRY MOOSE tucked up tight.

Not so comfortable that I didn’t awaken before the alarm went off. When I awoke at about 06:00 I made some kind of comment and I’m certain that I had some kind of reply from someone sleeping in the next bed about life in the RAF. Of course, then then kind of thing evaporated and I realised that it really was 06:30 and I really was awake in my own bed with my own things

And that was weird too. It really did sound as if there was someone else in the room. And it wasn’t His Nibs either. If only he could talk, he would have a few tales that he could tell that would be worth a good few bob to anyone who might be interested.

He could tell me a few tales too of when he’s been let loose on his own in the company of ladies of the opposite sex.

But returning to the dream, I’ve no idea what was happening there.

I also have a vague impression of walking through Shavington en route for somewhere else, just using one crutch and feeling quite confident about it too

If only I could walk with one crutch. I used to be able to do that up until about 9 months ago but how my mobility has reduced over that period of time. There are times when I’m hard-pushed to walk with two these days.

Just to prove that I can do it when I really try, I pushed myself out of bed before the alarm went off. Only by five minutes, it has to be said, but five minutes is five minutes and they all count.

After a good wash and scrub up I loitered around for a while transcribing the dictaphone (such as they were) until the nurse came round.

When he arrived I told him about the prescription to which he readily agreed, and then he cleared off without writing one out. I hope that he does it back at the office and drops it off in the morning.

Once he’d finally gone I made breakfast – porridge and toast with orange juice and strong coffee. And believe me, I needed it.

There wasn’t much time to revise or review my Welsh before the lesson started, and having missed a week, Bane of Britain revised the wrong module. But it makes no difference because I’m rubbish whether I revise or not.

And having given the matter serious thought, as well as studying next year as normal, I’m definitely going to retake this year in an evening class with another provider because I’ve missed so much of it with hospital and all of that, and I don’t want to embarrass Coleg Cambria by doing it with them.

The difficulty is finding a provider who offers “North Welsh”.

For the southern dialect there are more courses than you can shake a stick at. It’s not too much of a problem because my grandmother came from down south even though she lived most of her life up in the north-east so I’m used to hearing both dialects. But I’m definitely a “North-id”. Bangor University is affiliated to the “LearnWelsh” programme so they might have something.

After the end of the lesson, when we all went our separate ways for the summer holidays, I changed the habits of a lifetime and had a sandwich seeing as I won’t be having my mid-afternoon snack.

And then I made myself ready for my trip to Avranches.

The trip down there was the first time that I’d felt tired? but I soon livened up when I couldn’t get out of my chair and everyone in the building had to rally round and help. Fancy a hospital waiting room with no arms on their chairs!

Anyway, the surgeon played ball, which was nice. He understood my fears, mumbled his way through what he was supposed to say, didn’t say anything else and asked if I agreed with what he’d just said.

How could I do anything else?

Next step will be the anaesthetist. He wants to “see me” – I suppose, in the same way that the executioner looks over the condemned man. I’m already feeling rather uncomfortable and we haven’t started yet.

We had a full car going home – it seems as if we went to every medical establishment in Avranches on some sort of Cook’s Tour to pick up everyone heading to this neck of the woods.

Back here I was first out, and my faithful cleaner helped me up the steps, standing behind me lifting up my foot with hers.

This can’t go on much longer. I don’t have the force to keep on dragging myself up the handrail, and neither does she, I suspect. I can only see an unpleasant future of doom and gloom if this carries on. And if I have dialysis, I’ll be doing it three times per week at least.

Once I was home I sat down – and crashed out. I was dead to the World.

Only 20 minutes late starting tea. At least it was taco roll with rice so it didn’t need much preparation.

As for me, neither do I. I’ll be in bed before you know it and there I intend to stay until my name changes to Rip van Epic. I am totally wasted after this afternoon – and I have to do it tomorrow too. That’s when I go to see Emilie the cute consultant’s sidekick.

But as I said, I’m off to bed to reflect on the events of the day and mull over the words of the surgeon – at least, the words that I understood.
"I’ve listened to you for fifteen minutes" I told him "but I’m still none-the-wiser"
"Maybe not" he replied "but you’re certainly better-informed."

Tuesday 21st May 2024 – NOT ANOTHER HORRIBLE …

… miserable day when I’ve spent most of the afternoon fast asleep on my comfortable chair?

It’s gone from being 10 minutes every few days now to a couple of hours on a couple of occasions every day and you’ve no idea just how fed up I’m becoming of it.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I awoke as quickly as I went to sleep, but awakening is a long, drowsy process when I’m not able to do anything at all except vegetate and wait for my body to catch up with the spinning of the World

There’s nothing in the World that I’d like more than to be able to say “goodbye” to all of this. One way or the other – it doesn’t bother me at all, but this is simply no good at all.

It’s not as if I had a particularly late night last night. It was the wrong side of 23:00 to be sure, but not by enough to worry me. And I actually had a decent sleep for several hours too.

At a certain point I definitely heard the alarm go off but it didn’t feel like 07:00 so I checked my watch. Battery flat! So I had to leave the bed to check the time on the ‘phone. It was only 06:00 as it happened, so once more we must have had a phantom alarm call.

As for me, I crawled back under the covers and waited for the 07:00 alarm call.

When it rang I went through the usual procedure of leaving the bed to switch it off, and then the bathroom for a wash followed by the dining area for my medication and to set it out as the nurse likes it.

While I waited for her I transcribed the dictaphone notes. Here’s a dream about people escaping from a prisoner-of-war camp and we’ve had this before. People being disguised as couples or families doing their best to make their own escape kits of clothing and materials that they’ll need. The night before the escape they all have a dress rehearsal by all appearing in the hallway of one of the blocks where there’s a German guard but he doesn’t suspect anything with the unlikely arrival of a couple of women and children etc. They have this demonstration. There’s a dog there for some reason, probably a prison warden dog. Someone makes a joke to another potential escapee about “oh it’s OK to stroke the poor doggie. That’s quite all right”. Generally speaking the display passes off quite well and the people prepare themselves to break out the following night. Certainly a couple of nights later the camp is empty so the escape must have been successful to some certain degree

Then I dreamed that dream about Bala FC escaping from that prisoner-of-war camp again although one of the prison camp guards played for Chester. I’ve forgotten this dream now. He was a prison camp and later on was told quite dramatically that I am sure to be his position, sack all over the street (…fell asleep here …)

So what’s going on about all of these prisoner-of-war dreams that I’m having right now? It must be significant, I suppose, but I can’t think of what the significance might be.

The nurse went through the procedures with my feet and legs, and I think that she realises that she’s fighting a losing battle. I know that that’s how I’m thinking. There’s no improvement and it’s just delaying the inevitable, and for no good purpose too.

After she left I revised for my Welsh class. The lesson passed quite well today which makes a nice change. We were talking about music, and of course that’s a subject about which I can talk for ever.

One of the things that I mentioned – in Welsh – was a rock group called Sumé. They come from Greenland and sang – would you believe – in Inuit. It’s thanks to their songs that many words made their way into the Inuit language and their singing started a revolution.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I began to learn Inuit but the problem with that language is that with the communities being so isolated and inter-community mixing so rare, each community has its own sub-language. What you learn in one settlement is different from the Inuit spoken in another settlement. So really you have to master about 20 different dialects

After the course was over I had my lunchtime fruit and then spent to afternoon fighting off – often unsuccessfully – wave after wave of sleep. While I was asleep at one point in the afternoon I’d been in some kind of dispute with someone and had climbed into my car ready to drive away to Manchester to fetch some things. I had someone with me. I realised that I was in no condition to drive and was on the verge of asking the person with me to take over when I realised what was happening was that I was slowly awakening.

Me being in dispute with someone? Surely not!

Despite the “wave after wave of sleep” I did manage to do some work. I wrote a few more notes for a future radio programme. With a bit of luck, God’s help and a Bobby I should be able to finish it tomorrow, if I don’t fall asleep.

The cleaner came round too to go through the medication. She brought me some new slippers that she’d picked up in LeClerc but it’s no good – despite them being two sizes too large I can’t actually put them on myself.

Tea tonight was a delicious taco roll with some more leftover stuffing. I can eat that with rice and veg every day of the week. There’s plenty of stuffing left to go into a left-over curry on Wednesday and I’ll have steamed veg and falafel in a cheese sauce on Thursday, I reckon, if I’m still here

They were actually discussing the funeral arrangements with someone not so long ago
"Would you like him buried in one of the new glass coffins?" asked the undertaker
"That’s a novel idea" said the client. "Do you think that it’ll ever become popular?"
"Remains to be seen" replied the undertaker

Tuesday 14th May 2024 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… yet another candidate for “worst day ever of my life”.

It really has too. In fact I’ve spent almost all the afternoon fast asleep on my chair in the office and I’m totally fed up of all of this. I haven’t done a stroke of work.

Last night I actually made a really good effort and tried my best to be in bed early. Not that I succeeded but I did find a much better way of getting into bed that didn’t hurt my painful hip anything at all like it has been doing.

Once I was in bed I settled down for a nice, comfortable sleep but there wasn’t much hope of that. Although I fell asleep quite quickly we had another phantom alarm call in the middle of the night

When the real alarm went off I staggered off into the bathroom and then into the dining area for my medication. But the bathroom was hilarious from the point of view of dressing myself. I’m beginning to lose all of the basic skills. However, the pain in my hip has lessened a little.

The nurse came round later. He helped me put my leg up on the stool and when he did it, it didn’t hurt at all. I wish that I knew what his secret is.

After he left I began to revise for my Welsh lesson. And having collected a slice of flapjack and made myself a pot of strong coffee I joined in later.

The lesson actually passed quite well today but there again we weren’t actually stretched. We had to talk about our home and then about music. Of course, I can do both those things for hours.

As i’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … in all the places in which I’ve ever lived, this is the only place for which I’ve ever felt homesick when I’ve been away. It’s the first place that I’ve ever called “home”.

By the end of the lesson though, I was flagging quite badly and once it was over I crashed out completely Totally and absolutely, and for ninety minutes too. I felt totally awful too when I awoke

Once I’d come back round into the Land of the Living (and that took longer than it ought) I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been just recently. So I was there with some young girl, a member of our family, and were taking it in turns to be treated by the opposition, one team at a time, about something or other. I was putting my feet up on a stool in front of me but suddenly there was no stool there and the table cloth with cups of coffee etc set out began to fall to the floor. I had to grab hold of it and hold it. I had no idea what I was going to do next because I couldn’t move and there I was, holding this table cloth with all of the crockery and cutlery all set out for tea etc. There was absolutely nothing whatever holding the table cloth except my two arms.

Later on at Cardiff we put the ball up there but elected to push on because that was our strength but Cardiff also relied on our strength to defend. They managed to hold out and push us backwards out of a decent range Our players were young and inexperienced and weren’t able to take the ball in a way that they might have been if they’d had more experience. In the end that left the field open for Cardiff to come on and score the winning try.

That was just like in the previous match where they’d waited until I’d replaced Findi (whoever Findi is or was) and they took advantage of that change of line-up to swarm all over our front line and push it back down out of range again and into their own half

For the final couple of minutes and we had possession but weren’t able to advance. We didn’t have our kicker on the field so we couldn’t kick, so it was a case of having to persevere with the attack by running as much as we can. In the end we ran for miles, it seemed, just to make a small amount of ground to find a crack in the defence and swarm through for that goal in the final two minutes. We scored a touch-down but it was so lucky and we did so well to win it

A phantom alarm at 04:10 this morning. At the time I was busy instructing my girls’ rugby team about how to advance that final yard to have a pushover try if it were to become necessary in the match against Cardiff.

So what am I doing involved in a rugby team? And a girls’ rugby team at that? Rugby is a game that holds no interest at all for me. It’s just a silly game played by men with odd-shaped balls

It’s true however that one of the daughters of my niece in Canada played for a girls’ rugby team at school, and at school they tried to make us play rugby instead of football but we were having none of it. Our tactic was that our scrum would win the ball, pass it to me and, because I could kick with either feet, I’d kick for a drop goal from just about anywhere on the field within range.

"You don’t play rugby like that!" bellowed our new games master

Well, we did. And in the end, he gave up, went back to the staff room for a coffee, we began to play football and that was the last we ever heard about playing rugby. And quite right too.

Finally it was the final day of this end-of-season sale in this camping and sports shop. The whole world was in there looking for stuff. I found one or two things that I liked. As the evening drew to a close I was hovering by the till waiting. When they announced the closing of the store we all stampeded to the tills. I reached a till. The girl said something to me that I didn’t understand but it carried on until the person in front of me was served. Then she just switched off her till and walked away at that point. I found the people with whom I’d come and told them – I said “you won’t believe it but they’ve done it again, switched off the till right in front of me when I’m ready, willing and able to buy stuff. There’s absolutely no accounting for British people these days. Turn down a pile of work just so that they can be away from work five minutes earlier and not have to deal with any particular work.

And it wouldn’t be the first time that that has happened to me either, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

When I was asleep in the afternoon I had another one of these series of hallucinations with all kinds of stuff briefly flitting through my mind. One of the things that I do remember from when I was asleep in the afternoon was taking a girl out in one of my old vans. We went for a walk in a field and then back at the van to go somewhere else she put her hand through the flap to open her door but her hand became stuck in the aperture.

What with all of this I was rather late going for my nice hot chocolate drink. Something simple but it really does cheer me up. And I would probably have been even later had the cleaner not awoken me bringing in yet more medical supplies

But than back in my chair I crashed out again, and that’s how I stayed until, would you believe, 19:10. I’d missed a whole afternoon with being asleep. But while I was asleep this time it was the school dance. I was asked to take everyone home by train at 16:00 so was warned to have nothing to eat or drink beforehand. But the dance rolled on and on, a long time past 16:00. I was starving hungry and thirsty so I went to look for the headmaster to complain. I couldn’t find him but instead came across my Geography teacher. I told her of my difficulties but she dismissed me rather unpleasantly. I wandered back into the building and found a group of people, including a good friend of mine, taking my PA mixer board from my room. I told them to put it back but they carried on taking it out with a laugh and a joke, but I grabbed it from them, put it back into my room and closed the door, using a few very choice words to describe my anger. My friend called me “a miserable old fart” but I didn’t care. I was incandescent with rage by this time.

And “incandescent with rage” was quite right too. Incandescent with rage that I’d missed out a whole afternoon flat-out like this for no good reason.

That was really disappointing too because I’ve spent all these years and all this effort and made all these sacrifices to bring my anger issues under control and to try to make myself a nicer person, and here I am being undermined by something as stupid as falling asleep

My whole life is falling apart right now with having to fight these health issues and I’m at the stage where I can’t fight any more. I just don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going.

It’s making me feel like Gwyneth Glyn and
"I DON’T KNOW WHERE I’M GOING
I DON’T KNOW WHERE I’VE BEEN
I’VE NO IDEA WHERE I AM RIGHT NOW
AND GOD KNOWS WHERE I’M SUPPOSED TO BE"

My rice and veg to accompany my taco roll were cooked by the steam coming out of my ears tonight, not by electricity. I really need to get a grip of myself but I can’t believe that I have to do it all again. I don’t even know why I’m bothering to struggle. It’s not as if my health will ever improve and I’ll get better.

Many years in Belgium a solicitor who had been trying to contact me made the remark "Mr Hall! We all thought that you were dead!"
"Not at all" I replied. "I just smell like it"

EPIC HALL

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