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Friday 3rd April 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… another miserable day today and I’ll be going to bed in a few minutes regardless of how early or late it might be. And if I have yet another evening without any tea, I really don’t care at all.

Last night, as I said earlier, I was in bed at 20:20 or thereabouts, and I was asleep almost straight away. But not for long, though. By about 00:30 I was awake, and try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep.

In the end, round about 03:00, I left the bed and went to sit at the computer. After doing the stats and backing everything up, I wrote yesterday’s entry and replaced the terse note that I had written earlier.

Back into bed at about 04:30, I set the alarm for 07:30 and went back to sleep – except for a brief moment round about 05:00 when I definitely heard someone shout “wake up, wake up”.

When the alarm went off, I staggered … "eventually" – ed … to my feet and went off to the bathroom for a kind-of wash. Not very much of a wash, it has to be said, because I was still fully dressed.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was something about a girl who was writing some kind of biography about the Beatles, or one of the Beatles. She was choosing all kinds of music for the programme. She’d borrowed a pile of books to read but her teacher had borrowed half of those and she was having a great deal of difficulty getting them back. It turned out that this teacher wanted to be involved in the project too but the girl writing it wouldn’t have her in the project at any price. Eventually, she managed to come up with some kind of notes, but there was all the music and she didn’t really want to be involved in the music. She was going to leave this to the producer to sort out the songs and insert them into the programme where he thought fit, despite where otherwise she might have put them.

There doesn’t seem to be very much of any relevance in this dream, so I’ve no idea about anything that might have been going on. It seems that quite recently, we are having a lot of dreams that don’t relate to anything that’s been going on, so I’ve no idea what’s happening these days. It’s probably something to do with these extra pills that I have to take.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and we had an interesting chat about hot cross buns. Apparently, she’d seen something on TV about them and wanted to know more. I told her that I’d give her my recipe and let her find out for herself.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of THE ROMAN FORT AT BALMUILDY on the Antonine Wall, written by Stewart Napier Miller.

Today, we’re discussing pottery, would you believe? And it’s interesting to note that these experts can identify the individual potter, where and when he worked from just a small fragment.

And just like James Curle at Newsteads, they note that pottery from the earlier period is of much better quality than that of the later period, quite the reverse of what you would normally expect.

As an aside, I have to say that my home-made hot cross buns are absolutely excellent. They really have turned out very well indeed and I’ll have to make another batch like that, but not have the oven so hot. I should have realised that 200°C is too high and I should have stuck to my usual 180°C

Back in here, I had things to do, such as to check my e-mails, and I found that there was work to do. Someone had written to me to tell me that I had misidentified a building on ONE OF MY WEB PAGES, so I had to amend the entry.

While I was at it, I was able to identify a colour for which I had been searching for quite a while and I can now use it, as you might already have noticed.

When I’d finished everything, I began to edit one of the sets of radio notes that had been hanging round for quite a while. So right now, the two halves of the programme have been prepared, the joining track has been chosen and the notes for it written, ready for the next lot of dictating.

That was despite several interruptions. Firstly, at midday, I had to put the dirty clothes into the machine to wash them. And then take them out later and prepare them for my faithful cleaner to hand up when she comes this afternoon.

When she turned up, round about 14:00, I was feeling too ill to stand up and say “hello”. I just grunted a few things to her from in here and let her get on with it.

After she had left, there was football on the internet, Llanelli v Y Bala.

And I have to say that I have never ever seen a team play as badly as Llanelli. Bottom of the table and already relegated, for the first sixty minutes, they played so badly that they made Y Bala, next to bottom, look good. The game was already over at that point, with Y Bala 4-0 up and it was no exaggeration.

For the final thirty minutes, Llanelli were much improved and played with much more fire and spirit. They even hit the woodwork a couple of times, but couldn’t score a goal. And in fact, near the end, Y Bala scored a breakaway goal that made it 5-0.

The battle for the second relegation place is now hotting up. From being eight points clear a couple of weeks ago and looking quite safe, Y Fflint are now just two points ahead, with one game left to play.

After the game was over, I crashed out in my chair for an hour or so. I’d been fighting off wave after wave of sleep all day. When I awoke, I really was feeling dreadful.

As it was almost teatime, I cut myself a slice of chocolate cake and put a dollop of home-made ice cream on it, and then brought it in here. That’s my tea for tonight and, once more, it really is excellent. I’m quite pleased with how the cake has turned out.

So now that my notes are finished, I’m off to bed, hoping for a good night’s sleep, but I doubt it.

The heating is turned up full in here tonight as I’m freezing cold, I’m coughing like never before, a streaming cold and non-stop sneezing. At least, in bed I can keep warm, and I’ll stay in bed for as long as it takes. I really am feeling quite dreadful right now;

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my cake … "well, one of us has" – ed … a man walking on a beach finds a magic lamp and gives it a rub. Suddenly, a genie appears.
"You have liberated me from my prison" said the genie. "I shall grant you three wishes."
"First, I’d like a motor yacht on a trailer"
"No problem" said the genie. He waves his wand and a motor yacht on a trailer appears.
"Now I would like a million Pounds" said the man.
"No problem" said the genie. He waves his wand and a million Pounds appears.
"Now I would like to be totally irresistible to women" said the man
"No problem" said the genie. He waves his wand and transforms the man into a chocolate cake.

Thursday 2nd April 2026 – YET ANOTHER HORRIBLE …

… day today, and I’m totally fed up with these.

The only highlight, I suppose, was the memory of that really nice butternut squash soup and fresh bread that I’d had the previous evening. But not even that lasted very long.

Back in here afterwards, I had my notes to write and a few others of the usual things to do, and I was actually in bed by 23:00, and asleep shortly afterwards.

But again, not for very long. Round about 02:30 I awoke, and then we had a desperate battle to go back to sleep again. I actually didn’t think that I did because I was still awake when the alarm went off at 06:29.

It was another desperate battle to rise to my feet and head off into the bathroom for a good wash and shave, and then into the kitchen for my hot lemon, honey and ginger drink that I take with my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And to my surprise, I had actually been out and about. And one of the time stamps tells me that I must have gone back to sleep at one point.

There was something last night about some kind of change of history exercises. There were several people involved in this, and the aim was to rewrite the history of certain events if alternative situations had taken place. For some reason, it turned out that it was to do with maths rather than actual history and it involved reworking certain maths questions. There was one girl who was rather slow doing the work but she seemed to have it all correct in the end. One thing was that there were no adults who managed to make it correct.

This is another one of those dreams that seems to relate to nothing at all.

There was also something about splitting the Catholic Church into two. Someone was keen to do this but for some reason, he put the western border down between France and Germany and France and Italy so that Rome ended up in the eastern part of it, which was a most unusual situation, but I can’t remember the rest of this now.

We did, in the early Medieval times, have Christianity split into two, the Catholic Church centred on Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church centred on Constantinople. Although Constantinople has long gone, the Eastern Orthodox Church still carries on, mainly in the Balkans and in Russia. But I can imagine the outcry if someone decided to include Rome and Italy in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

When the alarm went off, there was something about a memory, and certain memory tests that were being taken but everything evaporated the moment the alarm went off and I can’t remember any more.

So obviously, I must have been asleep when the alarm went off, despite what I was thinking.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, in her “chat mode” and we had a little discussion about nothing very much at all. After she left, I could make breakfast and read some more of THE ROMAN FORT AT BALMUILDY on the Antonine Wall, written by Stewart Napier Miller.

The Antonine Wall was only occupied for about twenty or so years, yet already Miller has uncovered two different periods of major destruction of parts of the fort. I’m not sure as yet what his conclusions will be, but it does seem to indicate that things were rather warm on the northern border.

Back in here, I had things to do, and then I edited two lots of additional notes for the joining tracks of two radio programmes. So now, those programmes are complete and ready to go at some point in the future. There was even time for a little “relax”.

However, I awoke in time for my cleaner to apply my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for my taxi, which was fifteen minutes late.

My arrival at dialysis seemed to be fortunate because at that moment, there was a gap in the patients arriving, so I was seen to quite quickly. But to my horror, I seemed to have put on three litres of fluid to be removed – the highest for ages.

This is something that I don’t understand. I’m controlling my liquid intake very closely and my visits to the … errr … smallest room have if anything been more frequent of late. So what’s going on? The doctors were so concerned that they instructed the nurse to set the machine at two litres and remove the rest the next time. That is, if there isn’t another ridiculous weight gain.

And because of that, there were constant interruptions, checking my blood pressure every fifteen minutes, and I couldn’t even go to sleep as the nurses would shake me awake, for fear that I’d gone into a fainting fit. All in all, it was a horrible session there today.

The taxi was waiting for me and there wasn’t much traffic on the roads so we had a quick drive home, where my faithful cleaner was waiting to help me into the apartment.

But by now, I was totally exhausted. I warmed up the rest of the butternut squash soup and sat down to eat it, but after five minutes, well over half of it went into the bin, followed by the bread, and I came in here.

All that I did was to type out a terse note on the blog and then I crawled into bed, fully clothed. It was just 20:20.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about The Antonine Wall … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was telling a friend that it reminded me of that well-known Biblical ice-cream company.
"Which one was that?" she asked
"Walls of Jericho" I replied.

Tuesday 31st March 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day it’s been today. And I don’t mean just this last twenty-one hours, but all twenty-four hours since 21:45 last night.

With having tea – the other half of Sunday’s pizza – already prepared, it didn’t take too long to eat and to come back in here. With not very much to write last night, I’d soon finished. It didn’t take long to do the stats and the backing-up either, or to sort myself out ready for bed. As a result, at 21:45, I was crawling into bed under the covers.

And how much sleep do you think that I had?

One of the side effects of one of the medicaments prescribed by Emilie the Cute Consultant is “insomnia”. Ad as I have enough trouble sleeping already, it doesn’t take much more for me to have what the French call a nuit blanche – a night where you don’t go to sleep at all.

So there I was, head tucked under the quilt, tossing and turning, doing in-bed physiotherapy and all kinds of things, but sleep just never came and I lay there awake all night.

When the alarm went off, I managed to haul myself out of bed, but it took a good while for me to find the strength, courage and energy to stagger off into the bathroom.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and took my medication and then came back in here to see if there was anything on the dictaphone. And, to my surprise, there was too. I must have gone to sleep at some point during the night.

There was something about the Royal Navy last night. It was supposed to be fitting out a ship but for some reason, the finishing time was being delayed for an hour here and an hour there and an hour something else and no-one was actually catching up with it. Then there was an explosion in Portsmouth harbour as one of the British battleships spontaneously combusted. It threw metal and everything all over the town. Everyone on board, including a load of sea cadets, were killed. That wasn’t the only catastrophe that happened to the Royal Navy. There were two ships on blockade duty off the coast of Belgium, and they somehow managed to collide with each other.

What the boat is doing being fitted out in my dreams, I don’t know. But the story of the exploding battleship reminds me of THE MONT BLANC – an ammunition ship that exploded in Halifax harbour after a collision, taking half of the town and half of its population with it in its way to the hereafter.

Whether that’s the reference to the collision or not, I wouldn’t know, but ships on blockade duty colliding with each other was a regular occurrence.

I was living in a small village where the highlights of the occasion were things like people ringing up the police saying that someone’s goat is free, things like that. And if you were to go into the police station, you would usually find the police officers asleep, slumped over the desk. Where we were living, there was something about someone with some kind of music list and when I was twelve, I reported it to the police for some kind of reason that wasn’t clear. I don’t really know what happened after that.

This sounds like several villages in which I’ve lived at one time or another, although I wouldn’t be the type of person to report anyone to the police.

But it does remind me of a sign that I saw once in Fredericton, New Brunswick, that read “on this day in” … (some year or other) “nothing happened”.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in, all happy and relaxed after her week’s rest, much of which was spent with her daughter in Paris. I told her about my encounters with Emilie the Cute Consultant and the pills that she’s prescribed for me. She asked about the cough, so I explained that they were trying to sort out a thoracic scan and an appointment with a lung specialist.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’ve been working through the story of Anna Komnena, daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Alexios Komnenos. She wrote a biography of her father, which is said to be a fascinating eyewitness account of the Byzantine Emperor and the goings-on therein during the period 1081 – 1108.

There’s a translation of this into English, dated 1928 and I’ve actually found a copy to download. It will make interesting reading if ever I have the time to read it.

But that’s Miller’s book finished, and I certainly did learn a lot, which is the whole point of reading. Tomorrow we start a new book.

Back in here, I started a couple of things, but the next thing that I knew, it was 11:20. I’d fallen asleep in my chair for about two hours, and I can’t say that I’m at all surprised.

It comes as no surprise either for me to say that after that, I just couldn’t concentrate on anything. Most of my effort went on trying to stay awake.

However, I remixed the soundtrack for the concert that I’m preparing for the radio, and it’s a much better mix than the one that I prepared yesterday. It’s even a couple of minutes longer too, which means that I don’t have to write as much text.

Anyway, the text is all written for it now and I just need to find the time somehow to dictate it. There’s quite a bit building up in the pipeline right now that needs dictating.

There were the usual interruptions too. My faithful cleaner turned up to do her stuff and she chased me into the shower for a good scrub. While I was in there, she changed the bedding so the nice, clean me is going to have a good sleep in a nice, clean bed, if this insomnia has worn off. Which, judging by however many times I’ve almost fallen asleep this evening, it probably has.

There was still some time left at the end of the day, so I tried to prepare the next radio programme but my heart and my head just weren’t in it at all. I managed to make a few notes, but that’s about all. I shall have to do better than this tomorrow.

Tea tonight was a gorgeous bowl full of pasta and veg in a vegan cheese sauce, followed by more trifle. It’s beginning to break up now, the trifle, but it’s still delicious.

And that reminds me, I have to cover the chocolate cake with chocolate sauce.

But that’s tomorrow because right now, I’m off to bed, hoping for a better night than last night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about ships and collisions at sea … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends was telling me about a ship carrying blue paint that collided with a ship carrying red paint.
"Really?" I asked. "What happened?"
"The survivors were marooned."

Monday 30th March 2026 – THE GOOD NEWS …

… is that Emilie the Cute Consultant still loves me. Or so she told me this afternoon at dialysis when she came to see me about the new medication.

The not-so-good news is that the pain in my foot is back after having been absent since Wednesday. I suppose that that’s the effect of this new medication wearing off since I took the last batch on Friday. I shall have to take some more tonight before going to bed.

Last night was rather a painless night, except that it was later than I wanted it to be, as usual. It was much closer to 23:00 when I finally crawled into my stinking pit after doing everything that needed doing.

And it was another really mixed night too, with moments of deep sleep followed by moments of turbulent tossing and turning, and so on. One thing for sure though was that when the alarm went off at 06:29, I was in one of the turbulent phases.

As usual, it took an age for me to sort myself out and head to the bathroom, and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone, and what a miserable effort that was.

There was something about my brother going to convince someone else to do something but it was all extremely vague, and I didn’t remember anything more about it unfortunately

The last time that I changed my medication, the flow of dreams dried up for a while and it looks as if the same thing is happening right now. That’s a shame because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I depend on my dreams for my excitement. It’s the best that I can do these days.

So with some free time on my hands, I watched the highlights of Sunday’s game between Connah’s Quay Nomads and Y Barri. But there was nothing of any real interest in the match – none of these “let’s play it out from the back, lads” catastrophes that seem to liven up more than just a few of these games.

The nurse turned up as usual, still his cheerful self, no doubt due to the fact that he’s off on his week’s break this evening.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we were discussing the collapse of the Latin Empire in the Holy Land, and as usual, it makes dismal reading, all of these disputes amongst the Crusaders while the Moslem armies are gathering on their borders. How many times is this that the Europeans preferred to fight amongst themselves rather than make common cause against the “enemy”?

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I spent an hour revising my Welsh, seeing as we have no course for the next two weeks.

There was even time to start the next radio programme, and I actually made some headway with it too.

My cleaner turned up as usual to sort out my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi, which was twenty minutes late. There were already two other people on board, but luckily, I was dropped off first.

We were early arriving and, luckily, I was seen to quite quickly. And then they left me alone for most of the session.

As I mentioned earlier, Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me. She told me that the dry throat was a side effect of one of the medicaments that she had prescribed for me. And she assured me that she still loves me, which was really quite nice. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been worrying me for quite a while.

Being plugged in early was one thing. Being unplugged was quite another thing. When four people finish at the same time and there are only two nurses, it’s evident that someone will have to wait. And guess who drew the short straw?

Still, the taxi was waiting for me, but there was someone else to drop off and we became tangled up in roadworks. So it was just as late as it usually is.

My cleaner helped me back into the building, and after she left, I finished off my pizza and had some more trifle.

So now with the pain back in my foot … "and back in spades too" – ed … I’m off to bed for an early night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Emilie the Cute Consultant … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned that I thought that she didn’t love me any more because of the suicide pills, and how I imagined her sitting at her desk with her fingers crossed.
"That’s not true at all!" she retorted.
"Really?" I asked.
"Yes, it is" she replied. "I’m paid according to the number of patients I treat, and if you die, I’d have to take a pay cut!"

Friday 27th March 2026 – AND SO, AFTER …

… last night’s theatrics, I managed to survive into today.

Not without problems, though. I am still having these severe coughing fits, my nose is running and I’m freezing, freezing cold. In fact, although for the past few days I’ve just been running the heating at night, it went back on on Thursday for twenty-four hours per day. And yet I’m still perishing.

So after I’d finished the notes for yesterday, I managed to find the time to dictate a few radio notes, making a horrible mess of them, and I reckoned that that was nature’s way of telling me to go to bed.

But not before I’d switched off the alarms and set one for 07:30. A lie-in will do me a little good, I hope.

However, there was just one problem. The alarm that I’d set didn’t have a sound. Consequently, it was the vibration and the buzzing that awoke me, rather later than it might have been. I was dead to the World at that moment.

As usual, it took a while to haul myself out of bed, and as I was already dressed (yes, I’d gone to bed again fully dressed) I sat at the desk and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And again, it was somewhat disappointing.

I was in dialysis last night. There was some discussion amongst the staff about cases of food poisoning going around. I listened quite carefully because when someone began to mention a couple of the symptoms, I realised that that was actually how I was feeling and how I was suffering. However, the only thing that I have to eat or drink there is the orange juice and coffee so I don’t know where this thing about food poisoning might have come from at dialysis.

That was rather prescient, I suppose, because the idea of food poisoning had gone through my mind at some point during the afternoon on Thursday.

When the alarm went off, there was something going on about weddings. We’d been planning some kind of wedding for something or other and a couple of people had said that this is going to be the kind of wedding that we’ll never forget. But I didn’t manage to go very far down into this dream at all because the alarm went off and awoke me.

What a shame that the alarm awoke me just as this dream was starting up. I would have loved to have known how it would have developed.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort out my legs and feet. He didn’t have much to say today, especially after I’d told him that I’d gone to bed at 20:00. I suppose that he was pondering on how to deal with the situation in his capacity as a nurse, but he simply dealt with my legs and feet and left.

Once he’d gone, I could deal with breakfast — the first meal that I’d had in twenty-four hours — and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’ve finally finished the sorry tale of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where, like just everywhere else in the Balkans, the citizens handed their country over to the Ottomans on a plate. We’re now turning our attention to Rome, which seems to be where all of the exiled Kings and Princes ended up, living at the mercy of the Pope.

The list of royal personages who found refuge there is impressively long, that’s for sure, and it includes the names of some of the most powerful in the medieval Balkans.

Back in here, I had plenty of things to do now that my week’s work is finished. The most important was to pay my property taxes for my place in Canada, and now that’s done. There was also the food order for Leclerc to review and send off. And as you might expect, there were several items unavailable.

However, they did have a butternut squash, so my roasted butternut squash soup for Easter Saturday looks like it might be on.

Another thing that I’ve been doing is to back up the files. Now that I have an 8 TB disc drive in the new office computer, I’ve been merging all of the files that were on different hard drives, and they are all now on this large one. I’ve merged in the working files too, and the next plan is to format the two external drives, split the contents of the large back-up drive into two and copy them onto the two external drives, half each, as an extra insurance back-up.

My cleaner turned up as usual to do her stuff. I explained that I wasn’t well, so she sensibly left me to it and left at the end of her session.

Not that I had much rest because fifteen minutes after she had gone, Leclerc turned up with the shopping. So I had all of that to put away (and it’s still not all away) and one kg of carrots to dice, blanch and freeze. And to save the water for the base of the butternut squash soup.

Back in here, I drifted off on my travels for a short while and then had a look at some of the notes that I’d dictated just now. Two of them were the notes for joining tracks so I edited them both and assembled the programmes. That’s me now well ahead for self-sufficiency.

Tea tonight was the curry that I was going to eat last night, a korma from out of the freezer, with rice and veg followed by vegan trifle. And I noticed that the agar-agar jelly seems to be breaking up. It’s probably not meant to be kept as long as this, so I shall have to make a smaller one next time. I hope that this one survives a little longer and doesn’t end up completely in the waste bin. That would be a tragedy.

It will also be a tragedy if I don’t get a move on and go to bed while I still can. I need a good night’s sleep and this looks like the best chance of having one.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about weddings … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked "why does the bride always wear white at her wedding?"
"It’s to symbolise purity and chastity" I replied
"Of course it isn’t" retorted someone else. "If you look around, you’ll find that all kitchen appliances come in white these days."

Thursday 26th March 2026 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow but sitting at my desk in my office. And the time is 02:15

If you’re wondering why it’s so late, the answer is that it isn’t. Anyone who came here yesterday evening or in the early part of the morning will have noticed from the rather terse entry that I made at the time that I’d come home from dialysis and gone almost straight away to bed.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … when I’m feeling as bad as I was feeling at that moment, bed is by far the best place for me to be.

In fact, I’ve been feeling rather strange all day. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that it all began on Wednesday afternoon when a bizarre wave of fatigue swept over me. In the evening, I couldn’t finish my meal and I was really glad to finally make it into bed, late as it might have been, for all the usual reasons.

Once in bed, I went to sleep fairly quickly and apart from one or two little twitches during the night, I slept right through to the alarm at 06:29.

As usual, we had another struggle to rise to our feet and then I staggered off into the bathroom for a wash and a shave – not that it will do me much good because, having prescribed some tablets for me that have a high suicide rate, I imagine Emilie the Cute Consultant sitting all afternoon in her little office with her fingers crossed.

After the hot drink and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And it was rather disappointing.

TNS won the Welsh championship and by rights should have qualified to play in Europe, but something happened which meant that they lost that place to a Scottish football club. Many people were upset by this. One of the Welsh reporters said that regardless of the outcome, TNS should have had the chance to play in a play-off against that team, regardless of how many people were interested in coming along to watch it.

This is another one of those dreams that has little basis in fact. The Welsh clubs sometimes have three, sometimes four teams playing in European competition during the summer but that number depends on how well the clubs performed in the previous summer. And TNS, perennial championship winners, would always qualify for first place.

The nurse turned up early today. And he had a moan about the gloves that he used yesterday and had set aside for today not being where he’d left them. I replied that if he were to leave them in the medication drawer, they would still be there but if he were to leave them on the kitchen worktop, they would automatically go into the bin with the rest of the rubbish.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’re still discussing Bosnia and Herzegovina, and we’ve reached the same old, old Balkan story of disputed successions, greedy nobles, all that kind of thing, who spend so much time squabbling amongst themselves that they fail to see the danger of the Ottoman forces gathering on their borders.

In fact, there have been several instances of nobles actually calling the Ottomans to help them with their struggles, preferring the yoke of the Sultan to that of their own brother, uncle etc. It really was a shameful period in European history.

Back in here, I finished the radio programme from yesterday, choosing the final track and writing the notes for it.

With that out of the way, I began to look at the next two for next week. The first one is easy – it’s difficult to believe that I’ve been doing this radio work for seven years and I can now actually recycle one of my earlier programmes, with some slight updating of the notes. That was done in no time flat.

The second one might be a little (just a little) more complicated. It relates to a sad day in San Francisco’s music history and as it happens, I have a recording of the concert that took place there on that day.

The big question though is “how do you condense a concert of four hours and fifteen minutes of one of the greatest jam bands ever into a programme of fifty-eight or so minutes?”. I can see that I shall have to be very imaginative.

But by now, there were strange goings-on. My throat had become all dry and sticky, I was losing my voice and I was feeling a little light-headed. I’ve no idea why. Anyway, I treated it as just one of those things and carried on.

My cleaner was rather late arriving for my anaesthetic so it was something of a panic. And then the taxi driver, who had never been here before, couldn’t find the entrance to the building and my cleaner, who had collared him in the street, came back here to escort me out.

We had two other people to pick up, one of whom was worse than me so I had to leave the front seat and sit in the back. And that was quite a gymnastic effort without my crutches, desperately clinging onto the door of the car.

At dialysis, I was seen quite quickly, but it was the nervous new girl who attended to me so it took longer than it otherwise ought to have done. However, she took one look at my lips and went to fetch a colleague. So I ended up sitting there for have an hour with a damp compress wedged between my lips.

Once I was plugged in, I was left pretty much alone and I could press on and fill out my shopping list for tomorrow. The doctors kept their distance today, obviously all sitting in their little office with their wax effigies and with their fingers crossed.

By the end of the session, I was feeling light-headed and nauseous as well as everything else. Luckily, the taxi driver was waiting for me when I was unplugged, and even luckier, it was one of my favourite drivers so we had our usual rocket-ride home.

My faithful cleaner helped me into the apartment, where I was hit with an overwhelming wave of fatigue on top of everything else from which I was suffering. After my cleaner had left, I simply made a brief blog entry and then crawled, fully clothed, into bed and that was that.

And that is where I’m going right now – to catch up on my beauty sleep.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about fighting between brothers … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember once when my brother and I, very young, were having a kiddy fight
My mother turned up and asked "what’s happening here?"
"He started it" said my brother, pointing to me. "He hit me first."
"And why did he hit you?"
"He didn’t like it that I’d hit him just before."

Wednesday 25th March 2025 – IT HAS BEEN …

… a strange kind of day today — neither one thing nor another. I’m not quite sure why but if ever there was a day of two halves, this was it.

Take last night, for instance. Even though I was late … "yet again" – ed … finishing off everything that needed finishing, I wasn’t in the least bit tired and I ended up sitting around for a while listening to a concert by Renaissance. As a result, I was quite late going to bed, and it was all my fault.

Not being tired, it took me a while to go to sleep but apart from one moment, more of which anon, I slept right through until just a couple of minutes before the alarm — 06:24 if I remember correctly. Not that there was any prospect of me claiming an early start by sliding my feet onto the floor before the alarm went off — that four minutes in bed was valuable.

Even so, when the alarm went off, it took me a good few minutes to raise myself from the Dead and head off into the bathroom. And then into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

There had been a dance at an army camp and plenty of male and female soldiers had attended. During the evening, a couple of males and a couple of females had made themselves into couples. At the end of the dance, when everyone was due to go home, one of the female soldiers remarked that there would be a bed empty in her hut because one of the female soldiers isn’t there this weekend. One of these ad-hoc couples decided that they would take advantage of this so they followed everyone else back to the various dormitories. They worked out which one was their hut, and they went in. But there were a couple of other women in there, including one who looked after the section’s lion, which was their mascot from Ethiopia and looked after by them, so this was a strange sight of a woman and a lion, another lion, another woman, a third woman and then this couple who were in this other woman’s bed. At some point, I was summoned to do something with the hot water firing. I thought that this was a surprise because it’s not really my job. However, it was explained to me that the person whose job it was usually was missing. So I was called out and came down and went to fix it, and then I began to ask about the whereabouts of this other guy, and so a search began. When they opened the door of this women’s dormitory and found him there with this woman and this lion in this room, and all these other women, the service went totally berserk.

This is another dream that has absolutely no connection at all with anything that has happened in the real World just recently, as far as I can tell. What on earth a woman would be doing in a dormitory with a lion is something that totally baffles me.

The army dance is interesting too, but that doesn’t seem to fit in with anything either. As for me being in the army, that would be most unlikely too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that if a war were to break out and conscription came into force, I would be heading for the nearest Merchant Marine office.

Then there was a dream about a group of people who had let themselves go in their lives. The first one was a graphic artist from Italy who had settled into the UK to do some kind of graphic work, but had lost his job and was content to sit around all day on benefits rather than go out to try to find a job to better his position.

As I was starting to dictate this, I was overwhelmed by the most enormous coughing fit, one of the biggest that I’ve had and which awoke me, as I mentioned earlier. When it calmed down, I found that I had forgotten everything else that I needed to know about it and so that was that.

Almost immediately that I had finished transcribing the dictaphone notes, the nurse turned up. He didn’t have a lot to say for himself today and was soon gone on his travels. I could make my breakfast, cutting the bread with my new bread knife that arrived yesterday, and it isn’t ‘arf sharp. I hope that my cleaner can find some of those vegetable knives if they are as sharp as the bread knife is.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re discussing Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I can understand why there is so much fighting over the possession of these territories even today. Their history is so convoluted – at some time in the past, almost every power of any importance in the Balkans and in Italy has had possession of this area at some point. Numerous battles have been fought across the area as other powers have tried to take control.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then an e-mail to write. That actually took longer than it ought.

When I’d dealt with that, I began to write the notes for another radio programme. However, the time seemed to evaporate and what should have taken about three hours at most ended up taking over five, and I’ve no idea why.

My faithful cleaner turned up to interrupt me at one point. She’d brought the rest of the medication that had to be ordered. I mentioned the side effects of the medication that Emilie the Cute Consultant had prescribed, and her response was “serve you right”. It’s nice to know that you have loyal friends.

Something strange happened after all of this. From going along, bright and cheerful, I suddenly became overwhelmed with fatigue and found myself slumped over the desk in one of these trances that I used to have quite regularly.

In fact, had Rosemary not ‘phoned me up for a chat, I would probably still be there now. Even so, over an hour crashed out like that is some going.

Rosemary and I just had a short chat today — a mere one hour and twenty-four minutes. We’re obviously losing our touch these days.

After she’d hung up, I attacked one of the radio notes that i’d dictated a while back. I’d hoped to have had these all edited, the two halves of the programme prepared, the extra track chosen and the notes written , with plenty of time to spare afterwards, but what with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed … I’d barely finished preparing the two halves.

That filled me full of dismay because the time is just melting away between my fingers and I can’t stop it.

Tea tonight was pasta and vegetables in a vegan cheese sauce followed by more delicious trifle. It was quite nice, except for the fact that some of the pasta ended up in the bin as I couldn’t eat it. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … my taste buds are definitely changing.

But right now, I shall be changing, into my night clothes to go to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow … "I don’t think" – ed …

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the woman and the lion … "well, one of us has" – ed … she was walking with the lion down Hoole Lane in Chester not so long ago.
A policeman stopped her and demanded "where do you think you are going with that lion?"
"Where do you think?" she asked. "I’m taking him to Chester Zoo"
A couple of days later, the same policeman stopped the same woman with the same lion in Sealand Road
"I thought you said that you were taking that lion to Chester Zoo?"
"And so I did!" she retorted "but he didn’t think much of it so we’re going to watch Chester City play Scarborough Athletic."

Tuesday 24th March 2026 – MY VEGAN TRIFLE …

… is absolutely delicious! With its base of agar-agar grape jelly with real pears, a mid-layer of vegan custard and the pièce de resistance – the meringue topping that went onto the custard this afternoon, it really was a masterpiece. I shall be making another one of these at some point in the near future.

So what with the vegan cheesecake that I made the other day, my repertoire of puddings seems to be expanding quite quickly. And that can only be a good thing, especially as I have decided to make a chocolate cake for Easter, with real chocolate chips and a chocolate topping. That’s Sunday’s task, with Saturday’s being, of course, to make some hot cross buns.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here. I was so looking forward to my trifle yesterday that last night I dashed right through my notes and everything else that I had to do, and I was actually in bed at something like a reasonable time.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happens when I manage to go to bed early. It was something like 02:00 when I awoke, and failing miserably to go back to sleep, I lay there in a kind of semi-conscious haze as the clock went round and round towards 06:29.

At one point, I was seriously thinking of leaving the bed and doing some dictating, but how do you dictate when you are being constantly wracked by a series of severe coughing fits? I came to the conclusion that I would be of more use if I were to stay in bed, rest and relax and maybe eve fall asleep if I’m lucky.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be, and I was still awake when the alarm finally went off.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, being awake is one thing — being up and about is quite another thing. As usual, it took me a good ten minutes to bring myself round into the Land of the Living. Only then was I able to stagger off into the bathroom to sort myself out.

Into the kitchen next for my hot honey, lemon and ginger drink and medication, and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And to my dismay, it seemed as if I hadn’t been anywhere. Nothing but silence.

Never mind — after such a bad night, it’s hardly a surprise, and there are plenty of other things that I can be doing instead.

The nurse blew in this morning after his week’s break. He had a few things to say, but he kept very quiet about the fact that in the local elections on Sunday he’d been elected to the town council. That’s probably because he knows my opinion on the town council — I’ve expressed it often enough.

After he left, I could make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’ve now come to discuss Albania in medieval times, and this has, as you might expect, led me off on a trail down a side-alley, at a tangent to where I’m supposed to be. But regular readers of this rubbish will recall that that kind of thing is only to be expected when I’m doing something.

Back in here, I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. It was another really good lesson, but I had to keep my microphone on “mute” for most of the time because I didn’t want my classmates to be disturbed by my constant coughing. It’s really out of control, this is.

After the class ended, my faithful cleaner turned up and shooed me under the shower for a good scrub. At least I feel quite clean now, even if I wasn’t very enthusiastic about the affair today.

She’s also bought some of the medicine that Emily the Cute Consultant prescribed for me yesterday. And now I’m more convinced than ever that she doesn’t love me any more. According to the warning notice, "Severe side effects include an increased risk of suicide.". The lesser side effects include "sexual problems". So that would seem to indicate that a bout of indoor alligator-wrestling is off the menu for the foreseeable future, for various reasons.

The good news is that she managed to find some of the expensive kitchen knives that were on offer, ridiculously cheap with my fidelity tickets. Not the ones that were most important, though, but as the offer continues until the 11th of April, she’ll keep on looking.

Mind you, there was a professional knife-sharpening tool that was included as part of the offer. They had a few of those so she brought one home, and I’ll see if I can rekindle some life into some of the old ones, as a kind of stopgap.

After she left, I went to make my meringue topping. I didn’t have enough aquafaba in the freezer, so I opened a tin of chick peas for some more. That made me decide that I would have a noodle stir-fry for tea tonight, using up the chick peas that I had just drained.

Whipping up the meringue topping made it a much greater volume than the unwhipped liquid, so I’m glad that I used my big Pyrex dish. It only just about fitted all in. And it’s heavy too. I can’t carry it one-handed so I’ve been relying on my little trolley to push around.

Back in here, I was really exhausted after all of that and what with the bad night too, so it’s no surprise that I had a little … errr … relax on the chair. Except that there was nothing “little” about it. I was away with the fairies for ninety minutes, although not in any kind of situation that would excite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine.

When I was back in the current World, I finished off one of the radio programmes that I’d started last week. That’s now added to the mountain of stuff that needs to be dictated, and I’ve no idea when I’ll be able to do that.

As I mentioned earlier, tea tonight was a vegan noodle stir-fry — delicious as usual, followed by my wonderful vegan trifle.

So now, suitably refreshed and suitably clean, I’m off to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my vegan trifle … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me "what’s made of egg-whites and sugar, and swings from tree to tree?"
"I’ve no idea" I replied. "What is made of egg-whites and sugar, and swings from tree to tree?"
"A meringue-utan of course."

Monday 23rd March 2023 – GUESS WHO …

… at dialysis today spilled a whole beaker of hot coffee all over the keyboard of his nearly-new laptop?

Yes, I’m convinced that I’m going from bad to worse these days and I don’t know why, but everything seems to be taking so long, and I seem to be creating difficulty after difficulty for myself.

Like last night, for example. It could — and should — have been another early night, but when I’d finished my tea, it was already 21:45 and that leaves me very little time to do anything that I want.

Consequently, it was closer to 23:30 when I crawled into bed last night, and this is good for neither man nor beast.

Once in bed, though, it didn’t take long to go to sleep, and apart from one or two awakenings, more of which anon, I stayed asleep until about 06:15.

Not that I felt much like leaving my bed when the alarm went off. It was quite a struggle to drag myself into the bathroom and once again, it was horribly late when I went in for my hot drink and medication.

To make matters worse, the computer in here wouldn’t boot up. In the end, I had to go into the BIOS to check and, sure enough, the bootable disk had fallen to the bottom of the pile, so I had to promote it to the top and we could start again.

Once it was up and running correctly, I uploaded the dictaphone files to see what had gone on during the night.

A friend of mine had reached his 118th birthday. He was living in an old people’s home where it was customary once every couple of months to let them out for a week to go to some kind of rehabilitation and re-education class. What they did with him was that they combined two groups together so that he could have a couple of weeks away from the home doing different things because he’d been a very active man. They had rung us up on a Monday morning to say that he was being released for a week and did we have any calculations that he could do for recipes etc. We said that we’d sort a few out. But ten minutes later, he was at our door with his carer. Firstly, she was concerned about this process that we had of combining the two series, and secondly, there was some kind of delay in this week’s course starting, so could he come to take part in our group activities? We all went out and saw him in the corridor, and we were delighted to see him and began to chat to him — he was called George — and make some plans about some kind of activity. However, his tutor told us to slow down and take it easy rather than him letting all at once, but we weren’t interested in that. We had our own things to do and the race between one of the tenants from Rhyl and Cardiff Met, and their coach Ryan Valentine … fell asleep here …

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m actually asleep when I’m dictating, but what happens at times like this, I slowly drift off into silence and then you can hear me breathing deeply.

So if you want to hear what I’m like during … errr … four hours and a few minutes of deep sleep, don’t hesitate to ask.

But what this dream means, I’ve really no idea because, … "as usual" – ed … it makes no sense at all. And Ryan Jenkins is the manager of Cardiff Metropolitan – Ryan Valentine is the number two at Y Bala.

Did I dictate the dream … "well, sort of" – ed … about the kind of old man who was being looked after somewhere, and they had programmes and things for him. One day, I noticed that the programmes had returned to the shelf where they stay sometimes, so I wondered which ones they had ended up keeping and which ones had returned. However, they were all returned and the old guy had died or something. From there, I headed back to my van, which was where I was living at the time. There was some kind of squat or something like that, and there were quite a few people living there in all kinds of situations, including several people who were living in some kind of tent, I suppose. But instead of being on the ground, it was hanging by a rope from a tree, with the idea that it would keep out the damp in the cold weather. As you walked into this camp, the glow of the open fires make these kind-of tent things look extremely weird and surreal.

Wanting to dictate this dream led to a mad panic-stricken search of the bed for the dictaphone, which had fallen out of my hand when I fell asleep just now. And it was still running, four hours and a bit after I’d lost it. That’s a long time-gap to drop back into a previous dream.

There were some workmen coming into our office to paint and decorate it, so round about 17:30, I went out to buy a couple of things and some tile cement that I needed for home because these workmen were starting at 18:00 and they needed some kind of supervision. I went into Crewe town centre where I found a really cheap set of golf clubs so I bought them so that I could practise playing my golf. I wandered around BHS and Woolies but they didn’t have any tile cement. When I came to Halford’s up the road, that was just closed so I went back to the office, hoping that no-one would notice me because it was now slightly after 18:00. I noticed that the colours that they were using to paint were horrible, a kind of dark blue in the main office. When I went into my office, there was a guy there preparing everything and I noticed that one of the walls was a horrible dark green. I asked him, and he replied that it wasn’t he who had chosen the colours — the colours had been chosen by the Head Office. I went outside to begin to play with a car — an old MkIII Cortina that I’d found in a shed five or so years ago. After playing around with it, I managed to make it start so I crawled underneath it to see what it would need for the MoT. One thing that it would need was a new silencer, and the silencer was routed so that it expelled air through the hollow rear axle rather than the tailpipe. I thought that this is going to be complicated if I were to renew the exhaust. Then a young Chinese guy came along. He was with the workmen. He began to talk to me about the cars, and the subject moved on to girls as it usually did back in those days. He told me a few little secrets about his life and a girl or two. I thought to myself “why is he telling me all of this? This is something that I don’t need to know especially as he worked with this office-renovating firm and not in our business

No chance of going to Wooolies, BHS or Halfords in Crewe Town Centre these days. Those shops have long-gone and the whole town centre has been flattened by the Council to prepare it for the massive investment of cash and facilities once HS2 arrives in Crewe. It looks as if Crewe Town Centre will be a war zone for many years to come.

But much as I try to keep politics off these pages, Crewe’s decision to flatten the town centre probably came about as a result of Louise Haigh, Labour’s spokesperson on transport who “appeared” during a speech in March 2023 to promise to build phase 2 of HS2, sentiments echoed later by shadow Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds, who said in September 2023 that “We will build HS2 in full”.

And a Cortina in a dream? What a surprise! Just as surprising as it would be if I ever decided to play golf.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in and, just as quickly, breezed out again. She’s off on her week’s break this evening so I imagine that she wants to finish as quickly as possible.

After she had left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re dealing with the miscellanea — the little remote areas of the southern Balkans that haven’t as yet figured in the main part of the story. This is proving to be interesting as it highlights how several of these areas managed to skate nimbly in between the various major warring parties and preserve some of their independence.

Back in here, I reviewed this week’s radio programme and sent it off, and then once I’d done what else needed to be done, I revised my Welsh until it was time to prepare for dialysis.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic, and then I waited for the taxi. Bang on 13:00 he turned up, and once we’d picked up another passenger in Granville, we headed for Avranches.

For a change, I was early arriving, and in even more of a change, I was seen to quite quickly. And then I could press on and do some work.

That was, until I spilled the coffee all over the laptop. Luckily, I don’t take sugar, but even so, it was a mess. I managed to throw my sheet over it to absorb what it could, and after some love and attention from one of the nurses, it still manages to work, which is just as well. How long it stays working is anyone’s guess. I’ve left it switched on overnight in the hope that the heat generated will dry it out.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me, and she definitely doesn’t love me any more now. I told her what my nurse and my cleaner had said about the cough and the pain in the foot. She confirmed that there is nothing that can be done about the pain. It’s due to the breaking up of my nervous system, but she’ll do her best to put together a cocktail of painkillers that have no side-effects, and we’ll see where we go.

As for the cough, she’ll try to make an appointment for me to have a thoracic scan, followed by an appointment with a lung specialist. And not before time.

The taxi driver was waiting for me when I was unplugged, but the chaos on the roads meant that we weren’t home any earlier, which was a shame.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment, and after she left, I had the other half of my pizza. And I didn’t enjoy it at all. My taste buds really are changing again and it’s not very nice.

But right now, I’m off to bed, ready for my Welsh course tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about that old man … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once met an old man in a Greek cemetery who was there for a funeral.
"How old are you?" I asked
"A hundred and three" he replied
"Where do you know him from?" asked my Greek friend.
"I’ve no idea" I replied. "But I bet that he comes from Ikaria."

Friday 20th March 2026 – WHAT A MESS …

… my bedroom/office is in this evening.

You can’t move in here for computer bits, boxes, packaging, cables and all of that. It’s going to take hours to sort out all of it and make the place tidy enough that I can even crawl into bed.

Consequently, it won’t be anything like as early a night as last night was.

And “early” is certainly the word. Having abandoned tea at some ridiculously early time last night, I came back in here and dashed all the way through what needed to be done, with hardly a pause. That’s why I was in bed at 21:48, and I wish that it was as early as that every night.

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what happens when I try to have an early night, without me having to explain it in anything like any detail.

Searing pains in the foot, intense fits of coughing – they would be guaranteed to awaken me at any moment without the extra assurance of an early night. And so, from about 04:00 onwards, I was going through phases of sleeping, dozing and awakening all the way through to the alarm going off at 06:29.

And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … there have been very, very few times when I have felt less like leaving my stinking pit than this morning.

Eventually, though, I was in the bathroom for a good wash and then into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication, all the time wondering how long it will be before I’m back in bed. Totally ridiculous, seeing how early I was in bed last night.

Back in here, I managed to avoid the bed and instead, had a listen to the dictaphone notes to find out where I’d been during the night.

There were Royals under attack again last night. This time, it was the turn of Prince Michael to face the music when he asked someone in the crowd what they knew about a certain organisation. They replied that they were the people who sponsored the prize given by the Prince for some kind of good social activity. That took the Prince quite by surprise, as it was as well-known as it seemed to be. But with a lot of attention on the Royal Family in these recent times, it’s hardly surprising that a lot of these little facts are creeping out into the open when they were hidden before.

The Royal Family is still making the headlines these days, even if the Press has moved on from AFKAP – The Andrew Formerly Known As Prince. They now seem to be concentrating on others, and I really do wonder when someone else is suckered into the Epstein web. Not that it’s likely to be Prince Michael, of course. He keeps himself well out of the limelight and out of controversial situations.

I’d joined some kind of club on the internet about something or other, and although there was a list of about seven or eight people who were supposed to be officiating this site, I had my suspicions that it was being done by artificial intelligence, so what I proposed to do was to sit down and draw some 3D models of people that would represent this mysterious committee. I began to draw one, and I was giving some people a few lessons on the anatomical arrangements, the clothing, etc., but it was coming close to midday. I had some cheese with me, but I wanted some bread or something like that to go on it. Seeing as we were at the seaside, I went to a few of the stalls to see if they would sell me a bap or something, but they would only sell me a bap if it had something on it. In the end, I had to settle for a really basic kind of salad bap with just lettuce and tomato on it. It cost me thirty shillings, which I thought was enormously expensive, but I thought then that at least I’d have something to eat with my cheese at the moment.

Yesterday, I had a posting removed from a British newspaper comments section. My comment contained a word that is completely innocuous in British English but means something completely different in American English. It seems that their comments “moderator” is an artificial intelligence program from the USA because it was zapped almost immediately.

And it’s been an age since I’ve done anything with my 3D program, but the story that no-one would sell me an “empty” bread roll is one that occurred on several occasions in the distant past.

I was back in the Auvergne at Cécile’s place. I’d put an advert in the local paper about wanting to form a group. I had a couple of replies, and the first person to turn up was a female keyboard player. The second was a guy with a guitar. We began to talk about what we wanted to do and what we intended to do, and it seemed to gel a little. We didn’t have a drummer, but that can come later, I suppose. The guy explained that he was something of a novice, but that didn’t matter because we’d improve as we went on. When it came to late at night, these other two people decided that they would have to go, but they said that they would be back in the morning. They actually left together, so I thought that at least, those two were going to get on really well. Then, it must have been Cécile who mentioned something about tea. We hadn’t eaten, so she was going to make a great big bean salad, and she wondered if I’d help too. The way that she was giving out the instructions, it looked as if I would be going to be making all of it. Then I remembered that I’d bought some bean salad dressing from Canada and I couldn’t remember where I’d left it, so I thought that I’d run down to the shop on the seafront and see if they had any. But I’d forgotten how late it was, and, of course, all the shops along the seafront were closed, so I had to come back empty-handed. As I was passing the police station, I noticed that there was a woman standing outside with a baby in a pushchair. The woman was smoking a Turkish cigarette right in front of the baby. There were a couple of people remonstrating with her about this, but she didn’t seem to care at all.

Cécile used to play the guitar, and so when we were together, I did actually put an advert in one of these ecological papers to see if there were any drummers about. We did actually have a response too, but Cécile had to go off to the Ile d’Yeu to look after her mother, and so that put an end to that project before it had even started.

All of the shops being closed is another recurring story from the past, but I’m not sure where the cigarette episode fits in all of this.

And back at the seaside again? Hmmmm.

I was trying to organise a football team, so I’d sent out an open invitation for players to come to trials. One guy, who played in the centre of defence, had brought along his wife, who also played in central defence, and asked if she could have a trial too. I put her on the field alongside her husband at the start of the game. Although, like most trial games, it was very bitty and disjointed, she had a really good game and, in fact, performed better than her husband. Anyway, I kept them both on for the next round of trials.

When FC Pionsat St Hilaire was due to play against another team one Saturday night, the opposition turned up with only ten players. There was a girl with their supporters, and she offered to play for them. We couldn’t see why she shouldn’t, so she ended up on the field with them. And she was quite a useful player too.

But the third and fourth dreams recurred all the way through the night, coming back on several occasions. It’s been a good while since I’ve had a dream like that.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and was disappointed that I hadn’t found a doctor whom I could berate. And she made a bad move with her hand, right on the base of my foot exactly where the worst pain can be found. I was in agony after that.

After she left, I went to make breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’ve finished the Latin occupation of Greece, and we’re now dealing with the Ottomans. Surprisingly, life for the Greeks under the Ottomans is in some respects easier than under the Latins, so our author tells us. They are allowed freedom of religion, the power to appoint their own governors and all kinds of things like that, things that they were never allowed to do under the Latins.

And surprisingly, there is very little repression of the population.

Back in here, I revised for my Welsh and then went for the lesson. And for a change, it was one of the best lessons that I’ve had, and I wish that they would all go like this one.

After the lesson, my faithful cleaner turned up to do her stuff. She sat me down at the kitchen table, took all of the boxes off the shelf unit by the door and told me to sort them out.

It took an age, as you might expect because tidying up is not my forte, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. However, it’s almost all done now. There’s just one box of stuff that I wouldn’t know how to sort, and there’s a box that I brought in here, full of stuff that should, by rights, belong in the bedroom.

Surprisingly, even though I used more boxes than were there before, not only is the unit much tidier, there seems to be much less stuff on it. I’m not sure how that happened.

After she left, I came back in here and unwrapped my late birthday present.

As you might have guessed, it’s a new computer – or, at least, a reconditioned one.

The first thing that I did was to take the case off and installed the hard drives from the old one and uprated the RAM, but to my surprise, there’s no HDMI socket for the screen.

On the graphics card, there are four ports that look as if they might be USB ports but they are about twice the size. Some kind of HDMI adapter came with the computer and it plugs into the ports on the graphics card, but when I plug in the HDMI cable, there’s no screen display.

The screen is working fine because when I plug it back into the laptop, it works fine. So I’ll have to find a solution, and if not, I shall hope that the graphics card from the old computer will fit into this motherboard.

However, as you might expect, I have boxes, cables and computers all over the place and I can’t go to bed until I tidy them away somehow.

Tea tonight was chips, sausage and beans with cheese, followed by vegan cheesecake. Only a small tea tonight as I’m still off my food. It looks as if it’s going to be another period of semi-starvation right now.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. I’m going to tidy up and at some point, if I’m lucky, I might even be able to find some room on the bed for me.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the pain in my foot … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once told one of the doctors at dialysis about it.
"It hurts so much in several places, doctor" I said."What do you advise?"
"Well" he replied. "My advice is to stop going to those places."

Thursday 19th March 2026 – I AM BACK …

… on this “not eating” lark again. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me saying over the last few days that I was sure that my taste buds were changing again. Well, tonight, half of my tea (and a big half too) went into the bin before it had even made it onto the plate. I simply couldn’t face it.

Coupled with that, the pain in my foot, which had subsided for a period of about twelve hours, is now back. And back in spades too.

A lot of this might actually have something to do with last night. As usual these days, it was another late night – just after 23:30 when I finally crawled into bed. And once more, it took quite a while to go off to sleep.

It was another turbulent night as well. I can’t remember how many times I awoke, but I do know that when the alarm went off at 06:29, I was wide-awake and had been for about half an hour.

In the bathroom, when I eventually arrived there, I had a good wash and a shave, not that it would do me much good, and then went off to have my hot drink and medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

There was some kind of raid on the Football League headquarters by some group or other. They had managed to kick down the door and swarm in. Several clubs on the ground floor, mainly the lower-league ones, they simply didn’t try to reinforce any more doors and stay safe. Of course, all the big clubs fled upstairs, and some of the smaller ones were overwhelmed by the invaders. Gradually, they came higher up the stairs, picking off others. Someone who was so incensed by the activities of the bigger clubs in sitting there on the top floor, apparently safe, that he would shout up every time a smaller club was overwhelmed. He would shout up the name of the club in the hope that it would embarrass, but gradually, this dream became something like the play-off or something or other for the next round of the cup. There was a ball in defence that was kicked way out of the field halfway across Wales. Two players, one from Crewe Alexandra and one from a minor club in Crewe, set out to chase after it. After a long period, it was the club, the representative or whatever from the minor club in Crewe who came back with the ball, about ten yards ahead of the Crewe Alexandra player. This brought cheers from everyone because it meant that it would be this club that would be playing in the next round of the competition and not Crewe Alexandra.

This is another weird dream that seems to have no significance at all.Mind you, I’ve grown up with Crewe Alexandra being eliminated from the FA Cup by all kinds of part-time or amateur outfits, so nothing in this dream surprises me at all.

The idea of other football leagues raiding the FA headquarters and eliminating some clubs is certainly a novel idea, though. I can think of several candidates for elimination myself.

I was back in Canada. I was living there throughout the winter, and I needed to adapt myself to some Canadian winter clothes. The first thing that I really needed was a really heavy overcoat with a hood on it, so I went to look. I heard of someone part-exchanging one, so I went along to see. They had several in there so I chose the one with the front toggle fastening and hood, so this person proceeded to put it on and to demonstrate to the people who were watching. I had to tell him five or six times that that was the one that I wanted. In the end, even I became confused. He was intent on showing every last feature on this overcoat to the watchers before he’d give this coat to me. Eventually, I was given it, so I tried it on. It was a little too big for me but that was fine because I could wear several layers of clothing underneath.

This is rather wishful thinking, isn’t it? me being back in Canada. I need to resign myself to the fact that I’ll never be there again, with or without a duffel coat.

There had been a series of serious crimes committed in Georgia. The FBI had been on the trail and they’d obtained the identity of someone whom they thought was the perpetrator. One of the things that they knew about him was that he used to eat orange after orange after orange. They made a few enquiries and found that there was an old shack that was some kind of workers’ rest place from many, many years ago in an area of forest which used to be an orange grove in the past. I was sent to keep an eye on this place, which was very difficult because there wasn’t any cover. I saw whom I thought might have been the guy, who came out of and then disappeared back into this forest, so all of the police turned up on a bus. They set out to comb through this forest, piece by piece. Eventually, we found this building and I was one of the ones chosen to go through and search it. Some people were taking this search very casually, and others were being extremely cautious. I was one of those being extremely cautious in that I’d open a door really wide and wait for a minute before going in, and I was continually looking over my shoulder to make sure that somehow he hadn’t come behind me. We combed through the building but found nothing. There was a member of our party who was some kind of senior woman who was actually sitting on a window ledge with her back to the outside, sending messages on her ‘phone. I tried to explain to her that that was not the place to sit because he could come up from the outside and pull her out, but she didn’t seem to take too much attention, so I left her to it. After I was satisfied and everyone else was satisfied that there was no-one in this building, we went outside. Sure enough, he crept up to the building and pulled this woman out and held her as a kind of hostage. However, he was picked off by a sharpshooter who hit him in the shoulder and he was taken away. I headed back to town – I was given a lift by this woman. She was telling me about her work and her position, and everything that she had to do, which sounded extremely complicated. Because her partner, or other shift leader or whatever, was on holiday, she was having to work to be in charge of the two shifts. I thought that that must be extremely tiring.

This is another long, totally meaningless dream that relates to nothing at all that I know of. But can you imagine – a dangerous lunatic prowling around and someone sitting with their back to an open window?

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and reminded me to berate the doctors at dialysis about my state of mind. Not that I need reminding, of course, because it’s preying on my mind, and I wish that someone, somewhere would find a solution.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, the subject was the death of Francisco II of Lesbos, who, we are told, "on a journey through the island, while passing the night in one of the lofty towers then common in the archipelago, was stung by a scorpion. Alarmed at his cries, his attendants and nobles climbed up into his room in such numbers that the floor collapsed and he was killed on the spot"

His father, by the way, was killed when the building in which he was sitting collapsed during an earthquake, and Francesco II was the only survivor.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I attacked the radio programme that I’d started yesterday. By the time that I needed to go to make myself ready for dialysis, all of the songs had been chosen, remixed, re-edited, paired and segued, and I’d even written some of the notes.

One of my favourite taxi drivers came to pick me up and we had a lovely drive down to Avranches in the sun. And not long after I arrived, I was coupled up to a machine, which was nice. They even remembered to adjust the dry weight.

Generally speaking, they left me alone throughout the session – the doctor on duty never even came near me – and I was unplugged at something like a respectable hour.

The taxi driver was waiting to take me home too, but the enormous traffic jam spoiled any chance of being home at a reasonable hour.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment, and then I told you the sorry tale about tonight’s tea. At least my vegan cheesecake was nice.

So right now, I’m off to bed, hoping for a good sleep … "if the pain in his foot will let him" – ed … ready for my postponed Welsh class tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about being held hostage … "well, one of us has" – ed … a certain American president was being held hostage in a house at the side of the highway by a group of Iranians.
The American police were there, stopping all of the traffic.
"It’s the President" said a policeman. "They are holding the President in that house there, and they say that if they don’t receive ten million dollars by tonight, they’ll douse him in gasoline and set him alight. We’re taking a collection"
"How much are people giving?" asked a motorist
"The average so far is about two litres each."

Tuesday 17th March 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… twenty-four hours I have had. It has been without doubt one of the worst twenty-four hours of my life, and I don’t ever want to go through another period quite like it ever again, although I know that I probably shall.

You might think that it all started very well, with actually being in bed … "for once" – ed … at 21:48, and that won’t ever happen again unless I’m ill, but what happened is that I was in such misery with the constant coughing fits and the electric shocks running though the sole of my right foot that I scrambled through everything as quickly as I possibly could.

Once in bed, though, it was a constant battle all the way through the night of falling asleep and then being awoken by either a coughing fit or a stabbing pain. It was absolutely awful.

When the alarm went off, I’d already been awake for about fifteen minutes, but even so, I was in no state to haul myself out of bed, so tired was I. I missed the second alarm and in the end, it was rather late when I finally managed to crawl into the bathroom.

After a wash, I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication, and all the time I was thinking “I wonder how long before I find myself back in bed again” – that is, if the coughing and the pain in the foot would let me.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised to find so much on there.

One of the Greek islands is in danger of being overrun by the Turks, but the Greeks were trying to make some kind of heroic defence out of it. They had a leader who was in charge of their army on his visit to Kyiv in 1903, but I wasn’t particularly impressed by him, every 25th December, I think. He was the person who wore a stained tattoo and was danger, so he had quite a cult following. One day, while there were the two operations going on, the Turks were searching for him, he came to stay at my lodgings in Canterbury for … fell asleep here …

Going back to the dream about the Greek hero, when they were hot on his pursuit, they were marvelling at how small the windows were in his house etc., because it showed that he wasn’t very big himself, yet he managed to lead the Greeks on all kinds of standard adventures in the fourteenth century against the Ottomans, all kinds of hit-and-run adventures until the latter part of the thirteenth century and his name of Letterman or whatever it was, was quite clearly due to his ability in handling his fleet of boats

The Greeks kept up a resistance until the 1450s, when they were finally all overwhelmed by the Ottomans. The Ottomans made some kind of saint out of it, but the Greeks wanted to convert a cave into somewhere holy, called the Twelve something-or-other, but the Ottomans turned down their request to make monuments to any of their soldiers.

These first three need no explanation. They clearly relate to the book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller that I’ve been reading quite recently. It’s obviously getting to me, all of this.

There was some strange dream about someone who had bought a Volkswagen LT flatbed, and on top of the flatbed he’d put a wooden pickup body. There was some complication about the insurance, so he went off to his insurance broker and his broker rang up their office. The guy who was answering was totally surprised and wondered why he hadn’t taken off the flatbed and bolted the pickup body straight to the chassis. That would have been a much easier way of going about it. But he recommended that the guy take the vehicle to a vehicle inspection site, and if they pass it as safe, then there would be no problems with it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I worked for two years in an insurance company in Chester after leaving school. I worked in the section dealing with commercial garage insurance, and so I’m quite used to dealing with strange quotations for unusual vehicles and equipment. However, I can’t recall anything like this.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual after her week’s break, and I’m afraid that I horrified her by talking about suicide. I was serious too, but that was the state in which I was this morning – in total and complete agony – and I couldn’t see a solution. You’ve no idea of the amount of pain in which I was and the discomfort with not having had a decent sleep.

She urged me to talk to them at Avranches and to insist that they do something. I’ve tried all of that, of course, and so I don’t think that doing it again will help all that much, but we can try, I suppose.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re discussing the events on the island of Lesbos, and I do have to say that these Lesbians seem to be everywhere. But Lesbos is another one of these islands where the constant bickering between the Genoese, the Venetians and every other occidental power leave the door wide-open for the Turks to creep in.

Back in here, I had things to do. And then I was able to carry on with the radio programme that I’d started over the weekend. Trying to assemble a concert out of a recording on a fire-damaged and smoke-covered tape is not an easy task, especially when there are holes in it everywhere, but I’ve done the best that I can.

The quality is quite poor, and ordinarily I wouldn’t broadcast anything as bad as this, but its value is in its rarity. It’s never been played on air before, and it’s a recording of a landmark event that led to a very famous rock song being written about it, so it’s worth listening to just for that.

My faithful cleaner turned up as usual to do her stuff, and she shooed me under the shower as usual. And for the first time in a long, long while, I actually felt like a human being afterwards.

After the shower, we had a good chat, as we sometimes do. The good news is that there are some expensive kitchen knives on offer in the local supermarket, with a massive reduction if you have so many vouchers. My kitchen knives are rubbish after nine years of constant use so I need to replace them, and my cleaner has a whole raft of vouchers that she isn’t going to use.

So next time she passes the supermarket … I just hope that they have some left.

After she left, I finished off that radio programme and the notes, which are now ready for dictation. And then, dear reader, I had a little … errr … relax.

While I’d been asleep during the late afternoon, my assistant and I had detained someone for questioning about a pretty innocuous incident, and we’d brought him to my office. I’d asked him several quite simple questions, but to my surprise, he’d refused to answer, even after I’d asked him several times. Consequently, after an hour or so, and as I had better things to do, I decided to leave him. My assistant had plenty of paperwork to do, mostly about other matters, so I left her in my office to supervise him, although not to talk to him, as she did her paperwork. Every now and again, I’d go back into my office for different reasons and also to check up on whether he was willing to answer, but he wasn’t so I ignored him each time. When it came round to 16:00, I typed out a formal order of detention, which was crazy when you consider what a simple matter it was, and took it into my office, where I pinned it up on the wall. I’d explained previously to my assistant to let me know when she wanted to leave to go home so that we could take our interviewee down to the cells for the night. However, she showed no signs of wanting to leave, looking for all kinds of jobs to do, even checking that the recycling system for the bins was working efficiently. Eventually, it came up to my usual time for going home, my assistant still showed no sign of wanting to leave, and so I was obliged to stay on.

This is yet another dream that relates to absolutely nothing at all. I wonder what was going through my head while I was dreaming this.

For almost two hours, I was away with the fairies … "although not in any way that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine" – ed … but when I awoke, I was feeling so much better, which was good news.

Before tea, there was enough time to choose some music, from which I’ll select several for the following radio programme. I edited and remixed it all and even chose four of the tracks to include, which I paired and segued. I’ll do the rest tomorrow and write all the notes.

And no Welsh class today? No, our teacher has gone to a funeral.

Tea tonight was a lasagna from out of the freezer with vegetables in a cheese sauce, followed by another slice of my vegan cheesecake. And I didn’t enjoy the lasagna as much as I was hoping to. I think that my taste buds are changing yet again.

So right now, I’m off to bed, with a busy day ahead of me. I hope that I can have a good night’s sleep tonight, because I need it.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about feeling like a human being … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember fifty or so years ago when I played in a rock band and we were performing in a pub in Runcorn.
The guitarist – singer whom we had began to sing "Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child …"
And a voice from out in front shouted "well, you’re not going to find a motherless child in here tonight, dear!"

Saturday 14th March 2026 – MY VEGAN CHEESECAKE …

… is magnificent!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I posted on here a few days ago about the dessert that I should make once my birthday cake is finished. And while most of the suggestions that I received were totally unprintable in a family-orientated blog, there wasn’t a one that made any suggestions about making a vegan dessert.

Consequently, I had to put on my thinking cap and try to invent something.

It’s a good job that I didn’t have my thinking cap on last night, because I probably would have ended up with even less sleep than I actually had. Despite pushing on as best as I could and trying all I could to avoid distractions, it was 23:30 exactly when I crawled into bed.

As usual, I managed to go off to sleep quite quickly, but once again, it wasn’t for long. At 04:20, I was wide awake again, awoken by a stabbing pain in the foot and a desperate fit of coughing.

An hour later, I was still wide awake, but I must have gone to sleep at some point because the alarm at 06:29 awoke me from a really deep slumber.

When the alarm went off, I was round at my father’s. He had an old Ford Transit van and had completely emptied it. He was going through, scraping all the mud out of the body panels and recesses because he was going to weld a new floor into it. When I had a look, I thought to myself that it’s not before time that he’s doing this. He was finding all sorts of stuff. Then he was talking about a transport company called Fitzgerald’s – apparently, I’d met them once at some kind of party but I didn’t remember. He said that Fitzgerald had told him that the company was going under. My father said that he wasn’t surprised because they were very expensive and, of course, freight has become a cutthroat industry these days. He poured a cup of coffee for me, which I drank, but it tasted weird. Then he asked me if I would make another one, so I went to wash the pan in which he’d boiled the water, and there were all the remains of boiled tomatoes in it. I thought “no wonder the coffee had tasted awful” so I went to wash it in the swimming pool there. There was a girl there who might have been Roxanne so I just picked her up and threw her into the pool and then tried to wash the pan. However, the pan was caught around the tap, and the handle broke off. I thought that this was a catastrophe. I played “peek-a-boo” with this little girl for a minute, she diving her head under the water and me ducking my head down so that I could see her under the water through the glass. Then my father came along and said to the little girl, “Eric must have put a lot of effort into throwing you into that swimming pool. I could see him straining every muscle”.

In the past, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, our family has owned all kinds of disreputable motor vehicles, many of which wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a public highway today and probably shouldn’t have been back in those days either.

However, my father was a motor mechanic by profession and in my earnest desire to out-do him, I learnt quite quickly by experience, and I also took night school courses in welding, paint spraying and lathe operation. Between us, we could keep almost anything on the road and running, although the hydraulic tappets on that Vanden Plas 4.0 with the Rolls-Royce engine had us beat for a long, long time.

When Laurence, Roxanne and I used to go to Spain to visit Roxanne’s grandfather, I used to throw Roxanne into the swimming pool on regular occasions, especially when she wasn’t expecting it. She used to squeal but she loved every minute of it.

As for making coffee with water in a dirty pan, that wouldn’t surprise me at all.

As usual, it took a few minutes for me to struggle to my feet, and then I staggered off to the bathroom for a good wash. There were also the undies to wash. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s important for me to keep on top of the washing of clothes like that.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and then took my medication. And then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

I was doing something with several sheets of glass last night, picking them up off different piles, each pile that represented a country in the EU. I was washing one of them so that I could build some kind of fortress somewhere on behalf of each of the countries, but that’s all that I remember of this.

A fort made of glass wouldn’t be of much use now, would it? It makes me wish that I could remember the rest of this dream so that I could find out what happened.

Later on, I was watching a football match involving Pionsat. Twice, from corner kicks down in the far left-hand corner, the Pionsat winger kicked the ball far too hard and sent it completely out of play on the full on the other side of the pitch. I thought that Pionsat couldn’t afford to waste all of these little moments that they have, because they aren’t a very good side and they need all the breaks they can get. A high ball into the penalty area can cause enough confusion to enable them to sneak a goal every now and again, particularly when they have all the players running in as the ball is kicked. But no, both of them went way out of play on the full without bouncing.

This is one thing that bugs me in a lot of football matches these days. The quality of freekicks and corners is pretty abysmal. As I said during the dream, a high ball right into the centre of the goalmouth can cause chaos and panic, and every now and again, something will come out of it.

But most clubs these days seem to want to mess about with the ball in all kinds of fancy tricks, most of which usually lead to them losing possession.

However, dear reader, read on ….

The nurse turned up as usual, just as I was in the middle of a really interesting chat with a couple of friends. I had to go off instead to have him see to my feet.

And today, he managed to avoid touching my really bad right foot. Instead, he dropped the heavy stool right onto it, and I was in agony for hours.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re reading about how the Marquisate of Boudonitza held out desperately against the Ottomans for many years until 1414, when the Sultan Mohamed I finally captured it. Now, we’ve moved on to discuss Ithaca, the legendary home of Odysseus, if we are to believe the Ancient Greek authors.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I made a start on editing some radio notes that I’d dictated a while back.

After a while, I had to stop because there was football on the internet – Y Fflint v Y Bala.

This was a game that Y Bala had to win if they were to have any chance whatever of avoiding relegation, and so they went at it hammer and tongs. Y Fflint could also have done with a win to haul themselves further away from the relegation zone, but for some reason, Y Bala’s aggressive start to the game knocked Y Fflint out of its stride.

Y Bala had the ball in the back of the net but it was ruled out for an offside, something that was disputed by many people in Cae y Castell this afternoon. Y Fflint took the lead – from a high ball floated in from a corner – but Y Bala equalised, from a high ball in from the wing.

So we had two poor teams rampaging at each other from one end to the other throughout the whole ninety minutes and playing the game as it ought to be played, in my opinion.

But a 1-1 draw? Leaving aside the “offside” goal, in the immediate build-up to Y Bala’s goal, I saw a handball by Y Bala’s Australian striker Jacob Tarasenko, and I would have awarded a penalty to Y Fflint for a blatant shirt-tugging that prevented a Fflint player from reaching a ball in the penalty area.

However that wasn’t all. Another thing that really gets my goat is this modern fascination of “playing it out from the back”, which has led to more disasters and calamities than games that it has won.

But not Joel Torrance in the Bala goal. The former Salford City keeper just kicked the ball as far upfield as he could, and that caused continual panic and chaos to the Fflint defence throughout the game. Why more teams don’t do this, especially against TNS whose central defence is … errr … somewhat “pedestrian” I really don’t know.

Y Fflint’s manager, Lee Fowler, was very dismissive of the game, but I for one quite enjoyed it.

After the football, I went into the kitchen to make my cheesecake.

This was a recipe that I saw in a magazine, and when I looked at it, I reckoned that I could transform it into a vegan recipe with no problems at all, especially as I now have a regular supply of aquafaba, now that I know that it can be frozen.

And it worked too – and in spades. When I sampled some for pudding later, it was absolutely delicious and I’ll make some more like that too.

One thing that I needed was some soya yoghurt, but my faithful cleaner couldn’t find any yesterday. However, just as I’d put it into the oven, she came in waving a pack of six around.

While I was at it, I made some more croissants too. And these also worked in spades. They didn’t have any of the really cheap flaky pastry, so this is the next price up – and it seems to make all the difference.

There was still an hour or so for tea so I finished off editing the radio programme, preparing the two halves, choosing the joining track and preparing it, and then writing the notes.

Tea tonight was falafel with vegan salad and baked potato with cheese, followed by cheesecake. And I’m still not enjoying the first course as much as I used to just recently. I think that my appetite might be changing again.

But not now, because I’m off to bed, ready for my important Sunday lie-in, if the nurse doesn’t drop anything else on my foot while I’m in bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about cars … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of an American who was in a bar in Ireland doing his usual American stunt of “showing off”.
"Your farms are so small and pathetic" he said. "Why, back in Texas, I could get into my car and at the end of three days’ driving I still wouldn’t have reached the boundary of my land."
"I know exactly how you feel there." replied a local at the end of the bar.
"You do?" exclaimed the American, incredulously.
"Oh yes" replied the local. "I used to have a car like that myself."

Friday 13th March 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was, last night.

And it started off quite well too. Without very much to say about the day, I’d finished the notes by about 21:50, and by 22:10, I was in bed. Well before my curfew time of 22:30, and it’s been a long time since that happened, hasn’t it?

However, regular readers of this rubbish will recall what usually happens when I go to bed early, without me having to remind them. And it was at 04:10 too.

This time, though, it was something different that awoke me. First of all, it was a coughing fit of the like that I had not had before, and at the same time, there was the stabbing pain in my foot. Except that this time, it was like an electrical discharge going all the way down from the rear of the instep to the tip of the little toe.

One of those every minute or so, and I was having the worst amount of pain that I’d had since that muscular biopsy. But at least the muscular biopsy pain only endured for a minute or two. This electrical discharge was a sudden, sharp pain that lasted about three or four seconds but was continuous every few minutes.

There was no possibility of going to sleep and no possibility of leaving the bed, so I lay there and festered until 06:29 when the alarm went off. After a minute or two, I managed to haul myself to a sitting position in the bed, and then we had the usual struggle to leave the bed.

When the alarm went off, though, we were in Pionsat. It was 16:00, school chucking-out time. There was quite a lot of traffic coming round a corner and I remember saying to whoever I was with that this really isn’t the time to be in Pionsat right now. But again, that’s all that I remember of that.

This dream reminds me of yesterday, in Carolles, where we went to pick up that other passenger, and then an incident in St Jean le Thomas when we were trying to negotiate the narrow streets of the town.

In the bathroom, I had a good scrub and then went into the kitchen for the hot drink and medication. And guess who forgot that he’s now moved the medication into a drawer in the kitchen?

Back in here, I transcribed the rest of the dictaphone notes from the night.

Last night, it was one of the big battles between the Crusaders and the heathens, but this time it was near Constantinople towards the end of the Byzantine government’s rule. The Franks were badly defeated and their only hope was to send out for young kids to carry on the fight in the hope that they could do something to stop the Muslim hordes advancing and overwhelming the country, but that looked to be a really most unlikely situation.

This, of course, relates to ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT, the book that I’m reading at the moment, of course.

I was at grammar school, and towards the end of the previous year, I’d been talking to a girl who was in the first year – we’d been talking over the internet or over the ‘phone etc. We were back at school for the next year, and I rang her up again to ask her how things were. She told me that she’d finally managed to change her history teacher or geography teacher. She hoped that whoever she had was much nicer, and she told some rather lurid tales about the previous one. So I laughed and said “yes, you’ve certainly changed him. We have him this year, to which she laughed. We carried on chatting on the ‘phone for a while, and then I had to go. Then, there was something happening and everyone found themselves confined to their rooms. I went and had a wash and clean-up, and then rang up this girl and told her what had happened and why didn’t she come along to my room instead of hers and have a chat? I’m sure that the people who share with me wouldn’t object. I came out of the bathroom carrying a dirty dish and was immediately given a lecture about “no dirty dishes allowed in the rooms”, which I thought was rather strange, so I put the dish down and went into the room. There was a girl there whom I didn’t recognise. She was an enormous girl, and it wasn’t until she began to speak that I realised that this was the girl to whom I’d been speaking on the ‘phone so often.

As if we had the internet when I was at school. And mobile ‘phones.

This story about an “oversized” person is interesting too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall from things that I have said in the past that I keep a pretty close eye on my weight, and so should other people, I reckon. I’m not into this “big is beautiful” idea when it comes to people.

And at our school, we didn’t have many lurid tales to tell about the teachers at our grammar school, except for one who ended up with a two-year prison sentence, although there could quite easily have been a few similar. Mind you, we used to make up quite a few, and they quickly gained currency amongst the more gullible pupils.

The nurse turned up as usual, so I told him about my bad night and the agony that I was suffering with my foot. I warned him to be very careful, so didn’t he go and put his hand right on it?

After I’d come back down from the ceiling, he finished sorting out my legs and feet, and then he cleared off on his rounds. I could go about making my breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

We’re still in the Ionian Islands today, and it seems that, in Corfu at least, the locals did experience some kind of sanity and better judgement and managed to keep themselves out of the hands of the Ottomans. However, for a period, they did fall into the hands of the French, then the British, and later on, the Italians.

Back in here, I was about to start work when I had a visitor. The electrician sent by the estate agency came to inspect my telephone wiring. I sent a message to my faithful cleaner to invite her down to see him in action to find out what’s going on.

He spent ages here searching for the telephone cabling and eventually found it, after much searching, behind the wall in the wardrobe cupboard. He didn’t have with him all of the equipment that he needed, so he promised to return later.

After he left, I finished off the notes for the radio programme that I’d begun the other day, and they are now ready for dictation.

There was a pause next for a disgusting drink, and then my cleaner came down again, this time to do her stuff. We were interrupted by the return of the electrician, who managed to thread a tracing cable through part of the conduit, and now he reckons that there should be no problem for the fibre-optic people to install the cable.

In the middle of all that, there was another interruption. The postie came by with a big parcel for me. I’ve ordered some new waste bins, the sort that slide out like a drawer, because I’m struggling with the ordinary type of waste bin with the swinging top. I really need two hands for that type of bin, but I need one to hold myself upright.

As well as that, there’s a new computer hard drive. That’s for my late birthday present, which arrives next week, with a bit of luck, God’s help and a bobby.

After a brief … errr … relax, which is hardly surprising given the bad night that I had, I sorted out the plans for the next two radio programmes that I’ll be preparing next week. And for one of them, I’ve already chosen the music and written the notes, and I’m right now in the throes of editing the music that I need.

For the other programme, I’ve made a list of the songs from which I’ll be choosing those that will be included in the programme.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with chips and salad, followed by the last of the birthday cake and some more home-made ice cream. I didn’t enjoy the salad and chips as much as I would have liked, though. Having only recently recovered my taste buds, I don’t want to start losing them again so soon. It makes me wonder what on earth is going on with my body.

But I’ll worry about all that tomorrow. Right now, I’m off to bed, to sleep if the agonising pain in my foot and these severe coughing fits let me. I honestly can’t take much more of these.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the teachers at my old grammar school … "well, one of us has" – ed … on one occasion, following a series of arguments in our history class, it all came round to the teacher shouting, in an exasperated voice, "if anyone believes or thinks that he or she is stupid, stand up!"
So, of course, I stood up.
"Do you really believe or think that you’re stupid?" she shouted
"Not really, miss" I replied "but I felt really sorry for you, standing there all on your own like that."

Thursday 12th March 2026 – TONIGHT’S TEA …

… wasn’t as nice as some have been just recently. And I’ve no idea why that might be, because it’s a tea to which I’ve been looking forward for over a week.

Something else to which I’ve been looking forward since Monday morning was a good night’s sleep, but one again, I was thwarted in my ambitions.

Last night’s tea, nice as it was, took so long to prepare, eat and clean up that I ended up running hours late. In fact, I didn’t go to bed until about 23:45 and I need much more beauty sleep than that, especially as I’d been awake so early in the morning.

To go from bad to worse, it was another turbulent night and I felt as if I hadn’t gone to sleep at all. When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was dead to the World and it took me an age to summon up the energy and the courage to head for the bathroom.

Even though Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more, I still had a shave. I might as well go through the motions, even if I don’t feel like it and they are of no earthly purpose.

In the kitchen, I made my hot lemon, ginger and honey drink to go with my medication and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had gone on during the night. And that was a disappointment too.

It was round about 03:30 when I definitely heard someone shout “aren’t you getting up yet?”. I wondered what time it was, and looked at the clock. It was 03:30 so I don’t know who it was who had awoken me.

When I looked at the timestamp of the soundfile, it showed 03:31, so this dream obviously had some basis in fact somewhere. But that’s a few times now when I’ve either heard a phantom alarm or heard someone shout out during a dream.

There was also something about the bandage and plasters after dialysis but I can’t remember too much about that. In fact, I can’t remember anything really other than the bandage and the plasters.

And this kind of dream makes me wish that there was much more to it than that which I recorded. Or else, it’s my subconscious stopping me from going too far into “what happened next”.

The nurse came along to sort out my legs and feet, and today he remembered to put the things back into the drawer and to close it. I’m glad about that because I shall rapidly lose patience if he doesn’t tidy up after himself. It’s bad enough that I don’t.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.

Today, we’re reviewing the position in the Ionian Islands. At the moment, the Venetians are clinging on to a precarious foothold as the Ottomans slowly surround them and hem them in. We’ve already had a few important raids, and I suspect that there are many more to come.

Back in here, I had a few things to do, and then I turned my attention to the radio programme that I started yesterday. All of the music is now paired and segued, and quite a lot of the notes have been written. I can finish this off tomorrow morning, provided that my visitor doesn’t come too early.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and then I had to wait for my taxi to arrive.

And I was in luck. It was my favourite taxi driver and we had a lovely chat all the way down the coast to Carolles to pick up someone else and then another drive down the coast to Avranches.

Once again, I was early. It was 13:40 when I arrived, but it made no difference because I wasn’t connected up until 14:50. And then, they set the dry weight to what it had been two weeks ago and so there was almost nothing to take out. And they forgot the booster for the blood pressure. I don’t know what’s the matter with them these days.

But once I was connected, they left me pretty much alone. Even Emilie the Cute Consultant, who was the duty doctor today, kept to the far end of the room, well away from my clutches.

At least they didn’t hang around too long to unplug me, but it was still 18:50 when I climbed into the taxi to come home.

When I arrived here, I had to be dropped off at the rear of the building as there was a howling gale blowing up outside. My faithful cleaner helped me in, and believe me, I was glad to be home.

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and ratatouille, which I didn’t enjoy as much as I thought it might. The birthday cake and home-made ice cream were nice, though, but tomorrow will see the last slice of that disappear.

And right now, I’m going to disappear too because I’m off to bed. And to sleep, if the stabbing pain all down my foot will let me. Right now, it’s the worst that I’ve ever known.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my strange dream … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of an old Tommy Cooper story.
"I once knew a man who dreamed that he was awake" he said.
"And what happened?" asked someone in the audience
"Well, when he woke up, he was!"

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: cleaner

Friday 3rd April 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

Thursday 2nd April 2026 – YET ANOTHER HORRIBLE …

Tuesday 31st March 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Monday 30th March 2026 – THE GOOD NEWS …

Friday 27th March 2026 – AND SO, AFTER …

Thursday 26th March 2026 – HERE I ALL AM …

Wednesday 25th March 2025 – IT HAS BEEN …

Tuesday 24th March 2026 – MY VEGAN TRIFLE …

Monday 23rd March 2023 – GUESS WHO …

Friday 20th March 2026 – WHAT A MESS …

Thursday 19th March 2026 – I AM BACK …

Tuesday 17th March 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Saturday 14th March 2026 – MY VEGAN CHEESECAKE …

Friday 13th March 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Thursday 12th March 2026 – TONIGHT’S TEA …