Tuesday 2nd December 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s pointless going to bed early, because all that it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

Actually, you have no idea just how tired I was last night. I fell asleep twice … "or was it three times?" – ed … while I was typing out my notes, and in the end I gave up. I left undone a lot of things that I shouldn’t have left undone, and round about 22:20 I crawled into bed.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, and there I stayed until about … errr … 04:20 when I awoke. I was able at that point to go back to sleep, but when I awoke the next time at 05:13, that was that. By 06:00, I was in the bathroom having a wash.

After the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink and my medication, I came back in here to finish off what I should have finished off last night, like take the stats and back up the computer.

Then it was time to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was back in my office again and it was the final day so I was preparing to retire. I was slowly going through my things, slowly tidying up. But at one point, I was actually in somewhere else trying to clear the floor of all kinds of papers and everything. It was all little notes and stuff that I’d written years ago and it all went into the bin. I couldn’t believe how tidy I’d made the place. I even found an assignment from one of my University courses and when I had a look at it, I found that although it had received a good mark, the page layout and format of the document that I’d sent was awful, and I wondered how on earth I’d managed to miss this when I’d been preparing it. Then I was back in my office and going through my desk. There were tons of stuff, and I couldn’t work out what I needed to take and what I needed to leave behind. People were asking me what I intended to do. I replied that I had a deckchair, a nice garden and two nice cats. I’ll just sit out and enjoy the summer. Two of us, right at that moment, said that I’d picked the best time of the year to leave. Then the boss came round and asked me if I was nearly ready to go. I replied that I was still sorting out my stuff. She said something like “don’t take the toaster” which was the office toaster that was on my desk. I replied “it’s still on my desk, isn’t it?” because I thought that it was a really offensive thing to say. Then I suddenly realised that it was Friday so I rang up Nerina at her place and asked “shouldn’t we be going swimming tonight after work? I haven’t brought anything to wear”. She replied “I’ll get something off one of my brothers, some shorts or something” but I wasn’t too keen on the idea. Then she told me about this plastic underwear that you could buy. I turned up my nose at that. She tried to persuade me but I wasn’t in the mood to be persuaded. In the end, I thought that I’d probably just go home and make some tea for when Nerina comes home. That’s going to be the best solution but she was still trying to persuade me to wear either her brother’s shorts or some of this plastic underwear.

So having spent all those years during the night reaching the final few days at work but never actually finishing, here I am finally about to cross the threshold. That’s twice in a week or two that I’ve done that, after all of these years.

But whatever this is about plastic underwear? I really don’t know. And as if I really would pinch the office toaster … "perish the thought" – ed …

The nurse turned up, his usual cheerful self (at least, these days) and we had a little chat as he sorted out my legs. He’s all inclined not to come on Sundays to give me even more of a rest and relax, but I’m not quite at that stage yet – although if I fall asleep once more while I’m typing these notes, as I just did five minutes ago, I’ll think again.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

Not that I managed to go very far today, though. I was side-tracked … "again" – ed … looking for the one of the many towns named Manton that contains some significant Roman remains, and ended up going on a guided tour of Roman villas in England – abandoned, or burnt, or destroyed, or buried.

You’ve no idea just how many there are altogether. They even came across one when they were digging a driveway into the Council offices in Bromley.

After breakfast, I came in here to revise my Welsh and then I went to the lesson. It started off quite well, but it all went pear-shaped when we had a spontaneous test on a subject that had been covered by the class while I was at chemotherapy. That was an embarrassment.

However, I bravely stuck it out until the end of the lesson, but I was glad that it was over.

My faithful cleaner came around later, as usual, and organised the shower for me. And so now, I’m a nice, clean boy again. I can’t wait, though, to have the time to order the handrails for the shower so that I can shower on my own and have more than one per week.

After the shower and I’d dried myself off, the next task was to install the strings of Christmas lights in the windows.

Last year, I was the only person in this whole area who had some pretty coloured lights in the window. And even though I’m not a believer in Christmas or anything like that, it’s still nice to bring some joy and gaiety into a depressing period of the year and it’s a shame that other people don’t make any kind of effort at all.

Consequently, my faithful cleaner (under my supervision) put up my lights in both the windows, and now it looks as if at least one person in the area is celebrating Christmas instead of the whole area being so miserable about it. At some point, I’ll even organise my Christmas tree.

After my cleaner left, I sorted out the rest of the music that I need for my next radio programme, and I’ll organise that over the rest of the week. And won’t it be nice to have a couple of days when I’m going nowhere, so that I can press on.

Tea tonight was mashed potatoes, veg and vegan sausage, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. Only small portions, but I managed to eat it all tonight. It’s a meal with foods that are full of carbohydrates and fats so while it’s not a particularly healthy meal, it’s full of energy and proteins so that should help to keep me going while this lack of appetite persists.

And so, on that point, I’m going to be and see how I’ll get on tonight. I could do with another good sleep but, as usual, that’s not particularly likely. We shall see.

But seeing as we have been talking about sticking it out … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a story that I heard when I was in the High Arctic about two nudists who went on a camping holiday in the north of Greenland.
Freezing and shivering to death inside their tent, they were wondering how long they could stick it out before they ended up being frost-bitten.

Monday 1st December 2025 – THERE’S A HOWLING …

… gale blowing outside the building right now. So much so that in fact, coming home from dialysis this evening, I had to come into the building through the back door. It would have been impossible for me to have walked the twenty yards from the street down to the front door.

It’s been blowing up over the last twenty-four hours actually. The wind started to freshen yesterday late evening when I was typing up my notes before I went to bed.

Mind you, it was quite late when I finally retired, having not eaten until late and, as usual these days, being wracked with indiscipline and all of that as I tried to finish off everything that needed finishing. It was actually close to midnight, and I wouldn’t like to speculate which side of midnight it was.

Once in bed though, I remember nothing at all until the alarm went off at 06:29. It was such a deep sleep that I regretted not having gone to bed earlier.

Eventually, I managed to find the energy to leave the bed and stagger off into the bathroom for a good wash, and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis.

In the kitchen, I made myself a drink of hot lemon, ginger and honey to wash down my medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. It was Crewe Carnival, so everyone was lining the streets to watch the parade. I went to take up a position in Mill Street. I could see the carnival on Nantwich Road but it didn’t turn in to Mill Street – it turned into Edleston Road instead. I had to run through one of the side streets onto a balcony overlooking Edleston Road where I could see things passing below. I noticed one or two people, and someone had a big coiled snake that he was carrying – a toy one. I suddenly recognised it as “Hissing Sid”, a snake that I used to keep as a mascot. I shouted down, and the fellow came up and handed it to me. I said something along the lines of “he’s grown somewhat since I last had him”. He replied “yes, we’ve let a piece of hosepipe into the middle”. So possession passed and everyone wandered away. I climbed back into my car, and they were talking on the two-way radio about a back road that I knew over the hills, saying how difficult it was for an ordinary car to pass. I said “I’ve been over those hills three times today already”. They asked me in what car, so I replied “The Ranger”. They answered “that’s a different matter. Anyway, we’ll want you in a few minutes for a job”. So I drove down to the start of these hills ready to drive over and come out on the other side on Nantwich Road near Wells Green, but the wooden gates were locked so I had to find the key for it. As I was looking for the key, a car came round the corner, an old Citroën DS estate with an old woman driving it. She turned into the entry, scraped all the way down my car, didn’t stop, drove through, broke the gates and carried on. I decided to go on foot so I walked over to pick up my crutches, and realised that I was walking without my crutches. I thought “it’s a long way over these hills in the sandy road. If my legs give out again, I won’t make it at all”. I went back to the car, wondering just when they were going to call me up to tell me about this job for which I’m needed.

Now, this is a road over which we have travelled on many, many occasions during the night but surprisingly, only the first or second time that we’ve approached it from this direction. It’s almost always been from the other end.

And I did have a “Hissing Sid” too. He was one of those snake-type draught excluders that everyone was making to keep the draughts from coming under the door, but mine was brown, not green. Apart from that, I’ve no idea if Crewe Carnival is still going, and when it did, it had never appeared at the south side of the town. The Citroën is a mystery too.

Someone came to see me to tell me that there was some work going, abroad. It meant that we had to take a ‘plane to fly there. The ‘plane was leaving at 15:15. I had a look, and that gave me two hours to pack and to go to Manchester. I thought that this was a strange timetable, so I went home and began to pack, but I couldn’t think of what to take. I needed some casual clothes, some work clothes, some entertainment etc. By the time that I’d finished, I had the size of a suitcase that everyone would take for a month, especially with a camera in it. It wasn’t the kind of thing that you’d take for a couple of days’ work at all. I went outside but the taxi had already gone with some other people so a group of us began to run. I found that running was comparatively easy and I actually ended up in the lead in this, although after a while, someone began to close the gap. There was one section with a long, steep uphill and this is where the person began to close the gap, but I began occasionally to sprint up this hill to keep the distance. Everyone was saying that I’d soon blow up at this rate, but I reckoned that if I made it to the brow of this hill, I could push on really well. It turned out that the brow of the hill was the railway bridge in Edleston Road. Just over the top by the traffic lights was a pub on the corner. As I reached the pub, a group of policemen came out with someone so we all had to stop and wait while the police sorted out this arrest or whatever it was. Then, I forgot where I was going. I sued to work in a building across the road from there as if I was going back to work there. I suddenly realised that I had a good way to go yet to the airport, so I had to turn round, go back to the road and carry on running. In the meantime, I saw some members of my family who were also running along this road. They knew that I was well ahead so they asked me what had happened. I explained about this incident at the pub. One of the people there was my niece’s second daughter. She was so pleased to see me. She said something like “Eric, wherever I am going to go to live in the near future, I want it to be somewhere near you”. I replied that there were a lot of other places in the World. She replied “yes, but not near you though”.

This is typical me, though. Always packs ten times more than he really needs. Running was another thing, and so is forgetting where I’m supposed to be going. As for my family, here we go again. Who on Earth in their right mind would want to live near me?

Finally, I had to go to a medical examination and it’s said that there were one hundred and forty pieces among the tour and some were trying to start before the others had finished. I told my daughter how dissatisfied I was and she told me that she’d alleviate these symptoms or cancel them altogether for either the awful growth and one of the holiday weekends later in the year. Back home, I was trying to pack for this trip. It was only for a couple of days but I couldn’t think of what to leave behind. Things like the computer and the camera made my briefcase weigh a ton. Then we had that race up the hill again in Dream Two and we carried on back from there.

This is another one of my dreams that means absolutely nothing at all to me. I have no recollection of any of this. As for my daughter, this is obviously a Freudian slip. Someone is trying to tell me something.

Isabelle the Nurse brought the rain in with her this morning. She was her usual cheery self, not that it’s much of a surprise seeing as she’s off on her week’s break later today. She dealt with my legs and then she bounced off outside again. I made breakfast and read some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

There was nothing worthy of report today, though. No interesting fortresses to track down.or anything like that.

Back in my office, I checked over this week’s radio programme to make sure that it was goos enough to broadcast and then sent it off. Next task was to check my Welsh homework, export the text into *.pdf format and then senf that off too for marking.

The rest of the time was spent revising my Welsh ready for tomorrow.

My cleaner came along to apply my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi. We had a couple of other people to fetch too. They lived at the Old People’s Home at Sartilly. It’s on the way, but we were still late arriving so I was late being plugged in. There’s a big shortage of staff right now so they had drafted a male nurse in from the AUB at St Malo. He was, well, not what I was accustomed to.

The chef de service came to see me to ask how it went at the Centre de Ré-education so I told him. He’s still going on about this chemotherapy so I told him AGAIN what they have told me before.

"We shall see" and I reckon that we will, too.

Emilie the Cute Consultant didn’t come to see me today so I was rather disappointed. It took me a good while to get over it and it was 18:40 when I finally left the hospital, with one of the passengers who had come down with me.

After we had dropped her off in Sartilly, we came back here only to be buffeted about by the wind so, as I said earlier, I had to come in via the back door.

My faithful cleaner helped me to a chair in the kitchen where I sat, completely exhausted for a while. And then I warmed up and ate the remaining half of yesterday’s pizza.

Now I’m off to bed, thoroughly exhausted once more. I need to prepare for my Welsh tomorrow so I’ll do that in the morning. I can’t keep going any more.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about Hissing Sid and daughters … "well, one of us has" – ed … one day, one of his daughters slithered over to him
"Are we poisonous snakes, dad?" she asked.
"No dear, actually we aren’t" he replied
"Thank heavens for that" she replied. "I’ve just bitten my tongue."

Sunday 30th November 2025 – WHEN I WENT …

… to bed last night, I was looking forward to a nice uninterrupted sleep all the way through to when Isabelle the Nurse would shake me awake by the shoulder when she comes in to sort out my legs.

And so waking up at 01:06 this morning was something of a disappointment.

It wasn’t as if I had gone to bed early either. It was well after 23:00 by the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do and crawled in under the covers. Mind you, I fell asleep quite quickly with the kind of sense of relief that you have, knowing that a good sleep is just about the ideal solution for all known ills.

Anyway, as I said just now, I awoke at 01:06 and when I noticed the time, I was devastated. I was not expecting this at all. However, I was lucky in that I managed to go back to sleep quite quickly.

But only until 07:46 though. I might not have moved a muscle in the intervening period, but it was still not long enough to have really enjoyed it. What was worse was that I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards.

In the end, round about 08:00, I gave it up as a bad job and arose from the Dead.

It would, of course, happen to be a day when Isabelle the Nurse decided to reorganise her round in order to give me more time to sleep, so she was rather put out to find me sitting at the kitchen table with my glass of hot ginger, honey and lemon drink.

She had something of a mumble about it, sorted out my feet and then went to carry on with the rest of her patients.

It took me about fifteen minutes to summon up the courage to rise from my chair in the kitchen in order to make my breakfast – coffee, porridge and home-made croissants from the batch that I had made last weekend.

While I was eating, I was reading more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. I mentioned the other day that he had put me on the track of John Horsley’s BRITANNIA ROMANA. Codrington is not very impressed with Horsley’s interpretation of the Iter Britanniarum though, saying that "the way in which he dealt with the Itinerary distances is remarkable.".

Codrington talks about a Roman camp called Epiacum up on the northern edge of the Pennines. It’s described as "not rectangular but lozenge-shaped, with probably the most intricate system of defences of all the known Roman forts". So I had a little search around on an on-line aerial map, and what do you think ABOUT THIS? Isn’t it magnificent?

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. We were trying to smuggle someone out of mainland Europe last night into the UK. We had something of a trial run at one of the border posts but it didn’t work very well because he had a kind of wrong attitude towards the Customs officers and it rather shattered his nerve somewhat. So rather than adapting his behaviour and comportment, he just sat there like a clam and refused to co-operate. We tried everything we could to cajole him to coming along and crossing the border but each time, he refused. When we told him to prepare himself a drink, he’d prepare a drink and then pass it to one of us instead of bringing it with him. In the end, full of frustration, we decided that we’d leave him and go back on our own. There was no point trying to force someone. But there was some kind of dispute at the border between him and one of our army officers. It seemed that the guy at one time had stolen the girlfriend of one of the army officers, and that was what made one of the army officers in our group rather bitter and terse with him.

This dream probably relates to some of the issues that the Secret Intelligence Service had with trying to bring out their agents from occupied Europe in World War II. They had many different escape routes, but going over on a ferry would have been novel, especially as no ferries ran during wartime.

There had been talk of a giant whale stalking people in London. Things came to a head when it appeared before a group of Year Two children, so Holmes and Watson set out on the trail. They waited until it was a foggy night and then took a boat, and rowed to a wharf where this school was. These two young boys who were rowing were telling them stories about it. They climbed out and went for a little walk themselves, and stopped to have a bag of chips each. They put their chips on their plates and were sitting there outside, waiting. Suddenly, out of the mist, the whale appeared. The first thing that it did was to launch itself at the plate of Sherlock Holmes. He quite simply cut a piece out of it with his knife and fork and ate it. That was basically at the end of the drama.

There have been dreams involving Holmes and Watson before, but this one was one of those surreal ones that has no explanation at all.

I was somewhere in France. There was a road down which I had driven hundreds if not thousands of times, only today, I found that I was walking down it. When I reached the top of the hill, I noticed that there was an old car just at the edge of the field with a sign pièces detaches written on it. I’d not noticed it before, so I went through into the field and at the back was a kind-of wood or coppice. There were probably about thirty or forty old cars scattered around there, and there was some kind of workshop. Someone came by and asked me what I wanted. I asked if it was OK if I were to have a look around. The guy told me to please myself, so I did. Eventually, someone came over to me to chat. He pointed to an old 1930s-type car that was there. He said “I don’t know what I’m going to do about this because the cylinder block has cracked”. He couldn’t find anyone to weld it because it was such a long crack. I asked him if he had thought about re-sleeving the bores and putting smaller pistons in. I thought that when he had an idea that I knew what I was talking about, he began to chat with me. I told him that I had one or two old cars andA TRACTION. He replied “we have four around here”. I noticed that there was one that was being restored and painted. I told him that I would give my right arm to have a Traction that was running but he didn’t really hit on anything like that. We had a long chat, and then I found myself driving back into town again afterwards. I wasn’t thinking, and I was following two cars. One was a Rolls-Royce and one was something else. I suddenly realised at some point that we were going the wrong way down a one-way street. I hoped that no-one was watching and that there were no cameras. Eventually, I found the supermarket and grabbed myself a plate of chips with some weird Indian accompaniment. I had to struggle to find a seat in the café but I did in the end, and the chips were nice. But these Indian things, I wasn’t all that impressed. I decided that I wasn’t going to eat them after I’d tried a couple. Then I looked at the time and it was almost 18:00, time that I was due home, so I had to hurry up and move on.

This dream reminds me of that time ON LONG ISLAND when I stopped at this warehouse where I’d seen an aeroplane parked outside. I spoke to the manager of the place who interrogated me on my knowledge of the history of early aviation and, satisfied that I knew my stuff, allowed me in to see their prize exhibits, including a replica of Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis and sit at the controls inside it.

The Indian meal reminds me of tea last night.

Going back to that dream about the abandoned cars, later on, I was driving around somewhere in the USA in a hilly area. I found a nice patch of green at the side of the road where I thought that I’d pull up and I could eat my sandwiches there. I noticed that there was a group of kids in the field at the side. They were all playing about. One of them came over to say “hello”. I had a little chat with her, and it turned out that she was in Year 6 and was going to High School soon. She was talking about her new English teacher, that he was always crying and becoming angry. I explained that not everyone is always very happy and in a good equilibrium. Sometimes, people are like that and you have to push the emotions aside and push on with what you are doing. Learning English is fun. We carried on chatting and we talked about sports. It turned out that she wasn’t American at all. She was from somewhere else. She was saying that one thing she hated about the Americans was how they blew themselves up into something that they weren’t. They were always showing off etc, and how she couldn’t really cope with it. I told her a story about one of my niece’s children who played sports. They were playing against some team from a High School on a Native American reservation. There was one young lad who was winning everything, and no-one knew why he was so good until a few days later when they checked the results and discovered that he was an Olympic champion in some kind of events. That was much more like the way that people should be. She agreed. Then, one of her friends came over and the three of us began to chat. I said how well they had done, that they had gone through elementary school so quickly and were nearly ready for the High School, and I hope that they’ll enjoy it. Then, the school bell rang and they had to leave. I said goodbye to them and “maybe I’ll see you again”. I drove off and back over the hills with this beautiful view in the distance of what was going on in the valley.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have a lot of time for kids. I think that they have a really raw deal in life. They have such a lot to say, much of which is interesting, yet no-one wants to listen to them

There was football next. Stranraer v Clydebank in the Scottish Cup. The third round was full of shocks and surprises, with many clubs being knocked out by lower-league opposition, such as Dumbarton losing 4-0 at home to West of Scotland League side Auchinleck Talbot, for example.

And we almost had another one here at Stranraer, where but for several slices of good fortune, the score could have been 2-1 to Clydebank rather than the 2-1 to Stranraer, as the match finished.

This afternoon, I tackled my Welsh homework and waded through it from start to finish. I just need to review one or two questions and then I can send it off.

While I was at it, I was chatting to my friend from Munich, but I had to abandon that because Rosemary rang with a computer issue and needed help. It was another one of those long conversations where we can talk for hours about nothing at all, but it made me late for my baking.

The loaf that I made looks to be excellent, and the pizza really was delicious. However, I could only eat half of it, so the other half will do for tea tomorrow. Based on the weight, I’m eating between about a third and a quarter of a pizza that I would have comfortably eaten six months ago.

While everything was cooking, I wrapped my two Christmas cakes in baking paper and tinfoil, and they are now cooling in the fridge ready for marzipanning next weekend.

So now, horribly late, I’m off to bed. Dialysis tomorrow, unfortunately, but at least I’m only out twice next week, which is a major improvement. I can get on and do things.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Holmes and Watson … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was talking to Holmes not so long ago and I asked him how his crime investigations were going.
"Ohh, I’ve retired now" he told me. "It’s only the elderly who remember me and appreciate me. The young people don’t know me at all."
"So I suppose you’re really an Old People’s Holmes" I replied. "But do you keep up with the news from London?"
"Watson still lives there" he replied. "He keeps me up-to-date with the news."
"So he’s your ‘Watson in London’ then."

Saturday 29th November 2025 – I HAVE DECIDED …

… that tomorrow and all subsequent Sundays until further notice, there will be no alarm call. If Isabelle the Nurse comes along and finds me still in bed, then she will have to sort out my legs while I’m lying there, and after she’s gone, I’ll go back to sleep. I can’t go on like I am at the moment.

What didn’t help was that, after the football, it was a terribly late night. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do, it was long after midnight when I finally crawled into bed.

There was no difficulty falling asleep either, and there I lay, dead to the World until BILLY COTTON shattered my peace.

Ohhh! How I wish that I could have stayed in bed. I was feeling absolutely shattered. It took a good ten minutes for me to summon up the courage to leave the bed and stagger off to the bathroom.

As well as washing myself, I filled the washing machine with dirty clothes and let it loose while I wandered off for my medication.

In the kitchen, there was yesterday’s washing-up to do before I could do anything else. How I hate waking up to that in the morning, but it gives you some idea of how tired I was last night that I left it. However, once I’d done it, I could make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink with which to take my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone but there was nothing on it from last night. Not that that’s a surprise, seeing how tired I was. What I did instead was to … errr … crash out on my chair.

Isabelle the Nurse took me by surprise when she arrived. Pressing the doorbell as she does when she arrives awoke me with quite a shock.

After she had given me the final injection of this series, she sorted out my legs and then wandered off. It took me another good ten minutes to be able to stand up and go to make my breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN and although there was plenty of interest, there was nothing that was worthy of a note in here.

However, our author did put me on the trail of a book written by John Horsley called BRITANNIA ROMANA, written in 1734. It contains information about what was known about the Romans at that time, and also visual descriptions of the remains. Judging by what Codrington has been telling us, a great deal of infrastructure was still standing in Horsley’s day but had disappeared by the time of Codrington.

When I’d finished breakfast, I went to rescue the washing from the washing machine and hang it on the clothes airer. And that almost killed me too, so back in here, I crashed out yet again.

When I came round, at about 11:30, I began to assemble the radio programme that I had been preparing. It took a while, but it’s now finished and ready to go. And so I watched the highlights of Barry v Hwlffordd from last night.

After I’d stopped for my disgusting drink break, I began to make my Christmas cake. And I’ve ended up with two because I made far too much batter. Does anyone want a spare Christmas cake?

It took over three hours to prepare them today, and of course, the week during which the dried fruit had been soaking, and they went into the oven on a low temperature for three and a half hours.

While the cakes were cooking, I made a start on another radio programme. This is another complicated one and is going to take some assembling. Sorting out the music is quite a task and I’ve still not finished that part yet

Back in the kitchen, I switched off the oven and checked the cakes. They are cooked to perfection, and now they need to cool down for a week or so before I can marzipan them, and then another week before I can ice them

But I’m definitely ill and I’m at a loss as to why. I’m totally exhausted, I ache in every conceivable place and I’ve lost all of my energy and enthusiasm. In fact, I’m really surprised that I’ve managed to do so much today, despite how ill I’m feeling.

So ill that, in fact, I made a very small portion of mushroom curry and yet most of it ended up in the waste bin. No dessert either. I just want to go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about baking a Christmas cake … "well, one of us has" – ed … you have to bake it in a fan oven turned to 120° for three and a half hours
When I lived in Crewe, I mentioned it to a local girl who wanted to know the details.
A few days later, I asked her how she had got on with it.
"It was a waste of time" she replied. "I tried what you said but after ten seconds, the cake just slid down to the side."

Friday 28th November 2025 – THERE’S NO DOUBT …

… about it – I really am ill.

Today has been a pretty miserable day as far as I am concerned. And it should have started so well too.

Having raced through everything last night, my notes were online quite early and I was looking forward to a nice, early night and a really good sleep. However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s really pointless going to bed early, because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

Like 04:05 this morning, for example.

At about 05:20, I’d given up all hope of going back to sleep and had risen from the Dead. I took full advantage of the early start by dictating the radio notes that I had rewritten the other day, so they were ready for editing.

Next stop was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I’d been out with some friends last night, and we’d been to rescue a car that belonged to one of them. When I went to pick it up, they asked me if I would drive it back. It was a Morris marina, and I couldn’t get the hang of the gearbox. It felt ever so tight to me. However, I managed to move it in some fashion and came into the city centre. I put the indicator on to turn left, but people stopped for me as if I wanted to go up into the church precinct. In the end, I had no choice but to go up into the church. We stopped there and waited for the traffic to die down, then we climbed into the car again, with me struggling with the gearbox to leave. I ended up being stuck behind an old, dirty bus and I suddenly realised that I was in an old, dirty bus too. I had to pull out from behind this bus without hitting it and somehow make my way forward. I pulled out and had to wait for a gap in the traffic. Just as I was about to pull out, a car suddenly appeared. I saw it over my shoulder and the guy with me said to his wife “did you see that? He actually used his shoulder”. He was quite impressed by that. So we set off, but then we had to go to a DIY shop for some DIY stuff for my house. They all set off running but I knew that it was miles away so I ran a lot slower to conserve my strength. But there was an incredibly steep descent and I could have jumped into the bus and let it roll down to the bottom of the hill but I thought that it would be most unsafe so I carried on running. Eventually, I arrived at this DIY place and found that they had all purchased everything and it was all stacked. However, they looked exhausted so and they asked about when we were going to load it. I replied “you need to take a break first because you aren’t going to load anything like that in that condition”. The guy in the shop said that as it was all on a pallet already, he could take it with a fork-lift truck and drop it down at the side of our vehicle.

The part about looking over my shoulder relates to the time when I was chauffeuring in Brussels. I had a General from the Finnish Army in my car and he asked me if I had been a motor-cyclist. I asked him why, and he replied "you’re always looking over your shoulder when you drive, just like a motorcyclist does. "

The friend was, by the way, related to one of the young ladies who come to see me during the night and it’s a disaster that she never put in an appearance. And we had a Marina estate once when I had my taxis. We were going to use it for parcels but, as always, I was overtaken by events.

One thing though was that I never drove “dirty old buses”. I was quite selective about whom I drove for and restricted my activities to Shearings and to a local firm with an excellent reputation.

By now though, I was wishing that I had stayed in bed because I was beginning to feel awful, nauseous and totally exhausted. Nevertheless, I went for a good wash and to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink for my medication.

Back in here, I could no longer concentrate on anything, and it was a very weary, depressive me that crawled into the kitchen when Isabelle the Nurse came round. She gave me my injection and sorted out my feet, and when I told her how ill I was feeling, she suggested that I go back to bed.

Strangely enough, that was my opinion too, but first I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

As usual, I was sidetracked by the Iter Britanniarum as I followed the routes of some of these roads. Interestingly, he talks about a Roman agger or embankment that carried a road that crossed over the River Hodder in Lancashire. I had a quick look on an online aerial map and noticed a LOVELY CURVED EMBANKMENT NOW OVERGROWN WITH TREES, THAT COULD EASILY BE AN AGGER leading to the river, and if you zoom in to the river really closely, you can see what looks like a paved ford under the water.

There’s also talk about a Roman fort at Caersws in mid-Wales “in a bend of the River Severn with three concentric defensive rings” and, allowing for modern erosion by the river, I FOUND THIS.

A little earlier, I’d mentioned going back to bed but I couldn’t even go that far. I staggered onto my office chair in the bedroom and promptly fell asleep again.

When I awoke, over an hour later, I was still feeling ill but I pushed on and edited the radio notes that I’d dictated earlier. So that programme is ready to be assembled now.

The taxi came early to take me to the Centre de Ré-education so I had to wait around for a while when I arrived.

My first session was with the relief physiotherapist as mine was on a training day. She exercised my arms and legs for a half-hour period that passed surprisingly quickly.

The second session was with the occupational therapist but he didn’t really offer a great deal of help and we were finished after fifteen minutes.

After waiting around for a while, I saw Elise the Dishy Doctor. I poured out my tale of woe, and we decided, after a lengthy discussion, to suspend all of the activities at the Centre de Ré-education until the doctors at dialysis decide that I’m fit enough to restart, whenever that may be.

In the meantime, she gave me a prescription for twenty-five sessions of physiotherapy at my own pace in some local cabinet. However, as my faithful cleaner said later, finding one that has a vacancy is going to be a real challenge.

The final session was this standing upright in this frame thing but I abandoned that after twenty minutes and went to look for my taxi home.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment and then I collapsed into a chair in the kitchen. After she left, I came back in here and, once installed in my comfortable chair, I crashed out again – until, would you believe, 19:45.

For tea tonight, I made a batch of hummus and ate it with some crackers while I watched the football – TNS v Caernarfon. TNS had the lion’s share of the game, of course but the Cofis kept them out for eighty-two minutes.

Two late goals, one of them with the very last kick of the game, gave TNS another win, and once again, the Cofis played the match without any great sense of urgency going forward. They really are going to have to play better than this if they want to make their mark.

So right now, I’m off to bed. Totally exhausted, but relieved to some extent that I’m only out for two afternoons next week. This is some kind of progress.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the Finnish General … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I went round to his apartment once, he had a large stuffed black bear in his hallway.
He told me a story about it that I could easily believe to be true and underlines the misunderstanding when two foreigners are conversing in a third, foreign language.
He was holding a cocktail party and one of his guests, an Italian lady, asked him about the bear, and the conversation continued in English.
"I shot it myself" he replied.
"So is it the complete bear there? "
"Oh no. It’s just the fur "
"So what did you do with the bear itself? "
"We ate it"
And so she went round this cocktail party with stories of the General dragging the dead bear into a clearing in the forest and then sitting around a campfire eating it raw while it was still warm and fresh.

Thursday 27th November 2025 – FOR TWO PINS …

… I’d have gone back to sleep after the alarm sounded this morning. It was another one of those days when I have never felt less like leaving the bed.

If the truth be known, I should have gone to bed much earlier than I did, but as usual these days, I dillied and dallied and dallied and dillied and generally managed to waste a lot of time while I was finishing off the evening’s work. As a consequence, it was another evening that was much nearer 23:30 than anything else, and probably approaching from the wrong side too.

Not that I was all that tired either. That sleep that I had at the end of the afternoon probably had an influence on everything because, apart from everything else, it took a good while for me to drop off once I’d finally made it into bed.

At some point I remember waking up, but it wasn’t for very long and I was flat out, dead to the World when the alarm went off. And what wouldn’t I have given to have been able to have gone back to sleep. However, with the nurse coming around every day, a real, proper lie-in these days is quite impossible.

It was a real struggle for me to rise up from the bed before the second alarm, and then we had a desperate stagger into the bathroom for a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis this afternoon.

In the kitchen, I made my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to wash down my medication, and then I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was going out with a group of US Cavalry to make a large armed patrol into Native American lands. I was appalled by the lack of security that was going on there. There was a General in charge, and he was insistent that the natives wouldn’t attack because we were so numerous, but I thought that that was a crazy situation to suggest because they will attack when you least expect it, in a manner that you least expect it and a place where you least expect it. You need to be at security all the time, for example, at night, he just set up a kind of camp on the plain and didn’t mount any serious attempt at pickets or guards. About a mile away, there were some rocky slopes. That’s where I would have gone to have my camp at night – amongst the rocks on the slope where you are pretty much hidden from view from what’s happening down in the valley, and you would have immediate defence if there were any problems and you came under attack.

These books that I have been reading about the US cavalry in the late Nineteenth Century are clearly preying on my mind. I must be doing too much reading, I suppose. It’s interesting that I’m happy about giving tactical advice to US generals but seeing the mess in which managed to find themselves in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc, it’s not too difficult.

Later on, we were on board a train heading from Italy to Germany. It was one of these super-high speed trains. It was travelling at an incredible rate of speed, and it came to a new tunnel that was twelve and a half miles long so it shot into this tunnel and out the other side. I went and stood outside the carriage for some fresh air after that, but when I looked back in, all of my seats had been taken and there was no room for me. I waited for a moment until we stopped at a station, where everyone alighted except my friend and me so I could sit down again. Then we thought about making breakfast. There was a kind-of grill in each carriage so we made some breakfast, bacon, sausage, things like that. Suddenly, my friend looked at the time and said “we’ll be in Munich in an hour and we haven’t made the beds or anything”. He asked me if I would go to fetch the suitcases, but I explained that I didn’t think that I could manage the two suitcases on my own, so he began to become agitated. “And what are we going to do about making the beds?” he asked.

Unfortunately, I’m not likely to find myself on a train these days, least of all travelling between Italy and southern Germany, much as I would like to. It’s simply a totally impractical proposition, never mind being able to sit outside the carriage.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up to give me my injection, and then she sorted out my legs. Her happy mood is still continuing, which is nice. I don’t know what it is that she takes, but I wish that she would give me some.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. We’re up on the moors right now, north-east of Manchester, and I’m still tracking down these camps along the way, trying to identify them.

Back in here, I had things to do and then I rewrote some of the radio notes to make them longer. I can dictate them the next time that I awaken early, I suppose.

My faithful cleaner turned up to fit my anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi. Once aboard, I had to go to the depot to witness a game of “musical chairs” as they swapped drivers around. Once I had my new driver, I could set off, but I was still late arriving.

It took a while for me to be seen, and once more they took a measurement of my dry weight. When they coupled me up, they didn’t want to take everything off but I managed to persuade them. If I’m not back for four days, I want to be ahead of the game as much as possible.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today but she ignored me again. She really doesn’t love me any more, which is a shame. I was left pretty much alone all through the session, something that suits me fine.

The taxi was waiting for me when they unplugged me, so I wasn’t back home as late as I was fearing. I had pasta, vegetables and ratatouille for tea, followed by some of my ginger cake.

While I was at dialysis though, they gave me a booklet that included a recipe for a pear cheesecake, and I reckon that I can make it into a vegan recipe with no difficulty. I shall give that a try one of these days.

But not now because, having already fallen asleep once while I was typing my notes, I’m off to bed before I fall asleep again.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Romans … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was chatting to a friend about Roman numerals
He told me "I have enormous difficulty trying to remember Roman numerals. If you asked me how you write, for example, 1, 1000, 51, 6 and 500, I wouldn’t have a clue. It makes me really angry."
"Is that so?" I asked.
"Oh yes" he replied. "I’M LIVID"

Wednesday 26th November 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I crashed out in the chair in my office during the late afternoon.

That’s something that I really must stop because it’s really driving me insane, all of this. I’m not managing to complete anything that I set out to do.

Part of it is probably due to the late night that I had. I can’t keep these early nights going for any consistent length of time. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do at the end of the evening and crawled into my nice, clean bed, it was well after 23:30.

Add to that, the fact that for a couple of hours, I was totally unable to go to sleep might also have had something to do with it. I lay there tossing and turning and trying to make myself comfortable, but to no avail.

Eventually though, I must have gone to sleep because I remember waking up. I lay there, half-awake, for a little while and then checked the time. It was 06:28, one minute before the alarm but not before it enough to be able to be sitting upright with my feet on the floor when the alarm went off and claim an early start.

Instead, I just lay there waiting.

Eventually, I managed to force myself out of bed and went off into the bathroom.

Next stop was the kitchen, where I made my hot lemon, honey and ginger drink to wash down my medication. And then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was with TOTGA and her daughter, her son and her slightly older daughter. We’d all gone to the seaside. TOTGA was sitting there thinking that maybe she would like an ice-cream so daughter and I went for a walk. We had a chat, and it turned out that her elder sister had had some kind of accident a few months ago and it was something that was recurring. When I asked where she was, her sister replied that she was in hospital again and her mother was off doing something else, she didn’t quite know where. We walked along together down the seafront and it began to be cold and rainy somewhat. She pointed to an ice-cream stall halfway up a set of steps so we climbed up these steps and went into the ice cream stall. There were lots of people milling around and they all recognised the girl. Anyway, we bought three cornets. I noticed that mine didn’t have a flake in it and hers had two and her mother’s had one. Then we walked as if we were heading back home. We came to a place in the street where she wanted to cross the road so we had to worry. She went in and I found that it was a health food shop. She was wondering if they had any of these products – she wanted some breakfast nuts, something like that. We had a look around, still holding these ice-creams and she found what she thought might be fine. She explained that her brother was looking for these and had not been able to find them anywhere else. But at the ice-cream stall, everyone knew the girl and they were all talking about her, whether she was coming back to work there again. However, I was certain that she was far too young to be working in a place like that, even on a Saturday.

So welcome back, TOTGA, even if it was only for a short while. It’s been a while since you’ve featured on these pages. However, instead of two daughters and a son, it’s two sons and a daughter, but let’s not go letting the facts stand in the way of a good dream… "perish the thought" – ed …

The idea of walking around the town with melting ice-creams is a bizarre one, but the conjuring trick with the flakes is the kind of thing that Zero would be more likely to do, rather than TOTGA’s daughter.

Later on, Nerina and I had been driving taxis last night and it had been a slow, slow day. We’d done about three or four jobs, that’s all, and were sitting at the side of the road in a lay-by having a chat. Someone came over with a big parcel and we thought that this might be a fare but it wasn’t. It was just someone chatting to a neighbour. In the end, Nerina decided that she’d go back to the rank. Before she did, someone in a blue uniform came over. He said that he wanted to book a taxi for 04:00, but it was only a short trip. I said to Nerina “ladies first” so she began to note the details. However, she said “we already have this job” when she looked at the paperwork. “It’s down for 03:55”. The guy apologised and then needed some help to be pushed onto the bus that turned up, because the bus was crowded and there wasn’t very much room on there for anyone else.

Strangely enough, the subject of taxis has been something that has featured quite considerably elsewhere in very recent times. But things would help if I stopped trying to remember the things that I did forty years later and how I could improve on them if I were to do it all again, something that I have absolutely no intention of doing.

Isabelle the Nurse drifted in, dressed for an Arctic winter. Apparently, it was minus 2°C when she set out on her rounds this morning and she had to scrape the ice off her windscreen. “Winter is acumen in, lhude singe Rudolph” and all of that.

She gave me my injection, sorted out my feet and then drifted out again to brave the Arctic temperatures. I made breakfast and read some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN.

In fact, I didn’t read all that much of it. I ended up being sidetracked into the Iter Britanniarum – the guidebook said to have been prepared for the Emperor Augustus although it’s suggested that it was the Emperor Caracalla who was its sponsor, seeing that it includes much that was not in existence in the time of Augustus.

It’s like the kind of thing that we had in the distant past, a kind of “RAC Handbook” listing Roman roads, wayside stations, inns and the like. I’ve been following Codrington’s book and using the Iter Britanniarum to plot where the wayside stations might be. If one considers that a Roman mile – a mille passum – was actually one thousand double paces, and is equivalent to about 0.92 of a modern mile, the distances given in the Iter Britanniarum are surprisingly accurate.

Back in here, I had things to do and then I began to edit the rest of the radio notes that I’d dictated the other day.

Later on, I knocked off in order to prepare for the Centre de Ré-education. The taxi was late coming to pick me up and I missed the first ten minutes of my session with the occupational therapist.

Not that I missed much, because despite spending a week searching, he couldn’t find anything more practical than the system that we were using. However, he did suggest a liberal usage of anti-slip tape. On the other hand, I prefer four good stainless steel screws myself.

My second session was with my physiotherapist and she worked me quite hard today, forcing my legs into all kinds of impossible positions. I was so exhausted after this session that I couldn’t lift myself up off the bench.

And that was all today. They had cancelled my next two sessions! But let’s not be carried away by this because there are stil four, and sometimes five sessions for the next couple of visits.

One of these visits though is to see my doctor, when I shall tell her how I’m feeling.

It was another desperate struggle to the taxi to bring me home, and another desperate struggle to come into the apartment. I really don’t know how I would manage if my faithful cleaner were not there to help me.

Back in the apartment, I collapsed into a chair for half an hour, trying to summon up the energy to move, and then I moved into the office where, regrettably, I fell asleep.

Once I’d awoken, I completed the radio programme but I’m a few seconds short. I shall have to re-dictate something to include a few more notes in order to make the commentary rather longer.

Tea tonight was rice with vegetables and a vegan burger, followed by ginger cake and a mandarine … "PERSONdarine" – ed … and lemon soya dessert. It really is nice too.

So now, I’m off to bed. I’ve done enough for today and I have the delights of dialysis tomorrow. Let’s see what my water retention is like, then I hope that they won’t want me to come in on Saturday.

But seeing as we have been talking about ice-cream … "well, one of us has" – ed … Crewe was very famous for its ice-cream vans, made by SC Cummins and Co. They were exported all around the World, but even so, there were always plenty plying the streets of the town.
One day, out at Queen’s Park, a girl from Crewe went up to an ice-cream van there and asked for a chocolate ice-cream cornet
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman. "I’m out of chocolate ice-cream"
"But I want chocolate" she insisted.
"I’m sorry" replied the salesman.
"But sorry is no good! I want chocolate!"
"Look" said the salesman, exasperated. "If you took the ‘s’ out of ‘strawberry’, what would you have?"
"trawberry" replied the girl
"And if you took the ‘p’ out of ‘pistachio’? "
"Istachio " she replied.
"And if you took the ‘f’ out of chocolate?"
"But there’s no ‘f’ in chocolate!"
"And isn’t that what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last ten minutes?"

Tuesday 25th November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. there is absolutely no point whatsoever in going to bed early, because all that it seems to mean is that I wake up correspondingly early the following morning.

And that, dear reader, is why at 05:34 this morning, I was sitting at my desk working.

Last night, having finished off my half-pizza (which did not require any preparation – just warming up) I’d finished tea quite early. And so I came in here, dashed off my notes, did everything else that I needed to do, and was in bed just a few minutes after 22:00. And wasn’t that nice for a change?

Once I was asleep, I remember nothing at all until about 03:30, but I was soon back to sleep and there I stayed until about 04:30. When I awoke at that time, I couldn’t go back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried, and so, after an hour or so, I decided that I’d leave the bed and make the most of an early start.

The first thing that I did was to dictate the radio notes that I’d written the other day. And then re-dictate some of them because for some reason, I’d missed off the first twenty seconds or so.

While I was at it, I found some notes that I’d written a while back for another programme and hadn’t recorded, so I dictated those too while I was at it.

As an aside, what I do is that if I’ve written notes and entered them into the spreadsheet that I keep but have yet to record them, I give them a light green background so that I can see them at a glance as I scroll through.

The next task was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was at Pionsat last night at the football club with the President. We were talking, and I mentioned that there was a British guy who played centre-half for several lower-league clubs and was rated quite highly. For some reason, he had disappeared off the radar in the UK. When I performed a search for his name, it turned out that he was playing for FC Rouen in France. The guy from Pionsat said that that must have been a good career move because there were plenty of British players now playing in France who were making their careers for themselves. He asked me if I knew someone called Mulliner who plays for one of the clubs down south. The name rang a little bell with me but it was all that I could think of. But we were talking about the football club and playing friendly matches. We said that they had one team that played in blue and another one that played in red, and when they were playing against other teams, they had a shirt that was a quartered blue and red that they used to wear and still did when they were playing friendlies.

Blue and red quartered shirts were our old colours for the school football teams. Not that I would really know, because I was only ever selected once. That was the problem when you had two players in front of you for your position, one who was on the books of Crewe Alexandra as a schoolboy and went on later to play professionally for Wycombe Wanderers, and the second who played semi-professionally for Northwich Victoria in the Nationwide Conference.

The only “Mulliner” I know in the footballing world was a goalkeeper who played for several clubs in Mid and North Wales in the Welsh pyramid. As for the centre-half, I can remember his name from the dream and while he’s never likely to have played for FC Rouen, he certainly had a “most interesting” career.

Later on, I was at work and one of the people came over to me with a piece of paper or a notebook or something. He asked “is your friend taking the mickey or something?”. I had absolutely no idea what he meant, so he showed me that on a page in this notebook thing, he’d drawn out the basis of a graph or a table, but he’d made it so small that there was no room to write any figures in between the lines. I looked at it and asked “why didn’t he turn it round ninety degrees or maybe go across two pages in the notebook?”. We couldn’t work out why he’d done this. It would be a puzzle to put any figures into this table. Then he was trying to work out what some kind of hieroglyphics meant at the bottom of the page of this notebook. Eventually, it dawned on me that it was a list of days, and then there was “HD” alongside it, so I asked “I wonder if that’s when he’s planning to take a holiday?”. The guy said “I’m not going to be here by then”. I asked “why not?”. He replied that he’d only come here on a temporary basis to learn the work and he was moving on somewhere else. I said that I was terribly disappointed by all of this because we happened to get on well with each other. He was about the only person with whom I did. He agreed but he was disappointed by the social life of this place. He said that there didn’t seem to be any at all. I replied that most of the parents seem to be far too egocentric and didn’t really want to mix at all at any other time outside the office. The only thing that was any kind of social in any degree was the cricket team, but that only took place in the summer and that was just one night per week, but that was just about everything.

Funnily enough, there was someone with whom I worked who would have fitted this description. He was the only person there whom I liked and we used to play snooker together. As for the cricket, though, I mentioned just now that I never really had the change to play as a goalkeeper (which was my favourite position) at school but when Nerina’s work organisation needed a wicketkeeper for their midweek cricket team, I found my niche. From there, I played a few times for a good-class local cricket team too when they couldn’t find a wicketkeeper.

When I’d finished, I went and organised myself in the bathroom and then into the kitchen for the hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to take with my medication.

Isabelle the Nurse interrupted my reverie when she breezed into the apartment. She gave me my injection and then organised my feet. We had a nice little chat while she was here, but then she moved on quickly.

Once she’d left, I made breakfast and started my new book, ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN by Thomas Codrington. It’s an interesting book because it tells us not only about the situation of the roads, but goes into details as to the construction

You can tell how old the book is, though. He notes that "the Roman paving has recently been cut through in a trench for laying a telephone tube along the Edgware Road ". A “telephone tube”. That’s some ancient history of course. It’s harking back to the compressed air systems that existed in big cities for the pneumatic powering of lifts and so on.

But he (and the workmen) pay a huge compliment to the Romans. "The workmen found that it gave them much more trouble to break up than the modern concrete floor above.". Imagine what a typical local council road will look like in two thousand years time.

Back in here, I went to revise for my Welsh and then attended the lesson. It went OK – not as good as some of them have been just recently, but much better than many in the past, But I need to sort myself out because I have notes everywhere and need to tidy them up.

After a disgusting drink break, my cleaner put in an appearance and she helped me have a lovely, warm shower. And you’ve no idea how much I appreciate it.

She also brought in the post, and one of them was a copy of a report from the dialysis centre. It lists all of my complaints and how I’m being over-taxed with medical appointments, but concludes rather ominously by saying "the patient’s morale is quite low. He’s talking about abandoning his treatment. We strongly recommend that he sees a psychiatrist."

Well, your morale would be low if you were going through all of what I’m going through. As for the psychiatrist, God help the person who draws the short straw and is obliged to probe the depths of my dark, subconscious mind.

Once I’d finished, I came back in here where, regrettably, I crashed out again. And for quite some considerable time too. The early morning doubtless had something to do with it, but I bet that the general fatigue had something to do with it and that’s rather sad.

After I awoke, I edited some of the radio notes and assembled one of the programmes. That’s now ready to go and I’ll do the other set during the week.

Tea was vegan pie with mash and vegetables followed by ginger cake and chocolate sauce, and now I’m off to bed, a nice clean boy in a nice clean bed because my cleaner changed the bedding while I was in the shower.

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about filling in forms … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember someone from Crewe who once did a “drop-in” at a local factory to enquire about employment prospects.
"But you haven’t filled in our questionnaire" said the secretary.
So the man from Crewe went back outside and beat up the doorman.

Monday 24th November 2025 – THESE LONG SESSIONS …

… at dialysis are quite difficult to bear, but I’m going to push ahead with them all the same for as long as I can, especially if it means that I can have an extra day at home.

By the time that I made it back home this evening, I was totally exhausted, and it was just as well that my tea tonight was already prepared without any intervention on my part.

It wasn’t a particularly late night last night either. By the time that I was finally ready for bed, it was about 23:20 and there have been nights much later than that in the past.

Once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed. I’d no idea what time it was that I awoke because I didn’t check the time as I usually do. But I was contemplating having a quick glance at the time when BILLY COTTON beat me to it; so it can’t have been too far short of 06:29.

As usual, it took a few minutes for me to find my feet, and then I staggered off to the bathroom. In the kitchen, I made my got lemon, ginger and honey and drink to go with my medication, and then I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone.

It’s surprising how much there was on there too, considering that I remember nothing at all. There were different kinds of spraying machines. I counted about three different types, and for one type, water came out of the jets with such force that it lifted the pipework up off the ground. Someone wanted to know the name of that type of thing, and I knew it but I couldn’t think of it. It was something like the Douche Marie or something. I was wracking my brains for ages and I couldn’t actually think of another name by which that kind of machine is called.

Everyone has seen these videos, I imagine, of people holding two Kärcher pressure washers, one in each hand, and being lifted off the ground by the force of the water. It was something like that.

And then I was on my way to a family wedding. I arrived at some different town and was walking through there looking for the place to go. I came across a bathroom so I thought that I’d nip in there and read the time, but it was pitch-black and I couldn’t see what time it was. But my mother was there. She stuck her head in and saw me, and was about to say something but she changed her mind and walked away. After I’d finished sorting out some water, I went into the main room. There was all my family and everyone whom I knew so I simply said “hello, people”, found an empty chair and sat down … fell asleep here … and anyway, so they were sending meals around at some point during all the speeches. My meal came on my black glass chopping board. I thought that this was unusual. There’s a special name for a meal that’s served like this but I couldn’t think of it at the time and I still can’t now.

As if I’m ever likely to go to a family wedding. But why would my black glass chopping board feature in one of my dreams like this?

There was a taxi to go to the station but the taxi was hours late arriving. We were all beginning to panic about this. We’d made enquiries about walking there but I’d have to change partner thirteen times between my house and the station. There was me, my girlfriend, my brother and his girlfriend or wife and we were waiting. Another taxi turned up for someone else so we asked about ours. The driver decided that he would go back to the depot and find out what was going on, and my brother went with him. Just then, our taxi turned up so I shouted to my brother but he didn’t really pay too much attention – he was too busy on the ‘phone. So we went somewhere into the vehicle, but there were some things like some plastic hurdle fences in there so we’d have to fight our way around them to get into the car. For some reason, I sat in the front instead of in the back with my girlfriend. The car set off and after we’d been driving for a couple of minutes, I noticed that my brother wasn’t on board. I asked what happened to him, and one of the girls said that he had decided to run. I thought that thirteen changes of partner was a lot, but it’s bound to be more now. This is making life extremely complicated to reach the railway station on time before the train that we wanted departs.

These dreams of indecision are a regular feature of my nocturnal rambles, but it’s usually to do with my activities rather than someone else’s. And who was the girlfriend? Fancy having a girlfriend in my dreams and not knowing who she is. That’s a sad state of affairs.

There was a film being shown somewhere. I had a friend of mine round and I recommended to him that he went to see it, because it was an extremely classic film. I was away – I had some taxi jobs to do – so I went to pick up a family from a poor area of Crewe and they actually had a copy of the book and one of the kids was taking it with him to read. So off they went and off we went. A short while later, I had to go to take them home. I’d picked up my friend from the cinema in the meantime and when I reached the home to drop off these people, I saw that the boy put this book in the waste paper bin. I picked it up and said that before I go, I’ll mention to the family to see if I could borrow this. We went off somewhere else and while we were driving, I noticed that the book was on my dashboard. I’d mentioned that I was going to ask to borrow it but it looks like I already have.

The film was actually THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS, based on A BOOK OF THE SAME NAME written by Erskine Childers. The book is much, much better than the film, even if Jenny Agutter is in the film. It concerns a couple of amateur yachtsmen who stumble across a rehearsal for a German invasion of the UK just before World War I. I actually have a copy of the book.

Ironically, when Childers was serving in the Royal Naval Air Service in World War I, he carried out many patrols over the area from where the invasion was said to take place. However, he came to a sticky end after the war. An ardent Republican, he was executed by the “Treaty Irish” in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War.

With that friend, he was a guitarist – he wasn’t, he was a drummer – and we were round at my house because we were going to meet some guitarist. There was a concert or gig being played and he’d been looking for a bassist and a drummer. My friend asked what kind of music we’d be playing. I said that according to this guitarist, it would just be basic, well-known twelve-bar standards. He asked whether this person was a boy or a girl, and I said “I don’t really know. I’ve never actually met who it was”. We set off and reached this rehearsal hall and there were several people there. I gave some stuff to whoever was in charge to make a meal. He looked, and told us of four or five things that were missing. So we piled into this car, and had another girl with us and we set off for the shops. I suddenly realised that the Intermarché in Pionsat was much closer so we went to the Intermarché at Pionsat and wandered round, picking up the things that we needed. I noticed that at the till, there was a bin full of reduced stock. I looked in, and there was a huge tin of custard powder there for sale for €3:01. I thought “it’s a long time since I’ve had some real custard” so I added that onto the list too. There we were, with all this food that we’d bought and I thought that at this rate, these rehearsals are going to be over and it’s not really worth going back because it’s taken us so long to do all this shopping.

Wouldn’t it be nice to find a giant tin of vegan custard powder somewhere? I’m having to make do with a sweetened béchamel sauce with vanilla flavouring and it’s not the same.

The nurse turned up as usual, but he didn’t stay long. He goes off on his week’s break this evening so I imagine that he wanted to finish his rounds as quickly as possible. I could then push on with making breakfast.

This morning, I finished MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

In the past, we’ve talked about how certain words in the English language have changed their meaning over the passage of time. At least, I hope that that’s the case here when she talks about the commemoration of the battles up on the Bozeman Trail, saying "It is well the programme was no longer, or I should run out of expletives"

And like the previous Mrs Carrington, she has no sense whatever of irony. She notes, when talking about the area in which the battles took place, that "it is not to be forgotten that the Sioux themselves had stolen it from the Crow Indians" and "many of the Sioux, themselves, were beginning to realise that their occupation had been one of force, and not of inherent right."

Just what, exactly, was the American army doing up on the Bozeman Trail in 1866? Pot calling the kettle “black”, methinks.

She also notes a report from one of the contemporary local newspapers in Sheridan, that "the time ought to come before many years, and will come, if the present policy is carried out, when the Indians will have the same rights and duties as other Americans"

That was written in 1909 and we are still waiting even now for this to come to pass.

Back in here, I checked over my Welsh homework and sent it off, and then I spent the rest of the morning revising for the lesson tomorrow.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and that I had to wait for the taxi. Not only was it running late, due to a weird decision by the controller to insist that the driver took her break in the middle of nowhere, we had to pick up in Donville les Bains and then miles out on the road to Villedieu.

As a result, I was quite late arriving but at least, I was connected up quite quickly without having to wait around.

Or so I thought. One of the needles failed and they had to start again later.

Apart from a brief visit from the doctor, I was left pretty much alone, and when I was finally unplugged, the driver was already waiting for me.

Back here, my cleaner helped me back to the apartment, then after she left, I warmed up the half-pizza from last night. It’s even nicer twenty-four hours later.

But right now, I’m off to bed, ready to recover from my recent efforts. And I need a decent recovery because I’m still quite exhausted and I can’t see it ending.

But seeing as we have been talking about invasions … "well, one of us has" – ed … the Duke of Wellington was told during the Napoleonic Wars that a prominent group of citizens planned to form a regiment of volunteer cavalry "but not to be sent overseas".
With one of his usual scathing remarks, he replied "except in the case of invasion, I suppose."

Sunday 23rd November 2025 – FOR THE FIRST …

… time since I don’t know when, I was asleep this morning when the alarm went off.

Now, you are probably thinking that it has happened a fair number of times just recently. However, that was during the week when the alarm goes off at 06:29. Today is a Sunday, a Day of Rest when the alarm doesn’t go off until 07:59, and lying in bed asleep at that time of the morning is a very rare event.

It wasn’t a particularly late night last night either. Although it seemed to be later than usual when I finished everything that I needed to do before retiring, it was actually 23:20 when I finally crawled into bed.

For a change, I was asleep quite quickly and there I stayed without moving until the alarm at 07:59.

There was nothing on the dictaphone either. That gives you an idea of how deep the sleep actually was and how tired I must have been last night.

With awakening so late, it was a mad panic to wash and dress before the nurse arrived, and I was only just leaving the bathroom when he came in. He sorted out my legs, took my medical card to swipe so that the Sécurité Sociale can pay him for his visits, and then he left.

Once he’d disappeared, I did the washing-up from last night and then made some more croissants. While they were baking, I made coffee and breakfast. The two fresh croissants from the batch that I’d just made were delicious.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

The other day, I mentioned that there were inconsistencies in her book compared to the book of the first Mrs Carrington, AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE.

There are some more that reared their ugly head today. The first Mrs Carrington tells us that at Fort Laramie, they had only been supplied with one thousand rounds of ammunition instead of the hundred thousand that they had been promised. Colonel Carrington tells us, via Mrs Grummond’s book, that they were "given only one thousand rounds of ammunition instead of twenty thousand promised"

His speech, given at an anniversary reunion of the soldiers at the fort in 1909 is recorded by Mrs Grummond and includes the fact that "Upon reaching Powder River, where the little post of Reno had been held for a time, I found awaiting my arrival only seven thousand rounds of ammunition.". This isn’t mentioned by the first Mrs Carrington.

However, this makes sense because although Carrington complains persistently of a shortage of ammunition throughout his period at Fort Phil Kearny, he’s able to send to Captain Ten Eyck, who is leading a rescue party in an attempt to save Fetterman’s patrol "forty men and ten thousand rounds of ammunition." If he was so short of ammunition, he certainly wouldn’t have had ten thousand rounds to spare.

Back in here, we had a mini-foot-fest. I’d seen all of the Welsh football yesterday, so today it was the turn of Stranraer to feature. They were away at Spartans this weekend, Spartans being top of the league.

The score was four goals to nil at half-time but surprisingly, despite having very little of the play, it was in favour of Stranraer! The second half was much more even, but Stranraer managed to hang on to their four goal lead and severely embarrass the title favourites.

The funny thing is that I’ve seen Stranraer play much better than this and somehow manage to lose, but for once, everything seemed to go in their favour today.

This afternoon, I finished off the radio notes for the programme that I’d been preparing, and then I went off to do some baking.

Today’s loaf is easily the best that I have ever made. It had risen up to an incredible height and I can’t understand why it’s done so well. The pizza was really good too, but I only managed to eat half of it. Not to worry though. I’ll have the other half for tea tomorrow night.

Right now though, I’m off to bed. I’m still exhausted after this last week, despite my long sleep today, and I can’t wait to go and try to sleep it off.

But seeing as we have been talking about Spartans FC in Edinburgh … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked a friend of mine who lives near there if she went to the match this weekend.
"I wouldn’t waste my time" she replied. "If I really wanted to watch someone struggle to score during ninety minutes, I’d come with you to the disco."

Saturday 22nd November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s pointless going to bed early, as all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

And that, dear reader, explains why I was sitting at my desk working at 03:30 this morning.

Last night, I’d hit the hay at about 19:30 or thereabouts after my totally exhausting day at the Centre de Ré-education. Having a day like that after two days of chemotherapy is not doing me any good at all, and as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s pointless giving me all of these exercises to make me better if the effort is going to kill me.

Surprisingly, considering how dead I was feeling earlier, it took an age for me to go off to sleep. But once I’d gone, I stayed gone and an earthquake wouldn’t have awoken me. But at 02:27 we had another one of these “sitting bolt upright” awakenings that I sometimes have.

Despite all that I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep so after an hour or so, I raised myself from the Dead.

We started off with a foot-fest. There had been some matches in the Welsh Cup last night and the highlights were now online.

And how I laughed as TNS – perennial winners of just about everything – were leading 1-0 against Cardiff Metropolitan with just five minutes to go, only to concede two quickfire goals and go out of the competition.

It was even funnier later when Connah’s Quay – perennial runners-up – playing away at second-tier Llandudno, went down and out 2-1.

What with other results today, we have to go back to 2002-03 to find a Welsh Cup winner who is still in the competition.

After the football, I made a start on last night’s blog entry. I was so exhausted last night that there was no possibility of me doing anything. Eventually, the entry went online and then I had to do the stats and the statistics that I also hadn’t done yesterday.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone from the night too. I was in the north of Scotland somewhere. There was a kind of canal that had been dug artificially from the sea. There was a ferry boat, one of these small, flat ferry things moored at the ferry terminal along this canal that sailed out across to an island just across a short length of sea. I was there in BILL BADGER, my old A60 van waiting to be loaded on, and a tractor appeared. He had something in the bucket at the front and something in the tri-point hitch at the back. The ferry guy told him that if he wanted to cross over to the island, he’d have to hire a trailer in order to take his things onto the ferry. They couldn’t go like that. He said that he would have to go back to pick up a trailer as he only lives at the top of the hill. The ferry guy said something like “it will be in the next price band” when he comes back so “to tell whoever was here that it’s agreed to pay twenty-five bob to go across”, which was presumably the fare for the current price band where we were. Then I was beckoned onto the ferry. There was a weird chiming noise in the distance, and the ferry guy said that that was the local church bells ringing the time. Then, there was an even weirder one almost straight away. He pointed to some tower on the horizon and said “that’s the town clock, that one is that’s striking now”.

Several ferries of that nature have had the pleasure of my presence. Mainly up in Scotland (and mainly in Bill Badger) but more than just a few around the coast of Nova Scotia.

Later on, I was with my niece’s youngest daughter and someone else. We were in my apartment in Granville. We decided that we’d go out for a meal so I collected my crutches and we set out towards the town. We hadn’t gone too far when I realised that I’d left my sac banane behind with my wallet in it so my niece’s daughter volunteered to run back. But then she pointed out the fact that I was in fact wearing it so we carried on downtown and came across a canal again where there was a boat heading up the canal from the sea. We came into the centre and came into a restaurant. It was 22:00 now and we weren’t sure whether it was still serving, but they ushered us to a table. It was an extremely posh affair and we were surrounded by waiters. I said to my niece’s daughter “we’re actually outnumbered here” to which she laughed. They kept on insisting that we had wines and that kind of thing whereas sparkling water was fine for me. Eventually, they poured a sparkling water for me and left the menus. I had the vegan menu, so there was a kind of stuffed tomato that looked nice. For the main course, I was hoping to have a salad. There were pages and pages and pages of different types of lettuce and different types of dressing. I asked the others what they were having, and they made some kind of suggestion but it didn’t ring any bells with me. The third person with us stood up and went over to a different table. She looked at it and came back, saying “that’s a lovely table over there”. My niece’s daughter said “well, we’re here now”. But the other person replied “but I want to go to sit at that table” but my niece’s daughter ignored her and so did I. We carried on looking through the menu and there were still these pages and pages and pages of different lettuces and different dressings, and I couldn’t really find anything else.

There’s no chance of me being in another restaurant. The last time that I was in one was an absolute disaster and I shan’t be doing that again. Besides, my appetite is all to pot these days. However, who was the third person? That’s a big mystery.

After a visit to the bathroom, I went into the kitchen to make my hot lemon, ginger and honey drink and to take my medication.

Back in here later, I sat down in my chair and that was the last thing that I remember until the nurse came at 08:30. Not that that is any surprise. It was an early start.

The nurse gave me a lecture this morning. I mentioned my ongoing dispute about the hours that they expect me to be available for treatment and he was most unhappy. He thinks that I should be grateful for all of the effort that everyone is making towards my eventual recovery and accept everything with a smile.

But that’s the difference between me and the medical profession. They want me to spend all of my life having treatment and I want some quality of life.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast. That included the two croissants left over from the last batch that I made and, warmed in the microwave, they were just as delicious.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

Some of the things that she writes are appalling, and I shudder to think what today’s World would make of them. The female Afro-Caribbean servant of one of the officers’ wives had been scared almost to death by an attack on the fort by the Native Americans and was refusing to go outside. The solution proposed by the officer’s wife was "to flail Laura into subordination by the help of a trunk strap.".

She asked the author to go to help her, and she did! And judging by the style of her writing and her description, she quite enjoyed it too.

Mrs Grummond told us at one stage that her "father was a slave-owner, but one of the better kind.". If the treatment of Laura is an example of the treatment meted out by one of the “better kind”, what on earth must the treatment have been that was meted out by one of the bad kind?

After the breakfast; I had a job to do. I sorted out all of the dry fruit that I need for my Christmas Cake, weighed it, chopped it into smaller amounts and mixed it in a large glass bowl. Having done that, I made a marinade of rum essence, brandy essence, lemon juice, orange essence and vanilla essence in water, added it all over the mix and stirred it well in.

It’s now in the fridge, all soaking in, and it’ll stay there like that for at least a week.

This afternoon I made a start on writing the notes for the radio programme that I’ve been preparing. It was a slow, laborious effort and I’ll have to finish it tomorrow.

We broke off for the football – Caerfyrddin v Colwyn Bay in the Welsh Cup.

Caerfyrddin are in the second tier and Colwyn Bay are in the Premier League, but with all of the cup upsets this weekend, a shock result might have been on the cards. However, Colwyn Bay ran out 3–1 winners without too much difficulty. They were always one pace ahead of the home side.

Tea tonight was two taco rolls with cheese, tomato and mushrooms followed by ginger cake and chocolate soya sauce. And now I’m off to bed, cough and all, because my cough has suddenly come back.

But seeing as we have been talking about the football on Friday night … "well, one of us has" – ed … the grandstand at Maesddu for the Llandudno v Connah’s Quay game was full to capacity, except for one empty seat.
"What’s with the empty seat?" asked one of the stewards
"I bought it for the wife" said the man sitting next to it "but unfortunately, she died."
"Well, couldn’t you offer it to one of your friends?" asked the steward.
"I did, but they couldn’t come" he replied. "They are all at the funeral."

Friday 21st November 2025 – I FORGOT …

… to mention yesterday that the 20th November was the tenth anniversary of being rushed to hospital when a blood test revealed that, instead of a red cells blood count of between 14 and 16, mine was 3.8 – a figure that is officially too low to support life.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d begun to feel ill a few weeks earlier while I was in Canada and the position had slowly deteriorated since then. Eventually, I’d reached a point where I could no longer keep going.

When I was transferred to the University Hospital at Leuven in April 2016, they told me quite bluntly that no-one had ever lived longer than eleven years with this illness, so either I’ll be setting some kind of World Record or these notes will shudder to a sudden halt at some point in the not-too-distant future. We shall have to see how things pan out.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, just for once, I finished with indecent haste everything that I needed to do. The notes were on line before 22:00 and I was in bed, would you believe, by 22:20. If only it could be like that every evening.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s a waste of time going to bed early, because all it seems to mean is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. I was all set to write those words again this morning when I awoke at 03:27 and was still awake at 04:10. I was giving some serious thought to leaving the bed at that moment but the next thing that I recall was the alarm going off at 06:29 as usual.

The foregoing notwithstanding, it was still quite a struggle to raise myself from the Dead and toddle off into the bathroom. Next stop was the kitchen where I made my hot ginger, honey and hot lemon drink with which to take my medication.

Back in here, there were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. I’d been down in the Auvergne with a friend of mine. There was this big party taking place, so they doped me up with cough mixture etc so that I sounded healthy, and they dropped me off at this party. It went on for quite some time, and then it was time to head north. It was early in the morning, and I was thinking that if I have to drive through the towns and across country to join the motorway that brings me up here, I’d be running the risk of being found drink-driving, because I’m not used to drinking beer. I thought that if I nipped across to Combronde, which is ten kilometres away or something, I’d be on the other motorway. That way, I would be much better off in driving and heading north. So I began to set off, but for some reason, I found myself travelling with my friend again and his son. They had been somewhere and picked me up again. We were heading north. As we were going further north, suddenly the car shuddered to a halt and this boy, the son of my friend, suddenly screamed. It turned out that he had stubbed his toe somehow on the street outside and he’d hit a rock or something as we were going past. That had caused the car to shudder and stop, and that had caused him a most damaging pain to his foot.

Whatever was going on here, I really have no idea. Apart from one bottle of beer halfway down a mountain in Bulgaria in 1994 (it was the only refreshment available), I’ve not drunk any alcohol for decades. The rest of it is totally meaningless.

This started off being on a Native American reservation, guarding the tribes that had tried to break out to seek their freedom. However, I came across an old schoolfriend of mine while I was there and we began to chat about old times. I asked him what he was doing these days, and he replied that he was working for a radio station. So, of course, was I. We had a chat about what we were doing. He worked the late show, which was called something like “Good Evening”. He didn’t say exactly what he did, but he said that he had an album of music from the 1960s that had over sixty songs on it. That was what he played through his programme. I told him that I had a library of over fifteen thousand songs. He said that he remembered it from the olden days, but I replied that it had grown much bigger these days as I had been collecting discs and albums unashamedly over the last ever-so-many years. We carried on chatting like that for a while.

Native American reservations have been the subject of conversation for several weeks. The Navajo Reservation that I visited in Arizona in 2002 was the saddest, poorest place on Earth and I don’t blame anyone for wanting to break out. The natives were struggling to raise crops in an arid semi-desert environment while the luscious, irrigated green fields halfway up the hill at the back were part of an irrigated golf course. I once read a report that when a group of Native Americans surrendered their best hunting grounds in return for an annuity, the annuity consisted of two yards of calico per person and one blanket between six.

The friend was someone whom I knew at school and with whom I shared an apartment in Crewe for a while. The record mentioned in the dream would indeed probably represent his entire record collection, whereas mine is probably much more than fifteen thousand songs these days … "it’s actually twelve thousand six hundred that he has digitalised so far" – ed ….

It was finally my last couple of days at work and retirement was actually going ahead. I left the bed early and then spent about half an hour trying to decide what clothes to wear. In the end, I settled on a grey suit, a grey shirt and a kind-of orange-red tie, but it took so long to do it that I was running horribly late, and my sister told me that my niece had been banging on the bathroom door for ages, trying to make me hurry up. However, I hadn’t found half of what I needed. There were some things lying around that I’m sure my sister was going to take home with her when she leaves so I discreetly hid one or two of them so that there would at least be something behind. I then grabbed my bass speaker cabinet and ran off for the final train. I burst into work just on time, where they were busy laying out some food for my retirement party. I thought that it was tomorrow that I retired, not today. But they were laying out this food, and I took them by surprise. I found that my brother was sitting at the desk next to me. He was playing around with the electronic equipment that the usual woman who sat there had left behind, and making some remarks about how far behind in her work she was, and how much chaos it all was. I dumped my bass speaker down and then dashed off somewhere else to do something, but I can’t remember what it was.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that being on the point of retirement has been a reoccurring theme in these dreams for quite some considerable time, but last night I finally made it … "well, almost" – ed … My brother has appeared in a few dreams here and there but one of my sisters? Where did she come from?

The nurse was quite early again, which suits me. No blood pressure to take, so he was in and out in five minutes, which suited me even better. I could push on and make breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington, or Mrs Grummond as she was at the time.

While she was travelling towards Fort Phil Kearny, she tells us that she "had an experience with cactus that, in the expressive term of a later day, was the limit.". Now who amongst us would not have liked to have been present to witness that? What with women having had experiences with cacti and Native Americans having intercourse with their ponies, there must never have been a dull moment on the frontier, to say the least.

But leaving that aside, when discussing mental health issues (which is an extremely rare thing for a layman to do in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century), she notes that "such a condition as insanity is unknown amongst squaws, and if insanity is sometimes attributed to the red man, it is due to the white man’s firewater. ".

Despite the interesting nature of much of her writing, it has to be taken with a pinch of salt in some places. She notes that "It was well known that there was gold to be found in all the creeks near us, and a few pannings in the nearest branch abundantly proved it; but not a soldier deserted the post, or shirked his duty in its pursuit." and continues with her eulogy in honour of the troops.

However, Margaret Carrington notes at least four soldiers who deserted the fort, and according to a report that I read elsewhere, there were about twenty-five in total. There was also a military prison at the fort that was quite full on a regular basis.

After breakfast, I had a few things to do, and then I finished the selection of the music for the next radio programme, edited, re-mixed, paired and segued it.

The taxi turned up for me somewhat later than programmed, so it was something of a rush to go to the Centre de Ré-education. And it was walking from the taxi to the building that I realised how much the chemotherapy had affected me. I really was ill.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d telephoned the Centre de Ré-education to complain about them over-taxing what remains of my strength. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it seems as if I have been talking to the walls. Today, I had three sessions, next Wednesday and Friday four, the following Wednesday four and the Friday after, FIVE.

That is taking the mickey and no mistake.

The first session with my physiotherapist was all about working on my ankle muscles. These are, of course, non-existent so we aren’t going to go far with all of this.

The second session was sitting in this pseudo-rowing machine, pushing weights with my feet.

There was a pause of half an hour here so I took the initiative, went onto the attack and stormed up to the offices of my doctor there and berated the secretary. She assured me that she had spoken to the doctor, but she would speak to the doctor again.

We shall see.

The third session was standing upright in this machine for half an hour, looking out of the window. And then it was home-time. And what a struggle that was. I was totally exhausted.

Back in here, I was helped into the apartment – my lovely, shining, clean apartment – by my faithful cleaner who had been hard at work in my absence. And I needed help too because I would never have managed it on my own.

Once inside, I crashed into a chair in the kitchen, and it took me an hour to summon up the energy to move into my office.

Once in the office, I crashed out completely and there I sat for about an hour and a half, totally out of it. When I awoke at 19:30, I was feeling so dreadful that I crawled into bed, fully-clothed, and called it a night.

But seeing as we have been talking about our author and her “experience with a cactus” … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was told that there was a saloon at Fort Phil Kearny. One day, she went inside and asked the saloon keeper for a double-entendre.
"What happened?" I asked naively
"The saloon keeper gave her one."

Thursday 20th November 2025 – THIS LITTLE OFFENSIVE …

… of mine seems to be starting to bear fruit. At dialysis this afternoon, I was asked "do you still want to do three sessions per week of three hours, or to try two sessions of four hours and see how it goes?".

As a consequence, for the foreseeable future I have my Saturday afternoons back, assuming that all goes well. Of course, if it doesn’t, they will think again but let’s enjoy the moment for now.

It’s about time that I had some good news because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

It wasn’t such good news last night, though. Once more, despite trying my best, I was late going to bed. I really don’t know why I can’t seem to concentrate on things like this these days.

And once in bed, I might have been asleep quite quickly but it wasn’t for long because I was wide-awake again at 03:10. At some point I must have gone back to sleep but I awoke again at about 04:30 and that time, it seemed to be for good. I lounged around in bed for some time but at about 05:30 I called it a night and left the bed.

After a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today, I went into the kitchen to make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink to accompany my medication. That drink really is wicked

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. This was something like a LORD OF THE RINGS adventure. Several people had gone into a large cave deep underground to liberate some kind of sacred, heavy chain. When they took out the chain, they made something of a noise and several enemies began to appear. These were the typical gruesome Middle-Earth type of enemies and these people were involved in some kind of battle. But I missed out something in the middle, which was when they pulled out this huge chain, there were plenty of other things too. He ordered his men to pick these other things out and pass them to him to keep. However, many of his men wouldn’t. Some of them did, but they were definitely not happy. One of them dumped a load of this stuff onto him, over his head, as a gesture of defiance after he had made a huge noise lifting up this chain. For some reason, this attracted the evil spirits and it became a fight to the death. Eventually, someone shouted “cut!”. It was of course a Hollywood-type of movie thing that had reached the end of a scene.

Wouldn’t that be nice if it were to happen in real life – finding yourself in a really sticky, unpleasant situation and all that you need to do is to shout “cut” and it would end? But what’s going on that a situation like this has suddenly appeared?

There was also something about going on an office trip somewhere. I was going with two or three other people and we decided that I would take my cat and one of these other people would take their dog, a collie. We asked a girl whom we knew if she was coming with us. She said that she couldn’t because in the evening when they would come back, there would be nowhere to park on the market. We found that to be a strange decision and tried to persuade her, but she was adamant. We set off walking through Crewe and were at the bottom end of Victoria Street. Someone said “well, it’s at the back of the fruit shop”. So we wandered our way up Victoria Street through an alleyway into the rear of the fruit shop, which used to be the old road that went down to the Ritz Cinema. There was a marquee there, and we went in. This was where everyone was assembling to go on this office trip.

What is surprising is that I can still remember where Perry’s Fruit and Veg shop used to be in Crewe Town Centre after all these years. As for the back entry that led into the street that dropped down to the Ritz Cinema before it was all swept away in a mad fit of demolition, the dream was actually perfectly correct.

The Ritz Cinema was great though. I’d fixed the projectionist’s motorcycle once so we had free admission. We’d go there in the late afternoon fifty and more years ago to watch the brilliant films of the day. Quite often, we’d be the only people in there but when we left in the early evening, there would be queues all the way down to the old Co-op.

The nurse turned up early today. He took my blood pressure and then sorted out my feet. After he left, I should have gone for breakfast but I was engrossed in something else. In the end, it was a late breakfast.

Having finished AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE by Margaret Carrington, I’ve started reading MY ARMY LIFE by Frances Carrington.

She was Henry Carrington’s second wife after Margaret Carrington died. She was however at Fort Phil Kearny as the wife of Lieutenant Grummond, one of the soldiers who was killed with Fetterman. It will be interesting to read her take on the situation.

It has to be said though that, in marrying Carrington in 1871, just four years after the death of her first husband, she can’t have borne Carrington any ill-will.

After breakfast, I attacked the radio programme that I’d been preparing, and that’s now ready. I then went and uploaded the utilities to the computer’s new drive. I’d forgotten about them.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic, and then, while awaiting the taxi, I crashed out completely, hunched over the kitchen table. I was far-gone too and I had a real struggle to bring myself round when the taxi arrived.

We had to pick someone up at the hospital, and then we drove down to Avranches.

To my surprise, they put me in a room on my own today. And no sooner had I been installed when one of the doctors (not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately) came to see me and made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse.

It’s all conditional, of course. It depends on how much water they need to remove and if the machine can do it (it’s limited to 950 ml/hour) in the time allowed. Otherwise, it’ll be back to three sessions.

Today, they kept me for almost four hours and extracted every last drop in order to give me a head start and we’ll see what happens on Monday for my next visit.

There is a down-side to all of this, though. The reason why I was in a private room was that they sent the psychologist to see me. Never mind about what she wanted – she blanched when I described my week’s medical appointments to her. I think that she needs to see a psychologist herself now.

She told me to let her know if I want to see her again, but I think that my problems will just make her feel worse.

They eventually let me go and I was late arriving home, as expected. They had kept my blood pressure sheet so I told the nurse not to bother coming round this evening. He was delighted by that.

It took a while to sort myself out once I arrived home, but then I made tea. I wasn’t all that hungry so I had mashed potato, peas and a vegan sausage followed by a piece of this delicious ginger cake that I have made.

Right now, though, I’m off to bed, ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for the Centre de Ré-education tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about FE Smith, Lord Birkenhead, just recently … "well, one of us has" – ed … his off-the-cuff remarks were legendary.
When he was Lord Chancellor, a newly-appointed judge came to see him for some advice about sentencing in a case that he had been trying.
"What do you think I should give to a man who allows himself to be b****red?" asked the judge.
"Well, " said FE Smith. "Thirty shillings, two Pounds – whatever you happen to have on you at the time."

Wednesday 19th November 2025 – PART THREE OF …

… my offensive did not go according to plan this afternoon.

After all, you can’t fight a battle if they don’t send anyone out to fight you.

What it does prove though, are that the tactics of many generals during a war, such as the Russians against Napoleon in 1812, of quite simply withdrawing your army and letting the enemy roam around haphazardly inside your territory are quite often the best tactics because they wear down the enemy and in the end, the enemy loses its morale as its supply lines lengthen and resupply becomes impossible. That was how I was feeling at the end of the afternoon.

That was a huge disappointment, because I’d been looking forward to this for the last twenty-four hours.

Last night ended up going to bed rather later – in fact much later – than I had intended and it took an age to fall asleep, probably due to all of the sleep that I almost had yesterday at chemotherapy.

And once asleep, there I lay until all of … errr … 04:10 when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings. This time, I knew what had awoken me. There was a howling gale outside and it was blowing a huge rainstorm against my bedroom window. I’m experiencing all kinds of new sensations since I moved into this downstairs apartment at the front of the building.

It was impossible to go back to sleep with all of this going on, so at 05:30 or thereabouts, I left the bed and headed for the bathroom.

Neither medication nor breakfast this morning – what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out, that’s my theory for this morning. So instead, I came back here and listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was some famous businessman whose name I won’t mention who owns several limited companies and was outwardly a very wealthy man and he had spent £2.400.000 on a coach which he had fitted out as some kind of luxury travelling accommodation. It turned out that the coach was registered in some completely different name and the leasing payments stopped on the coach. There was an issue about it being repossessed so the reporters were on his trail. In the meantime, I was with a couple of other people and we were talking about the future. One of the things was the Ford Ranger. The Ranger’s bodywork was fairly rotten but we weren’t sure about the chassis. However, being an old American style of vehicle, the bodywork would come off the chassis. So I was thinking about taking the bodywork off, inspecting the chassis, welding it where necessary, then either buying a new body or repairing the old one. Everyone was encouraging me to go back to learn welding again, only this time, argon-arc welding, do the job properly and take it from there. We were out in the Ranger, and one of the people with us was a newspaper reporter. As we were going through the West End of London, we came across this guy threatening his wife with an axe. We pulled up at the side of the road and she came over. We asked her about this £2.300.000 coach, but instead, she climbed into the vehicle and asked us to take her away, so we did. However, he climbed into another vehicle and began to follow us. We decided that this wasn’t going to be a situation that was acceptable, so we drove into some kind of narrow entry where there was an exit at the far end, and we stopped. Our aim was to immobilise his vehicle and leave him there, and then carry on driving. He stopped behind us, but he came out and began to attack our vehicle with an axe. The newspaper reporter climbed out, and I climbed out too. Our aim was then to go ahead and neutralise this guy, and then to neutralise his vehicle.

The name of the guy has been removed from my account of the dream because there really is a businessman of this name whose business affairs have attracted the wrong kind of attention, and while there is no record of anyone having successfully won a slander or libel case against someone who has had a dream, there is always someone willing to try and there is a first time that such a case might be won. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. the whole state of Western society has gone downhill fast since solicitors have been allowed to tout for clients.

There has, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, been some discussion in the past about doing something with Strider, the Ford Ranger in Canada, and this part of the dream refers to that. And although I enjoyed my gas-welding course very much and did quite a lot of gas-welding afterwards, I really should have concentrated on argon-arc welding instead.

The nurse took me by surprise, coming at 06:25 this morning. He took my blood pressure and then sorted out my legs. Then he cleared off and I went into the living room to wait for the taxi.

It was the senior driver who picked me up and we went across town to pick up another lady who was also going to chemotherapy. The drive was interesting because I’m sure that the driver has an issue with his vision. In the dark, in the rainstorm, he was driving along at 50 kph in an 80 kph limit at times, and wouldn’t put his foot down on the autoroute. I’ve noticed previously that in the dark he seems to be disorientated.

As a result, we were twenty minutes late arriving at Rennes, twenty more minutes than we should have had listening to the non-stop chatter from the lady in the back who never seemed to know when “enough” is “enough” and talked all of the way about the most inconsequential nonsense.

At the hospital, I was plugged in pretty much straight away and, for a change, everyone avoided me, which was nice. It was a shame that I wasn’t tired. The chemotherapy finished at 10:15 and at 10:30 I was on my way out of the door.

Travelling with the taxi company and the new rules from the Sécurité Sociale about combining trips and passengers, I’m seeing parts of Normandy that I never knew existed. Today was no exception and we ended up exploring the isthmus between the Sée and Sélune rivers.

As a result, I was back home at 12:15, all alone because my faithful cleaner was out on her rounds dealing with some of her other clients. So I had a disgusting drink and then made breakfast.

After breakfast, I … errr … crashed out on my chair for an hour or so, which is no surprise to anyone after the early start today.

Back in here, I ‘phoned the Centre de Ré-education and asked to speak to Elise the Dishy Doctor. However, she refused to speak to me and I had to speak to her secretary.

The secretary was gasping with surprise by the time I’d reached today on my list of medical appointments. She was speechless by the time that I’d reached Saturday. She agreed that I was doing far too much, given my state of health. She told me that she’s speak to the doctor about what’s going on and confirmed my ‘phone number.

Whether she will or not is another story, but certainly, no-one has as yet returned my call. As I said just now, it’s impossible to fight when your opponent won’t come out to fight you.

After another pause for a rest, I was interrupted by the return of the nurse to take my blood pressure this evening, and then for the next while I began to sort into the correct order the radio notes that I’d edited and began to assemble to program.

Tea tonight was a ratatouille with chick peas and pasta, followed by the last of the chocolate cake. And for once, I finished everything. I’m not sure how, though.

So tomorrow, we’re having dialysis so I’m off to bed. But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my latest offensive against my medical appointments … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m reminded of a case in the Courts where the then-junior counsel FE Smith was arguing with the judge.
"You are extremely offensive, young man!" said the judge
"As a matter of fact we both are" replied the future Lord Birkenhead "and the only difference between us is that I am trying to be, and you can’t help it."

Tuesday 18th November 2025 – PART TWO OF …

… my offensive against all of these medical appointments went onto the attack this morning.

It involved a flank attack on the Chemotherapy section of the Centre Hospitalière Universitaire de Rennes. It was unfortunate that my target this morning was a young intern called Jade, but you can only fight those whom they send out to fight you.

Anyway, it’s the turn of Elise the Dishy Doctor at the Centre de Ré-education to come under attack tomorrow afternoon.

So last night, feeling definitely not like it, I dashed through my notes and everything that went with it, and ended up in bed at 22:40 hoping for a good sleep. But, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s something of a forlorn hope these days. For all kinds of reasons, I had a very difficult time dropping off.

It wasn’t as if it was a good sleep either. I awoke a few times during the night, and I was up and about by 05:50 this morning.

In order to be ready for the nurse and the ambulance, I’d gone to sleep fully-clothed last night. It was a pointless exercise though because although the nurse told me that he’d be around at 06:30, it was 06:40 when he finally turned up and I’d already given up hope by then

Last night, when the driver dropped me off after dialysis, I joked that it will probably be him who will be coming to pick me up in the morning so I may as well sleep the night in his taxi. My faithful cleaner told him, on the other hand, just as jokingly, to make sure that he would bring the croissants round in the morning.

That was all said as light-hearted banter, and no-one seriously expected it to be him who would come to pick me up. But truth is stranger than fiction.

We made good time down to the edge of Rennes when a collision on the motorway produced a tail-back of about fifteen kilometres. We were consequently twenty minutes late arriving.

The intern was waiting and she grabbed me as I walked onto the ward, before I’d even had time to register.

She examined me and asked how things were. I told her that there had been a marked deterioration in my condition, and I repeated what I had said yesterday at dialysis.

Being young and impressionable, she was shocked to learn of my series of appointments – six days with no rest. I asked her why everyone was expecting me to recover from the treatment that I’m having when the sheer fact of travelling to and from it is killing me off.

Of course, she had no reply to make to that, but it gave her food for thought and she promised to discuss it with her superior and my consultant in Paris.

One thing that was confirmed at the interview, as I had known all along but it’s difficult to impress upon the minds of those at dialysis, is that the reason why my chemotherapy can’t be done locally in Granville or Avranches is that the use of one of the components of the chemotherapy can only be authorised and under the supervision of certain hospitals.

The local hospitals are not authorised to use it, so although it would be a good solution, there’s no point in the dialysis centre trying to promote it.

Anyway, the folder that I gave to the intern was missing the blood test, so they had to ‘phone up Avranches for it. And then it showed an anomaly … "one of many" – ed … in my blood so they had to contact Paris. Eventually, Paris authorised the chemotherapy and it began at 11:10, a far cry from the 08:30 appointment.

During most of the session, I was fast asleep. I was so totally exhausted that it was untrue. But even the sleep wasn’t enjoyable. Every few minutes, someone would come along and check something, which would awaken me

They brought me lunch as well, boiled potatoes with a vegan burger. When I’d had the burger before, I’d enjoyed it, but this time I didn’t like it at all. My taste buds are awful right now.

Eventually, though, the session was finished and by 15:30 I was in the taxi, along with another passenger.

Since I’ve been ill and have had to travel in a taxi, I’ve seen parts of Normandy that I didn’t realise existed. That was certainly the case today. And dropping off a passenger in the wilds well at the back of Avranches, we passed a garage with a few old cars, one of which was a Ford Cortina mkIV.

Those cars were responsible for the successes that I had with my taxis and I haven’t seen one for years. I’ve a couple of mkIIIs and mkVs down on the farm, but no mkIVs. How I was tempted to go back afterwards and spirit it away, but I can’t even walk to the van these days, never mind drive anywhere in it.

In any case, all of my towing tackle (the “A” frame, the towing dolly and the trailer) is still down on the farm, not up here.

Back here I crashed out in the chair in the kitchen for a while, having a good chat with my cleaner, when we were interrupted by a rather angry nurse. He wans’t happy that I hadn’t ‘phoned him as soon as I arrived, because he was in the area and it would have saved him a trip across town.

Well, it’s not my fault that the batteries were flat in my crystal ball, was it?

After he left, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. There was something going on about my brother and his wife buying a new house. When I was talking to my new boss at work, he told me that he had agreed that my brother could have two days off work in order to sort out all of the necessary paperwork. I asked about his wife as well, whether she would be entitled to a couple of days off because I reckoned, knowing them, that she’d be the one actually involved in doing most of the work with regard to the purchase of this property. He smiled and said that he probably agreed. Then, he asked about my brother’s complaint to the office, how he complained. I replied that he probably complained via AI up to the Cloud. The boss asked whether there would likely be any follow-up to that. I said that I thought that AI was supposed to be much more intelligent than any other form of computer contact, so it would seem very likely. But that’s all that I remember of that dream.

Artificial Intelligence is in the news quite a lot these days but, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, it’s not infallible. I’ve managed to trip it up on a few occasions without trying too hard and I’m sure that the experts can make mincemeat of it much more efficiently than I can.

However, I do use it on occasion, even if I will admit that I much prefer Natural Stupidity.

Team was a nice, thick mushroom and tomato soup with pasta and I managed to eat all of it. My soup-making is improving, that’s for sure.

So now, later than I would like, I’m off to bed, ready … "I don’t think" – ed … for my early start in the morning. My driver is coming round at 06:50.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about going onto the offensive … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned this to my cleaner this afternoon when I arrived.
"Offensive" she replied. "That’s certainly the correct word to use with anything that you do, Eric."

EPIC HALL

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

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 – AS I HAVE …

Monday 1st December 2025 – THERE’S A HOWLING …

Sunday 30th November 2025 – WHEN I WENT …

Saturday 29th November 2025 – I HAVE DECIDED …

Friday 28th November 2025 – THERE’S NO DOUBT …

Thursday 27th November 2025 – FOR TWO PINS …

Wednesday 26th November 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

Tuesday 25th November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

Monday 24th November 2025 – THESE LONG SESSIONS …

Sunday 23rd November 2025 – FOR THE FIRST …

Saturday 22nd November 2025 – AS I HAVE …

Friday 21st November 2025 – I FORGOT …

Thursday 20th November 2025 – THIS LITTLE OFFENSIVE …

Wednesday 19th November 2025 – PART THREE OF …

Tuesday 18th November 2025 – PART TWO OF …

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