Tag Archives: eric hall

Tuesday 4th November 2025 – I HAVE HAD …

… a lovely chat this afternoon.

It’s been ages since Liz and I have had a good natter over the internet, but this afternoon she came online and we had quite a discussion. It’s really nice to catch up with old friends.

Something else with which I shall have to catch up is my sleep, but that’s not going to be for a day or so, the way that things are panning out right now.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. it’s totally pointless going to bed early, because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the next morning. And so it was today.

Last night, after tea, I rushed through everything. My notes were on-line at 22:07 and it didn’t take long to finish off everything. By 22:40, I was tucked up under the quilt and already half-asleep. It didn’t take very long at all to go the rest of the way.

And there I lay, flat out and dead to the World until … errr … 03:15. I’ve no idea what awoke me, if anything actually did, but I couldn’t go back to sleep despite all of the trying.

By 05:15 I had given it up as a bad job and left the bed. Taking full advantage of the unexpected early start, I dictated the radio notes for the additional track on the radio programme that I’d been preparing.

Once I’d done that, I uploaded them to the computer, edited them and then completed the radio programme. It over-ran by nineteen seconds, which is better than under-running by nineteen seconds. I can edit out an over-run but there’s not much that you can do to an under-run except to slow the speed of the recording.

The editing took a while, but now it’s all up and running at exactly one hour in length, which is what it’s supposed to be.

The nurse turned up as usual today. His happy, cheerful self seems to be continuing, which is very pleasant. He’s much nicer than this.

To cheer him up, I told him that I’m going out at 07:30 tomorrow morning. He told me that he can’t make it by that time so I should have to sort myself out. That’s not too much of a problem, as it happens. I’m sure that I shall manage.

After he left, I made breakfast and then came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night. It was some guy’s party for a birthday, a wedding or something, so everyone had gone to town with him. When they were outside a pub, they were awarded a free kick, so one of their friends took the kick and hoisted it really high towards them. The commentator said something about “this is a typical gentleman’s wedding-type ball, this one”. Anyway, they all dispersed themselves, walking away. But before that, though, when the ball was played into the air, everyone ran forwards towards the ball except for two guys who stood waiting at the back. They were the ones who were able to get the ball and head it towards the goal, or towards the pub etc, and the commentator was saying something about it being a proper wedding ball. But these players who ran forward trying to get the ball, it was like a stampeding herd that you’d see in a couple of these other games. Anyway, later on, there was another free kick that needed to be taken, so the same player who took the previous one again kicked a high ball into the centre of the town where everyone was waiting outside the pub, trying to head it in.

Whatever that’s about, I’m sure that you can work it out for yourselves. I can understand the football part, but why they should be doing it in a town centre in the middle of a stag night is anyone’s guess.

Someone had made a cheese soup and they had brought it into the kitchen where we were all waiting. So I went into the cupboard and brought out a pile of bowls and began to hand them round to people who went up to be served with it. However, the woman in charge took a great deal of exception to the idea oof me handing out bowls. She told me quite simply that bowls were not allowed. I replied “I don’t know how else we’re going to eat this meal”. But she dispensed everything to everyone else in the bowls and just put the soup down. Then they all wandered off. As I wasn’t allowed a particular bowl, I picked up the big bowl that was already there and wandered off with that. I just sat in my car outside and ate it, or, at least, ate some of it. The next thing that I knew, I was surrounded by these two angry women who wanted to know what was happening with the soup. I explained that I couldn’t supply myself with a bowl from which to eat it, so I just ate it out of the main one. That made them even more angry. In the end, they took the soup. They wanted to know what had happened to the tickets that I must have taken from the people to whom I’d handed out the bowls. I replied “no-one gave me a ticket” so that made them even more angry. In the end, they searched through the car to see if they could find any tickets but all they found were two sets of ear-studs belonging to children, who must have been children who were at this meeting or whatever it was and had come there in the car. They were so angry, but I didn’t care at all because if I hadn’t been allowed to eat the soup out of a bowl that I’d supplied from my kitchen, then I was going to eat it out of the main bowl whether they liked it or not.

It’s not as if I have any interest whatever in cheese soup – it sounds disgusting to me – but this kind of situation where I’m excluded from something that I’ve organised on my own premises is nothing at all new to me.

One of the guys from the Welsh class was saying that he wasn’t here last week because he’d had to go to some small place on the Bristol Channel somewhere. There was a mutual Society there called something to do with the Bristol Concessions. They owned property and that kind of thing in their settlements, and everything was done on a very co-operative basis. It was very cheap to live there and one of the shares had come up for sale, so he went to see it to see if he could buy the share and move to the village. He was telling us all about this place and we all decided that we’d go with him to have another look around. He took us and showed us around the village. My eye immediately fell on someone’s workshop, which was full of motorbikes, many of which, I imagined, had never been used. He was saying that this was the guy to whom he’d been talking. There were even cars that that belonged to the Society that go back eighty years that are still active today, and there were many that they had bought that had never even had their engines fitted yet. This particular guy owns one of them. We carried on walking around the village and came to a field where there were about a dozen old cars, one of which was one of the vehicles that he mentioned. I swarmed in there and began to take photos. There was even a rare Audi van from the late fifties or early sixties. I was enthralled by this. For some reason, I couldn’t make my camera work to take photos on it. I was distracted by the city walls of this place. Having to take a photo, I found that to take a photo, I was far too faraway because I was used to having my big camera. I had to change my photography technique, and in doing so, I forgot to take half of the photos. I had to run back to where this Audi van was so that I could take the photographs of it that I wanted

This one is quite confusing too. For example, the car wasn’t an Audi (it would have been an Auto-Union or a DKW in those days anyway) but a Volvo PV544. I can still see it now, even though I can’t remember the dream. And how I wouldn’t mind finding one of those in a field.

A workshop full of old motorcycles would be my dream too. It’s been a while since I had my last proper motorbike – a Honda CX500 30-odd years ago.

However, this part about the camera not working at a crucial moment – that was a recurring dream at one time too.

After that, I … errr … crashed out for ten minutes, and then had a mad panic to revise my Welsh for the lesson.

However, I needn’t have bothered because there was a power cut in Yr Wyddgrug and the College was closed, so we had no tutor and the lesson was abandoned. Instead, I had a couple of hours of nice, personal relaxing time.

After the disgusting drink break at midday, I attacked the next radio programme and by the time that I had knocked off, I’d finished them and they are ready for typing when I next have an early start.

There were several interruptions today and all of them were very welcome.

Firstly, my cleaner came round to do her stuff and, once more, she ushered me into the shower. That was really nice. And now that the plumber is finished, I can call the joiner and have him install the handrails in the shower so that I can climb into and out of the shower without any assistance.

Secondly, as I said just now, Liz and I had a chat that went on for quite a while and was only finished because I had to go to make tea.

Tonight I had a taco roll with rice. The filling consisted of lentils, mushroom, garlic and tomato sauce, and it was delicious. Nevertheless, there was some left on my plate yet again tonight. Not to worry though, because chocolate cake and soya dessert filled the home that was left.

Now, I’m off to bed. It’s a 06:00 start tomorrow because I have dialysis in the morning. My hours are messed up so that I can have a free weekend with my niece, which is nice.

But seeing as we have been talking about my niece … "well, one of us has" – ed … a friend of mine from Crewe told me that his sister was going to have a baby.
"What’s she going to call it?" I asked.
"If it’s a girl, she’s going to call it Denise " he replied.
"And what if it’s a boy?" I asked.
"I don’t know for sure" he answered. "I think she’ll call it Denephew."

Monday 3rd November 2025 – NEVER HAVE I …

… felt less like leaving the bed than I did this morning. For two pins I would have switched off the alarm and curled up back under the covers, and had it not been for the impending arrival of Isabelle the Nurse, I would have done too!

Mind you, it was somewhat late last night when I went to bed. Being delayed because of the length of time that it took to bake my cake, it was much later than usual by the time that I’d finished tea, and there was plenty of washing up to do too.

By the time that I’d finished my notes, it was after 23:00 and what with everything else that needed doing, it was much closer to midnight by the time that I crawled under the covers. And what with the early start, I was well and truly ready for it.

Once in bed though, I was out like a light and remember absolutely nothing at all until the alarm went off at 06:29.

As I said just now, I didn’t want to leave the bed. It took me a good while to summon up the courage to leave the bed, and even longer to haul myself to my feet.

After the bathroom, where I had had a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later today, I went into the kitchen where I made another one of these hot lemon, ginger and honey drinks to take with my medicine.

And I needed it too, because I was coughing like nothing on earth.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. In this dream, I was back in Crewe again. I was working in an office somewhere, and part of the work involved dealing with different issues that arose from different situations, such as the question of certain meals. We made a series of cards by typing on a sheet of paper and then sealing it inside one of these laminated pocket things so that we had all of the instructions and the regularly-occurring companies, their desires and demands all done like that so that we could follow them up quickly. There was one where they were always asking for certain more information about a certain product. Another one was asking if there was an instruction book to go with the DVD that they had received. I was on my way home and was walking up the bottom of Edleston Road towards Market Street over the Chester Bridge. It was early evening but there was no-one about. There were very few cars at all. I’d probably counted two or three along the whole way. As I walked up Chester bridge, I went to cross over to the north side. There was a little baby, running around on her tricycle thing. It started to talk to me so I talked back to it. But her mother called her, so she ran to her mother, but she had left her doll behind so I had to call her back to pick up her doll. As I crossed the road, I noticed a car coming towards me from my left, quite a way back. Its headlights suddenly disappeared, and I put it down to the fact that it had gone down a slip road down to the road that now runs along the old railway line under Chester Bridge, so I thought that I’d meet it down there when I go down the pedestrian steps.

This idea of cards made of sheets of paper and laminated pouches is nothing at all new, and back on the farm I have a laminating machine for just that purpose.

But if I were going home, I certainly wouldn’t be going down Edleston Road, over Chester Bridge and into Market Street. I’d be going in the opposite direction.

As for the road that runs along the old course of the Chester line past the old General Offices, there is indeed a road these days, but it starts further along the line at Wistaston Road, not at Chester Bridge.

Isabelle the Nurse was bright and breezy and cheerful this morning. Not surprising, seeing as it’s her last day today for a week. We had a very chatty ten minutes while she fixed my feet, and then she disappeared on her rounds.

It was boring old toast with my breakfast today – the croissants have all gone for now, but I’m going to make another batch, don’t you worry. How could I not? But regardless, it was a very slow, leisurely breakfast that I enjoyed immensely.

Back in here, there were things to do which took some time, as usual. While I was doing them, I listened to the radio programme due to be broadcast this weekend to make sure that it was OK, and then I sent it off.

However, I was interrupted by the arrival of the plumber. He finally appeared, after all of his vicissitudes, to sort out the water leak.

It didn’t take him long either. It turns out that there was a faulty gasket in the U-bend for the waste pipe. There’s an inspection trap that can be undone so that the waste pipe can be cleaned, and the gasket was the wrong size. It was the work of ten minutes to change it.

While he was at it, he reset the hot water timer for me. It was a common error, so it seems, committed by many people, mainly because the instructions aren’t clear. You don’t just set the start time to “on” and the stop time to “off”, you have to set each half-hour segment individually to “on” or “off”.

After he left, I made a start on combining the radio programme on which I’d been working, but I didn’t do much before my cleaner came to apply the anaesthetic on my arm.

She stayed for a while for a chat, and then after she left, I awaited my taxi driver.

It was my favourite taxi driver too, and we had a lovely chat all the way to Avranches. We picked up another passenger en route but I’m not going to talk about him because one day, I might be like him too, although I desperately hope not. I’m not exactly the tidiest or cleanest of people but I do try to take some pride in my appearance when I’m out and about.

At the dialysis centre, I was on time for once and didn’t have long to wait before I was coupled up. And once I was coupled up, they left me pretty much alone throughout the session.

The boss turned up and had a little chat with me, but I suspect that it was more to show willing rather than anything else.

They unplugged me quite rapidly too, and I had a lovely chat with a very lovely driver all the way home. There are some benefits of this dialysis and I have to do my best to find them.

Being home early, I finished off the radio programme, chose the final track and wrote the notes ready for dictation. That should be out of the way the next early morning.

Tea was a vegan burger with rice, veg and gravy followed by cake and soya dessert. And the cake is as nice as it looks too.

As you can see, I’ve gone back to having puddings. The reason is that they are high calorie and high carbohydrates, so that if I can’t manage a main course meal very well, topping up with a pudding packed with these sorts of things will help me maintain some form of nutrition, even if it’s not all that healthy. Adding fats will at least give the muscles something on which to work.

So now I’m off to bed ready for my Welsh class tomorrow.

However, in other news … "he said, blowing his own trumpet" – ed … I have been informed today that I have been elected to fill a vacancy on the Cymru Leagues’ Supporters Panel.

It’s not actually the first time that I’ve held such a position. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was on the panel in 2006 and was nominated by the supporters to attend a meeting at FAW Headquarters with the Competitions Secretary to present the supporters’ view of the proposed changes to the league structure.

But that was a long time ago and since then, there have been many changes, both to the league structure and to my life too. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of the situation this time.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the other passenger in the taxi … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of when I met a couple of friends in Brussels once, whom I hadn’t seen for quite some time.
"Epic!" one of them said. "We thought that you’d been dead for years!"
"Of course he isn’t" said the other one. "He just smells like it!"

Sunday 2nd November 2025 – MY VEGAN PIZZA …

… was absolutely excellent this evening. The chocolate and coconut cake that I have made is also excellent too, although it’s a little burned on the top – only natural while I try to figure out the characteristics of my oven.

Today, I’ve been making meal plans for when my niece and her daughter come for this weekend in just … gulp … five days time. They will need to eat something so I need to plan and send off a food order later in the week.

Yesterday at dialysis I’d already started to food order, as I had said yesterday, and it was my intention to finish it yesterday evening but "the best-laid plans o’ mice and men etc. etc." intervened as usual and by the time that I’d finished everything else, it was already horribly late without having to worry about staying up to finish the shopping list.

Instead, still with the stabbing pain in my foot, I crawled off into bed.

It didn’t take long to go to sleep, and the next thing that I remember was sitting bolt-upright at 05:20. Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I felt bitterly disappointed because Sunday is, after all, a Day of Rest.

In the end, after an hour of trying, I crawled out from under the covers and dictated the radio notes for one of the programmes that I’ve been preparing. I may as well make the most of the early start. Mind you, it wasn’t easy because of the howling gale that has sprung up outside yet again.

Once I’d finished, I went into the bathroom for a good wash, and then into the kitchen for the medication. To wash it down, I made another one of these drinks of honey, ginger and lemon. It’s a case of “kill or cure” with this throat.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I hadn’t gone very far. I remember something about needing help to dress. Someone came to see me from the top end of Granville, the part from near the roundabout by the football ground. I asked them if they had come far, and they replied “not ‘far, far'”. But that’s all that I remember of that

They keep on asking me at all of these assessment interviews whether I can dress myself or not. My usual answer is that it’s undressing myself, where I have problems, and if they have a nice young, nubile assistant who would like to help me, then I would be grateful.

Their usual response is to throw me out.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in with the hurricane this morning. Her irrepressible good humour continues, and we had a very pleasant chat for five minutes while she sorted out my feet.

After she went, I made breakfast, and ate the other two home-made croissants. That really was quite a success and I shall make some more.

Back in here, the footfest began. Firstly, we had the highlights of all of the other games in the JD Cymru League. No surprises there, though. Everything went according to plan. Not like last night in the Second Division where third-placed Llandudno thrashed unbeaten leaders Airbus UK Broughton 5-0 -a result that surely must stand out as one of the highlights of the season.

Following those games, we moved on to Scotland.

The first game was Stranraer v Forfar Athletic. Forfar always has been Stranraer’s bogey side, but Stranraer put that to bed this weekend. This strange upturn of form continued with a comfortable 3-1 victory to move clear of the bottom two for the first time this season.

Two leagues higher up the pyramid, Greenock Morton were away at Raith Rovers in Kirkcaldy. Following their disastrous 0-4 defeat at home against St Johnstone last week, we were all expecting the worst. However, the game ended 1–1 thanks to a bizarre, improvised shot on goal by central defender Kris Moore.

After a disgusting drink break, I began to edit the radio notes and, despite chatting online to someone while I was editing, I managed to complete everything. It’s edited down to six minutes and forty-six seconds, which is one of the shortest that I’ve done.

All I need to do now is to join everything up, choose the final track, and then write and edit the notes for that. The work of an hour, if I’m allowed an hour to spare in which to do it.

It was then time to go into the kitchen to do some work.

No bread today because the freezer is full of it, and I’ll be taking half a loaf out to defrost later before I go to bed.

To start, I made the dough for the pizza base, and then I attacked the cake. It’s a chocolate oil-cake made with coconut oil and desiccated coconut.

When it came to bake it, I reduced the time from how I would have baked it in my old oven upstairs.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long enough and I had to leave it in there for another fifteen minutes. By now though, the top was overcooked so next time, I shall have to bake it in a lower position in the oven. However, it rose up beautifully and looks quite impressive from that point of view.

The pizza itself was delicious – another candidate for “one of the best” and I shall think about the pizza when I’m in bed, which is where I’ll be going as soon as I’ve finished these notes.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pizzas … "well, one of us has" – ed … a girl from Crewe went into a pizza restaurant and ordered a pizza.
She could only eat half of it, and asked if she could take the rest of it home.
The waiter asked her "do you want a box for it?"
She replied "no thanks. If it means that much to you, you can have it. I’m no good at fighting."

Saturday 1st November 2025 – I HAVE JUST …

… watched the worst football game that I’ve seen for a very long, long time.

Ten minutes to the final whistle, and there I was, sitting here thinking “I wish that this game would hurry up and finish before I age another ten years”. We’ve seen games recently that have been brilliant adverts for Welsh football, but this one was definitely not. It was a perfect cure for insomnia.

Still, watching it this evening saves me from having to watch it tomorrow morning.

Mind you, if tonight is anything like last night, I won’t have the time to watch it. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do, it was quite late. Long after 23:00 in fact.

Still, once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly and remember nothing whatever until the alarm went off at 06:29. At that point, we were discussing some kind of military situation in four or five towns during some kind of conflict, but I can’t remember any more about it than this.

That might have been an interesting dream, I suppose, had I slept longer.

Anyway, after another few minutes to compose myself, I struggled out of bed and went off to the bathroom for a good wash and shave, in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later, and then sorted out my medication, including another one of my cleaner’s evil concoctions.

Back in here, there was more stuff from the night on the dictaphone. There was something about shipping convoys along the north-west coast of Wales. But they weren’t exactly off the coast – they were on the coast, land-based convoys. There were quite a few attempts to sabotage these. The Germans had quickly caught on to where the control box was for the belt, but couldn’t find anyone who would sabotage it. The Italians and the Japanese knew where it was, and they had better luck. However, what they did was only temporary. Sometime, there was a big build-up of frozen food in the freezers and this had to be identified when it came to distributing the items. Cheryl Gray was looking for a certain pack of frozen items like the breadcrumbed panés that I use but he couldn’t find them. In the end, there I was, being treated for some kind of medical issue, had to tell her that they were right at the top shelf of the freezer, on the far side on top of another product.

We’re back on the convoys again, but the next part of that relates to something that I was reading the other day about the German sabotage units in the USA during World War I.

As for who Cheryl Gray is, I’ve no idea.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up, half an hour late. She’d had a great deal of difficulty with one of her earlier patients. Consequently, she’d been falling behind on her rounds. She dealt with the final injection, sorted out my feet and then dashed off again.

Once she’d left, I could make breakfast. And those croissants that I made, they may not have looked very much, but the interiors were perfect and they tasted just like croissants should.

After breakfast, I came back in here and began to work, but I seemed to have run out of time. Before I knew it, my cleaner appeared in order to apply my anaesthetic cream.

Once I was ready, she stayed for a little while for a chat, and we had a good laugh and joke, which was nice. She also asked me why I don’t fill my home-made croissants with apple purée.

Now, there’s an idea. There’s some in my fridge as it happens.

The taxi was a couple of minutes late, but as I was the only passenger, I arrived at dialysis on time.

However, thereby hangs a tale. Two other people arrived at the same time so they were dealt with first.

The first one was a new patient, and he took hours to be coupled up while the nurses went through all of the induction procedure.

The second was a regular customer, but she had a health crisis right at the start and all of the nursing crew plus Emilie the Cute Consultant were gathered round her for almost half an hour.

Even though my session today was such that they set the machine for three hours, we were so late starting that I’ve finished long before today’s finishing time when there has been a session of three and a half hours.

Once I was coupled up, I started my shopping list for next weekend, and then revised my Welsh.

And although Emilie the Cute Consultant didn’t come for a chat, she did give me a “hello” as she walked past the bed.

The chief driver was waiting for me when the session finished, but we had to wait fifteen minutes for another passenger and then go on a Tour of Normandy. Consequently, it was well after 19:00 when I returned home.

This food issue reared its ugly head again. I wasn’t hungry at all, but I found some crackers and vegan cream cheese and came in here to watch the football.

Colwyn Bay v Y Barri, it was, and it was awful. Colwyn bay scored first and then Y Barri scored two, because of two appalling defensive mistakes.

The game pivoted on an incident a couple of minutes later when Colwyn Bay had a player ordered off. But instead of going for the throat, Y Barri were content to keep possession and pass the ball around amongst themselves for the rest of the game, boring the crowd and the tele-spectators to death.

Y Barri scored two more, one was a wicked deflection into the path of an unmarked player, and the other was a wicked deflection into the net. But this is not a game that I would recommend to anyone.

Mind you, I did manage to eat a pile of crackers, so things aren’t all that bad.

So now, I’m off to bed, if this wicked pain in my foot, that started up again half an hour ago, will let me. I’m fed up with that too.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about composing … "well, one of us has" – ed … It reminds me of something that someone said when we visited the grave of Beethoven.
"He spent fifty-seven years composing, and then one hundred and ninety-eight years in there, decomposing. "

Friday 31st October 2025 – AND EVEN THOUGH …

… I served up a much smaller portion of food for tea tonight, I still left the table with some food left on the plate. My appetite has all-but disappeared these days and, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. I’m beginning to worry about it.

At least I’m managing a reasonable breakfast, so that’s something for which to be grateful.

Last night, I remember saying that I was going to leave off worrying about my (lack of) appetite, and so I did. I finished my notes at a time that was much more reasonable than just recently, and then after taking the statistics and backing up the computer, I crawled off to the bathroom.

Managing this time not to fall asleep on the porcelain horse, I sorted myself out in the bathroom and then fell into bed at something like 22:45. Not early, but definitely not late either.

Although I awoke at about 04:15, it was only for a couple of minutes or so, and I was soon back fast asleep in bed. And there I stayed until the alarm went off at 06:29.

There was nothing on the dictaphone from the night, and so it must have been a really deep, relaxing sleep. But I’m in two minds about this. A deep, relaxing sleep will probably do me the world of good, but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …. I enjoy my nocturnal travels. It’s the only excitement that I seem to have these days.

After sorting myself out in the bathroom, I went into the kitchen for my medication.

Because of this cough that I have that doesn’t seem to want to go away, my cleaner recommended a hot drink of fresh lemon juice, ginger and honey. I had some honey so yesterday she brought me a root of ginger and some lemons. I made myself a hot drink with some of it and then went for the medication.

Of course, Brain of Britain forgot that the Calcium Carbonate powder that I take, diluted in liquid, is alkaline. Consequently, when I added it into the hot mix which contained very acidic lemon juice, I had a most interesting reaction.

Anyway, I’ll tell you how this concoction goes when I can find my throat again.

There was some repair work to do this morning. These IKEA drawers are very poorly made and every now and again, one falls apart when I pull on it. Last night, I had one do exactly that so this morning, I had to gather up the pieces and reassemble the drawer.

That didn’t leave much time before Isabelle the Nurse arrived.

She sorted out the injection and then tended to my feel and legs, and then disappeared off to her next port of call. I went and made breakfast.

Back in here, there were things to do, as there always seems to be. But once I’d completed everything, I began work on the radio programme, editing, pairing and seguing the tracks that I’ve chosen.

There are two more tracks than usual in that week because they all seem to be quite short ones. To make up for it, one day I’ll play the thirty-two-minute version of Mountain’s NANTUCKET SLEIGHRIDE.

When the music had been sorted out, I went for my disgusting drink break and then I prepared myself for this afternoon’s torture.

The driver came on time, which makes a change, and I arrived at the Centre de Ré-education just in time for my 14:00 appointment. However, I had to send someone in search of my physiotherapist. Consequently, I missed ten precious minutes of my session.

Today, she had me walking with this huge upright walk frame. It’s certainly easier to use than a pair of crutches, but I almost came to grief when, on the little slope, the front end reared up and nearly sent me flying.

These walk frames are OK, but where am I going to put one? They don’t fold up so there’s no room in here for it, and it won’t fit into the boot of the taxi either.

The rest of the session, she had me trying to stand up from a seat without pushing with my hands. I managed it once, but after that, it was a dismal failure.

She reckons that I’ll benefit from some more “advice” from a few more people, and will arrange the appointments. If it’s free, why not?

The second session, after a half-hour pause, was fifteen minutes sitting down pushing a series of weights with my legs. I can’t manage all that much, but every little helps, I suppose.

The remaining fifteen minutes was lifting weights with a downhill pull on a cord. That wasn’t too difficult, but the greatest part of the exercise was trying to stand up out of the chair afterwards.

The taxi was waiting for me when I left, so I didn’t even have a second to relax and recover. And it’s a long, complicated hike out to the car.

Back here, with the aid of my faithful cleaner, I staggered into the apartment and sat down on a chair, totally exhausted, while I had another disgusting drink.

And then back in here, where I began to write the notes for the songs that I’d chosen. That was a task that took me up to teatime, by which time I’d written about half.

Tea tonight was salad, chips and some of those breaded quorn nuggets that I like, but as I said, I left food on my plate yet again.

When I’d finished, I made another one of these ginger, honey and lemon hot cocktails. I reckon that it’s a case of either “kill or cure”. We’ll find out if it works in the morning.

But seeing as we have been talking about these wonderful cures … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the two farmers at Crewe Cattle Market back in the 1960s.
One of them, clearly worried, asked the other "when your cow had that mystery ailment in her throat, what did you give her?"
The other replied "I gave her a mix of turpentine, molasses, beeswax and rapeseed oil."
They met up in the market two weeks later, and the first one said "Remember that mix that you told me about? I gave it to my cow, but she died."
"Now isn’t that strange?" said the second. "So did mine!"

Thursday 30th October 2025 – AND SO IT WAS …

… three hours at dialysis today. And with the machine going at not far off full tilt too. Mind you, it was exhausting, and I reckon that I should be in for a good night’s sleep tonight.

Rather like last night, in fact.

The notes were finished at some kind of reasonable time and then I dashed through the rest of the things that needed doing. Somehow managing to avoid falling asleep while riding the porcelain horse, I was back here and in bed by 23:02.

A couple of minutes later than I intended, but it can’t be helped. It’s still earlier than several others have been just recently.

Once in bed, it took a few minutes to doze off to sleep, and there I stayed until all of … errr … 04:20. Not being able to go back to sleep, I was giving serious thought to leaving the bed but I reckoned that I’d give it five more minutes and then heave myself out of my stinking pit, but the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29.

At that moment, I was attaching some kind of white PVC guttering to a 1950s or early 1960s bungalow. There had been some discussion about fitting it, and how complicated it was, so I posted several photos of me doing it and how I could do it quite comfortably and make a good job of it, but people still carried on with this issue about how difficult it was. Anyway, the alarm went off at that moment.

After all the work that needed doing on the farm, I became something of an expert on fitting guttering. However, the guttering that I used was standard grey, except on the wooden buildings where it was brown if I could find it, and that wasn’t all the time either.

Having finally (but not without a battle) struggled to my feet, I staggered off into the bathroom for a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today, and then I went into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what else might have been on there. Unfortunately, there wasn’t very much. A new ship had been launched during the American Civil War. It was instructed specifically to keep clear of any kind of naval engagement. However, the captain prepared it with cannon etc and was intent on waging war in it. There were various disguises etc, and quite a few people came to inspect the ship and then left, suitably impressed as he prepared to wage his one-man war on the enemy.

This dream is very reminiscent of the largely ignored but absolute classic film MURPHY’S WAR where a shipwrecked mariner fights a one-man war against a German submarine.

The story about ship disguises though relates to the commerce raiders that the Germans used. They would comb their merchant fleet for ships that had twins in foreign fleets, soup them up and arm them and send them, disguised as innocent merchantmen from other countries, to wreak havoc in the shipping lanes.

Quite often, a little wood framing and painted canvas could enable them to resemble completely different ships, so they were constantly changing identity in order to escape detention.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual and sorted out my injection and then dealt with my feet and legs. After she left, I made my breakfast and had a leisurely start to the morning.

Once I was back in here, there were a few things that needed doing and then I finished off sorting out the music for this radio programme on which I’m working. I now have twenty-one tracks for eighty-three minutes, from which I need to choose about fifty-two minutes-worth.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply the anaesthetic on my arm, and then I had to await the taxi.

It was the guy who seems to be in charge who came for me. He was early, which was nice and made a change, and so I arrived early at dialysis.

By 14:10, I was plugged in, wired up and properly organised, and in the main, they left me alone.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there and she spoke to everyone else, except to me again. I’m convinced that she doesn’t love me any more, which is a tragedy.

They weren’t as prompt in unplugging me, unfortunately. It was 18:20 when I finally made it back here, taking my cleaner completely by surprise. It was another one of the nice, chatty chauffeurs who brought me home and we had had a lovely non-stop chat all the way home.

After a nice long rest, I made tea. Baked potato, veg and some strange spinach pasty things in breadcrumbs. But once more, despite it being a small portion of food, a fair amount ended up in the bin. I really am worried about this.

But I shall worry about it tomorrow because I’m off to bed for that good sleep that I have promised myself. We’ll see if it’s not “famous last words”.

But seeing as we have been talking about not eating … "well, one of us has" – ed … losing weight the way that I’m doing it is easier than some other methods.
A girl from Crewe went to the doctor’s to ask for some weight loss guidance.
After he examined her, he told her "the easiest way is to eat normally for two days, skip a day, eat normally for two days, skip a day, and keep that up for a month. Then come back and we’ll examine you again."
So back she goes after a month and she’s lost seven kilos.
"That’s wonderful" said the doctor. "Was it difficult?"
"To tell the truth, doctor, it nearly killed me."
"The hunger, you mean?"
"No, doctor. All that skipping!"

Wednesday 29th October 2025 – I AM ABSOLUTELY …

… wasted this evening.

This afternoon, I went to the Centre de Ré-education and, once more, they put me through the mill. I am so exhausted that standing up out of my chair is about a hundred times more difficult than it usually is.

It’s not as if I hadn’t prepared for it either. After I’d written my notes, in something of a hurry it has to be said, I rushed through everything else and finally crawled into my lovely fresh bed just one minute or so before 23:00, which was very nice.

How I was looking forward to a good sleep, and I wasn’t disappointed because, once more, I slept right through to the alarm at 06:29. That was certainly making the most of it.

When the alarm went off, I was at Stranraer watching a football match. It had just finished and the commentator was saying that if Stranraer had played like that during a league game, they would have been several places higher up the table by now. But I didn’t have very long to stay there because the alarm went off immediately at that point.

Not that I disagree with the commentator, but there are quite a few players at Stranraer who have come from non-league circles and they are making naive mistakes that are being punished by more experienced players.

But even though I don’t seem to have recorded it, I can still hear the commentator announcing “there is one change from the team from last weekend”. That’s no surprise in view of Salou Turay’s injury, but then again, that was the previous week, not last week.

As usual, I needed a good few minutes to raise myself from the edge of the bed and into the bathroom, and then I wandered off into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. One dream I have already mentioned, but also the clinic to where I go was closing down for the day so I was waiting there, hoping to have a haircut and a shave before they all went. But as usual, I was the very last person, and I was watching the person before me, how they were spending the whole quarter-hour on him with his hair and everything like that. In the end, they finally finished. I walked over there on my crutches, but I was walking far too fast and outran the speed at which I could raise my crutches so I actually managed to walk two or three paces, which surprised me. It surprised them too. I sat down in the chair and he told me to move my chair back a bit so that I wasn’t crowding the desk. Then he began to talk to me about this soup that’s made of vegetables. I couldn’t think of what this had to do with having my hair cut and being shaved. Then he pulled out a brochure for a caravan, a static home that’s situated at Wrenbury in Cheshire. Half of the brochure for this place included some see-through flooring which I imagined was thick, protective glass. He said that my first task would be to go to sleep in there. I wondered how on earth I was going to manage that. However, they opened the door of the accompanying car and made ready to open the door of this mobile home.

This dream seems to be confusing my dialysis experiences with something else. But if only I could walk three paces without my crutches. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

As for the static caravan, or mobile home, there was a Romany encampment at Wrenbury for a great many years, but it was cleared out at some point in recent times, but I’ve not been able to find the precise date.

And no Zero last night, after her visit yesterday. That’s a huge disappointment.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up, with her usual irrepressible spirit. She gave me my injection, sorted out my legs and feet and then cleared off again, leaving me to concentrate on making my breakfast.

Back in here, I had various things to do as usual, which seemed to take an enormous amount of time, and then I pushed on and finished the notes for the radio programme on which I’d been engaged. They are now ready for dictation.

Having done that, I prepared myself for the Centre de Ré-education and it’s a good job that I did, because the taxi came half an hour earlier for me. That was rather embarrassing because I was … errr … otherwise occupied, and the driver had to wait until I’d finished.

When I arrived, I had to wait over half an hour, only to find that my physiotherapist was off sick. Another one took her place and had me working out, but spent the final ten minutes massaging this bad shoulder that I have picked up from somewhere.

Another half-hour wait, and then into the gym for some light muscular work. But nothing “light” about it at all. I was aching in places that I didn’t even know that I had by the time that I’d finished.

Yet another half-hour wait, and then twelve minutes on the exercise bicycle. Last week, I managed 1.3 kilometres. Today, I managed 1.9 kilometres. Things are obviously improving, but I knew all about it when I finished.

The taxi driver turned up bang on tie and brought me home, where my cleaner helped me collapse into a chair. And there I stayed for an hour, trying to find the strength to move into the bedroom.

Once back in here though, I made a start on the next programme. Most of the music has been chosen and I’ve even written some notes. Where has this enthusiasm come from?

Tea was the rest of the kidney bean and soya mince whatsit with rice, and once again, a fair proportion of it ended up in the bin. I’m just not hungry these days, which is a shame. It’s not like me at all.

But now I’m off to bed, to have a good sleep ready for dialysis. Let’s see if I have just a three-hour session tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the gym at the Centre de Ré-education … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone else in there was extremely dispirited by his (lack of) performance.
"I can’t keep up with this" he complained. "I don’t have the strength for it. I don’t think that I’ll be coming again."
The monitor looked at him. "So this discussion will count then as your ‘too weak’ notice, I suppose?"

Tuesday 28th October 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I was asleep when the alarm went off at 06:29 this morning. I don’t know what’s happening to me. A few weeks ago, I’d have been up and about for several hours by then.

It’s not as if I had had a late night either. Although it wasn’t as early as I would have liked, 23:20 isn’t all that late by current standards. It could have been earlier too, but I can’t seem to find the motivation these days to push on and complete even the most simple tasks.

Once in bed, I fell asleep quite quickly, and there I stayed, flat out, until about 04:15. Having checked the time, I rolled over and went back to sleep, and that was that. I wish that I could do that more often.

As usual, it took me a good while for me to find the motivation to raise myself to my feet and stagger off to the bathroom, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here; I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was something about a ships’ convoy sailing down the coast of Normandy out here in the bay. They were keeping to shallow waters so that a submarine wouldn’t creep up on them and sink them

Yesterday, I was reading a report on the convoy codes from World War II and what they meant, such as SC, representing “Sydney, Cape Breton” – the slow convoys from the Gulf of St Lawrence to Liverpool, and the reverse route from Liverpool to the Gulf, ONS, meaning “Outbound, Northwards, Slow”. There were hundreds of convoy routes, each one with its own identity. What a convoy would be doing, hugging the coast to keep clear of submarines, is anyone’s guess.

There was also something about shopping and someone going to buy some food, and having to buy something else like a bread bun that was loose in one of these dispenser things.

This one, however, is totally meaningless.

But the one that I remember was someone being awoken in the morning and having to dress. He put on a suit but the suit was soaking wet; It had been on the floor when there had been a flood or something like that, but it was the only suit that he had so he put it on and tried his best to make himself tidy. He went into the living room where there were a few other people waiting. They began to talk about leaving. There was something about breakfast – whether they should have breakfast before leaving because all along the way, all of the shops were forbidden to serve Jews so they wouldn’t have anything to eat until they boarded their ship that was taking them to immigrate to the New World.

This one doesn’t seem to relate to too much either. Many Jews did flee Europe in the late 19th and early 20th Century, in order to escape persecution. Many more tried in the late 1930s but of those who did manage to escape on board a ship, many were refused entry at the destinations of their choice

A young Zero put in an appearance last night. She was coming to stay with Nerina and me for a couple of days, so we went to pick her up and brought her home. We all settled down on the settee and we let her choose a film. She chose CROCODILE DUNDEE and put the DVD on. But the film wasn’t anything at all about that. It was more of a cartoon type of ASTERIX THE GAUL and his friends, who were invaded by the Romans and the misadventures that befell them. All of the woman in this film had fallen in love with Caesar and so they wanted to assassinate Caesar but they couldn’t agree on a method of doing it. In the end, the plot was exposed, and they were all fastened to this huge plank of wood that was hinged on the floor. When they were fastened there, they were raised up – the plank of wood was raised up almost vertically so that the sun was shining directly onto them all. It was a form of medieval torture.

So welcome back, Zero! It’s nice to see her during the night, and it’s a shame that she couldn’t stay around for longer. However, I didn’t think much of the ending to this dream. It’s been quite a while since there has been a violent dream. At one time, I was having these bloodthirsty dreams on a regular basis.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in this morning, full of good humour and bonhomie. She gave me the first of this series of injections and then tended to my feet, chatting all the time. It seems that her son is off on holiday to Scotland at some point and she was asking after some hints.

My favourite part of Scotland is the West Coast, all around the lochs and islands, but I’m also a big fan of Galloway, where I’ve spent many a happy day or three.

After Isabelle the Nurse left, I made breakfast and then came back in here.

There was plenty to do at first and it took an age. It still doesn’t seem as if I’ve actually done anything. But once I’d finished as far as I could, I made a start on the radio programme.

By the time that I’d finished, I’d chosen all of the music, edited and remixed it, paired and segued it, and written half of the notes. Tomorrow, I shall have to crack on and finish.

There was an interruption today, when my faithful cleaner came in to do her stuff. That included organising a shower for me, and I did something that I haven’t done for several years – which was to climb unaided into the shower.

That was a real feather in my cap, I can tell you. And I enjoyed the climb too. The shower was even nicer, and now, I’m a nice, clean boy.

For tea tonight, I had a taco roll with rice and veg. But not the usual taco roll – I made it with soya mince and kidney beans just for a change. It was a change too, but I’m not going to say that it was any better.

So now, I’m off to bed ready for tomorrow. And as well as a nice, clean me, there’s a nice, clean bed. My cleaner changed the bedding this afternoon while I was showering. I’m really going to be in the lap of luxury tonight and I can’t wait to climb into it.

But seeing as we have been talking about showers … "well, one of us has" – ed … I was once in a motel when I heard a woman in another room shout "it’s disgusting. It shouldn’t be allowed!"
Of course, I wandered over there to see what was going on.
"It’s the man in the room next door" she said. "He’s in the shower, doing rude things to himself!"
So I had a look in the shower and couldn’t see anything at all.
"Of course you can’t" she said. "But if you put the bedside chair on top of the chest of drawers and climb up, you can see him through the air brick if you squint."

Monday 27th October 2025 – IN A CHANGE …

… from the usual programme these days, when the alarm went off this morning at 06:29, I was fast asleep in bed.

Not that it’s any surprise because, what with one thing and another … "and once you make a start, you have no idea how many other things there are" – ed … it was 00:50 when I finally crawled into bed. And it’s a long time since I have been that late going to bed, that’s for sure

Whatever these other things were, I really have no idea because I wasn’t doing anything that I don’t normally do. It’s true that I was late back from tea, but not all that late I just seem to have run out of time here and there for no good reason.

Surprisingly, after that ridiculously early start, I wasn’t at all tired. I could have stayed up for much longer than I did but there’s no point in pushing your luck for no good reason. However, I didn’t go to sleep all that quickly last night … "he means ‘this morning’" – ed …

When the alarm went off, I was absolutely out of it and it took a good few minutes to work out what was going on. However, I did manage to be sitting on the edge of the bed when the second alarm went off, so I can’t complain about that.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis, and then I went into the kitchen for the medication. While I was at it, I cut the new loaf in half, wrapped them and put them into the stock in the freezer.

The bread was followed by the croissants. When the current half-loaf that I am toasting is finished, I’ll resurrect the croissants and see how they have come out. If they are inedible, I’ll abandon the project. If however they are worth eating, I’ll send my faithful cleaner off to Leclerc for some more puff pastry and make some more for my guests next weekend.

No sooner had I come back in here when the nurse arrived – ridiculously early again. He’s off on his week’s break this evening so I imagine that he wants to finish his rounds as early as possible.

After he left, I made breakfast and then came back in here to transcribe the dictaphone notes. And I was surprised that there were some, considering how deeply I must have slept. There was a group of us who set off on a kind of hike. It had been part of some kind of exercise where everyone had to walk around or run around this circuit. It was extremely complicated, with climbing exercises, running exercises and all kinds of different things. The first part of this, or should I say, the first one of this, went OK. I wax one of the people who had to wait on a street corner for the parties to arrive. When this had happened in the previous version of this, it was someone else who was doing it and I was one of the people who was running, so I had a good idea of what to do. However, it was in darkness – it was pitch-black. You couldn’t see anything and you were really doing this kind of thing by intuition. It didn’t seem to work very well. The next time, we set off. There was about eight of us in this group, but I didn’t really fit in with the others but I went with them all the same. Coming across a field, we were all carrying wire baskets full of fruit and vegetables. And coming across the field, there was one of the songs by Man being played, and I was singing it. They were all wondering what it was. We were going past some kind of courtyard with all these old buildings in it. We were walking through this courtyard and there were all lights on in the odd individual buildings. Someone made some kind of comment, and I pointed to the doorway right at the very end of the row on one side of this courtyard, and I said that they were the most famous toilets in rock music. When we reached the end of this courtyard, we had to climb out and onto the street. This involved going through some large kind of wire – metal grilled compound or something. We had to put down our baskets to climb up, pick up our baskets. I was the last one out, and I realised that someone had my basket and left theirs behind, so we had to sort out the baskets. Then we came to the city walls, which were the big city walls with a tiny gap in between them – two concentric walls. I again had to pass my basket up to the people who were up on top of the walls. Then I had to hoist myself up in a most undignified way by leaping up, catching the sides with my elbows and using my feet to walk the lower part of my body up, hooking it over the top of the walls and then somehow pulling the upper half of my body up. There were some other people sitting on the walls, a group of girls. They were impressed, so I smiled at them but the other guys with me made some kind of ribald comments. Then we were talking about the next stage of the journey. Some guy seemed to be extremely cocky about it so I said to one of the others “wait until we are further on. It’s his daughter who is doing the sentry duty on the street corner and she won’t take any nonsense from him”.

This is reminiscent of the dream that I had several days ago when I was crawling underneath fences and through hedges. And the … errr … restrooms reminded me of those in the woodworking block at Grammar School.

The rest of it, though, is quite meaningless as far as I can tell, and I’ve no idea why we would be walking around carrying those wire supermarket shopping baskets.

With all of that out of the way, I set out to pay a couple of bills. However, I’ll be badgered if I can’t find them. I had them in my hand a few days ago and put them somewhere, but wherever I might have put them, I don’t have an idea.

Instead, I tried to contact the tax office for a duplicate or to see if they would accept a payment on-line, but trying to contact them is impossible. Despite there being a helpline number, all it does is route you to a series of recorded messages and is of nu use whatsoever.

The bank was even worse, because they aren’t open today, recovering from having to work on Saturday mornings. I shall have to contact them again.

As for the hospital at Rennes, I needed to contact them too. They have given me an appointment for chemotherapy on Wednesday 12th November, but that’s no good because the follow-up will be on the Thursday and I’m in dialysis.

Eventually I managed to speak to them and they changed it to Tuesday 18th November. I believe that, barring accidents, that will be the last chemotherapy until I’ve had my six-monthly check-up in Paris in February.

All of that, would you believe, took me up to midday when my faithful cleaner arrived. She sorted out my anaesthetic and then left me to await the taxi.

For a change, it was bang on time so I braved the howling gale to go outside while I waited for the driver to bring the car round. Being new, he didn’t know where to park so he had ended up on the public car park.

There was another passenger in the car, a lively old woman, and we had an exciting chat all the way to Avranches. Bizarrely, she has exactly the same illness that I have, with very similar symptoms.

Being early leaving, I was early arriving and to my surprise, I only had to wait ten minutes before I was coupled up. That is the first for quite a while.

They left me pretty much alone today, although the doctor came to see me. Not Emilie the Cute Consultant, even though she was there and talked to everyone else but me. She clearly doesn’t love me any more.

Instead, I had the chef de service. I’m obviously being watched quite closely these days. But he brought me some good news. Firstly, I can abandon another one of my pills for a while and see how I get on.

Secondly, he plans to try a few sessions of just three hours instead of three and a half if the liquid level will permit it. The machine is limited to about 850 millilitres per hour.

The taxi arrived for me just a couple of minutes after I had finished, and wasn’t it nice to be back home early? Even if it was well dark by then.

There was even time for half an hour of relaxing before I went for tea.

Tonight, I had mashed potatoes and vegan sausage with vegetables in a cheese sauce. And that made a nice change, even if it did taste of salt … "there wasn’t even a grain of salt added" – ed …

So now, I’m off to bed. There’s a day off tomorrow as my Welsh class is on half-term. I shall ring up the bank and then crack on with a radio programme or two, to see how far I can go.

But seeing as we have been talking about medieval city walls … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the time a friend of mine went to see the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem
"How did you get on?" I asked her.
"Actually, it was quite embarrassing" she replied. "Thousands and thousands of people there, and I was the only one who had brought a harpoon."

Sunday 26th October 2025 – HAS ANYONE ELSE …

… experienced any problems with Windows 10 today?

Updating and revisions for Windows 10 stopped being produced yesterday, and this morning, when I switched on the big computer, I had the error message “no operating system found”. After some coaxing, I managed to make it fire up but it went down again shortly afterwards and that, dear reader, was that.

Luckily, I have an old disk with a locked version of Windows 10 on it, and that fired up and seems to be running quite well at the moment, although it’s old and slow.

It could, of course, be nothing whatever to do with Microsoft’s policy of making all computers obsolete so that everyone must buy new computers, and be a simple technological fault. However, I seem to remember the exact same problem with an older laptop running Windows 7 on the day after upgrades stopped being supplied for that operating system, and so my curiosity has been aroused.

But it’s a good job that I have organised my computer as I have.

There’s a 1TB (although at the moment it’s a 256GB) solid state hard drive with the operating system and the programs

There’s a 4TB data drive, which is where I keep the data

There’s another 4TB data drive that is a mirror of the one above

There’s a 128GB memory stick in a USB port that I use for backing up every evening, or more often if I’ve been working a large number of files

There’s a 64GB memory stick in another USB port. That’s attached to my house keys. It’s another daily backup device and I use it as a travelling drive to update the travelling laptop.

Apart from that, there are several external drives and an array with several hard drives in it, all of which represent the complete history of my computing since I had my first 386SX in 1993. Wherever the stuff is for the old Apple 2 that we had before that, I really don’t know.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … err … apartment, last night should have been an early night. And it would have been too, had I not fallen asleep while riding the porcelain horse, yet again. Honestly, I was dead to the World last night.

No-one could ever have been more pleased than me to crawl into bed last night, even if it was as late as 23:30. Surprisingly, given how tired I was, it took a while to drop off to sleep, and it was a rather turbulent night too, thanks in the main to the howling gale that had sprung up outside again.

Round about 03:10 (well, 04:10 had we not put the clocks back) I awoke definitively, and try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay there dozing for quite a while until about 05:20 when I heaved myself out of my stinking pit.

After a good wash and scrub up, I came back in here to watch yesterday’s live football match – Cardiff Metropolitan v Y Fflint.

And what an exciting match that was! The two teams are low down in the table but they both play exciting, attacking football, and the game lived up to expectations. For about 80 or so minutes, the two teams slugged it out toe to toe with the game roaring from one end to the other.

The final ten minutes were something else entirely, and the game finished with one of the most astonishing goals that I have seen for a long, long time. EDRYCHWCH A MWYNHEUWCH – “watch and enjoy”, as the commentator said.

The nurse came at his usual time, and didn’t stay long. He was soon in and out and off on his travels again. I could then take my medication and make breakfast. With it being a Sunday, I had a very slow, relaxing morning.

Back in here again, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. To my surprise, there actually were some. There was a problem with one of the Ford Transits that I had. It had to be moved so I towed it all the way from France back to the UK. I reached about two miles from my home before I started to have a few problems. I was quite annoyed about that, being so close.

There is a story behind this kind of dream too, but the world isn’t ready to hear it.

But earlier, there had been something to do with ships etc on the Great Lakes where I’d been weighed. I had four kilos to lose but again, they had to cut short the session. That left the ship in the Lakes top-heavy and in the first storm afterwards, it turned over and sank. That was another piece of work that needs to be doing that I didn’t have the time or the energy to face.

This dream seems to include a little piece of everything, including THE WRECK OF THE EDMUND FITZGERALD

Later on, I’d been working away somewhere and my desk, as usual, was a total mess, my office was a total mess. The boss one day came in and she decided that she was going to help me organise everything. She asked me where I intended to put the spare battery for the car. I told her that I could put it in the bottom of the big black cupboard. Instead, she found a place at the side where there was a plug to plug in the charger. She was coming up with suggestions like that. Then it was time to go home. I filled up my suitcase with all kinds of rubbish that I didn’t particularly want her to see while she was tidying up, including three spare batteries for the cars. I set out, and I had my mother with me. When we came to near where we lived, she wanted to walk the rest of the way so we climbed out of the car but she couldn’t find her shoes. Eventually, when she did, the soles were wafer-thin, which hurt her to walk on the asphalt. We continued on down to my house, pulling my huge suitcase with me. When we reached the house, we could hear the taxi office working, but there was music coming from somewhere else in the house. The first thing that we did was to go in. We were met by someone working the radio. The house was, as usual, in a total tip. They were saying that they hadn’t been very busy at all while we’d been away. This was just how things were as usual while we hadn’t been there.

Everywhere I go seems to finish in total chaos and disorder. Someone once paid good money for a birth chart for me, and this was mentioned quite firmly. However, it went on to say "but that probably disturbs the people around you far more than it does you."

Having finished that, we had more football. There were the highlights of the other games in Wales over the weekend, and then there was Stranraer in the Scottish Cup against non-league Glenafton Athletic.

Stranraer ran out in what would appear to be a comfortable 4-0 victory, but a more experienced professional side would have capitalised on several of the errors made by the Stranraer back line during the match.

In the afternoon, I attacked the rest of the Welsh homework, which is now finished. And then I went a-baking.

Not only do I now have a lovely loaf of bread and a wonderful pizza (well, I don’t now, because I’ve eaten it), I have some croissants.

With visitors being here in two weeks time, I need to think about breakfasts, and so in my delivery from Leclerc I ordered a roll of vegan puff pastry and had a go at making croissants.

They were not very successful, but it was “encouraging”. At least, I know how to improve them.

While I was at it, I was looking up recipes for aquafaba – the juice out of a tin of chick peas. It’s an acceptable egg substitute so I’ve been trying to find something interesting to do with the aquafaba that came out of last week’s chick peas.

If anyone has any useful suggestions, let me know. I’ve found a recipe for meringues but I shall pass on that for now.

So having eaten my pizza, and hours later than usual, I’m off to bed, ready for dialysis tomorrow (I don’t think).

But before we go, seeing as we have been talking about aquafaba … "well, one of us has" – ed … someone once asked me "what’s made of egg-whites and sugar, and when you throw it away, it comes back to scare you?"
"I don’t know" I replied. "What is made of egg-whites and sugar, and when you throw it away, it comes back to scare you?"
"A booh-meringue."

Saturday 25th October 2025 – MY BROCCOLI STALK …

… soup was delicious this evening.

Actually, it wasn’t. But that’s not the fault of the soup, the ingredients or the method of cooking. It’s to do with my complete and utter lack of taste these days.

The soup tasted of nothing but salt, which is bizarre because there wasn’t even a pinch of salt in it. But that’s how my taste buds have gone since I started chemotherapy.

All in all, I’m not feeling too well today, which is no surprise given the night that I had. It was another late night, despite all of my good intentions, and although I was asleep fairly quickly, it wasn’t for long. By 04:20 I was wide-awake.

Having tried my best to go back to sleep and failing miserably, I left the bed at 05:30 or thereabouts and took advantage of the early start by recording some of the radio notes that had been building up.

After that, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been, and it was another disappointing night. That’s twice during the night that I’ve moved too rapidly in bed and pulled a muscle in my right thigh, and awoken in agony. I don’t know what I’ve done to this muscle. It must have been something that the physiotherapist did. If I move quickly, it locks up and hurts like hell.

Looking back, I can vaguely remember the muscle spasms. It seems rather strange, though, that I should dictate something about them.

During the night, there was a whole host of snippets of little moments that came and went so fast that I didn’t have time to record them. There was one that was concerned with music. I was editing songs and putting them in a special file – directory – for some reason but I can’t remember why. This went on all the way through the night.

There have been spells like this in the past where a whole raft of dreams has passed before my eyes. I remember one very dramatic occasion when I was on an intravenous drip in hospital, and it felt as if I was hallucinating. But the editing of songs and filing them in a special directory is one of the ways in which I organise my radio programmes.

Once I’d finished with the dictaphone, I edited the notes that I’d dictated earlier and now that programme is complete.

The nurse was at his usual time today. We had a good chat about the series of injections that I have to have, and also the ones that are in the pipeline, such as the ‘flu injection and the Covid injection.

After he left, I made breakfast and then came back in here to work.

There were a few things that needed doing, and then I carried on with sorting out the music for the two radio programmes that I have on the go right now. With an hour to go, I broke off and did half of my Welsh homework. I want to finish it this weekend if I can.

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

Our route out today took us to Champeau to pick up another passenger, so we were late arriving at Avranches. However, I was dealt with by Julie the Cook, the first time for ages, and she was quite rapid.

No-one bothered me at all today, but they were using some disinfectant to clean something and the smell was overpowering. I really felt like vomiting, it was so bad. It’s a good job that I only had to stay for three and a half hours. I would never have managed four.

They unplugged me quite quickly and another one of my favourite drivers was waiting for me. However, we had to wait around for the other guy to take him to Champeau again. Not that I minded too much because the driver and I had a lovely chat.

It was quite late when I returned, after all of that, and my cleaner was waiting. Back in here, we had a discussion, the result of which was that she’ll be coming on Tuesday afternoon instead of Wednesday for as long as I have to go to the Centre de Ré-education.

Tea was, as I mentioned, the broccoli stalk soup. And now I’m off to bed to try to make the most of this extra hour in bed. We put the clocks back during the night.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about disinfectant … "well, one of us has" – ed … my brother’s nickname at school was “Harpic”.
"Why do they call you ‘Harpic’?" asked one of the teachers.
"That’s easy, miss" said one of the other boys. "It’s because he’s clean round the bend!"

Friday 24th October 2025 – AND ONCE AGAIN …

… I’ve left the table, leaving a pile of food on my plate. This is something that is beginning to worry me. It seems that these days, I’m living on a few mouthfuls of food and a pile of protein drinks, and that can’t be good for me.

And neither is going to bed late either, but here we are. last night, it was just after 23:30 when I finally made it into bed. I really don’t know where the time goes these days. It’s not as if there’s a great deal to do when I have finished my tea.

So after writing my notes, checking the statistics and backing up the computer, I went and sorted myself out in the bathroom and then a very weary me headed off to crawl underneath the covers.

For a change, I had a decent sleep. I remember tossing and turning a few times during the night, but that was about everything. At least – until about 06:20 when I had another one of these dramatic awakenings.

Only nine minutes to go for the alarm so I hauled myself quickly out from underneath the covers and switched off the alarms. The storm seemed to have died down somewhat, which was good news. One of the ideas going through my head was that if the wind was blowing anything at all like yesterday, I was going to cancel my trip to the Centre de Ré-education.

Being out of bed at 06:20 is one thing. Actually standing up and heading to the bathroom is something else completely, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

After a good wash and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. And it was rather disappointing. Nerina and I had had a friend come round to visit us. We went for a drive into Crewe – the town centre. As we turned into Flag Lane, there was the Workingmen’s Club place on the right-hand side in the old temporary buildings so we stopped and went in. The person with us was extremely impressed. He’d never seen a place like this before – hundreds of people lounging around, playing darts or snooker, carpet bowls etc. I said that I’d been here a couple of times to give talks on different things. It’s the kind of place where you would come where there was a big football match on the TV and it’s a place where you would have plenty of atmosphere in here with the crowds watching it.

In Crewe, there were plenty of Workingmen’s Clubs and Family Social Clubs, although a lot less these days than there used to be. In my mis-spent youth I used to go to play snooker and table tennis (and have the occasional drink) in one or two of them, and I’ve even played in groups that have played in them. The buildings to which I’m referring though are the old Catholic primary school which, according to one of these street view things, has now been demolished and replaced by a flock of bats.

There’s an interesting story about the communal TV though. When I was very young, in the late 1950s or early 1960s, there was a cup game featuring Crewe Alexandra being televised. The parish council hired a television for the night and there were probably a couple of hundreds of us crammed into Shavington Village Hall watching the game on this tiny 405-line TV screen.

“The Good Old Days”, anyone?.

The nurse was early today. Apparently another one of his clients has been hospitalised … "what’s he doing to them all?" – ed … so his round is rather shorter. We talked about dialysis and the blood clot. He was formerly a dialysis nurse, and he told me that had it happened when he was working there, they would have cleaned the needle and re-inserted it, rather than abandon the procedure.

After he left, I made breakfast, even though I wasn’t all that hungry, and then came back in here to work.

There were a few things that needed doing, and the rest of the morning was spent sorting out some more music for a couple of radio programmes.

There were a few interruptions. Firstly, my cleaner came in with the injections for next week, and then Rosemary ‘phoned up for a chat. Just a brief one, because I needed to prepare my things for going out.

My cleaner came back a little later to do her stuff, and when the taxi arrived, she helped me out to the car although the wind was nothing at all as bad as yesterday.

At the Centre de Ré-education they put me through my paces.

Firstly, they had me working on a kind of press, sitting down and pushing weights with my feet.

Secondly, they attached a length of strong elastic to a pillar and I had to pull on it, keeping my upper arms parallel to my torso.

Those exercises were for fifteen minutes each

Thirdly, I was worked over by the physiotherapist who had me doing all kinds of things, even walking on my hands and knees. Thirty minutes of all of that was more than enough, thank you.

After a rest, during which I was drifting in and out of semi-sleep, I was given twelve minutes on the exercise bike. That was really tough, given the state of my knees and lower legs, but I managed to travel 1.3 theoretical kilometres. At one stage, I was developing as much as eleven watts of power.

It wasn’t just the exercises either. For many of the exercises, they had me sitting in low seats, from which it is almost impossible for me to haul myself up. It was a real gymnastic effort to do that, but, as they say, if it’s not hurting, it’s not doing you any good. I reckon that if that’s the case, then today I must have done a lot of good.

Just like chemotherapy, you don’t have a minute to recover before you are turfed out. It’s a labyrinth in there and you have to walk miles to where the taxis wait. Being disabled and in an exhausted state, it’s no picnic. When I arrived back here, I fell straight into a chair for an hour to recover.

Once I’d caught my breath, I came in here to sort out some more music and then went to make tea.

Tonight, I had a stir-fry of noodles, vegetables, bean sprouts and chick peas in soy sauce, but as I said just now, half of it went into the bin. I’m really not doing too well with my food and I can foresee serious problems ahead if I can’t find my appetite from somewhere.

But since chemotherapy, everything tastes of salt, I have the most incredible wind and I feel full all the time. What on earth is going on with my body?

Anyway, I’ll worry about that tomorrow because right now, I’m off to bed, hoping for a better day tomorrow. It’s dialysis, though, and we’ll see how the events of the last few days have affected that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about having the wind … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned to a doctor at dialysis the fact that I have wind.
"Can you give me anything for this wind that I have?" I asked.
He went away, and came back five minutes later with a kite.

Thursday 23rd October 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s pointless going to bed early, because all that happens is that I wake up correspondingly early next morning.

Mind you, the howling gale that sprung up at about 01:10 probably had something to do with that. I have, quite seriously, never heard winds quite like it.

It will be interesting to find out what wind speed was reached during the night, to see if it was anywhere near the record 209 kph that we had once. At the airfield, a speed of 87 kph was recorded but the airfield is quite secluded. It will be a different matter up here on the headland, exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic storms.

While I was at dialysis, my cleaner sent me A VIDEO OF THE STORM. And it’s quite sheltered around that side of the bay.

Throughout the day, it’s gone from bad to worse, and this is one of the reasons – only one – why I’ve had such a lousy day today.

Yesterday, I mentioned that I’d had no tea. When I’d finished everything else, I dashed through my evening routine and, much to my delight, I was in bed by 21:20 and that made a lovely change.

Not that it would last, though. As I mentioned just now, I was awake at 01:10 as the storm raged. And for the rest of the night, I drifted in and out of sleep.

Round about 05:20, I finally gave it up as a bad job and went to organise myself for the day, including doing the washing-up from yesterday.

After the medication, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a rock concert taking place with three groups in it. One of them was playing from 18:30 – 19:30, the second one from 19:30 onwards and the third was to come on later. At least, that was how I understood the situation to be. Someone asked me for some further information but I wasn’t able to give them any, except the proposed starting times for the first two groups because that was all the information that I had.

This reminds me of one of the rock concerts that I organised in Crewe in 1975 or thereabouts. Two local groups with the third one being a group from Chester in which a friend played. It was good fun, this one, but it wasn’t particularly successful and I didn’t organise many more after that.

We were given half an hour at school to write a story. It had to be a story about a holiday. I began to write a story about a young girl who had gone on holiday to Italy. She’d somehow ended up watching a beauty contest. She was all of the competitors and she saw the crowd cheering them. She was extremely envious and wished that she was up there with them. The situation carried on and eventually, she found herself in the arms of a young Italian boy. Just as she was starting to relax for perhaps her very first kiss, I dunno, there was this huge bellow of her name. She looked round and it was her mother. The boy ran away immediately and the mother gave this girl an enormous dressing-down and ordered her up to her room, so she ran off upstairs crying.

Now, this dream has a great deal of significance for someone whom I know. However, I’m not going to mention any further details in order to protect the anonymity of a certain young lady who will be familiar to regular readers of this rubbish.

A few of us were out there in these really high storms. Some kind of ball was being used for some purpose or other and it happened to fall to the ground in this wind just as one of the most feeble patients from dialysis was walking past. It hit her and she was rushed to hospital. A couple of days later we saw one of the taxi drivers, the guy who seems to be the senior driver. He expressed the opinion that if this ball was going to fall, it was bound to hit her more than anyone else just by simple Sod’s Law. Then he described in graphic detail the operation that had been taking place upon her. I had to leave the room again because I couldn’t stand to listen to it.

The lady concerned these days doesn’t walk to dialysis and hasn’t done for quite a while. But the part about the high winds is certainly apposite.

At some point or other I was out in the brown Cortina estate that I had for a while. I’d met some friends in the centre of Brussels. Before that, I’d been to see a psychiatrist. We had the interview in Brussels and she was asking me all kinds of questions. The answer in almost every case was “no”. She became frustrated and asked me if I was interested in pursuing this. I replied that I was, but she would have to ask me some meaningful questions if she wanted meaningful answers. In the end, I left and went to meet my friends. They told me to park up the car and come to join them. I parked up the car, but they wanted me to park in another car park next to it, which was a paying car park. I went in there, but as I was reversing into a car parking space, my foot slipped off the brake and the car rolled and hit an old Ford Escort. My friends came round to see what had happened. It had made something of a mess of the rear of my car but it was just the bumper that was bent on his. The guy came over and we agreed that I’d pay £20:00 for it, but I had a hell of a job searching through my wallet and all my papers for some money. They were becoming frustrated. In the end, I gave him this £20:00 to shut him up. We went for a walk, and we went past where I had a series of lock-up garages. We saw that two of them were open and were empty. I wondered what had happened to all my stuff and the cars that were in there. The third one had had its door broken but the stuff was still in there. I was wondering now what I was going to do about all of this because I couldn’t leave the door like this. And what about the stuff that had gone missing?

There’s a lot of relevant information in this one too, one way or another, although we can leave the trick cyclist out of the equation.

The nurse was early today, soaking wet and dripping everywhere. He told me that it was vicious out there, and I could well believe it from the noise of the howling wind. The soaking wet clothes just seemed to underline everything.

After he left, I had breakfast, not that I felt much like it, and then came back in here.

First task was to make an important ‘phone call, and that took quite some time. And for the rest of the morning, I was choosing music for another radio programme.

My cleaner blew in – quite literally – and applied my anaesthetic. She told me to summon her when the taxi came because I was going to need all the help that I could find.

She wasn’t wrong either. The howling gale was such that it needed the driver and my cleaner to hold on to me the moment that I stepped outside. It took over fifteen minutes to stagger the twenty metres to where the taxi was parked and there were times that the three of us didn’t really think that we could make it.

It was the most hair-raising fifteen minutes that I had had for quite some considerable time.

With picking up someone else along the way, I was hours late arriving at dialysis and as I was exiting the car, we had a torrential rainstorm and I was drenched.

Despite how I’d been watching my food and drink intake, I was well over the maximum limit and I’ve no idea at all why that should be. I’ve been very, very careful, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

As a result, they set up the machine leaving me with three hundred grams to take out “next time”.

The doctor came to see me, wrote a new medical prescription for me and gave me a prescription for a pedicure. Apparently I’m entitled to one every year.

After that, they left me alone – until the alarm on the machine began to go berserk.

Apparently, my blood had begun to clot so it was developing an airlock. There was nothing else to do but to cut the session short. So now I’m an enormous amount over the limit and the next few sessions are going to be gruelling.

Finishing early, I had to wait around for my driver. Luckily, it was one of my favourite taxi drivers, the one who took me to Rennes on Tuesday. We had a good chat as usual on the way home, talking about taxi operations and the like.

Back here, we managed to manoeuvre the car into the emergency space at the back of the building while my cleaner opened the fire escape. While the wind was even more ferocious at the back, there were only three metres to walk. Even so, it was still quite a struggle.

However, I’ll be in the taxi company’s bad books tomorrow. The wind tore the door out of my hand and slammed it against the front pillar with an almighty crash. I didn’t look to see if there was any damage, but I bet that they will when the car returns to the garage.

Tea was a leftover curry, and once more, I left a pile of food on my plate. I really don’t know from where this extra weight is coming, seeing as I’ve already cut down dramatically on the amount of food that I eat and I’m still throwing tons away.

But I’ll worry about that tomorrow because right now I’m off to bed. And I bet I won’t be able to sleep with all of this racket going on outside.

These winds are crazy. Since I moved here in 2017, I’m convinced that we are having more and stronger winds. There’s hardly a week that goes by without a very strong wind, and not a month without a hurricane.

But seeing as we have been talking about psychiatrists … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once went to see a psychiatrist about a problem that I had, where if anything was lying around, I would pick it up and disappear with it.
"I recognise your problem" he said. "You’re a kleptomaniac."
"Can you cure me?" I asked him.
"I’ll certainly try" he said.
"And if your cure doesn’t work?" I asked.
"In that case, could you pick up a new television for me?"

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 – I HAVEN’T HAD …

… any tea tonight.

Not that it should be a surprise to anyone. After all, if I didn’t have my breakfast until 13:30 today, it’s hardly likely that I’m going to be hungry at teatime, given the way that things have been just recently.

That’s right. We had another really early start today – the taxi due to come for me at 06:45 or thereabouts this morning to take me to chemotherapy.

Consequently, I’d rushed through the usual evening procedure after tea last night and was in bed by about 22:35, which makes quite a nice change.

However, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s a waste of time going to bed early because what seems to happen is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning. Like 03:55, for example.

Despite any amount of trying, I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards. I lay there tossing and turning for about ninety minutes, but in the end, gave it up as a bad job and arose from the Dead.

The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. Not that there was much on there. There was something about being in the army last night. One of the officers was complaining about one of the Generals going on leave all the time for long periods. He called the General’s aide-de-camp in to discuss it with him. The aide-de-camp reminded him that Generals don’t have leave. They are sent on leave at the discretion of the leader of the army. There’s no official entitlement to it.

This is another one of those dreams that is completely meaningless, as far as I am concerned.

After a good wash, I waited for the nurse to turn up. He arrived bang on 06:30 as promised, and sorted out my legs and feet. He was still in a very good mood, which is very pleasant. Once he’d gone, I awaited the taxi, which arrived at 06:50.

This morning’s driver was the young chatty guy, so we had a very long and interesting chat all the way to Rennes, a chat that included commentary on several other drivers, especially the one who pulled out right in front of us on the autoroute at 130 kph and the other one who drove for about 50 km with only one rear light illuminated.

We were early arriving at Rennes, but even so, I had to wait until 09:00 or thereabouts to be plugged in.

Once more, I was devilishly tired but I didn’t manage to doze off today. I read a book until it was 10:10 and time to be unplugged.

The driver was waiting for me when I came out. It was another one of the more sociable drivers. He took me on a little sightseeing tour of Rennes on our way to another hospital to pick up a young girl for Avranches. It was another chatty drive on the way back.

It was about 12:30 when I arrived here, and my faithful cleaner helped me into the apartment. I was slightly more sprightly today than yesterday.

After she left, the first thing that I did was to send off my shopping order. I have to eat, even if I don’t feel much like it.

Second thing was to make breakfast. Since tea last night, all that I’d had up to now was one very small mouthful of water and I had a thirst that you could photograph. And having eaten, I crashed out, hunched over the kitchen table, for over half an hour.

My cleaner came in to do her stuff, and I carried on with the radio programme that I’d started last week, choosing the music that I hope to be playing

When the shopping order came in, I put everything away and then washed, diced and blanched the carrots and the broccoli ready for freezing.

But now, even though it’s really early, I’m going to go to bed. Chemotherapy is exhausting and I’m really feeling it tonight. I’m glad that I’ve not had any food, otherwise that would keep me awake for hours trying to digest it. I’ll probably be awake early tomorrow, but it doesn’t matter all that much.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the car with one tail light … "well, one of us has" – ed … at one point, we flagged it down to tell the driver, and he left his car to go to have a look.
"Blast it!" he shouted. "This is all that I need. It’s going to cost me a fortune, this is!"
"There’s no need to panic" said my driver. "It’s only a rear light."
"Never mind the bleeding light!" he stormed. "Where the hell has my flaming trailer gone?"

Tuesday 21st October 2025 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since an old car featured on these pages?

Coming back from Rennes this late afternoon, I encountered a Panhard 24 CT two-door coupé coming the other way

Being driven by someone else, I couldn’t stop to photograph it, and as it was approaching us at some kind of ridiculous combined speed, it would have been an interesting challenge to say the least, so I had to let it go. But as it’s been almost a year since our last old car, I thought it worthy of note.

What else that was also worthy of note was that despite the alarm being set for 06:00 this morning, I was still early leaving the bed.

Having rushed through the usual procedure of notes, statistics, back-up and bathroom last night, I managed to be in bed early last night – round about 22:50. And although I fell asleep quite early, it wasn’t for long. I had a very turbulent night last night.

It was 05:10 when I awoke definitively, and after trying for about half an hour, I left the bed and went to the bathroom.

On the basis that “what doesn’t go in won’t want to come out”, I didn’t have anything to eat or drink this morning. Not even my medication. It’s going to be a long day.

At 07:00, my taxi arrived, driven by my favourite taxi driver. We had a lovely chat all the way down to the hospital at Rennes.

There were a couple of diversions too. Firstly, we had to go back to my driver’s house to pick up her ‘phone that she had forgotten. Then there was someone else to pick up on a housing estate outside Avranches. This passenger offered to show us the short-cut to the motorway, but ended up losing us in the maze of roadworks.

What with one thing and another … "and once you’ve made a start, you’ll be surprised at how many other things there are" – ed … we were twenty minutes late arriving.

It was a young intern doctor who saw me today, and he put me through the mill. He asked me to stand on the weighing machine, which was much more difficult than it ought to have been, and I’m convinced that he arranged it in order to see just if I managed to climb on.

He wasn’t very happy when he had to ring up Avranches to ask about my blood test results, because I’d somehow brought an out-of-date set.

In the end, he said that I was well enough to proceed with chemotherapy, finishing by saying "it’s all not so bad". I replied that as far as I was concerned, everything was an absolute disaster. "It was just a figure of speech" he said, hurriedly, but I still wasn’t impressed.

They took me straight in to chemotherapy, and then they all had some kind of discussion about what treatment I was supposed to have. I was there cringing, because there’s only one treatment of the (many) that I can tolerate with any kind of comfort, and I hoped that they weren’t going to mess it up.

Eventually, about an hour and a half later than advertised, they connected me up. I fell almost immediately asleep, and that’s how most of the day went. Me falling asleep, they waking me up with questions, blood pressure tests etc. At one stage I began to shiver so they gave me a sheet in which to wrap myself.

“This is very significant” I thought. “I wonder if it means anything”. It was certainly enough to put the dampers on everything.

The meal for me was boiled potatoes and fruit. I think that the vegan burger last time was beginner’s luck. And although fruit is banned from my menu, according to the dieticians, the orange and the banana looked so appetising that I couldn’t resist.

They unplugged me at about 15:15 and my taxi was waiting. I had to send for a wheelchair because I was in no state to walk. They don’t allow you even five minutes there to recover before you’re on your way. It’s very industrial there.

Before I left, they gave me a summons to come back tomorrow for part II of the treatment – again at 08:30! So another 07:00 start!

There was someone else to drop off at Avranches, and I finally made it home at 17:00 exactly.

To my embarrassment, I couldn’t exit the car, I was that weak. And once I did manage to raise myself to my feet, it was a real struggle to reach my front door.

After a good hour or so’s recovery, I transcribed the dictaphone notes. During World War I, several captured merchant ships were renamed and handed out to British companies who had already lost ships at sea because of the war. One of these ships became the SS Rhosllanerchrugog or a similar kind of name. When people heard of the name and saw the name written on the back of the jackets of the sailors, they were astonished because they didn’t understand how there would possibly be a name that long for a merchant ship. But she took the name and she took the crew and she sailed quite happily for the rest of the war.

This relates to what I read a couple of weeks ago about merchant raiding ships, disguised German warships capturing merchant ships, siphoning off their oil for fuel, and then either sending the ship to Germany if it had a valuable cargo, or scuttling it if it was valueless.

Interestingly, I pronounced the first syllable of the ship’s name as “ros” which, although is the “official” way of pronouncing the word, I’ve always pronounced it as “hrowse”. That is how it’s pronounced in a small area south of Wrexham and north of Rhiwabon, including in the town of Rhosllanerchrugog itself.

Why I pronounce it like that, I’ve no idea because my grandmother comes from South Wales and lived, apparently, north of Wrexham. When she married, they moved east to near the English border so I’ve no connection at all with the area of Rhosllanerchrugog.

We were camping somewhere in the Canadian Mountains. I’d not long arrived, and I decided that I would go to buy a loaf of bread so that I could buy something to eat. I walked round to the nearest shop, but all that they had left were two sandwiches, but someone immediately bought those. It wasn’t a shop, it was a petrol station. I tried to look around for a shop but the only shop that they had didn’t have any bread. We saw a mobile home thing drive off the campsite and shoot off somewhere. We’d heard that he was looking for bread too so we decided to follow him. About twenty miles into the mountains, we came across another small shop and there were several people hanging around there. So we went and asked if they had any bread. While we were doing that, I wandered around and found some loaves on the shelf. I went to pick one up but the woman told me not to pick that up because it was out of date0 I had a look, and it was about twenty years out of date. The guy in charge of the shop said that he had some bread in the back but he’s trying to find the keys for the storeroom. We waited and waited, and he searched and searched. After a couple of hours, he said that he was unable to find them. So we began to search to help him, but we couldn’t even find the lights to the storeroom, never mind the keys. We were there, searching for hours. I had to nip to the bathroom so I disappeared. I came back ten minutes later and found everyone gone. The place was shuttered. It seemed that he had not been able to find it at all. There was some rumour that the shop back in town had had sixteen hundred loaves delivered so we climbed back into our vehicles to head back. But there was someone, an old man, sitting on a bench outside the shop, and after we’d gone, the proprietor came out. It turned out that the little old man was Louis Roblès, the footballer from Bala. Those two greeted each other like long-lost brothers.

There’s a small town – a village really – on the “Forgotten Coast” of Québec called Godbout where I WENT TO STAY FOR A WEEK when they let me out of hospital in 2016. To find bread around there quite often involved a 20 km drive, and more besides at times.

However, although I met the solicitor from my neighbouring village in the Auvergne … "it’s a small world" – ed … I didn’t meet Louis Roblès, who, incidentally, plays for Colwyn Bay this season.

There was also something about me trying on hats. I found a nice, fur-lined olive green hat that I tried on. That seemed to fit quite nicely and it was warm, so I decided to take it. As I was doing that, a friend from school, who lived in Shavington from school walked past. He was surprised to see me and said “hello”. I said “hello” back. Once I had this hat on, two American soldiers walked past. One of them said “you are breaking the law wearing that hat”. I asked him if we were in the USA. He replied “no” so I told him that he could quickly go away, using a rather vulgar, vernacular term.

This dream doesn’t relate to anything at all, as far as I’m aware. And I bet that the boy was surprised to see me too! Considering that I haven’t given him a moment’s thought since we left school, I was surprised to see him in a dream!

Nerina and I had been working in a foreign country. We were sitting on a couple of chairs waiting to go home. We were on a cliff, and there was a real storm raging. The sea was really choppy and we could see trawlers and ships in the sea, struggling to make any headway. Then the currency exchange window opened. I went to the window but no-one would serve me for ten or fifteen minutes. When they finally did, after I’d made some remark, I had all of this money, and it was all in small change. I asked this woman if she would change it. She made some kind of grimace, but said that she would. I hauled out all of these pennies and ha’pennies. Nerina and I had counted them but we weren’t convinced that it was right, so she weighed them and worked out the price. I found some more, but she moaned at that and said that she didn’t think that she was going to add them into the total and give us anything for them. I told her that we could always find another currency exchange place if she wasn’t happy but she moaned even more. She said “your friend who was here last time took me out for a meal”, to which I replied “I’m not interested in going for a meal. I’m interested in changing my money”. I had noticed that on the counter, they had some really competitive prices for gold coin collections. I was wondering whether I had enough money to buy some gold and bring it home with me. But while this had started, Nerina was not in a particularly good mood so I went over and gave her a kiss. Someone sitting next to Nerina made some kind of comment but I ignored it.

There would have been no chance whatever of enticing Nerina to come to work abroad. Her feet were rooted firmly in Crewe, as close as possible to her mother. We had many a discussion about “abroad” but I realised quite quickly that nothing was going to persuade her otherwise, despite how many good arguments I might have been able to use.

And maybe if I’d kissed Nerina rather more when she had been in a bad mood, things might indeed have been different. But as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I can’t turn the clock back.

There was also something about changing my trousers into a pair of red trousers with a Welsh dragon on it, but they were about ten sizes too large for me. I had to draw the drawstrings really tight to keep them on.

This is completely strange too.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice. And I did manage to finish it all. That’s no surprise because that and the boiled potatoes are all that I’ve had to eat today. As for drinks, I’ve had 2×200ml disgusting drinks and two mouthsful of water, and that’s it.

So tomorrow, I’m off to chemotherapy again, so I’m off to bed, hoping to be in better shape than I am right now

But seeing as we have been talking about queueing for bread … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of when I was in Poland in 1979, and saw all these people queueing for hours for bread, which didn’t arrive.
One man began to make a fuss, shouting and waving his arms and denouncing the Communists. Subsequently, an armed patrol pulled up and surrounded the protestors.
"Now look what you’ve done, you old fool!" said one of the others. "We’re all going to be shot now!"
"There’s nothing to worry about" replied the old man. "If we’ve run out of bread, I bet that they’ve run out of bullets too!"

EPIC HALL

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

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