Tag Archives: football

Sunday 4th May 2025 – HAPPY STAR WARS DAY

May the fourth be with you.

And regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly how today began. Probably many of the occasional readers will have some kind of idea too because it seems to happen almost every Sunday following a Saturday dialysis.

However, having said that, 02:55 is carrying it rather to extremes.

It can’t be because I went to bed early either. I know that 22:25 is a rather extreme time for hitting the sack these days, but I was so exhausted after yesterday’s dialysis session, light though it might have been, that I simply dashed through everything that I needed to do and just fell into bed.

At 02:55 I was wide-awake and actually thinking about leaving my bed and making a start but even then I realised that doing that was probably going to unnecessary extremes. I made myself comfortable the best that I could and prepared for a very long morning.

At some point though, I did go back to sleep. But not for long because when the alarm went off at 08:00 (it’s lie-in day today) I was back in here having already washed and had my medication.

Although I’d started to transcribe the dictaphone notes, the nurse beat me to it and I had to go to have my legs seen to. He’s definitely not coming tomorrow morning and wants me to go to bed in my socks. My cleaner is outraged but as it happens, I’ll be going to bed fully-clothed tonight. I have a 05:30 start.

After he left, I made breakfast and began to read MY BOOK.

On page 233 he tells us that someone was employed in 1223 to make balistas corneas. A ballista is an ancient type of heavy-duty crossbow used for launching stones and heavy iron objects at buildings and obstructions and regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in one of the ancient hill forts that we visited, a skeleton was found with a ballista bolt, or heavy-duty arrow, embedded in its back.

Consequently, I expected to see the odd page or two about ballistae and their construction, especially in a book about Medieval Military Architecture, but there is not a word. Nevertheless I carried out my own research and I’m now confident that I can build a reasonable ballista, to go with the rest of the Medieval and Roman equipment that I built during my University course in Historical Technology

Back in here, I transcribed the dictaphone notes from last night. I’d been out and about on quite a long walk etc. I’d been out all day and had travelled miles. When I had come back to the hotel in the evening I suddenly remembered or suddenly realised that I only had one of my crutches. I wondered where on Earth I’d left that – the other one – and how far I’d actually walked around my enormous circuit with just one crutch holding me. I asked them at reception and I held up my béquille – my crutch. Someone said “ahhh yes, we have the other one of those”. I thought to myself “have I really gone all day without one of my crutches and done it all with the one in all that distance that I’ve walked?” One guy came back he had a belt with him, a leather belt he handed it to my brother who put it on and was admiring himself I took hold of another waiter and asked him what was happening there The waiter said “that was found at breakfast and we thought that it might have been your brother’s” I said “I didn’t know about that, but what about my béquille that he went to fetch?” The guy replied “I don’t think that there was one. I think that what he was thinking about was that belt”. I had to accept the fact that somewhere I had lost a crutch and I would have to try to organise another one and pretty quickly too because I really couldn’t go anywhere without two crutches. I was surprised that I’d even attempted to go the kind of distance that I did today and only used one of the crutches for at least part of the way

That’s not the first (by any means) dream that I’ve had where I’ve picked up my bed and walked, in a manner of speaking. Wishful thinking, I’m afraid. And once more, someone from my family has put his sooty foot into my dreams.

Back in here there was the football and for the final game of the season, it was another insipid performance from Stranraer as they went down 0-1 against basement club Bonnyrigg Rose Athletic, and it was on their own ground too, not the New Dundas Swamp.

They had only five players on the bench too, mostly youth players, as the injury crisis has ravaged their tiny squad. But that’s a self-inflicted problem.

They need to be thinking about a much improved squad and performance next season, that’s for sure.

There was a ‘phone call after this. A builder whom I had been trying to contact ‘phoned me back. We had a lengthy chat but the big issue with him is that he isn’t an electrician and I can’t find an electrician anywhere right now. There’s no point starting the work if there’s no electrician to do the electrical bits.

After lunch, of leftover pasta and salad, I made a start on editing the radio notes but I knocked off to watch my niece’s youngest daughter graduate from University.

St Francis-Xavier University had begun to stream the Graduation ceremonies during the pandemic and they had kept on going. So I had the pleasant sight of seeing her mount the stage to receive her Degree. I had to wait for ages though, with her name being down at the bottom of the alphabetical list.

Rosemary rang me too and we had a chat – only forty minutes today because it was the Welsh Cup Final between TNS and Connah’s Quay Nomads. There’s no need to ask the score because it’s pretty self-evident, especially when the winners were handed the winning goal on a platter as the opposition defence stood around and watched.

But in an event that can only ever happen in Welsh football, the Nomads took the field with only ten men. They had named the wrong player, an injured defender, in the starting line-up and so were obliged to start the game with (or without) him on the field, and make a substitute for the missing player once the ball had gone out of play.

While all of this was going on, I was making bread and defrosting pizzas. The pizza was excellent as usual and the bread looks wonderful too. I’ll know for sure when I make my sandwiches tomorrow morning.

Right now, though, I’m off to bed ready for my early start tomorrow.

But seeing as we have been talking about Connah’s Quay Nomads just now … "well, one of us has" – ed … regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have spoken before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … about various Welsh football clubs who have been playing with Martin Bormann and Lord Lucan, or a couple of Easter Island Statues in the centre of their defence
Next time that I need to talk about Connah’s Quay Nomads’ defence, instead of talking about our usual defenders, I shall mention that they are playing with the Invisible Man in central defence, and know that this time I shall be perfectly correct.
Rather like the time that the Invisible Man tried to make an appointment at the dentist’s
"I’m sorry" said the dentist. "I’m rather busy. I can’t see you right now."

Sunday 20th April 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning when I awoke. And that was a big disappointment. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I depend upon what happens during the night for any excitement that there might be to brighten up my boring, miserable days.

Things might have been different had I had a decent night’s sleep.

After I’d finished my notes, which wasn’t all that late, I dictated the notes that I had written for the radio programmes that I’d prepared during the week, organised myself properly (and you’ve no idea just how long that takes) and then went off to bed, just before midnight. So with my lie-in until 08:00 it would be a good night’s sleep.

As I said yesterday, I was good and ready for it too. After the dialysis session I was totally exhausted. So once I was in bed I was asleep straight away and didn’t move a muscle for a good while after that.

However, it’s a Sunday after a dialysis Saturday and regular readers of this rubbish will recall what happens on a Sunday after a dialysis Saturday. And so at 08:00 when the alarm went off, I was sitting at my desk working.

What was so bad about that was that it had been another one of these “sitting bolt-upright” dramatic awakenings and at that point I was away on my travels, but the shock of awakening wiped absolutely everything out of my mind and I could remember nothing.

With over an hour to spare, I had a dive into that site that seems to know where all of the best Artificial Intelligence programs are, and after some practice I have now succeeded in being able to swap one face onto another person’s body with a reasonable amount of accuracy.

Add that to the voice generator with which I played the other week, my next trick is to go with a background remover. Then, with my PaintShop Pro (25 years old and still going strong) I can use the image that I created, transform the missing background into “transparent” with the aid of a green screen.

Once I’ve done that, I can superimpose it onto any screenshot from Street View (so I’ll need an Artificial Intelligence image enhancer for the screenshot) that I like, so I can have people doing strange things and saying strange things in any location in the World that takes my fancy…

There’s no doubt about it – amusing as it might be, it has some very dangerous undertones. I reckon that we will be hearing quite a lot more about Artificial Intelligence, and it won’t all be good.

The nurse turned up as usual and had a lot to say for himself. He was soon gone and I could make breakfast and read MY BOOK.

We’ve finally left Kenilworth and we’re now at Cydweli which, for the benefit of our geographically-challenged author, is in South-West Wales. And on page 154, without the slightest hint of irony, he tells us that "The new town, parts of which are of high antiquity … "

Back in here, we have football to entertain us. Stranraer were entertaining Edinburgh City.

Once more, today, I saw some more sad attempts at defending, with defenders standing around waiting for each other to clear the ball and watching as an opposition forward pushes it into the net, another shot fully covered by the goalkeeper until a defender sticks out a leg and diverts it into his own net, open goals by the dozen blasted wide or well over the bar.

For a change though, it wasn’t Stranraer doing all of this but Edinburgh City. How Stranraer managed to win this game 2-0 is one of those big mysteries that will forever remain unresolved.

We also had the highlights of the weekend’s games in the JD Cymru League. While highlights can be very, very deceptive, I do have to say that I have never seen a team look so disinterested as Y Drenewydd.

Relegated last week, I did nevertheless expect that their final game would be one in which they would go out with a bang but Y Fflint, deep in the mire themselves at one stage just recently, strolled through the game and the Drenewydd defence with ease. A 4-0 victory was nothing like representative of the hundreds of chances that they were gifted throughout the game.

Rosemary’s computer is now fixed and working. She reset all of the parameters for the internet connection and on one particular combination of settings, it made a Wi-Fi connection and we now have one very happy Easter Bunny, just as I was today at breakfast when I had two more of my delicious toasted hot cross buns smothered in vegan butter.

The bread roll that I made for lunch was perfection and made some wonderful toasted cheese and tomato bread roll halves washed down with disgusting drink, and then I came back in here.

Most of the rest of the day has been spent editing the radio notes. Programme 260220 is now finished (I just had to lose eight seconds) and 260227 is almost completely edited and assembled, the final track has been chosen and remixed and the notes written ready for dictation next Saturday.

There was a break to make some dough for the pizza. Two lots are in the freezer now and the third made probably the best pizza base that I have ever made. The pizza was delicious too, melted exactly as it should be.

So tomorrow, I have dialysis again. I also have to ring up Paris to find out what’s going on about this visit and also to ring around to find some workmen who want to earn some money. There’s a lot to do and time is getting short.

But seeing as we have been talking about Cydweli Castle … "well, one of us has" – ed … when our author Geo. T Clark went to visit it, he was totally taken aback by the most rude and offensive manner in which the castle welcomed him.
In the village pub afterwards he met the local doctor and talked to him about it.
"It was most offensive" he said. "All the time that I was there, it kept on shouting abuse, insults and rude word at me."
"It’s nothing to worry about" said the doctor
"Really?" asked our author.
"Ohh quite" said the doctor. "A psychiatrist came to see it a couple of years ago. Apparently it has Turrets Syndrome"

Saturday 19th April 2025 – THAT WAS EXHAUSTING.

Four hours in dialysis with the machine going full-tilt. It’s enough to finish anyone off. But at least I’m down to my target weight so with a little luck I might only have to stay for three and a half hours on Monday. We shall see.

Things might have been different and I might have been less exhausted had I gone to bed earlier instead of hanging about until some stupid kind of time, but there we are … "or were" – ed ….

To make things worse, it was a miserable night and I don’t think that I had much sleep, waking up here and there every half hour or so. At one stage I was even planning on leaving the bed but I gave up that idea quite quickly.

When the alarm went off I was however fast asleep and it was, as you might expect, a desperate stagger to my feet to beat the second alarm. And in the bathroom I had a good wash ready for Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis, and I hand-washed my socks, undies and night attire.

After the medication I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone and to my surprise, I had actually been out and about on my travels during the night. A girl was being examined for some kind of issue with her legs. She’s on a kind-of operating table on her back with her legs in the air and they are examining them. The doctor tells her to put them into the neutral position which she tries. After a little manipulation … "PERSONipulation" – ed … the surgeon or doctor manages to put her legs into some kind of neutral position. He tells her “well, that’s much easier, isn’t it? Perhaps you should have done that at some kind of earlier point in the examination or even beforehand, but I’ll make a mark now to let them know where it’s all correct”.

It’s much easier for me – I simply press “CNTRL-Z” and that puts any selected 3-D object or character into a neutral pose. That dream did remind me somewhat of some of my 3D work when I was living down on the farm.

And then I was back in that dream … "which dream?" – ed … later on. Some thieves had stolen a train with the ammunition on it. They were heading off for wherever it was. They were taking their time, not in any rush, and had stopped to have a meal somewhere. In the meantime, a group of Indians had been removed from a town and were not happy. They found these men and explained to them what was happening and that there was a train on its way towards them. What they did was that they started up the train and set it to going back down the line with all aboard at the maximum permitted speed of seven mph. When they were just a few hundred yards away from a collision they leapt off the footplate and the trains ploughed into each other. Carriages were destroyed, carriages went everywhere. They were saying that over 200 people were killed, including 131 in one carriage. All the wagons ran loose and even sheltering behind the rocks was not saving them from the wagons rolling up on them. There was even a railway wagon that had come from Russia on board this train and it rolled to a stop right at the feet of one of these robbers.

That plot sounds just like a cross between the plot of THE WILD BUNCH and that of A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE, two films that spend a lot of time on my playlist. As for the wagon though, whilst Russian wagons ring no bells with me, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we once encountered a railway box-car with “Alaskan Agriculture” on it.

Now there’s an oxymoron if ever I saw one.

The nurse was chatting to me this morning, telling me what I should do about the situation in the apartment downstairs. When he finished, I told him that I had a letting agent who was doing all of that. "But still …" he said, and started again.

After he left I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re still in Kenilworth Castle where, on page 147, this rather peculiar paragraph caught my eye. What do you make of this? "The character of the ground makes it probable that the Norman fortress had but one entrance. This could not have been on the east, west, or south fronts, as the ground was low and marshy ; nor on the north, where the ditch is wide and deep."

The next thing that caught my eye was on page 150 where he tells us "the succession of great events which led to the death of the earl, and the celebrated siege of Kenilworth, belong to the history of England rather than to that of Kenilworth, and form one of its most interesting and most valuable chapters. The subject has fallen under the pen of Mr. Green, and has found a place in the pages of the Archaeological Journal (vol. xxi. p. 277), where the course of the events is disentangled, and very clearly narrated, and their political significance and bearing upon the constitutional history of our country treated in a manner both brilliant and profound"

He then devotes several pages to telling us about the Siege of Kenilworth.

Back in here, I carried on with the remote repairing of Rosemary’s computer. She is now connected to the internet with the aid of an Ethernet cable (but not the Wi-Fi) and has an antivirus installed. She ran a scan of the computer which came up with nothing (which was a pity because I had hopes for that) and when my cleaner arrived to fit my patches and I had to go, she was performing a deep scan.

After the cleaner had fitted my patches I had to wait for my taxi and was packing my bags for my next Paris hospitalisation when it pulled up. It was the boss again and we had a chatty drive down to Avranches.

Late in meant late coupled up and with a four-hour session I could see that it was going to be late. The blood pressure is set to be tested every half-hour and every half hour the nurses had to come running because of the wailing machine, complaining about my unbelievably low blood pressure today

In the end they set the machine to every fifteen minutes, so they had to come twice as often.

While all of this was going on, I was trying to watch the football. Caernarfon were playing Cardiff Metro for the privilege of finishing fourth. There wasn’t as much skill as I would have expected but it was an exciting game that roared from one end to the other.

And if ever there was a game of two halves, this was it. The Met had most of the play in the first half and were leading 1-0, quite deservedly, at half-time. But whatever Richard Davies put in his team’s half-time cuppa, I could do with a swig of that myself. The Cofis came out of the blocks at an incredible rate, had most of the play in the second half and eventually won 2-1.

And I’ll have to be careful what I say at dialysis in the future. A nurse and I were talking about my diet and Emilie the Cute Consultant heard it from across the room and came to join in. I hope that she can’t hear me call her “Emilie the Cute Consultant” when I’m here and she’s there.

It was a very, very weary me who staggered to the car to come home and I was glad to be back. Coming up the stairs was a very long, hard trudge tonight.

So having had my tea of baked potato, salad and breaded quorn fillet followed by chocolate cake and soya dessert, I’ll dictate my radio notes and go to bed. I don’t think that I’ll be awake long tonight and I’ll be surprised if I awaken early, but dialysis is a funny thing.

But seeing as we have been talking about acute hearing … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the snail, the tortoise and the sloth having a party when they run out of beer.
They draw lots and the tortoise loses, so they send him to buy more beer.
Three weeks later they begin to complain. "We should never have sent that tortoise" said the snail. "He’s so lazy and bone-idle"
"I know" said the sloth. "For all the good that he does, he may as well not be here"
Just then a voice from outside the door shouts "if you lot continue to bad-mouth me like this, I shan’t go for the beer at all!"

Sunday 13th April 2025 – A MANTELPIECE!

… "He means ‘Masterpiece’ " – ed …

Indeed I do. I’ve been a busy boy today, doing a pile of baking, and making use of my new scientific measuring gauge for the water. And everything that I cooked today turned out to be exactly as it is supposed to be – bread rising up like a lift, cakes actually looking like cakes and all of that kind of thing.

Probably, what contributed a lot to that was the fact that I’d had an early night. It was at about 23:05 when I’d finished everything that I would normally finish before going to bed, and then there was the dictating of the radio notes to do.

Even though I made yet another total hash of what I was supposed to be dictating, it was still all done by 23:40 and by 23:45 I was in bed. “Later than intended” I hear you say, but with a lie-in until 08:00, it can only be good news.

Mind you, what happened next does not need any explanation. It’s a Sunday after a Saturday afternoon dialysis session, isn’t it? And so by the time that the alarm went off, I’d been up and about for an hour and a half and was sitting at my desk working.

There had been the bathroom, of course, and there had been the medication. And next was the dictaphone. We were having a huge chat about adoption etc during the night. This conversation rolled on and on, and went on to the question of mutations and mutations of voice. There were other things taking place too. I know that on one occasion someone asked me a question and I answered “well, I’m not the busiest” or “it’s not the busiest, and it’s keeping me out of mischief”. However, I can’t remember what the question was now and that was disappointing.

Everything seemed to be in quite a turmoil during the evening. I have no idea what was going on there but it was certainly quite a mess.

And then I was in Wales somewhere. I had a lift with someone and they were driving me towards my destination. We went round a bend and there was this train, a tiny little narrow-gauge steam locomotive with a big parcels train behind it. It was just like that person had been talking about in a photograph. I said “you can drop me off here” because this was my destination. It was a narrow-gauge railway line and this was its terminus. They dropped me off and I wandered around the yard. I saw a locomotive with two carriages behind it. I thought “that must be my train to go”. I had to climb up onto the bank to climb into it. I became all dirty when I rubbed my shoulder against the boiler of the train. Then I had to find some treacle. In the end I found two tins of treacle but I was on the wrong side of the train. I had to throw these tins of treacle underneath the train and then walk round the front, hanging on to the front of the locomotive to make sure that I didn’t fall down the embankment. When I reached the other side, I heard a whistle, a steam whistle. I looked up and there was another train that I hadn’t seen, and a locomotive that was attached to three carriages. A double-decker bus just pulled up with a whole crowd of people on board. They were all heading towards that other train. I thought “maybe that’s my train” so I set out to try to run to catch it. Of course, I couldn’t run. I realised that I had no treacle, my backpack was open and everything was on the verge of falling out. I thought “I’m going to miss this train now and the next one is not for another several hours”. I was running and running and running towards this train. I couldn’t run and I was on my bad legs with no crutches. This was becoming a disaster

We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Yesterday in fact when we were trying to run in vain to catch a bus. Today, I’m trying to run to catch a train. I wonder what I’ll be trying to run to catch tomorrow? But the idea of it being a narrow-gauge steam locomotive is quite interesting. I’ve not had a run out on a narrow-gauge train for years, and certainly not with any tins of treacle. What did treacle have to do with it anyway?

While I was waiting for Isabelle I had a surf through the internet for the highlights of yesterday’s games in Wales. Colwyn Bay will be joining Llanelli in the Premier League next season after their win at Penrhyncoch. I also found the highlights of the game we watched yesterday BETWEEN Y DRENEWYDD AND ABERYSTWITH and Niall Flint in full flight down the centre.

Isabelle the Nurse had a lot to say for herself, mainly about dialysis and compression socks, as she dealt with my legs and then she wandered off, leaving me to deal with breakfast and to read MY BOOK.

A few days ago, I wrote about our author, Geo T Clark, not being able to make up his mind about the system of dating that he uses. Here’s a delightful paragraph on page 87 where he discusses the history of the castle at Hastings "Henry, the fifth earl, who died in the reign of Richard I., left an only daughter, Alice, who married Ralph de Essoudun, who in her right became Earl of Eu, and so died in 1211. Their son, William, elected to become a subject of France, and,29 Henry III., his possessions in England escheated to the Crown, and were granted to Prince Edward. As early as 1227 King Henry allowed to Robert de Aubeville 10 marcs, half his salary, as keeper of the castle. The college was retained by Henry in his own hands. In 5 Edward III., the dean and canons petitioned to have the castle wall restored, it having been injured by the sea. In 1372, the castle was granted to John of Gaunt,"

If he wants to continue to use both forms of date, then that’s fine. But how many times does he change from one format to the other in that one paragraph? He needs at least to stick to the same style in each paragraph.

He is also following the trend of many of our previous authors in contradicting himself, and this time, within the space of just a handful of paragraphs. At the bottom of page 89, when talking about Hawarden Castle (which, in a book entitled “Medieval Military Architecture in England”, is actually in Wales), he tells us that "At Hawarden, the course of action seems to have been different. Here are no traces of Norman work or of the Norman style, and though the keep is unusually substantial".

However, over the page, not even half-way down, he tells us that "The entrance is at the ground level on the north-east side, from the main ward. It is marked by a broad, flat buttress, rather Norman in character,"

And to show you just how times and appreciation have changed since he published his book in 1884, also on page 90 he tells us that "the modern brick and stone wall replacing the battlement is rugged and broken, but in parts about 12 feet high, and intended to give elevation to the keep. The building thus made extensively visible has become a sort of parish cynosure, and, however irregular its appearance, it would scarcely be in good taste to remove the addition."

Can you imagine that? Early medieval stonework disfigured by modern brickwork and it would “scarcely be in good taste” to remove it?

Back in here, we had Stranraer away at Stirling Albion, and I totally despair. Stranraer were miles on top of this game and at 1-0 up at half-time and well in control at the hour mark looking as if they could score another goal or two at any moment, they then go and hand the Binos not one, not two, but three of the easiest goals that they will ever score in their whole lives with a series of schoolboy errors that defy any kind of description from me. If you really want to see how bad it was, THEN IT’S ALL YOURS

My bread roll for lunch was absolutely wonderful, made with just the right amount of water. It could not have been better and the new cheese that my cleaner brought finished it off a treat.

Back in here after lunch I attacked the radio programmes for which I dictated the notes last night. And by the time that I was ready for tea I’d completed the final track for programme 260206 and assembled it all so that it’s one hour long. I just had to remove eight seconds of text.

And then I finished programme 260220 as much as I could – edited the notes for the ten tracks, assembled the two halves of the programme, chose the final track and wrote the notes ready for dictation next Saturday night.

If you are wondering where programme 260213 is, that’s a concert that I dealt with years and years ago.

Despite all of that, there was baking. A sunflower-seed loaf and a chocolate oil-cake. The loaf, like the bread roll, is also wonderful and the cake is excellent too. The oil in there is half neutral vegetable oil, half coconut oil, and there’s orange essence and desiccated coconut in there too. All of the baking is cooling off ready for cutting and storing tomorrow morning.

Tonight’s pizza was another one of the best that I have ever made, cooked just right. If I could make the pizza every week just as I did tonight, I would be really happy

But that’s not for now. I’m off to bed. I have dialysis tomorrow, worse luck, and I’ll probably be there for four hours.

But seeing as we have been talking about adoption … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember a friend of mine being called for a discussion with his parents.
"Son we have to tell you?" said his father "did you know that you are adopted"
"Really?" said the boy. " Could I ever meet my birth parents?"
"We are your birth parents" replied his father. "Now go upstairs and pack. Your new family will be here to pick you up in ten minutes"

Friday 28th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning when I awoke.

And that’s not surprising either seeing as I didn’t go back to bed until 04:15 and I was awake again at 06:50 (you will note that I said “awoke” – I didn’t say that I left the bed).

Last night’s fiasco was enough to put the shakes on just about everything. After my rather dramatic exit from the dialysis centre, coming home and going straight to bed where I was probably asleep before I hit the horizontal position, there I stayed in a state of what I can only imagine was unconsciousness until after midnight.

When I awoke, I was fully-clothed still, with a thirst that you could photograph. Luckily I still have some of that banana-flavoured soya drink that I like that I bought in Belgium (is it really eighteen months ago since my last trip to Belgium?), so I helped myself to a litre of it, wrote my notes and backed up all the files.

After I’d finished what I had to do I still wasn’t tired so I found a few things to do to keep me occupied and then eventually crawled into bed, fully clothed again.

It was difficult to go back to sleep, so I don’t suppose that I slept all that much, and when I looked at the time and saw that it was 06:50 I gave up all hope.

The alarm clock made up my mind for me so I crawled out of bed and went to the bathroom to sort myself out. Then into the kitchen to take my medication and to do yesterday’s washing-up which I had forgotten. I hate going into the kitchen in the morning and finding the washing-up still there.

With nothing on the dictaphone I found some things to do and then Isabelle the Nurse arrived. I told her about yesterday and she thinks that the machine was too powerful for my heart to cope and that caused the dramatic loss of blood pressure that triggered everything off.

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK.

We’re still discussing these stone circles and avenues in the West Country. At Stanton Drew he makes the point that while there are circles and avenues that suggest that Arcturus was the target when they were constructed, at 1690BC and 1410BC, he finds that "With regard to this N.E. circle … " – the third one in this series of circles – its strange alignment "… would suggest that the N.E. circle was really erected to provide the alignment, from the centre of the great circle, or from the Cove, to the summer solstitial sun, about the year 870 B.C.,".

Furthermore, "There is other evidence, to which I attach importance, as it deals with a method and policy found in many temple fields in Egypt, that of blocking the alignment of an older star- or sun-cult, which the astronomer priests replaced by their own. The stones of the avenue, of the solstitial N.E. circle I expect once blocked the May sunrise line from the great circle ; judging from the Ordnance map, and remembering the number of stones that have disappeared,"

According to my “wave of invasions” cheat-sheet, a huge wave of Celtic invaders began to arrive in England round about 800BC. They brought with them the Iron-Age “Halstatt” culture and their superior tools and weapons would have overwhelmed the previous settlers. If those previous settlers were pushed west, they would push before them the people who had previously occupied those lands, so maybe they replaced the previous culture of the worship of Arcturus with their own culture of worship of the sun.

What is also interesting is the reference he made to the situation in Egypt where the worshippers of one star arrived and overwhelmed a previous culture. Archaeological evidence lends a great deal of support to this idea, so I’m now interested in plotting, as I said yesterday, a timeline of the worship of Arcturus and seeing if I can follow it through Europe and maybe arrive in England at the same time that the worship of Arcturus seemed to have begun there.

But this is all sounding like my University studies. I’d start by researching something and be so engrossed in what I’ve found that bore no relation to what I’d be studying that I’d go miles off course on a tangent into some other realm that had nothing whatever to do with the subject. I enjoyed what I was doing, enjoyed it very much, but the lecturers didn’t.

His next chapter is actually on “folklore”, but not the folklore what we know. He’s more interested in finding relics of customs that relate to the old forms of worship and how they became tied into Christianity, rather than using them as I would and as LAURENCE GOMME was doing – plotting the migration of groups of people by the relics of the customs that remain in modern society.

After the book, I came back in here and prepared my LeClerc order. And I was really struggling to complete it too. Despite the fact that I haven’t sent in an order for three weeks, I’m not eating as much (or as often) as I did and I was really struggling today to reach the €50:00 minimum order

Times are really bizarre around here. I look at my “usual products” and my “reminder list” and think “I have some of that” or “I don’t need that” or “I don’t feel like eating any of that”. I don’t think that I can ever recall a period such as this that has lasted for so long. I look in the kitchen and the shelf unit is full of stuff.

Once I’d sorted that out, I spent the rest of the day (or much of it) on my Woodstock programme. I now have every song that I need, and they are all re-edited and remixed. Some of the tracks took some hunting down, others had to be extracted from the soundtracks of concerts that I have.

Every song (except one) was actually played at Woodstock by the band or musician concerned, although I can’t use any sound that came from the loudspeakers at Woodstock. I’ve had to use versions from other places.

My cleaner put in an appearance to do her stuff as usual, and while she was here the LeClerc delivery turned up. I usually order it for “after 16:00” but he often rings me up to ask if he can come earlier if I’m the only client in the afternoon. I’d rather have it after my cleaner has left but I’m not going to stop him having an early finish on a Friday if he can.

After my cleaner left I had 2kg of carrots to wash, dice and blanch ready to freeze and then back in here Rosemary, back from her break in Italy, rang me up for a chat. I’m convinced that she has a camera hidden in here somewhere to find out when I’m free.

Tea tonight was a rushed salad and chips with some of these vegan nuggets and it was delicious. The chips were cooked to perfection in my air fryer.

Tea was rushed because we had football, Drenewydd v Y Barri. Y Barri needed the win to keep alive their push for the European playoffs and Y Drenewydd needed a win to keep alive their hopes of avoiding relegation.

Y Barri came out of the traps so much quicker and played some nice football and were looking comfortable at 2-0 up. But Y Drenewydd came alive in the last ten minutes and when they scored with three minutes to go, they threw everything that they had into the attack.

Y Barri won the ball and roared upfield with a one-on-one on the Y Drenewydd goalkeeper – only for the Y Barri forward to miss the easiest goal that he could have scored in his life. That spurred Y Drenewydd on and we witness some desperate defending in the final minute and Y Drenewydd couldn’t find the goal that they needed.

Why they hadn’t played like that with the same desperation throughout the game I really don’t know, but now, while they are not mathematically sure of being relegated, they are going to have to find something special from somewhere.

At half-time I did the washing up and then I grabbed a slice of my new orange, ginger and coconut cake to eat for the second half. And it really is as delicious as I thought that it might be. I’m proud of that.

So now that I’ve finished my notes and backed up the computer, I’m off to bed ready for an exciting (I don’t think) day at the dialysis centre.

But seeing as we have been talking about shopping … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’m glad that I don’t go shopping any more. It saves unpleasant surprises.

Once I was in a supermarket in Belgium and a woman came up to me and asked me "aren’t you the father of one of my kids?"
That stopped me dead in my tracks. I had to rack my brains and think hard. There was the girl in Morlaix and the other one at that strange house when I was hitch-hiking around Brittany but that was in France in the mid-seventies.
For a whole minute I had to rack my brains about trips that I’d made into Europe subsequently. In the end I gave up.
"I can’t really recall anything" I said, shaking your head.
"Oh, I’m sorry" she replied. "I’m sure that I’ve seen you bringing Roxanne to school. She’s in my class this year"

Sunday 23rd March 2025 – MY ORANGE, GINGER …

… and coconut cake is absolutely delicious, if it tastes anything like the mix that I sampled and the crumbs that broke off when I brought it out of the oven. The proof of the pudding is indeed in the eating and I’ll have to wait a couple of days before I start on it, so I’ll tell you more in a few days time.

So last night, after I’d finished my notes, I dictated the radio notes that I’d written during the week and then went to bed. It was only a few minutes after midnight too so with my Sunday morning lie-in until 08:00, I was looking forward to a decent sleep.

To be on the safe side, I’d found an old fleece jumper in the chest of drawers so in desperation I put that on before going to bed. And while I may well have awoken in the middle of the night for a variety of reasons, cold wasn’t one of them. For once just recently, I was quite comfortable in that respect.

When the alarm went off at 08:00 I was away with the fairies, although not in any fashion that might incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. However, wherever I was and whatever I was doing evaporated completely from my mind and that was that.

In the bathroom I had a good scrub up and then came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been doing during the night.

Not that I advanced very far because the nurse came round to sort me out. He had a lot to say for himself this morning but nothing of any importance, so I could crack on and make my breakfast, including some home-made orange juice and home-made apple and kiwi purée with home-made bread out of the toaster and porridge.

I also read some more of MY NEW BOOK and, unfortunately, Sir Norman Lockyer is tying himself up in knots.

Having criticised the builders of these stone monuments on the grounds of their uncivilised nature, to day he tells us that, according to Caesar "that in the schools of the Druids the subjects taught included the movements of the stars, the size of the earth, and the nature of things … Studies of such a character seem quite consistent with, and to demand, a long antecedent period of civilisation.".

He also talks about the stories that the Greek, Hecataeus, told of the Hyperboreans – "so called because they live beyond the point from which the North wind blows". That’s interesting to me at least because the early Polar explorers were convinced, for some reason, that there was a warm sea beyond the ice belt, a delusion that led so many of them to their deaths. I always wondered why it would be possible to believe such a thing but if the myth of the Hyperboreans really was believed, (and Hecataeus was convinced they and the Greeks had been in contact and that the Hyperboreans were "in general very friendly to the Greeks.’") that would explain everything.

There was a bap to make this morning so that I could have my cheese on toast for lunch. I made the mix rather wetter than in the past to see what happens and it was rather difficult to knead. But once it was made I left it to fester for a while.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night. There was something about my youngest sister last night – I can’t remember exactly what it was but I wanted her to do something or to go somewhere and pick up something where I was. It took her a while to turn up and I can’t really remember any more about it because it’s another one of these dreams that evaporated away.

Just as well really. I don’t want my family loitering around my bedside during the night, that’s for sure

Later on, I started work being an Accompanier … "you mean ‘escort’" – ed … on a school bus in New Brunswick. I had to go to the local small town pick-up point to run a check on all of the pupils there. There were probably fifty children waiting there. Each of them wore a badge with their names, and several of them had changed their names and put “Bigfoot” there instead. After I’d reviewed all of the names I asked “how many Bigfoots have we here?”. Someone replied “well, there are five “. I replied “well, it’s New Brunswick, isn’t it? That will explain it”. Everyone burst out laughing.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … you could put everyone in New Brunswick, and in particular, Carleton County where my place is, into Tennessee and no-one, neither the New Brunswickers or the Tennesseans, would notice the difference. Much as I love that area of North America, western New Brunswick, Maine, Vermont, it is like going back seventy years in time. That’s probably why I like it.

Next, there was football. And I despair of Stranraer FC. Having played like a championship side last week and blown away so convincingly the leaders of their division, and away from home too, this weekend they were at home to the bottom club, played one of the worst games that I have ever seen them play, and lost 1-0.

These Jekyll-and-Hyde performances have to stop if they want to be serious about keeping their place in the league. Last season they had a lucky escape from demotion out of the League, and they haven’t really improved all that much.

And while we’re on the subject of demotion and relegation … "well, one of us is" – ed … the weekend’s results in the JD Cymru League mean that Aberstwyth are relegated, as predicted at the start of the season, and Y Fflint just need one point to be assured of staying up – and with three matches to go.

With Aberystwyth’s relegation, it means that Y Drenewydd are the only club to have been in the league for every year that it has been in existence, and they are looking by no means safe quite yet.

Next task was the radio. Last night I’d dictated the notes for eleventh track of a radio programme and so I edited them and joined everything up together. The whole lot over-ran by seven seconds but I always dictate stuff that can be edited out without disrupting the sense and the rhythm and that was soon accomplished.

Lunch was next and I do have to say that my bap was absolute perfection today, the best that I have ever made. I’m certain that my water measurer is inaccurate and that’s been the root of all of my problems. The air fryer baked it really well and made some lovely cheese on toast, even if it is vegan cheese.

This afternoon I attacked the next programme. Last night I’d dictated the notes for ten tracks and so I edited it all down and assembled it. Later on, I chose the eleventh track and wrote the notes for it ready for dictation next weekend.

After the disgusting drink break I set about making my cake.

It’s a standard oil cake of

one cup of flour
one cup of sugar
half a cup of hot water
half a cup of oil (I use 50% vegetable oil and 50% coconut oil)
half a teaspoon of baking powder
half a teaspoon of salt
one teaspoon of vanilla essence

to that I added

a couple of inches of ginger paste (Heaven only knows where my fresh ginger has gone
a teaspoon of ground ginger
a teaspoon of mixed spice
some desiccated coconut
an extra half-cup of flour
all of the orange pulp from which I had extracted the juice yesterday
some whizzed-up almonds and Brazil nuts

All of the dry stuff was whizzed up in my whizzer, then all of the wet stuff was added in and whizzed into the mix, and it was all then poured out into a lined cake tray and baked for 35 minutes at 180°C

While that was going on, the pizza dough that i’d taken from the freezer was defrosting. I made the pizza while the cake was baking and then popped it into the hot oven when the cake was done.

The pizza was perfection too, especially as I had remembered everything this week, for a change.

Now I’m off to bed ready for dialysis tomorrow, I don’t think

But while we are talking about Bigfoot "well, one of us is" one of my friends in Crewe contacted me the other day and told me that there was a big, hairy monster running around Crewe scaring everyone.
"Crewe’s equivalent of Bigfoot, I suppose?" I asked
"Very probably" he replied "but here, he’s called ‘Big Thirty point Four-Eight Centimetres’"

Friday 21st March 2025 – I’M HAVING ANOTHER …

… late night tonight. Mind you – this time it’s for a very good reason. Hwlffordd, third in the table, are playing Penybont, second, and need a win quite badly if they are to take second place. Normally, these days, I wouldn’t watch it until tomorrow afternoon at dialysis but this is a crucial match that I can’t really miss.

It’ll probably end up being later than last night’s, anyway. For a change, I was in bed not long after midnight once I’d finished everything that I had to do. And although I was asleep quite quickly, it wasn’t for long.

It was another freezing cold night and I was chilled to the marrow. In fact I grabbed hold of my dressing gown and put it on in bed and went back to sleep, feeling a little warmer.

And that’s surprising me. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that in the very recent past I’ve been sweating buckets and feeling so hot in bed that it’s unbelievable. Right now though, for the last couple of days it’s been exactly the opposite. So what’s happening here then?

Once I was asleep, there I stayed until the alarm went off and then a very weary me staggered to his feet and wandered off into the bathroom.

After a good wash and tidy up I went for the medication, and then back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see what had happened during the night. Some woman was talking to someone from the northern part of the USA about things that had been going on in a chat group. The person replied that it wasn’t actually things in general but a few specific occasions where people had been adopting some kind of strange attitude and coming out with some unusual comments. He couldn’t explain anything about them but he did mention that he was very friendly on line with a girl from Oregon. She was possibly the latest person to take part in this strange way of talking and using strange words and so on. He gave a couple of examples of things that she had said but they weren’t particularly complimentary.

That reminds me of a group of people with whom I used to hang around back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when we all talked in clichés. You would never ever hear someone say "it’s over there" without someone else replying "what? Behind the rabbit?"

Or when someone needed to find out how heavy something is the answer would always be "we shall use my largest scales"

There were thousands of quotes like that that filtered all the way through everyday conversation back in those days, and many of them still hang around today but for the most part, it’s a form of communication that has become very exclusive because there are fewer and fewer people who remember it.

These days, in general, a sense of humour is non-existent. I remember a fellow student, in despair after an “exchange” with an American, created a spoof web site with the University logo on it for a course entitled, “Understanding Irony” and pushed it into the USA. Not only did he have several applicants, his point was proven rather more dramatically than he intended because the University, which also didn’t have a sense of humour and would have benefited from his course, threatened him with all kinds of sanctions if he didn’t take down the site.

Later on in the night I had Crewe Alexandra v Barrow. Barrow, who were bottom of the league, put up a really stubborn existence but Crewe ended up overwhelming them and scoring in a late goal. As a result, Crewe won the championship, probably the first actual championship that they have won, and Barrow were relegated to the National League. Even so, many of the commentators were in admiration of Barrow’s determined style of play and their determination to hold on to win a point at all costs

Earlier in the season Crewe Alexandra were pushing for the leadership of the table and Barrow were down in the depths. But a look in the table just now shows that the Alex have slid down somewhat and Barrow have found some form and climbed up. So this is one dream that won’t be coming true – just like all the rest, I suppose.

The nurse is off to a funeral this morning so I told him to pass on my condolences to the family of the deceased. It’s for one of the guys with whom I used to travel to dialysis. He passed away last Saturday.

After he left I made breakfast and read some more of MY NEW BOOK. We’re still in the introductory basic astronomy lesson, discussing the various calculations of different New Years and, would you believe, mistletoe

Nevertheless I sat rather bolt-upright when I read his remark "It was absolutely essential for early man, including the inhabitants of Britain as it was then—townless, uncivilised — that the people should know something about the proper time for performing their agricultural operations".

Surely, if man had stopped being a hunter-gatherer and had settled down to a sedentary life to pursue agriculture, that must mean that they have stopped competing with each other and are learning to co-operate. And is it not the embracing of co-operation between human beings a sign that humans have become civilised?

Back in here I made a start on the Woodstock programmes and by the time I’d finished I had all of the music for Friday and Saturday, all edited, remixed and ready to go. Mind you, I’m not quite sure how I’m going to manage to fit one hour and twenty-two minutes of music plus all of the accompanying speech into a one-hour time slot on the Saturday

Tomorrow, if I have a moment spare, I shall have to do the music for the Sunday and see how much I have for that.

Some of the notes have already been written and I can work my way through the rest as I go along.

My cleaner turned up today and between us we have still not managed to find my medical card. This is going to become a problem if I’m not careful. I can’t think where it might be. I’ve put it somewhere safe and so that will be that.

That reminds me of life down on the farm. I’d see something on special offer and think that i’ll need that for a renovation in six months time, but it’s such a good price that it’s well worth buying it now. So I’d buy it, put it somewhere to keep it safe and when I came round to need it, I could never ever find it again.

Tea tonight was a very quick salad, veggie nuggets and chips, and then back here for the football.

Hwlffordd took off at a very rapid rates of knots and scored an early goal, but then Penybont roared back upfield and scored an equaliser almost immediately.

Having played at 100 mph for the first 20 minutes or so, Hwlffordd seemed to run out of steam and they became less concerned with attacking and more concerned with retaining possession, to such an extent that it became embarrassing at times. It goes without saying that Penybont scored a second late in the game and even so, Hwlffordd still didn’t show any sign of urgency

You don’t score goals if you don’t attack and Hwlffordd are one of the lowest-scoring teams in the league. Their defence is (usually) excellent but their lack of effort to move the ball quickly upfield and to find a striker who can score goals is going to cost them in the long run.

So now I’ll do the washing up and then go to bed. Washing clothes, making orange juice, and dialysis are on the agenda tomorrow.

But yesterday, we were having a discussion about light bulbs … "well, one of us was" – ed …
This morning a friend of mine in Germany asked me "how many Germans does it take to change a light bulb?"
"I don’t know" I replied. "How many does it take?"
"None" she replied. "German light bulbs are engineered correctly and so never ever need changing. And anyway, Germans don’t have a sense of humour."

Sunday 16th March 2025 – I HAVE BEEN …

… a very busy boy today and have hardly stopped at all. I could do with a few more days like that, except that almost none of it was to do with any of the work that has been building up in here.

It actually started last night when, after finishing off my notes and doing the back-ups, I recorded the notes that I wrote for the radio programme that I began last week, and also for the final track for the previous week.

That took me up to just after midnight and it wasn’t many minutes after that that I was in bed, underneath the bedclothes.

When the alarm went off at 08:00 (it’s lie-in day today) I was already sitting on the edge of the bed. I had beaten the alarm, not by many seconds, it’s true, but nevertheless I’m going to claim it as an early start all the same. They all count.

After a good wash I came back in here and began to transcribe the dictaphone notes while I waited for Isabelle the Nurse to turn up.

She was late again – even later than usual, but she brought with her the photos and videos of her Carnaval float and costumes. They did a really good job again and it was quite impressive. The way some of the owners of the floats let themselves go with their designs and lampooning of politicians, local and national, should be an inspiration for other countries to let themselves loose.

After she left I made a late breakfast and read MY BOOK. And it’s now finished, ready for the next one to start tomorrow.

Our author, having explored the effects on Christianity is summing up and tells us that he considers that the folklore that existed in many rural communities until fairly modern times is not Celtic but belongs to the Brythonic people whole the Celts found when they arrived here.

He quotes the mystery and mysticism that surrounded it that the Celts, whom Caesar encountered, told him all of the rumours and fairy-tales that litter Caesar’s writings. That may well be the case because Pytheas, who voyaged around the British Isles in the 4th Century BC, presumably met some of the Brythonic peoples in their coastal outposts before the Celts arrived, and he told similar (but not identical) stories.

Gomme states further that he considers that the Celts and the Brythonic people lived side-by-side, with the Celts in their tribal settlements and the Brythonic people in their rural villages, and there they stayed. But we’ve seen anthropological evidence that there was very little, if any, mixing of the people, and all of the later Brythonic human remains were found in caves, hinting that they may probably have been in hiding out of the way of the marauding Celts.

Furthermore, many of these magnificent hill-forts that we saw earlier date from round about 500-400BC – the time that the Celts were beginning to arrive in Britain. That doesn’t look to me like anything like people living side by side at all, It looks like defenders living in total fear and panic.

And so,even though it was a very interesting and thought-provoking book that made quite a number of good points and taught me quite a lot, as far as the contact between the Brythonic and Celtic people, and indeed the Celtic people and the subsequent Saxon people, I’m still going for defeat and extermination.

There was bread to make after breakfast – a bread roll for lunch. With the air fryer, it’s much easier to dash off a roll like this rather than go for a batch in the big oven. So I ran up 100 grams of flour and made a dough, leaving it to fester.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been. And I’d travelled far during the night. I was in a strange town and fancied going to the swimming baths. I turned up, paid for my entry and went in, changed and went through the double doors. It was the smallest room that you could imagine. There was some clear tiled flooring and there was a shower tray that was probably big enough to fit ten people. That was the bath, just one shower head. I thought “how disappointing this is for having spent this money to come for a swim. Nevertheless, people began to arrive. I thought “they probably enjoy it” and made ready to leave. Just as I was about to step out of the door, the room made a really funny noise and began to move. I looked out and the room was turning round through 90°. At the end of its cycle it coupled up to something. I had a look through another door. There was a huge Olympic-quality swimming pool there with cafés, shops, a swimming costume shop, everything like that. I was obviously in the ante-room where you showered before going into the water. At opening time the room simply spun round and connected up with the main pool. I was ever so impressed. I had a listen to the conversations of some of these people talking about what they had been doing, where they had been, what swimming clothes they had bought. It was really interesting.

When I was driving coaches I’d often go to the swimming baths to relax when I was away on a tour. When I lived in the Auvergne I looked forward to my Saturday afternoon swim at Neris-les-Bains and later at the new pool at Commentry. But my worst-ever encounter with a swimming baths was in Loretteville, a short distance from the city of Québec where I froze to death in water that was, if I remember correctly, 11°C. I must have been out of my mind, but there again I’d been living in a car for two weeks so it was not before time that I washed.

Later on I’d just been uploading a file to my computer, watching it, and it was going up, 20,000 items, 30,000 items and still going on. I was wondering how long it was going to take before it loaded. It was only supposed to be one item that I was adding.

And how many times have I, instead of deleting a single file, deleted a whole directory instead and had to go scurrying off to the recycle bin.

Later on, I’d been in a pub in Audlem. I asked if they had something to eat, but apparently not. I explained that i’d been on the road all day and was desperate to try to find something. In the end she suggested that I could make a sandwich if I had some bread, but I didn’t have any. She took me over to a corner where an old man was asleep. She said “see what he has”. I opened his bag thinking that there were some fish and chips in there but there was a loaf of bread which of course I couldn’t touch – the loaf of bread of someone else. A guy came over and gave me a set of keys. he said “take my tractor, there’s a blue Massey Ferguson, and go down this road. It’s called Cegidfa Road but it goes nowhere near Cegidfa and that should take you to the shop if you do a zig-zag as you go down”. I climbed into the tractor and set off but ended up in a completely different town so I climbed out and walked down a street of old, decaying, crumbling terraced houses with water cascading off the roofs etc. I suddenly found myself standing next to this really big, heavy stone wall. I wondered what it was so I looked round behind it and it was like a forest but with bits of building and bits of equipment and an old, decayed toilet in there. I saw a poster that said that this was the old RASC Stafford military base. Regretting that I didn’t have a camera I set off to go back to the tractor. But there was some discussion going on about how in view of the increased tension in the World and talking about National Service there is just not the infrastructure in the UK for supporting the National Service any more with all of the military depots that have been closed and wound down, some sold off, the rest abandoned. If they were to have a general call-out for one day it would be absolute chaos and totally impossible

This deserted and abandoned camp reminded me very much like Camp B70, the civilian internment camp at Ripples in New Brunswick that WE VISITED IN 2011. And it’s true that, having lived for so long under the shade of the American umbrella, Europe is totally uprepared for war. Regular readers of this rubbish in an earlier guise will remember the endless disputes that I had with the Finnish General in charge of the EU’s military force, trying to steel the force into filling the power vacuum that was developing in the World at the end of the 20th Century.

Later on, down the coast towards St Pair I’d met some British people who had a house right on the seafront. I’d come down from London. I wasn’t quite sure exactly whattheir game was but they were rather shady characters, I suspected. I was out with them one day. We’d been to some kind of do and there had been a buffet there. They told me where I could find something to eat. I went to the table to ask what they had but they didn’t really have anything. I had a coffee in a plastic mug so they poured it into a glass mug and they charged me £0:40, or €0:40. All I had was a £5:00 note so I paid with it and they gave it all back in change. I went and sat down and began to talk.
Shortly later we found ourselves in their house. It’s a big rambling house but so untidy, the garden was full of rubbish and the room in which we were sitting was full of paint tins, people and objects, all DiY stuff etc, paper everywhere. They were talking about all kinds of things, saying that they had a job available for someone who wanted it. I suggested “why don’t we write down on a piece of paper all the skills that we are all good at doing and we can see what we can do”. They thought that that was a funny idea but I thought it an excellent one. In the end they all dispersed and I was sitting there having a think when a girl came in. She asked me if that job had been taken. I replied “as far as I’m aware it’s still going”. She wondered what she could do about it so I told her “why don’t you ask?”. The woman of this house then came in to say that they were all planning to go off to London for a concert or something or other. I said “I’d like to go too”. She replied “you can go in a car with someone and the rest of us will have to go in the buses”. We began to think about preparing to go. I began to have this really uncomfortable feeling about this situation. It’s nice to meet people and it’s nice to be friends and to be involved in things but this was simply far too shady a situation in which I should be involved.

And this reminds me of the “Pink Palace” – that place where I stayed while I was waiting for the previous occupier to move out of “Reyers” when I’d bought it, so that I could move in, back in 1994. That house was a huge house with many single rooms, each one occupied as a kind-of pied-à-terre by single British businessmen when they came to do business in Brussels. That was a very happy three months and I learned a great deal from those people.

Having dealt with the dictaphone I sat back and watched Stranraer totally demolish league-leaders East Fife up in Methil. 3-0 was the final scoreline and it was not undeserved. What I wish though, having seen the dismal displays against Clyde and Forfar, is that they could do this every week.

Next task was to edit the radio notes that I had dictated. But I was nowhere anything like even halfway through when I had to break off for lunch

My bread roll was perfect, my cheese on toasted bread roll exquisite, and I ate it in here, something that I vowed never to do, but today it was because of the other Welsh Cup semi-final.

Cambrian United are seventh in the second tier and have had better seasons than this, and today they have the unenviable task of facing runaway Premier League leaders TNS, fresh from their triumphs in European competition

For the first five or so minutes the team from Tonypandy took the game to TNS but when TNS scored their inevitable first goal, the heads went down and the floodgates opened. At half-time the score was 5-0 and it looked as if we were going to be heading for an embarrassing scoreline.

However, I don’t know what the Cambrian manager put in their half-time cup of tea but I wouldn’t mind a swig of that myself, because it was a different game in the second half. Cambrian were much more relaxed and played some neat football. They kept TNS out for the rest of the game (although I suspect that TNS could have changed up a gear had it been necessary) and had a few chances of their own. Had the referee seen the foul by McGahey on Tim Parker as he was one-on-one with Connor Roberts in the TNS goal, TNS would have finished the game with ten men.

After the final whistle there was bread to make as I have run out (well, I haven’t – there’s some in the freezer but it can stay there for now). It was another sunflower seed loaf, and I set the dough off and left it to rise.

While it was doing its stuff, I had some over-ripe fruit here, apples and kiwis. I’m right of my fruit at the moment so I made a batch of apple and kiwi purée to have at breakfast with half of the stuff. I’ll make some more later on with the rest.

There’s also some oranges that I can’t seem to eat (my taste buds changed dramatically a few weeks ago when I was ill) so when the current breakfast orange juice is finished, I’ll experiment with the liquidiser attachment on my food processor and make some fresh orange juice.

The bread was excellent and my pizza (I’d taken some dough out of the freezer earlier) was perfect too. In fact, all of today’s baking etc seemed to have gone very well. It killed my legs though, standing up, and when I move downstairs I’ll have one of these screwable stools that I can raise the height of the seat.

But now I’m going to bed. I’ll finish the radio notes tomorrow and do half of my Welsh homework too ready for Tuesday’s lesson. We’re cracking on with our Welsh course but we won’t be anywhere near finishing it by the end of the year and it’s going to over-run.

But while we are on the subject of swimming pools … "well, one of us is" – ed … a boy at that swimming pool in Loretteville ws thrown out while I was there, for … errr … relieving himself into the water.
"But everyone does that in a swimming pool" pleaded the boy
"Maybe they do" said the lifeguard "but not from the top of the high diving board"

Saturday 15th March 2025 – THERE WAS NOTHING …

… whatever of any interest happening today. I can’t think when it last was that I had such an uneventful day.

There was even a decent sleep for once. It may well have been late by the time that I went to bed, quite a while after midnight in fact, but I was soon asleep, which is no surprise after the difficult night the previous day … "??" – ed ….

Once in bed and asleep, I stayed asleep right the way through the night with no recollection whatever of awakening and it’s been a while since that’s happened too.

When the alarm did go off, I was away with the fairies – but not in any manner that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine. I was doing something with a pair of lady’s shoes but I’ve no idea what because immediately that the alarm sounded I awoke and the whole lot evaporated completely.

Into the bathroom for a good wash and scrub up, some deodorant and a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant later on at Avranches.

There was also some washing to do, and amazing as it might seem, having taken care to wash my clothes before another large pile builds up, there was still too much for the washing machine. This is becoming ridiculous – either my clothes are growing or the washing machine is shrinking . There certainly aren’t more clothes than before.

With nothing on the dictaphone this morning, I could crack on and do some more unzipping. There’s not all that many left to do now but I keep on finding more and more that I hadn’t found earlier.

Isabelle the Nurse was late as usual, no thanks to the roadworks in the town centre where they are rebuilding the square outside the Mairie. As well as that, they’ve suddenly and spontaneously decided to carry out more roadworks elsewhere in the town centre that’s blocking part of the one-way system and it’s a nightmare.

After she left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK.

We’ve begun to discuss the influence of Christianity on folklore. He is of the opinion that "Christianity was both antagonistic to and tolerant of pagan custom and belief. In principle and purpose it was antagonistic. In practice it was tolerant where it could tolerate safely. At the centre it aimed at purity of Christian doctrine, locally it permitted pagan practices to be continued under Christian auspices. In the earliest days it set itself against all forms of idolatry and non-Christian practices"

He goes on to quote from Gibbon’s DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE saying that "in later days, after the fifth century it accepted both pagan practice and pagan ritual."

It’s interesting that he picks the fifth century. Rome was sacked by Alaric in 410AD and by the Vandals in 455AD and in 476AD the “barbarian” Odoacer seized the throne of Rome. This influx of foreigners into the city of Rome doubtless weakened the grip of the Church .

Pope Gregory wrote in 601AD to Abbott Mellitus who was on the point of going as a missionary to England "because they have been used to slaughter many oxen in the sacrifices to devils some solemnity must be exchanged for them on this account, so that on the day of the dedication, or the nativities of. the holy martyrs whose relics are there deposited, they may build themselves huts of the boughs of trees, about those churches which have been turned to that use from temples and celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting and no more offer beasts to the devil [diabolo], but kill praise of God in their eating, and return thanks to all things for their sustenance"

Our author adds "This toleration took the shape either of allowing the continuation of pagan custom and belief as a matter not affecting Christian doctrine or of actual absorption into Church practice and ritual."

In fact, judging by the deterioration of the pure Christian faith in the way that it is practised these days by many so-called Christians, there’s a very strong argument that suggests that rather than the Christian faith having absorbed some facets of paganism, it’s more as if paganism has absorbed some (and only some) facets of Christianity. The more uncomfortable aspects of pure Christian belief have been abandoned a long time ago, if ever they were there at all.

Back in here I attacked the Woodstock radio project and I now have all of the music that I need – at least one track from every artist (even the ones that I didn’t believe that I could find) except one. And that’s because Sly and the Family Stone don’t really fit into my programmes and I’ll have to omit one or two groups anyway.

My cleaner turned up later to fit my patches and then the taxi, driven by the boss, turned up to run me to Avranches.

Once more, I was one of the first there and had to wait until they had cleaned up from the morning. Once I made it to my bed I was the fourth to receive attention (I don’t move as quickly as the others) and then I could settle down to watch the football.

Welsh Cup semi-final today between Connah’s Quay Nomads of the Premier League and Llanelli of the second tier. The Nomads are having a wretched season by their standards and Llanelli are leading their division so it was always going to be a tight affair.

The gulf in class and quality was evident however but even though the Nomads had most of the possession they went in at the break 1-0 down because of a penalty. Both sides had hit the bar however.

Two inspired substitutions at half-time turned the game around for the Nomads. They were 2-1 up in a couple of minutes before Llanelli had had time to re-adjust but once they had adapted to the new situation they held on to the end, having had a couple of chances of their own.

It was another one of those really exciting games however, with plenty of entertainment for the neutral fans.

After that I began to sort through the music for the Woodstock project until it was time to be unplugged.

The same driver brought me home – early once again. I could relax and unwind for an hour or so with my disgusting drink.

Tea tonight was a chiliburger on a bap with salad and baked potato followed by date bread and soya dessert. The same as last week’s, and the week before etc, but still just as delicious.

So right now I’ll dictate my radio notes and then go to bed. I have a busy day tomorrow, bread making and so on

While we’re on the subject of pagan ritual and belief … "well, one of us iss" – ed … to tell a little secret, I had my suspicions that Nerina might have been in touch with things that we know not what. Not long after we had come together, we were out driving when she touched my leg. I immediately turned into a lay-by
It made me suspicious, especially when we were in the local supermarket once and she wanted to buy a new broom to sweep the yard.
At the check-out I told the cashier "don’t bother to wrap it – she’ll fly it home"

Tuesday 11th March 2025 – I’M HAVING ANOTHER …

… late night tonight but ask me if I care. I have just seen one of the most exciting football matches that has been broadcast on S4C and believe it or not, it was between the teams who are next-to-bottom and third from bottom in the table, Llansawel and Y Drenewydd.

Never mind though about the late night – it will go with the late night that I had last night. It wasn’t until about 01:25 that I finally crawled into bed.

Thinking about it though, when I remember how things were nine months ago when I was crashing out for a couple of hours in the afternoon,staggering into bed like a zombie and struggling to rise up next morning, it does point to something of an improvement the way things are now, and I suppose that it’s the dialysis that is responsible for that. I can’t think of any other reason

So there I was, crawling into bed at 01:25 and there I stayed, flat out without moving until the alarm went off at 07:00. It wasn’t a particularly perspiration-laden night – not as much as some have been just recently – so I suppose that dialysis may not be to blame for the perspiration either.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and clean-up and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back here there was the dictaphone that needed my attention. I was running a wedding car business last night with an old Rolls Royce. At one wedding that I went to, I actually missed it myself because there was some kind of problem going on with the car or with something. While the party was in there marrying I actually had my head under the bonnet of this Rolls Royce so I didn’t make the ceremony. There was a second wedding too and I also missed that but I can’t remember why now but I didn’t go to it. The next one I had all the people on board the Rolls Royce and they wanted to stop at the corner shop so I pulled up, went out and came back with some cans of drink. They climbed back in and we had a chat. The man said “right, let’s go to the wedding. You don’ want to miss this one, do you?”. I made some remark and he replied “yes, but let’s go to the wedding and find a reason for hating him”. We set off and the Rolls Royce turned to the right inside this great big building. I was going straight on for some reason. Whatever it was that I was pushing became bogged down in the carpet and I couldn’t move it and I was still there trying to free it off and free it off.

Sticking my head under the bonnet of a car was something that I spent a lot of time doing, and I would have enjoyed it very much had I had the time, but things always seemed to go wrong at the wrong moment. It was a never-ending story of swimming against the current back in those days, probably very much akin to being stuck on the carpet while everything is going by past me.

Isabelle the nurse was horribly late today. It’s her first day back on duty so I suppose that she has all of the blood tests and injections that have been building up while her oppo was doing the rounds. She breezed in and back out again and hardly had time to draw breath while she was here.

Breakfast was next and then there was MY NEW BOOK. Today we have been examining early English folk-tales. He’s been looking at them in depth and identifying customs and practice in those folk tales that bear no resemblance whatever to real customs and practice, either in the British Isles, traditional Middle Europe or Scandinavia,

His argument is that the English population as we know it, starting with the Celts, came from those areas mentioned. If the customs and practice in the folk tales does not come from those areas, it must therefore come from someone else, which of course is logical. However he suggests that it comes from the race of humans in the British Isles that the Celts found when they arrived in the middle of the first millennium B.C.

This is how he reckons that he will be able to construct something that will give us some idea of the social and interpersonal life of those who were here before the Celts arrived.

Later on I began to revise for my Welsh. I had a good hour at it and made more progress that I thought that I might but it was to no avail because the lesson was not as good as it might have been. However I was relieved (to a certain degree) to find that I was not the only person in the class who is struggling to keep up, and we talked about going on a Summer School together later in the year

After the lesson I was computing again and I now seem to have almost everything that I need. There’s one program that I mentioned that I can’t find, and for some reason, Waterfox wouldn’t connect me to my Welsh lesson and I had to use another steam-driven web browser. I shall have to look into this and find out why.

Tea tonight was a taco roll as usual, a hurried tea in fact because of the football.

Aberystwyth look well-and-truly down, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … but of the other three clubs at the bottom, Y Drenewydd, Llansawel and Y Fflint, they seem to have cycles – one will win two or three game and pull clear, and then another one will do the same and catch up, and then it’s the turn of the third.

Consequently, tonight’s game between Llansawel and Y Drenewydd is of crucial importance to both clubs who are level on points in the table.

Y Drenewydd came out of the blocks at a tremendous rate and it must have been almost 10 minutes before Llansawel entered their opponents’ half. I forget now how many times Y Drenewydd hit the post, hit the bar, had shots cleared off the line, and had Will Fuller in the LLansawel goal not played the game of his life it could have been a catastrophe.

Llansawel had only really one good chance in the Drenewydd penalty area and you surely don’t need me to tell you what happened.

Nevertheless Llansawel have made something of a habit of dropping points by conceding goals in the final minutes of a game and today was no exception. A 1-1 draw was probably a good reflection of Y Drenewydd’s failure to capitalise on the chances that they had and a tribute to Llansawel’s dogged defence. From a neutral spectator’s point of view, it was a thrilling, exciting match.

Tomorrow is shower day of course, and radio day too so I’ll be busy. It will all keep me out of mischief anyway, I suppose.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Rolls Royces … "well, one of us has" – ed … when Tiger Woods came to play at the Scottish Open a few years ago he hired a Rolls Royce from Edinburgh Airport and set out to drive to St Andrews.
On the way he picked up a young girl hitchhiker, and he delighted in showing off all of the luxury fittings in his car. She kept on pointing to things asking "what’s this? What does it do?" and he told her.
She pointed to some plastic things in the tray by the gear lever and asked "what are those?"
"They are tees" he said
"What are they for?" she asked
"You put your balls on them before you drive off" he replied
"Blimey!" she exclaimed. "Rolls-Royce think of everything!"

Sunday 9th March 2025 – THAT WAS MORE …

… like what I call a decent night after the last couple that I have had. I was in bed just after midnight and slept right through until about 07:45 without any interruption at all, taking almost full advantage of my extra hour’s Sunday lie-in. I could certainly have done with it too.

After I finished my notes and everything last night I dictated the radio notes ready for editing and refraining from doing more work on the computer, I crawled off to bed for a good night’s sleep.

At 07:45 I had another one of these dramatic awakenings and although I didn’t look at the time I had a good idea of what time it might have been by the fact that it was light outside. I simply curled up under the quilt until the alarm went off.

Last weekend the nurse caught me in flagrante delicto in the bathroom. Today either I was quicker than that or he was later arriving because I was actually back in here when he turned up.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK. His take on religion (which we are discussing today) is that "I venture to think that civilised man shares with the savage of today, and with the primitive ancestors of all mankind, the charge of applying perfectly good logic to an insufficiency of facts."

Interestingly he notes a great similarity in religious beliefs between various bands of Native Americans, natives in Guyana and in Brazil, as well as other beliefs shared by other widely-dispersed groups of natives.

Back in here there were the dictaphone notes that needed transcribing. I was with one of the boys from school last night. We were walking along Alton Street in Crewe. He was telling me that what he was looking for was some kind of place where he could give singing lessons and have a kind of pied-à-terre there too. I asked him “what kind of place? But what? First-floor balcony? Open-air roof garden?”. In the end he came down to the idea of a singing workshop with apartment. I said “what you are actually looking for is what you would used to find on every street corner in Crewe in the pre-1920s Crewe which is the old local shop that would have been a grocer’s or a hairdresser’s or something with a two-roomed apartment above it”. Just at that moment we walked past what was a florist’s so I said “just like this in fact”. He wasn’t very enthusiastic but I couldn’t see exactly what he was hoping to do if that wasn’t the solution. While we were pondering on this I stepped out off the kerb into the side-street and was nearly run down by a car coming the other way. I looked around and we were in Nantwich Road near the Earl of Crewe. I wondered what on earth I’d been doing to have walked this kind of distance from Alton Street up to Nantwich Road without thinking about what I was doing and where I was going.

Whoever this boy was and if I recognised him in the dream, I have no idea. But it was certainly a quick transition up the hill from Alton Street to Nantwich Road.

Later on, we were round at my house in Virlet last night, me and a couple of my siblings. The house was in a total mess with dust and rubbish and papers everywhere and hadn’t been lived in for fifty years. They were having a good look around it. We were wandering into the next room looking at the damage and the decay and the waste, all the rubbish and dust. They came to a door in the side wall and managed to force it open. Next door was the Council Chamber which was all richly furnished with seats and huge tables and chairs with silks and everything. The contrast between that room and the rooms in my house was astonishing. They all noticed it and made some remarks. They they picked up a couple of brushes and began to sweep everything up. I’d left everything as it was because I was intending to go through the rubbish and sort out everything that I needed but they just began to brush things up and stick them in bin bags. They went into the bedroom and found that the bedroom was in total disorder and mess that someone must have left the door open, the Christmas tree had fallen down so I’d better go to have a look at that. Then they came to the door at the end of the house and couldn’t open it so they all pushed against it. Suddenly it opened and they cascaded out, falling down one storey into the yard at the back. They asked “how do we come out of here?”. I told them to go down to the end of the alleyway and turn left. I thought “this is the moment when I suppose that I ought to go too”. I locked up the house and left. When I reached the place where they should have been, there was one of these cryptic signs so in the end I interpreted it as “Eric, forget this and go home” so I thought that I’d better set off for home. It was a sunny day with lots of cloud though. All the rain that we’d had over the last few months was slowly beginning to dry out. I thought that this is going to be a really nice day.

The house I actually recognised. It was one in Gresty Road opposite the football ground, one that I knew quite well at one time. But the idea that the Council Offices were next door is a long way short of the mark. The story about the house and dust everywhere sounds just like the farm in Virlet when I was plastering it and dropped a huge bag of screws all over the floor into the dust. I loved my place down in Virlet but it was no place to be when ill-health strikes. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the old man with whom I was quite friendly who had a fall in his house in the middle of a minus eighteen degree winter and lay on the floor undiscovered for four days and never recovered.

There was a bread roll to make for lunch. Last week the fresh bread roll was an excellent idea so I was keen to give it another try.

After that we had the football, Stranraer v Peterhead. It was a tough gritty match that finished 0-0 and quite rightly too because no-one had any much more play than the other. But the disgraceful scenes at the end when the Peterhead coach came onto the field and attacked a Stranraer player have no place whatever in football. And even worse, the referee took no notice whatever of the incident. Whether he mentions it in his match report remains to be seen.

There were the highlights of the matches in the Cymru Premier League to watch too. And Penybont finally won a match in the second phase as they beat Y Bala. Aberystwyth went down 3-0 though and now look certainties for the drop down to Tier Two. Y Drenewydd live to fight another day after a draw with Y Fflint but Llansawel went down at home against Y Barri by a last-minute goal.

Much of the rest of the day has been spent finishing off the uploading of data onto the new system disk. It’s all there now but it needs unpacking and sorting and that is going to be a mammoth task and will take an age until it’s finished

The cheese on toast on fresh bread roll, all cooked nicely in the air fryer, was excellent again. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I am really impressed with my air fryer, almost as much as I was with my stainless steel dustbin.

Later on I had bread to make and following the success of the loaf last week I put sunflower seeds in this one too. And it rose up just as well as the one last week did

There was pizza dough to make too. This was another really good batch that rose up really well. Two lumps are in the freezer and the third made a lovely tea tonight – a tea that would have been even nicer had I remembered to put the cheese on before the cherry tomatoes. I really don’t know what’s happening to me and my memory these days.

So now that I’ve finished my notes I’ll carry on unzipping *.RAR archives for a while and then go to bed ready for Welsh homework and dialysis tomorrow

A few days ago though, we were talking about the dams in Germany that the Dambusters breached. So while we’re on the subject of religion today … "well, one of us is" – ed … when the Mohne Dam broke, the warden telephoned the church in the valley to tell the vicar to flee
"I’ll be okay" he said. "The Good Lord will provide"
When the water reached the church the vicar climbed into the tower. A few minutes later a boat rowed past. "Quick, vicar, leap aboard"
"I’ll be okay" he said. "The Good Lord will provide"
When the church was flooded the vicar climbed up to the steeple
Another boat came past. "Quick vicar, leap aboard!"
"I’ll be okay" he said. "The Good Lord will provide"
But the Good Lord didn’t and the vicar drowned
At the Pearly Gates he met St Peter and he remonstrated with him. "I always believed in the Lord and he betrayed me. Why did the Good Lord let me down and let me drown?"
"Well" said St Peter. "He did send two boats for you."

Saturday 8th March 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

But then that’s hardly a surprise when you don’t go to bed until 02:20 and you are up and about by 05:35. And that’s something of a tragedy because if I’m going to have a bad night’s sleep at least I want to be going out and about enjoying it, even if it is only a notional travel.

As you might expect I was hunting down files and data last night and then ended up being carried away by something or other, and once you make a start you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are. It was still a very weary me who crawled into bed at about 02:20.

Not that it did me all that much good because although I did go to sleep at one point it wasn’t for very long and in the end I became fed up of doing nothing whatever and arose from the Dead.

In the bathroom I scrubbed up and washed my clothes, and then went into the kitchen to take my medication. Next task was to finish off the unpacking of the food from yesterday and organise the collection of glass jars so that there was room to add some more

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’m trying to do away with plastic in here. Over the last few months I’ve been buying my olives in these big glass jars and I now have quite a collection. My range of glass-bottled loose product is expanding quite rapidly because of the extra stuff that I have bought over the last few months as my recipe ideas have expanded and as I try to move everything out of plastic and paper bags into glass jars.

Before I came back in here I tidied away all of the shopping bags so that they weren’t all over the floor. But in any case it doesn’t work. My place is now just as untidy as it was yesterday before my cleaner came.

Once back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone to transcribe I made a start on unzipping data but was halted in my tracks by the nurse who came to sort me out. He asked me the same questions as usual and so he had the same responses as usual, not that I’m too bothered.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK. We reached page 123 today and that marks the end of the introductory preamble as he sets the scene for what is to come.

He’s convinced that these strange stories that Julius Caesar reported about the British people being cannibals, holding wives in common and other "odious practices" as he puts it were not actually the practices of the Celts who Caesar met but those of the people who were here and were displaced by the Celts when they arrived.

Furthermore he thinks that he can prove it too and I shall be interested to see how he manages to do it, bearing in mind that if there are no written records of the Celts there are likely to be even less for the people who were here before.

In here I carried on with the extraction of files until my cleaner arrived to fit my anaesthetic patches. She had only just finished too when the taxi arrived. 12:15, 15 minutes early. Not that i’m bothered though because the sooner we start the sooner we finish (in principle).

It was the young chatty driver who came for me today but he didn’t have much to say for himself which is a shame because the time passes more quickly when you are having an interesting discussion.

First in at the dialysis centre I was, and first to be coupled up. Julie the Cook had left a message for her colleagues and they applied the ice pack too before they plugged me in and although it did hurt, it didn’t hurt as much as it has done in the past.

There was football this afternoon, TNS v Hwlffordd. Hwlffordd are pushing Penybont for second place following Penybont’s dramatic collapse of form but TNS demolished them with some ease and the 5-1 scoreline was not flattering TNS at all.

Hwlffordd played some pretty football at times but it was all to no real purpose and they didn’t look threatening at all. For all the distance between Aberystwyth and Hwlffordd in the table and in the style of play, Aberystwyth’s showed much more dogged resistance last week that Hwlffordd did today.

Emilie the Cute Consultant was there today and she said “hello” to me, but that was about the extent of her interaction today. No-one else spoke to me until it was time to be unplugged.

The driver who brought me home was the young girl who brought me home several weeks ago. We were talking about food and I found, to my surprise and to hers too, that we are both vegan. She immediately asked if she could come round for a meal and who am I to refuse such a request?

Mind you, I’ll believe it when I actually see it.

My cleaner watched as I ascended the stairs and once I’d sat down and recovered my strength I had my disgusting protein drink.

Tea tonight was one of those weird chili burgers on a bap with salad and baked potato followed by date bread and soya dessert. It was the first time for a fortnight that I’ve actually felt like eating a proper meal.

So there’s some dictating to do and then I’m off to bed ready for tomorrow. I have a busy day of baking and there’s some fruit that needs transforming into juice and purée.

But while we’re on the subject of glass bottles … "well, one of us is" – ed … I used to collect them if they were any good and reuse them for other things. One day I found a really nice one.
It was rather dirty so I went to rub it clean and suddenly a genie appeared out of the neck.
"You have released me from the bottle and now I am yours to command" he said. "Give me 100 gold pieces and I will answer any two questions"
"Blimey!" I said. "That’s a lot of money for two questions, don’t you think?"
"Yes" replied the genie. "Now what’s your second question?"

Thursday 6th March 2025 (cont) – NOW THAT THINGS … .

… are back to normal (well, as normal as things ever could be around here) I can carry on and do what I ought to have been doing, and update everything.

And had I known how things were going to have worked out, still being on my feet (well, OK, on my chair) at 02:00 I would have had an early night instead of being up to all hours watching Stranraer, after several weeks of impressive football, go back to their old, miserable ways and be easily beaten by the bottom club in the league who spent most of the night playing with just ten men.

That was as embarrassing as the defeat aginst Clyde a couple of weeks ago and was really depressing after the last three or four performances.

So anyway I went to bed eventually and had another perspiration-laden night where I was only really half-asleep for most of it.

When the alarm did go off I hauled myself to my feet and headed off to the bathroom for a scrub and even a shave. After all, you never know if Emilie the Cute Consultant is going to be there today.

No medication right now because you also never know if the nurse might actually want to come along and do this blood test this morning and it has to be done à jeun so I listened to the dictaphone instead to find out what had gone on during the night. There I was, lying here asleep and a girl was trying to load some ink or something into my mobile ‘phone so that it could print a document. I tried to pur some fat into it but the fat was in a chip basket thing. Of course, every time you tilted it to pour it the liquid would seep out through the holes so I wasn’t having any success with my cooking last night.

Can you imagine trying to lift molten fat out of a chip pan with the chip basket? I’ve no idea what goes on inside my head at night, but there again, I don’t have all that much more idea about what goes on inside my head when I’m awake.

Later on I was out in North Wales looking for an address. I ended up somewhere beyond Conwy in an area that I didn’t know very well but I couldn’t find it. I ended up on an extremely steep hairpin bend. Trying to walk or cycle up there was extremely complicated. When I reached the top there was a waterfall. The waterfall was where some kind of primitive dam had been that had been broken and the water was cascading over it down into the valley where it joined the main river. There was a main road off there to the right and there was a lot of traffic coming that way so it was complicated to cross the road. I did cross the road but still couldn’t find this address. In the end I saw a map with the shape of where it was and I identified that I should have been four miles beyond Abergele so I had to retrace my steps and try to return across the road on a pushbike was even more complicated with all of the traffic that was coming straight on down the main road. Once or twice someone paused and that was the signal for someone to nip over but I had to wait for a while and found myself in the end with about a dozen vehicles on the central reservation waiting for a gap in the downhill traffic again. Once we set off there were all these vehicles passing so closely and I was then freewheeling down the hill listening to the news about a bicycle race. There were two people in the middle of the road, a man and a woman with bikes and they didn’t seem to be paying any attention to me as I came hurtling down and I missed the woman by a matter of millimetres.

As it happens, I recognise this road too. It’s out of Llangollen heading down into mid-Wales and I was there 20-odd years ago with Nicole when we came to pick up the old LDV. The dam is very much how I would have imagined one of the “Dambusters” dams to have been after it had been blown up. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we WENT FOR A LOOK AROUND the dams few years ago on our way to Colditz and STRAWBERRY MOOSE‘s famous escape attempt.

Incidentally, four miles beyong Abergele up a steep mountainside is one of the Iron Age hillforts to which Arthur Allcroft took us a couple of weeks ago, but there was nothing about any hillforts anywhere last night.

When the nurse did finally turn up he did actually take the blood sample and I knew all about it because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … he just doesn’t have “the touch”.

After he left I made breakfast and carried on reading MY NEW BOOK. We’re discussing exciting subjects today, such as men marrying their daughters and the young killing off the old folks once they stop being productive and become useless mouths to feed.

He’s actually done some research into this and has found plenty of examples back in history and in more remote parts of the World where those customs were still current when he was researching his book. All I can say is that for someone whose day job was a clerk in London County Council, he had some strange pastimes and hobbies.

However, he has proved a point over which I have been puzzling. If people back in ancient history were so concerned about having useless mouths hanging around eating the produce, the produce must have been so scarce that not even family ties could hold the people together and stop them killing each other. So I remain totally unconvinced by the modern way of thinking that these hillforts were nothing but symbolic. The huge amount of effort that went into the construction of these immense defensive works and the amount of time they had to spend away from the fields or from the hunt, they really must have been scared almost to death by what might have happened had they not spent all that time and effort in their construction.

Back in here later I had a few things to organise and sort out but was interrupted by the telephone. "Is it OK if I come a little earlier, like 12:00?". It was my taxi driver.

What has happened was that last week these new Social Security regulations came into legally-binding force and so this is how it’s going to be from now on – taxis turning up at any time they like if they are obliged to combine trips. Not that I’m complaining because, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed …, it’s a free service and in any case the sooner we arrive, the sooner I can leave and so I sent a message to my cleaner to inform her.

Poor thing, she had to scramble here to fit my anaesthetic patches and was still here when the taxi arrived – at 11:47. The Sécu has instructed that a timespan of 45-minute either side of the booked time is acceptable under these new regulations and by my reckoning the car was actually 43 minutes early. That’s cutting it fine.

We had to pick up someone else on the way of course, someone who had a hospital appointment for an operation. "As we’re so early we may as well drop madame off at the hospital first."
"She’s going to hospital in Rennes"

When I arrived at the dialysis centre I was so early that they hadn’t even finished dealing with the morning’s patients but Julie the Cook saw me and she quickly finished off setting up my machine (patients have their own individual settings) and I was installed and up and running by 13:15.

She tried a new trick this afternoon. While she was setting up the machine she slapped an ice bag on my arm. And that actually might have helped a little – at least until the effect wore off.

Apart from the coffee, no-one bothered me at all until it was time to unplug me. Julie the Cook had gone home a long time before and one of the others came to sort me out. For some reason I was rather unsteady on my feet at first. It can’t have been low blood pressure because that was OK.

So it was 17:30 when I staggered out of the centre and the taxi was already waiting for me. We had someone else with us to drop off along the way but even so I was back at home by 18:15, much to the surprise of my cleaner

That was when I discovered the catastrophe in here, with the big desktop computer spinning around in BIOS mode complaining “I can’t find any disk with an operating system on it”.

Luckily I had a spare 1TB SSD that I’d dismantled from another machine so I formatted that in a disk caddy with the help of the travelling laptop and set about dismantling the big computer. It’s always good to perform a clean installation every couple of years because you’ll be surprised (or maybe you con’t) at the amount of rubbish that accumulates over the passage of time.

While I was doing that, I actually found what I suspect is the fault. There’s an internal power lead with three connectors for disk drives. The one that was connected to the SSD system drive has a crack in it and what seems to have happened is that the crack has allowed the internals to flex and they have shorted out.

No problem. I just disconnected the internal back-up drive and plugged the new SSD System drive into that connector. I’ll have to order a new power lead from somewhere in due course to connect everything back up on a more permanent basis.

While it was sorting itself out I made a quick tea – just like THE CARMICHAELS and "supper waits on the table inside a tin".

Back in here afterwards, I settled down and steeled myself ready for what is going to be a very long night

But while we’re on the subject of Colditz Castle … "well, one of us is" – ed … I’m reminded of that legendary “Two Ronnies” sketch from years ago.
"We’re making a film about prisoners escaping from a camp in Germany"
"What’s it called?"
"The Colditz Story"
"What are you making next?"
"A film about life in a South Wales mining village"
"What’s it called?"
"The Coal Tips Story"
"And after that?"
"We’re doing a film starring Raquel Welch who will be playing the role of an Inuit"
"What’s that called?"
"We haven’t decided yet"

Sunday 2nd March 2025 – I NOW HAVE …

… a complete flapjack and also a complete loaf of home-made bread.

And as well as that, I also have a large bowl of leek soup, mainly in the grounds that at lunchtime I wasn’t at all hungry and there’s no point in forcing food down if I don’t feel like eating it. It will do for tea tomorrow night instead, complete with a fresh bread roll that I also made today.

There were in fact lots of things that I didn’t feel like doing, but what accounts for that is the really miserable, wretched night that I had.

It was late when I went to bed, for one reason or another … "mainly the football highlights" – ed … but I was soon asleep. However, not for long. As I said into the dictaphone at the time, “not long after I went to sleep I was talking to a girl about music and one or two popular musical sayings. I didn’t go very far into that dream before someone walked past in the street blowing a saxophone and awoke me, and that was that”.

And that was it too. Not the noise from the disco or the fairground last night, but a whole series of attacks of the most severe cramp that I’d had for ages. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few years ago I was having regular severe attacks of cramp, and last night they were back.

There wasn’t much danger of going back to sleep after that.

Anyway, I stayed in bed until the alarm went off at 08:00 and then had a difficult climb out of bed and into the real World. The nurse came round very early today and caught me in flagrante delicto in the bathroom. He wasn’t happy about being made to be kept waiting but that’s his problem not mine.

After he left I made breakfast, had my meditation and read some more of MY BOOK.

We are still wandering around the South Downs admiring the scenery, something that has very little, if anything at all to do with the “Earthwork of England”.

However, I’m still puzzled over his book, even more so these days. Is it a historical account, a scholarly work of reference, a travel guide for the educated tourist or simply an exercise in prose? When you see flowery phrases such as "your dreams here should be of times and peoples yet earlier than the Roman—of taller warriors clad in skins and armed with stone, and of others harnessed in bronze or helmeted with the horned casque of the iron time, but not of those terrible squat interlopers who made such play with the short sword and the pilum, and carried upon their shields the blazon of the thunderbolt." you begin to wonder what on earth he must have been smoking, and could he maybe pass it round to the rest of us?

Back in here there was the dictaphone. Surprisingly, there was something else on it from last night. I went back into that dream … "presumably the one where the saxophone awoke me" – ed … later on and I was talking to a girl from Crewe, one of the friends of a girl whom I knew. She was actually doing something like being a hairdresser, something like that, and I was waiting to have my hair cut. I recognised her and remembered her name, Jennifer Marie something so I said “hello Jennifer Marie”. She looked at me and said “well I’m going to obviously have to change my name if people start recognising me”. I said “yes, change it to ‘Miss Crewe 1962’ ” which made her smile. Then we began to have a chat about the old days when a group of us used to go to the rock venue in High Street in Crewe. It was a real surprise to see her in a dream.

This is rather interesting because the girl concerned didn’t have a friend of that name, and I knew most of them. They were much younger than we were but used to sneak into the rock music venue to watch the groups on Saturday night – the one where I had that very long and interesting chat with that Dutch rock group “Alquin”. At their age (the girls, not Alquin) they wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a bar, never mind a night club full of rockers, but they used to tell their mothers that they were sleeping over at a friend’s and the friend would tell her mother that they were sleeping over at the first friend’s – you get the picture. Then at 03:00 when we were thrown out of the club they would go and sit on the station drinking coffee until it was time for them to “come home after breakfast”. I’m surprised that they got away with it for as long as they did but the downfall was inevitable. For once, I managed to keep myself well out of trouble and well out of the picture because even then, the young, naïve irresponsible me had no doubts at all about how it was going to finish. It’s strange though that it should all come flooding back last night.

After that, there was football to watch, Edinburgh City v Stranraer. Stranraer seem to be on a roll at the moment and it carried on today with a hard-fought 1-0 away win up at Meadowbank. Once again, luck was on their side as they survived a few desperate scrambles on their goal-line,

They were also lucky to have finished with all eleven players still on the pitch after a foul that would have seen many other players in many other clubs and many similar moments taking the walk of shame to the tunnel for the early bath.

Then I’ve been intermittently working. I’ve been sketching out the bones of how my “Woodstock” programme is going to work and it’s going to take some organising too. I have very little live music for the groups and artists who played on the Friday night and not much more for the blues artists that appeared on the Sunday night. As for the rock groups on Saturday, I could fill half a dozen programmes with what I have and still have plenty left over.

No lunch, as I said, but I did make a bread roll to eat with it. It will still be good tomorrow night. It means that if I have another bad time at dialysis I shan’t need to worry too much about tea.

The flapjack was interesting though. I added some coconut oil in place of some of the vegan margarine and it certainly made it sweeter. A little softer too, which was surprising.

As for the bread, in view of my recent successes I went back to where I was right at the beginning and added several handfuls of sunflower seeds. Once more, it rose up light a lift and was as soft as anything that I have ever made. And because it was a full-sized loaf, that was baked in the big oven too after the flapjack.

Jamais deux sans trois as they say around here, and the third thing that went into the oven was the pizza. I’d taken some dough out of the freezer earlier.

This pizza was another resounding success too and tasted as delicious as any that I have ever made. In fact, my baking seems to have moved up another gear right now. I hope that it keeps going.

But I’m not going to keep going. I’m going to bed, hoping that there are no attacks of cramp or people playing the saxophone.

Yesterday though, we were talking about Carnaval and dressing up … "well, one of us was" – ed …
Today I spent some time thinking about if I were fit, well and able to join in, how would I dress up?
At one time I thought to myself "why shouldn’t I dress up and disguise myself as a suitcase?"
But then of course a touch of realism crept in with ourselves and I thought "now let’s not go getting ourselves carried away here with this idea"

Saturday 1st March 2025 – DYDD GWYL DEWI HAPUS.

And a happy St David’s Day to those of you who don’t celebrate it. And my leek soup was delicious. Even better – there’s enough left for lunch tomorrow.

That is of course, always assuming that I’m here to eat it because a few more nights like last night and a few more days like today and I won’t be.

As I expected, last night was another late night. I didn’t hang around at all though so I’ve no idea why I couldn’t have been in bed at a reasonable time.

Once in bed though, I couldn’t sleep. I had a pain in the neck (and I’m not talking about a partner here) that was absolutely agonising and try as I might, I couldn’t make myself comfortable. What with all of the music drifting up from the ball in the town centre and the revellers making their way back to the millions of motorhomes parked all around here, I lay awake for hours and I’m not joking either.

When the alarm went off I was fast asleep though and once more it was a very weary, bleary-eyed me who struggled to his feet.

After a wash, I set the washing machine off. And how many times is this now that I’ve had dirty clothes left over after I’ve filled the machine? Either I need a bigger machine or else I need to use the machine more frequently.

Next, it was into the kitchen for the medication, remembering not to take the medicine that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back in here, I was surprised to find some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I seriously thought that I hadn’t been asleep long enough. I’d been out on a night off and had gone to the pub to sit and have a quiet drink. Then I thought that it was becoming late so I’d better set out and head for home. I began to jog and when I reached my house, I carried on running but suddenly realised that I was supposed to be going home, not for a run as I used to do at night, so I turned round and went back to the house but suddenly found myself running again. I had to stop and go back another time. When I reached the house I put my hand on the door to open it and a dog began to bark. Someone said “it’s Eric”. They came to meet me and said “a girl has been to see you” and mentioned her name. I thought that I recognised the name from somewhere as if it was someone whom I knew in Stockport but I suddenly realised that it was a girl with whom I’d worked once. Whatever does she want? “Well, she’s left her business card”. I went in and saw on the table a business card so I picked it up. It wasn’t hers though, but for a guy called Tim Edmonds who works for the Government. “Who’s Tim Edmonds? What does he want?”. My youngest sister asked me “is your car OK?”. I replied “yes. Shouldn’t it have been?”. She looked at her husband and said “I’m just making sure that he has some windows in his car” so that there had obviously been something about windows in cars between the two of them.

When I was taxi-driving when I lived in Winsford I often used to go for a run when I came home at some kind of silly hour in the early morning. I really enjoyed it and it was a really good way for me to relax and unwind. I lost the habit after that when I moved to Crewe but I started running again when I moved to Belgium. After I taught Roxanne to ride a bike she used to chase me through the local park. There’s also a story about my youngest sister, her husband and a window too but that’s yet another story that the World isn’t quite ready to hear.

Isabelle breezed in, hours late because of Carnaval. Today is the defilé des enfants – the Children’s Procession when all the kids dress up as their favourite characters and walk into town accompanied by the brass bands, and they have begun to close all of the streets even at this time of the morning. That’s actually my favourite part of the long weekend and a few years ago I hit the streets with my recording gear and interviewed some of the kids to make a radio programme

After she left I made my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Today we are talking about Burpham Camp in Sussex. And having disputed at great length (as regular readers of this rubbish will recall) the opinion that some of these hilltop camps are “Danish camps” because the Danes wouldn’t build impressive fortifications, he tells us, about Burpham Camp, that "it is safe to suppose that it is not a British work. For reasons as obvious it is not Roman. It has no known characteristics of Saxon work, and had it been such, the church would certainly have been within the vallum. It must therefore be either Danish or Norman. To Norman work it has no resemblance, and the conclusion is that it is Danish.".

So having insisted "that it is not a British work" and "has no known characteristics of Saxon work", according to archaeological excavations undertaken on behalf of the National Heritage List, "the Iron Age promontory fort at Burpham is an example of an inland fort where the natural defensive qualities of the land were utilised and the site was reoccupied as a burh in the Anglo-Saxon period. ".

After breakfast I had bread to make for tea tonight – just a couple of rolls – and then I went to sit down for half an hour for a rest with a mug of coffee.

When my cleaner came in, she found me hard at work. Not only had I prepared all of the veg for my soup, I actually had it all in the pot simmering away and the bread was in the air fryer cooking. Today we gave the anaesthetic cream a try-out and after she left, I carried on with my soup.

The taxi was driven today by my favourite taxi driver but she was late. And then we had to go to pick up someone else but because the roads were all closed because of the defilé we had to go miles and miles out of our way.

It took an age to sort out the other passenger and then we had to go almost to Bréhal before we could pick up the road to Avranches, a detour of about a dozen miles.

As you might expect, I was last to arrive and was even later because there were two emergencies admitted. My appointment is in principle at 13:30, and I wasn’t seen to until 14:45.

By that time the anaesthetic had long-since worn off so I knew all about the connection. And Julie the Cook tried to do it all on her own and failed, and I was in total and utter agony and despair throughout the entire session.

However, I did manage to watch the football. The result was predictable, with TNS, eight points clear at the top defeating Aberystwyth, eight points adrift at the foot of the bale, winning the League Cup.

What wasn’t predictable was the heavy weather that TNS made of it and while Aberystwyth never looked like threatening the TNS goal, a 1-0 win isn’t a safe win by any means. All I can say though is that if Aberystwyth had played with the same fire and spirit throughout the season that they showed today, they wouldn’t be in anything like as much trouble as they are.

What with one thing and another it was 19:45 when I returned home. While all of the police had ringed the town with roadblocks to hunt down drunken drivers, a bunch of drunken teenagers were misbehaving in the street blocking all of the traffic and needed quite a lot of persuasion to move.

When I finally returned home I finished off making the soup and have somehow ended up with two litres of it. That will keep me going for a while, I reckon.

Tomorrow I’ll be bread-making, a complete loaf this time, and flapjack-making. As for the radio programme, Grahame and I have been chatting on the internet exchanging ideas and I’ve decided to make three programmes for my “taste of Woodstock” – one of the Friday to be broadcast on the Friday, one of Saturday and the third of the Sunday, to be broadcast similarly, mutatis mutandis. So tonight and tomorrow I won’t be radioing.

But talking of Carnaval and dressing up, I told my taxi driver to be careful on the way home. "There are several elephants in the town and at Carnaval they disguise themselves by dressing up in black suits and black glasses and pretend that they are the Blues Brothers"
"That’s nonsense" she replied. "I’ve lived in this area 30 years and I’ve never seen tham"
"There you are then" I said. "It shows you just how good their disguise really is"

EPIC HALL

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