Tag Archives: eric hall

Monday 20th October 2025 – I HAVE LEFT …

… on the dinner plate about half my tea tonight. I just couldn’t physically eat it.

The way things are right now, I seem to be in quite a bad way, what with one thing and another, and unless I can find some way to pull myself out of it, I worry about what will happen.

It all had the air of being really good today too. Once more, I was in bed prior to 23:00 – well before, in fact, and I fell asleep quite rapidly.

Although I awoke at about 03:00 or so, it was only for a fleeting minute and then I went back to sleep again. And there I stayed until the alarm went off at 06:29

There was the usual procedure – into the bathroom for a wash and scrub up, and then into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here, there was the dictaphone. The war was about to hit France in its full fury. I’d been leading one of the French armies. We’d ended up on the Normandy coast not too far from here when the information came through that the Germans were massing ready for a final sweep into Brittany. There was no time to spare so I ordered my army to stand to, and I went back to the base headquarters from where my army was administered. Everyone was waiting there for me, waiting for instructions, but I needed to look at reports and plans, and details from the sentinels as to what the German army was doing before I disposed my troops. But people were in such a rush. They asked if they should be ordered to arms, so I replied “yes”. “So what about being sent to the transport?”. I replied “there’s no harm in them being sent to the transports either”. I asked about Division 1816 which was the one that I wanted to be in the thickest of the fight. That was not actually present at Headquarters at the moment. Eventually, I obtained enough information to go to join my particular division which was at St Pair here and ready for an attack on the German Army.

This is, I believe, only the second time that I’ve dreamed about this area. But, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there would be no chance whatever of me joining the Army, even in wartime. If I had to choose, I would be in the Merchant Navy.

There were three of us, two guys and me. We had to walk somewhere, which was going to take us about eight hours. We set out and began to walk, but at one point we were in a field where there was a big depression. To go round this depression, it meant climbing up some kind of bank, crossing over higher and going out through a hedge. The first person who went, she was actually a girl. She complained that I was too close behind her for her to manoeuvre at the top, saying something like “the purpose of being perpendicular is so that you can turn easily”, in other words, implying that I had to take a couple of steps back to give her room. At the top, there was a barbed wire fence to slide under. This turned to be more complicated than it might be, and I began to think that it would have been far easier just to jump the depression, and far quicker too. At the top, we had to slide under this barbed wire fence, then another barbed wire fence and into the roadway, but there was a cowpat in the way that didn’t look very comforting. Just then a car pulled up and a little woman was sitting in the car reading something that was on the seat beside her. We thought that if she stays here for long, we’re going to be very late. We have to push on regardless. Later on, there was this announcement that the British Government had discovered traces of three snakes. They described the three snakes, and I wondered if they meant that they had found our tracks on that embankment place where we had had to slide on out stomachs underneath that barbed wire.

It’s amazing how my fellow travellers change sex in the middle of a dream, isn’t it? As for the rest of the dream, including the cowpat, it’s quite meaningless. What would the snakes be doing in all of this?

There was also something about being in a house at the side of a road with a slight incline downhill. I had to come out of there in my van, towing a caravan, go down about 200 yards and turn left. I’d checked the road and it was clear, so I set out. But the van was really struggling to find any acceleration and a car caught up with me, which I thought that I’d have plenty of time to avoid. He cut in front of me at the traffic lights where this left turn was, and turned left, regardless of the light being on red, but just as I approached it, it turned green so I could carry on.

Where the house comes from, I have no idea. But the road junction, minus the traffic lights, is where you turn off the Upper Labrador road near Goose Bay to travel over the Mealy Mountains to the Labrador coast, SCENE OF OUR TRIUMPHS IN 2010. The van not working as it should, especially when towing a caravan, is something that doesn’t fit anywhere.

After that, I turned up in Wrexham after that. There were these people trying to register for something – there was a huge crowd. One girl was saying to her friends “come back here! Look at this!” and took them back to the reception window. As I walked past, I saw one of the guys whom I knew from the previous times that I’d been to hospital. He said “hello” so I said “hello”. I asked him if the way to the hospital that I wanted, which was a different one, was down at the bottom of this particular lane. He said that it was, so I set off. It was through a posh area with these Victorian buildings that looked like a school or a hospital or something. Then out in the countryside, I came across a ruined viaduct, so I had to walk down the valley to find another bridge to cross over, and then climb back up the other side.

This dream doesn’t fit anywhere either. I could easily see it as being the first part of the first dream, except that it’s out of order. But then, the purpose of this project at the beginning was to tie together some of these isolated dreams into some kind of continuous soap opera.

Isabelle the Nurse blew in on the gale (we’re having another storm). She told me that she doesn’t think that her oppo will be here in time tomorrow before I go. She’ll ring me if there’s a change in this decision (but as yet, not at all).

After she left, I made breakfast and then came in here.

There were several important things to do this morning, such as pay a few bills and write a letter or two.

To fill in the rest of the time, I prepared for the Welsh class tomorrow. I know that I won’t be there, but I need at least to have an idea of what’s going on so that I don’t fall behind. I’ve been doing too much of that in the past.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic. She brought with her a pile of medication too, as I’m running low on that as well. And that reminds me – the prescription is expiring so I need a new one.

Once she had left, I waited for the taxi. And waited, and waited. It turned up eventually at 13:30 or shortly thereafter with another two passengers. The driver was a very young, chatty girl who has taken me once, months ago. She was somewhat insistent on the bell, so I apologised, saying "I’m not able to run".

There was heavy traffic on the road but she put her foot down when she could, and I wasn’t all that late arriving. And although I was last to be coupled up, I didn’t have to wait too long.

Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me to talk about my infection. She thinks that I’m fit enough to go to chemotherapy tomorrow. I told her about all of my medical appointments this week and asked her if she couldn’t find one for Sunday, so that I would have a full week.

While I was at it, I told her that I was going to sell my apartment and live in one of the taxi company’s ambulances. That would save everyone a pile of trouble.

They have also re-organised my dialysis sessions for when my niece and her daughter arrive so that I can spend all the time with them.

One of my favourite taxi drivers was waiting for me, and we had a nice chat on the way home, but I was battered by the storms once I left the car, trying to return to the apartment.

After my faithful cleaner left, I made a stuffed pepper with pasta and veg but as I said, half of it went into the bin. I’m throwing away tons of stuff just now and it’s not at all good.

So tomorrow, I shall be up at 06:00 ready (I don’t think) for chemotherapy. I’m not looking forward to it at all but I suppose that I have to go through with it.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about snakes … "well, one of us has" – ed … one day, mummy snake saw baby snake crying.
"What’s the matter, dear?" she asked
"It’s the snakes next door" sobbed baby snake. "They won’t let me hiss in their pit."
"Don’t you worry about them" replied mummy. "I can remember them when they were so poor that they didn’t have a pit to hiss in."

Sunday 19th October 2025 – JUST FOR ONCE …

… I actually managed to have a lie in. And I really needed it too.

It wasn’t as if I’d had a late night last night either. After finishing off everything that I need to finish, and sorting myself out in the bathroom, it was just before 23:00 when I crawled into bed under the covers, and went to sleep quite quickly.

During the night, I awoke just once – at about 04:10. And although I did think for a moment about leaving the bed, I turned over instead and went straight back to sleep.

It was 06:20 when I awoke next. And had this been a weekday, I would have been straight out of bed. However, it’s a Sunday when there’s a lie-in until 07:59 so I curled back up under the quilt. I tried to go back to sleep but without any luck. Nevertheless, I stuck it out until about 07:10, when I finally abandoned the effort and left the bed.

After the bathroom and the medication, I came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a hospital somewhere where there were a great many sick patients for all kinds of reasons. One of the things that this hospital did was to give abortions. There was one of the doctors who was violently opposed to the idea of abortions, and he and his wife made themselves extremely unpleasant on the subject. They had to be diverted away from the other services. There was an issue with the woman, something to do with packing a baby away. They were in the middle of doing this when suddenly they announced that one of the baby’s left hand had disappeared and there was a feeling that it had its arm wrapped around its neck. They had to stop the procedure and examine it. However, this doctor was quite angry, violently so, against some kind of situation that was taking place between the hospital and his wife of this affair. I had to go along and check on something, and it was not a situation that I liked very much. He and this other woman were sitting there discussing this case, and I was trying to work in this room in the background, but it was not very encouraging. I wasn’t really able to complete what I was supposed to do while he was there. He was running back and to, doing things in connection with this issue, and I couldn’t really have some kind of minute to myself to do what I needed. I had a feeling that I was going to be discovered any minute now, and this was going to lead to an extremely violent confrontation.

As if there’s any chance of me working in a hospital. The story about the baby refers to the daughter of a friend of mine in Florida whose mother had a very uncomfortable birth with her. The doctor referred to seems to resemble someone whom I knew in Crewe fifty years ago. He wasn’t a doctor and he had no opinion on abortion, but the rest of his character and personality fits.

We were then having a little get-together in Gainsborough Road. I’d invited a friend of mine round, and she came because her husband was working on nights and he had gone to bed. We were there having a chat, and the woman from next door was here. As we had a close look at the houses, we saw that next door’s house had a cellar, or seemed to have a cellar – there was a small window underneath the living room window whereas mine didn’t. This was probably accounted for by the slope of the land. We were intrigued by this and had a discussion. In the end, we asked the lady next door “how do you go into the cellar?”. She couldn’t remember, but she said that she had been in there once. She thinks that she remembers that you collapse the side of something and open a window. From outside, she shone a torch in through the cellar window, saying “I wonder what’s happening here now?”.

Whoever the girl was, I have no idea. But there is no cellar at the next-door house in Gainsborough Road and as far as I am aware, there are no cellars anywhere in the vicinity.

Isabelle the Nurse breezed in as usual and breezed out again shortly afterwards. It didn’t take her long to sort me out, and she gave me my instructions – or, should I say “orders” – for the dialysis clinic tomorrow. I have to make sure at all costs that they examine me.

After breakfast, I came back in here and spent the morning catching up on the football highlights, including Stranraer’s monumental morale-boosting win against Edinburgh City. And not just a scrappy win either but a resounding 3-1 win away from home.

After the disgusting drink break at lunchtime, I had work to do. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I maintain the shipping beacon for the port. It’s mounted in my apartment with the antenna on the shutters. Its purpose is to detect the shipping identification transmissions from the equipment on board the ships moored here and transmit them to a central control in Denmark.

A few weeks ago, the beacon ceased to function, and closer examination revealed that the beacon was of an obsolete type that should be replaced. They had sent a new one during the week so this afternoon, I assembled and installed it. It now seems to be working fine.

While I was doing that , I was chatting with several friends on line It’s nice to interact with people like that, although of course it’s not as nice as to chat face-to-face.

There was bread to make and a pizza to make too. The bread didn’t rise as high as usual, which is a disappointment, but the pizza was excellent once more. I was really impressed with that.

But now I’m off to bed, early enough, to prepare for my busy week next week.

But seeing as we have been talking about babies … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once saw a guy coming out of the chemist’s with a baby under each arm.
"Where are you going with those?" I asked him.
"Back to the factory" he replied.
"The factory?" I queried.
"Yes" he replied. "I’m the local Durex representative and these are two complaints that I’m taking back with me."

Saturday 18th October 2025 – I WENT TO …

… bed early last night – before 23:00 in fact – for once. And I’m so glad that I did because not long after I’d gone to sleep, I had a special visitor come to see me. Had I gone to bed late, I would have missed her.

But more of that anon

Firstly, though, I did actually make it into bed at something like a respectable time. In fact, had I concentrated and been more motivated, I could have been in bed a good while earlier than that. However, as usual, I dillied and dallied etc. etc.

Once in bed, it took a while for me to go off to sleep and I don’t know why. I ought to have been completely wasted after my session at the Centre de Ré-education, but apparently not.

Eventually though, I did manage to drop off to sleep and although I awoke a couple of times during the night for no good reason, I awoke definitively at about 06:00.

As usual these days, it took a while to raise myself from the Dead and head off to the bathroom. And after the medication, I came back in here to see what had happened during the night.

And to my surprise, I’d had a special visitor. And she’d come quite early too so, as I said just now, I was glad that I was in bed early. Yes, I was with Castor (or, rather, she was with me) last night. We were on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR again. There was some kind of meeting taking place and I was one of the last to arrive. I had to struggle my way in to find a place to sit. There was a place right at the back next to Castor so I went to sit down on it, thinking that I could probably move to a more comfortable seat at some other time. As I went to sit down, the ship lurched and I ended up sitting down almost on top of her. I excused myself, and she had a smile at me and something of a laugh. I thought “maybe I don’t want to move now”. While this discussion was going on, the two of us and Castor’s friend, we were having something of a chat. We were talking about electricity. They were saying that they needed some more electricity. I was saying that Canada doesn’t have any more, what with Muskrat Falls and all of this taking so long. Then the discussion turned round to the forests, how Canada was destroying all of the forests for lumber. It moved round then to someone else connected with the events of the 11th September being found in New York and extradition to Canada being asked. It turned out that he’d advocated the massacre of all kinds of children and was described in the Press as a “loyalist”. We chatted about that for a while, and then Castor put her arm around me and cuddled up tightly to me so I put my arm around her too. I thought that this was really nice and comfortable.

Nice and comfortable? I bet it was! And how glad was I to see her? I thought that she’d dropped off the end of my dreaming cycle, just as The Vanilla Queen has, and Moonchild, who put in a flurry of rapid visits a year or so ago and hasn’t been seen since..

Muskrat Falls, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, is a hydroelectric project in Labrador that we have visited on a couple of occasions. It’s vastly overdue, vastly over-budget and has been described as "one of the most controversial public project cases in Canadian history"

As for putting our arms around each other, well, you can’t turn back the clock, can you?

The “loyalists” by the way, are the supporters of the Crown during the American Revolution. We’re back with Colonel Carrington and BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Someone else came to see me last night. It was Castor again. Just as I was stepping onto Her Majesty’s Steamship Pollard, we’d been asked for this incident to build shares and in this steam prop and everything so that if we were successful in capturing it, we could suppress it for a while, while these nasty ingredienty stuff is.

So did Castor appear again later? Not that it matters … "of course it does, really" – ed …
because I have no recollection at all about this. As for the Pollard, I’ve not been able to trace a ship of that name. The only Pollard whom I can recall was the captain of the “Essex”, the whaling ship that was sunk by a whale and the starving crew in one of the longboats killed and ate one of the crew members. That’s the inspiration behind the book MOBY DICK and also behind the song NANTUCKET SLEIGHRIDE by Mountain.

I was with my three friends with whom I travel frequently. We’d gone to Germany and had arranged to meet at a posh five-star hotel – restaurant type of place somewhere. When we arrived, and I was having difficulty with my crutches, we were welcomed by one of the waiters who escorted us to our seats. I had a special chef who had come to see me for my dietary requirements, and we had a lovely meal. Later on, we were actually on the stage, the four of us. We were singing folk songs, and there was quite a crowd there cheering us on, even when we were singing “The Rocky Shores of England” … "he means ROOTS" – ed …. It was all really enjoyable.

Not that there’s any chance of me singing folk songs praising England, of course. But news on the grapevine suggests that I may be having another visit in the Spring.

I’d been hired as some kind of umpire for a baseball team, which is crazy because I’ve never played baseball in my life. I had to go to Barony Park where, across the road, were some clay tennis courts. The team was practising on there. They all wandered off and I lay down on the floor for a relax for ten minutes. However, people came up and began to play tennis over the top of me. I had a baseball bat and I was holding it up, and if a ball came near me, it hit the bat and was deflected. When everyone came out, they presented me to the crowd and said that I’d hit every ball that had been thrown towards me. Wasn’t that brilliant? I replied “well, I’ve never ever played baseball in all my life before. That was the first time”. It was breakfast break at this time so we had to help ourselves to breakfast. This typical American buffet – it had cake, cream cake, pastries etc but I was simply looking for the muesli and some toast. I eventually found the muesli but I was still struggling for the toast. When I found the milk, which was over by the coffee, I had to ask the waiter if they had any plant-based milk but before he could reply, I awoke.

This is another one of those dreams that seems to be totally mysterious. The American buffet sounds quite interesting though, although there wouldn’t be much there for me to eat.

Isabelle the Nurse was late arriving, but she still found time for a little chat before departing again. I could then push on and make breakfast.

Back in here, there were the highlights of last night’s football matches in the Welsh Cup. However, the match that I particularly wanted to see wasn’t recorded, which was a shame.

After I’d seen all there was to see, I finished writing the notes for the joining track for the radio programme on which I’ve been working. That’s now ready to dictate, which I shall do at the first available opportunity.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic and then I had to await the taxi. It was only a few minutes late but we had to drive out into the sticks to pick up someone else, so we were late arriving. And as usual, I was the last to be connected up.

The doctor, he who is in charge, was supposed to examine me for Tuesday but he barely stuck his head in the room. That was right at the very beginning of the session so I thought that he’d be doing his rounds later. However, I never saw him again.

Instead, I watched the live Cup Match. Bow Street, a little village team from mid-Wales, had fought their way through the preliminaries to this round and had drawn Y Fflint of the JD Cymru Premier Division.

They were well-outclassed but put up a brave fight and managed to keep the score down to 3-0, which, I suppose, is something of a moral victory.

One of the Bow Street players received the “man of the match” award, but it wasn’t the goalkeeper, Lewis James, which I thought was a travesty because he had done more than anyone else to keep his side in the game, as YOU CAN SEE.

For the rest of the session, I began to make up my shopping list, although I have no idea when I’m going to find the time to have it delivered.

The taxi was waiting for me when I was ready, but it was still late when I returned home. There was a reception committee awaiting me – several of the residents, including my cleaner, were having a chat at the door.

One of them offered to programme my timer for me, but after half an hour of trying, he was unable to programme it either. So it’s not just me who can’t make it work.

Mind you, it took so long, and with me being late to start with, that there was no chance of making a cooked tea. Instead, I made myself a few rounds of cheese on toast, something else that I haven’t eaten for years. And it was nice too.

But now I’m off to bed, ready for tomorrow and a lie-in until 07:59 if I’m lucky, which I doubt very much.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Castor … "well, one of us has" – ed … I mentioned the story to one of the nurses at dialysis.
"What was the name of Castor’s sidekick in Greek mythology?" she asked.
"Pollux" I replied.
"Look!" she retorted. "If you don’t know, there’s no need to be rude about it!"

Friday 17th October 2025 – I AM COMPLETELY …

… exhausted again right now.

In fact, I spent much of the late afternoon asleep on my chair in here. That is, however, no surprise, because they really put me through the mill at the Centre de Ré-education earlier.

As well as that, I spent half an hour or so asleep on the chair this morning. But then again, that’s no surprise either when you consider that I awoke at 04:10 this morning, despite how tired I was last night before going to bed.

All in all, it’s not been a very good day at all, and I’m going to have to snap out of this and organise myself properly before long.

Last night, I finished off by saying how exhausted I was, and I wasn’t wrong. I had never felt so relieved as I did when I finally crawled into bed, bang on 23:00. And the prospect of a deep, uninterrupted sleep of about seven and a half hours was so, so welcoming.

The deep sleep I certainly had, for I remember absolutely nothing at all about anything during the night. But long, it was certainly not. As I mentioned just now, I was awake at 04:10 and once more, I couldn’t go back to sleep no matter how hard I tried.

After about an hour of trying, I thought “no time like the present” and arose from the Dead. And it wasn’t easy either.

Taking advantage of the early start, I dictated the radio notes that I’d written on Wednesday. And I made a total mess of them too. My heart wasn’t in it at all. I remember thinking “this is going to take a lot of editing”.

When I had finally finished, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I had been during the night, and regrettably, there was nothing on there at all. It must have been a really deep sleep. Instead, I checked my mails and had a look at what else had been going on elsewhere during the night.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up, as cheerful as usual, and she asked me if I’d spoken to them at dialysis about the proposal for chemotherapy on Tuesday. I said that I’d mentioned it, and that they would examine me on Saturday and see how I am. If I’m still full of infection, they won’t allow me to go.

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

There were a few things to do and then, as I mentioned earlier, I rather regrettably fell asleep. I was out of it all for a good half-hour or so too. I really do need to pull myself together and push on. I thought that dialysis was supposed to put an end to all of this.

Once I’d finally brought myself round into the Land of the Living, I made a start on editing the radio notes that I’d dictated. And I was right about them needing a lot of editing too.

After a while, I had to break off for a disgusting drink break and to prepare to go to the Centre de Ré-education.

My faithful cleaner turned up too ready to start her rounds. She noticed the enormous pile of washing that has built up while I’m waiting for this plumber to fix this leak, and she proposed to take a handful with her so that there could be more room in the basket. And I wish that the plumber would hurry up and sort out his problems and come round to sort out mine.

The taxi turned up on time, with two other passengers so I had to squeeze into the back. And, although you might find this hard to believe seeing as we are in mid-October, going past the port I noticed that they were putting up the Christmas decorations already. That is really taking the mickey.

At the Centre de Ré-education the first task was to sit on a chair and pull on some elastics in order to work the muscles in my upper arms. That was OK but the chair was too low and there were no armrests, so it was a nightmare for me to stand up again.

In the end, the monitor had to help me haul myself up, in some kind of bear-hug. And then some passer-by had to pass me my crutches. But while the monitor had me in her arms, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to ask her if she would like to dance.

Chance would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it?

With my physiotherapist, I was given some kind of apparatus to hold my knees steady and then invited to stand up, just pulling on the safety bar of this apparatus. I had about ten attempts, and actually managed it twice. So all is not lost. However, I was completely exhausted trying to do it. It took an awful lot out of me.

The rest of the session was spent walking around in some kind of machine that’s like a walkframe but it’s quite tall, with handles rather like that of a skid steer machine. She asked me if I would like one of these at home, but where on earth would I put it? It wouldn’t go into the boot of a taxi either so it’s quite pointless really.

As I was leaving, they gave me the programme for the next series of sessions, and they are taking the mickey too. Two sessions per day I can just about handle, three is the absolute limit, but giving me four? I put my foot down at that.

One thing that I noticed though was that my effort today was much less than previously. Whether my body has deteriorated over the last week or whether it’s the effect of this infection, I really don’t know. But whatever it is, I don’t like it.

It was a struggle to come back in here from the car and I crashed into a chair, where I sat for a good half-hour or more while I tried to gather my wits – something that should take much less time seeing how few wits I have left these days – and then I came back in here and crashed out definitively.

While I was away on my travels, I was at some point busy untangling small lengths of wire from a huge mass and testing each wire for conductivity. I’m not sure why.

Eventually, I managed to sort myself out and carry on with editing the rest of the radio programme, texting with Rosemary while I was at it.

Tea tonight was vegan sausage, baked beans with cheese and fried mushrooms, and air-fried chips. That was the first meal that I’ve properly enjoyed for quite a while, although after about half an hour, my stomach was back in the usual turmoil.

So now I’m off to bed. And I can’t say that I’m sorry. There’s no point in wishing for a good night’s sleep because it makes no difference what I would like. I’ll “get what I’m given” as my mother used to say.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the washing … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of back in Gainsborough Road. If the man was hanging out the washing, it was always going to be a sunny or windy day. It never rained when he had the clothes out.
One day, I asked him the secret.
"It’s the wife’s rheumatism" he replied. "If she’s lying on her right side, it means that the weather will be damp. If she’s lying on her left side, it means that the weather will be fine, so we do the washing."
"And if she’s lying on her back?" I asked. "What does that mean?"
"It means that we have far more exciting things to do than to worry about the washing."

Thursday 16th October 2025 – HAVING JUST FALLEN …

… asleep at the dining table in mid-meal, I suppose that I’d better hurry up, write my notes and go to bed before another disaster overtakes me. I’ve been having far too many of them just recently.

At least, last night wasn’t as late as some have been just recently. For once, I was actually in bed by 23:00. That was really nice. After all, a nice long sleep will do me the world of good, I reckon.

Ha ha! They were famous last words, weren’t they? Although it wasn’t until 06:15 that I actually awoke definitively, I’d had a very turbulent night and had awoken on several occasions.

Once more, it was another struggle to leave the bed and go to the bathroom. It was clothes-washing day too, with not having had a shower yesterday, so I gave my undies a good going over. I have to keep abreast of things like this.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised to have travelled so far. I was going on a mission to work somewhere in a town centre. With the town centre of this place being very tightly controlled for parking, I’d written a letter to the local council to explain what I’d been doing and asking for authorisation to park there for free during the period for which I was there. The day that my work started there, I set off and arrived. I went to the council’s offices and was met by a young girl who was in charge of the official parking. She told me that they had received my letter and that I could leave my car in the official car park, but it needed someone to let me in all the time. So she went with me. I saw a room with all kinds of machines in it, ticket machines for this, ticket machines for that. She went to one of the machines and presumably pressed a button to override it, but nothing happened. She ended up going back to her desk for something. She came back and said “you might just sit here for a moment”, pointing to an empty seat by someone’s desk. “You can watch a James Bond film if you can understand the language”. I looked, and it was a fight between James Bond and some evil character but I didn’t recognise the subtitles so I didn’t know in what language it was in. She came back a little later and allowed me to go in. She told me that the letter that I had sent, which was in the office inside the car park, I was to put that on my windscreen so that people who didn’t recognise the car would see what was happening. I drove in, and saw that this fight with James Bond and this character was actually taking place on the staff car park.

Wherever James Bond fits in with all of this, I don’t know. But the story of the car park presumably refers to the situation in Crewe at the moment where a pile of car parks are being or have been developed, replaced by one multi-storey car park in which it costs the earth to park.

And next, I had to go up north, to wherever my landing was taking place. But it was the Navy that was in charge of the boundaries of this city, not the Army, so I thought that my likelihood of being given a pass to travel into the war zone would be about absolutely zero.

This doesn’t seem to relate to anything either.

It was the first round of the Nations Rugby Cup. We were all in hospitals so we didn’t really have a chance to see any of the game but we’d heard vaguely that the results had gone our way. Our game was to be played this evening and if we were to win it, we would qualify for the semi-finals. At that moment, it was Emilie the Cute Consultant who appeared. She was doing her rounds. As she was leaving, I called her over and asked her if it was true that we stood a really good chance of making the semi-finals. She said that there didn’t seem to be any reason why we shouldn’t, and we had a little chat about everything. It turned out that the final was being played on the rugby ground across the road from where we lived on Davenport Avenue. I said that if we made it to the final, I’d fight for her to have a really good place on the touchlines where she could watch it. However, she pointed to her stomach and said “well, it would be rather difficult by the time that the final is played”. I replied “don’t worry. I’ll make a trolley for you and I’ll push you over” which made her laugh.

So this is the first time that I’ve dreamed about Emilie the Cute Consultant. This is astonishing. Much as I like her, she hasn’t made anything like the impact on me that has been made by most of the other regular nocturnal visitors.

It’s most unlikely that I would be going to watch a rugby match when there are other more exciting things to do, such as watching paint dry and watching the grass grow. There was a sports field over the road from where we lived in Davenport Avenue (it’s now a housing estate) but it was a cricket ground and football pitch.

But while I was out there on that sports field, there was a girls’ school that was having its sports on there. I was wandering around giving some help and advice to different people. One young girl came over to me and said that she wanted to talk. I asked her what was the matter, and she told me that she’d completely lost all of her interest in this. While at one time she was receiving really, really good marks, she was now just receiving average marks – yn aml, she said – for most of her subjects and she was really disappointed. She wished that she could find her motivation from somewhere. So we began to have a really long chat about this.

Now, yesterday I was looking through some of my photos from a famous trip that I made a few years ago, and they brought back certain memories of a couple of incidents that occurred and which relate to this dream more closely than anyone could imagine.

By the way, yn aml means “often” in Welsh, and Welsh wouldn’t be a language that the subject of this story would have ever used.

Later on, I was back in work. I’d arrived late, about 09:12. I wasn’t very happy about my choice of clothes. I had oil on one of the shirt cuffs, and I was having real difficulty in moving. Trying to make my way to my desk, I was disrupting everyone else’s work because I was swaying about from side to side. I could see that some of my colleagues were becoming rather short-tempered. To finally make my way to my desk was extremely complicated. One of the guys was complaining that I was knocking his papers everywhere so when I tried to stand myself upright better, it was making things worse. Eventually, I could make my way to my chair by disrupting just about everything, but noticed that my computer was missing from my desk. As I sat down, the boss’s secretary came over, starting to hand over slips of paper about things that needed to be doing. She came to me and mis-pronounced my name, saying that a medical report would be required on me because for the last few weeks, I’d been eating nothing but vegetables. I was sitting there, thinking “whatever this report comes up, it’s no loss because I should have been retired a long time ago”. But at that point, just as the dream was becoming interesting, I awoke.

At one time, dreams about being over the age of retirement in a miserable working environment were an everyday feature of these notes, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It’s been a while though since the last one.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual, sorted out my legs and then cleared off, leaving me to make my breakfast.

Once I’d finished, I went one better than David Crosby because, although it wasn’t Christmas when I had the ‘flu, I am still not feeling up to par. It makes quite an improvement though, this new, trim me.

Back in here yet again, I finished the notes (Isabelle had interrupted me) and then began to prepare the next radio programme.

My cleaner came along to sort out the anaesthetic and then I had to wait for the taxi. And wait. And wait. 13:35 it finally turned up, so we were hours late arriving at dialysis.

On top of that, there were dozens of tests to perform, and then my internet account there had expired and needed renewing, so today took forever

At least Emilie the Cute Consultant came to see me again. And you won’t believe this but she now has an infection. I apologised profusely but she didn’t think that it was the same as the one that I have. It ruled me out of offering to console her. Imagine a cocktail of infections in my state of health.

So, horribly late, and with a collapsing blood pressure, I ended up leaving, to find that it was the cute taxi driver whom I like very much who was waiting for me. We had a lovely chat on the way home, talking mainly about cats.

My faithful cleaner helped me in and after she left, I emulated THE CARMICHAELS and "supper waits on a table inside a tin". Once more, I left some on my plate and, as I mentioned earlier, I fell asleep at the table.

But now, I’m off to bed, thoroughly exhausted and desperate for a good sleep.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Emilie the Cute Consultant … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told her "I dreamed about you last night"
"Did you?" she asked.
"No" I replied. "You fought me off."

Wednesday 15th October 2025 – I AM FEELING …

… a little more like it today.

Well, let’s just say that I have managed to go from about 05:30 or so until right now without falling asleep anywhere. That is of course not to say that I’m not tired or that I’ve done a lot of work today, but almost anything is an improvement on how I have been on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

That very long afternoon in bed asleep must have done me the world of good, I reckon, even if I did fall asleep on the porcelain horse once more when I should have been preparing for bed.

It was just after 23:30 when I fell into bed, far later than I would have liked, but I was asleep quite quickly. However, at about 05:30 (or probably a little before because I didn’t look at the time for a while when I awoke) I awoke and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Round about 06:00 I left the bed and was still sitting on the edge thereof, trying to summon up the courage and energy, when the alarm went off at 06:29. It wasn’t exactly one of my quickest starts to the day.

After a good wash, I went for my medication and that was another leisurely “somewhat-more-than-a-moment” too.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see what had gone on during the night. Nerina and I were living apart, although in the same house. After being out one night, she brought her boyfriend home with her. I was in bed, and had two of the cats cuddled up around me. When she came in, she made quite a bit of noise that awoke me, and couldn’t go back to sleep. In the end, she came into my bedroom looking for something. At that moment, I awoke completely and asked her what was going on. She just mumbled a few things and wandered off. At that point, I left the bed and walked into the kitchen, still carrying one of my cats, and went to find a drink; However the fridge was just full of bits and pieces of plastic and paper. I asked her if the rubbish in the fridge was anything to do with her. She said that it was hers but I wasn’t to touch it. I said that I wasn’t even going to take it out, never mind throw it away. I couldn’t find a drink, but in the end I found some kind of strawberry yoghurt that I ate. Then I couldn’t find the cat so I went to the door and shouted for her. It was pouring down with rain, and two of the other cats came in, but she didn’t. Nerina said that she would go outside to look for her. Seeing as it was raining, I thought that that was a good idea. She took two paces outside, abandoned the search and came back in. After another couple of minutes calling the cat and she still didn’t arrive, I closed the door and went back to bed again, relying on the cat flap for her to come in, and then left Nerina and her boyfriend to it.

Nothing at all that would appear in a dream involving Nerina would surprise me. Our life together was quite lively and interesting and, as there are no Statutory Limitations for some of the things that went on, it’s probably not a good idea to discuss them anywhere.

It’s nice, though, to see the cats appear in my dream. I had my old black cat of course, but when Nerina and I began to make a home together, we ended up with a total of four. We were, in fact, quite a big happy family. I wish, of course, that I had a cat here with me now and one day, maybe I will.

There was something at one point though about her stripping all the plasterboard off the wall in the kitchen and talking about a few things that needed replacing. I told her that I wasn’t going to bother about that because I was planning to sell the place and move on, and let the new owner of the house worry about things like that.

This sounds like something that was going on in the Spring of this year and which, even now, isn’t completely finished.

Later on, I was in Stoke-on-Trent, but before that, I’d been talking over the internet with my German friend. He was saying that his water heater had to be switched off at 06:00 exactly. Not knowing exactly how to do it, I told him to call me up on the radio at 06:00 from wherever he is and talk me through it. When he did, there was some confusion but we managed to work out how to do it and we were able to switch it off. From there, I had a load of things to take round to Stoke-on-Trent on a trailer. When I turned up, I was at my brother’s house. We had then to go to somewhere else where the rest of my family was waiting and meet up with them. We reached this place and began to unload the trailer. I ended up being totally dirty, both me and my clothes. I suddenly realised that I had a white shirt on. I’d noticed one of my tee shirts before and I wondered how I’d still had that, but this was the answer. I should have changed into that tee-shirt before I’d unloaded. We both had to have a quick change and a quick wash, and our meeting-up with the family was going to be hours late. As we were ready to leave, there was an album playing a live concert. We had just reached a suitable break so I went to switch off the CD. But it wasn’t a CD playing, for the music carried on. It was an LP. In the end, we decided to leave it playing and we would go. Just outside his place was a Football League ground of one of these small clubs that was at the bottom of the old Fourth Division somewhere. I said “there’s a shortcut around the back”. He didn’t remember it but I told him that I’d reminded him of this when he came to live here. We took this shortcut around the back, and found that the football club had gone. It was now some kind of kiddies’ park with playground and adventure equipment etc. I was completely surprised by this because I’d heard nothing about this football club moving. We began to walk across the park and met a couple of girls who were about 10 or 11. They were eyeing us suspiciously for some reason but I couldn’t understand why because it was not as if we were doing anything that would attract any kind of attention at all.

There’s a feeling going around my head that I know where this football ground is, but I can’t think of it right now. I can actually see it still in my mind – situated on the angle of a couple of streets such as Catherine Street and Frances Street where the old Security Printers used to be before it burned down.

At the back of the park that they had built over where the football ground used to be, there was a run-down semi-derelict grassy park with a lake, and I’ve a feeling that I ought to know where that is too.

However, you can tell that this is a dream. In real life, I wouldn’t be in any kind of rush at all to go for a meal with my family. "Old sins" as they say "cast long shadows."

Isabelle the Nurse turned up at her usual time. I told her the good news that her partner will have to be here before 06:45 next Tuesday to sort me out before I go to Rennes. "I don’t think he’ll come" she said.

Somehow, neither do I.

After breakfast, I came back in here. There were plenty of things to do, of which I managed to do a couple, and then I began to concentrate (as best as I could) on the radio programme.

It wasn’t a rush, just a slow, steady amble and I managed to finish it with plenty of time to spare, which is always nice.

There were the usual interruptions, such as my faithful cleaner coming to do her stuff and trying to persuade me to have a shower, but I’m not that well as yet.

There were also a couple of disgusting drinks breaks, but, as I mentioned earlier, there wasn’t a sleep break, and that can only be good news.

Tea was a frozen curry from the fridge with rice and veg, and it was a struggle to eat it. Once more, I left food on my plate, so obviously I’m not feeling that much better.

But now, I’m going to capitalise on my apparent good fortune so far by going to bed ready for dialysis (I don’t think) tomorrow, and to see what the doctors think about my state of health

But seeing as we have been talking about cats … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me when we were learning addition at Primary School.
"If I gave you two cats" said my teacher "and the headmaster gave you two cats, how many cats would you have?"
"Five!" I replied.
The teacher was aghast. She thought for a moment and asked "so if I gave you two cakes and the headmaster gave you two cakes, how many cakes would you have?"
"Four!" I replied.
So she asked again "if I gave you two cats and the headmaster gave you two cats, why do you say that you would have five cats?"
"Because we’ve already got one at home, miss."

Tuesday 14th October 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day I’ve had today. It’s another one of those days that would qualify for “the worst day ever” and I shudder to think of how I would have been had Emilie the Cute Consultant not insisted that I cancel the chemotherapy for today.

It seems very much as if I have returned to the bad old days of 2016 in my little room in Leuven.

Things were not looking very good last night. Despite having spent much of yesterday afternoon asleep at dialysis, I fell asleep again while riding the porcelain horse and that was embarrassing. I had a very quick trip into the bathroom afterwards and was really relieved when I was finally able to crawl under the covers into my nice, comfortable bed.

And there I lay until all of about 04:00 – after about four and a half hours’ sleep. Not that I was wide awake, though. There was no question of me leaving the bed at that time. At some point, I went back to sleep again but awoke at 06:20, nine minutes before the alarm was due to go off.

That was the key to forcing myself out of bed, even though I had never felt less like it than I did this morning

As might be expected, it was a very slow start to the day. Isabelle the Nurse, spurred on by the suggestion that I would be going for chemotherapy this morning, exerted herself to arrive really early and caught me in mid-transcription of my dictaphone notes.

Naturally, I apologised for making her rush but she didn’t seem to be too worried. She didn’t stay long and I could push on and make breakfast. Not that I felt much like eating anything, but you have to go through the motions. I was in no mood to read my book either.

While I was at breakfast, my faithful cleaner stuck her head in at the door to check that I was still alive. That was nice of her. I’m not so sure that she was reassured, though.

Back in here, I carried on with the dictaphone notes. We’d been giving a discussion about the ten most deadly massacres by the Japanese of Allied prisoners of war. This involved one particular incident where, with a ship, the prisoners were rounded up and marched into the interior in different groups, but one group was stopped on the way and the Japanese injected everyone with what was supposed to be some kind of antibiotic or something, but in fact was a poison and all of the ones of this particular group were killed.

Something that I have been reading recently has bee the story of the Japanese “hell ships” – cargo ships crammed full of prisoners of war in the most unhealthy and disgusting conditions – which they sailed out of war zones towards the mainland. Refusing to notify them to the Red Cross so that immunity to attack could be granted, they were torpedoed by the dozen by American submarines who treated them as ordinary merchantmen.

There was a big group of us hanging around together, and my Afro-Caribbean friend was in there. I’d heard that these people were talking about going swimming, so I went to have a chat with her to find out where, and it turned out that they were going that afternoon, which was a shame because I wouldn’t be able to make it. So we had a chat and she said something like “you know, why don’t you come another time with us?”. I said “why don’t you come with me for a week in California and we’ll go swimming in the Pacific Ocean?”. Her eyes lit up, and so did her mother’s. I wondered if this was something that might actually really happen. Anyway, we all went later on to a rock concert with Mark Knopfler. We were in the wings on stage, watching it. He walked on stage and began to sing but his voice gave out so he had to stop, collect himself, clear his throat and begin again. He was halfway through the first number when one of the radios of one of the security men bled into the PA and said “is he still going on?”. Mark Knopfler obviously stopped dead and really didn’t know how to proceed after that. He thought for a minute and then said to the audience “you may as well go outside and bring in the adverts for this concert. There’s no point in them being outside now while the rain is pouring down” and he just turned round and walked off the stage. When we were assembling after the concert, we looked around and there were one or two people missing. We wondered where they had gone. We decided that we’d go to look in the nearest bars and pubs, and we’d all meet up back here in ten minutes to see if we’d been able to find them. I was in one when someone came in carrying a railwayman’s signal light. I overheard them talking, saying “I got it from the car park at the back of the station. The guy wasn’t very happy and he actually had a gun, but I managed to take the light from him”.

Whoever my “Afro-Caribbean friend” might have been, I’ve really no idea. During my University studies I met Annette from Barbados and Tracy from Nigeria and spent some time with both of them but I’ve not thought too much about either of them for years. That is a shame because I happened to like them both. And in any case, they were both sensible enough to keep me well at arm’s-length.

Strangely enough, I have never seen Mark Knopfler live, although the scenario in this theatre would not have been an unusual one. The rest of the dream means nothing at all to me.

Back with these Japanese prisoners of war again. A Japanese aeroplane flew in with several deceased and dying prisoners on board. I asked a couple of minutes later if the ‘plane was unloaded and was told “no” – they can’t find something that they need. I told them to go on and make a start without it. They came back a few minutes later to say that they still couldn’t find something else now. I told them to drop the passengers out through the bomb bay, and if they can’t find the button to press for the bomb bay, to use the manual winding handles to open up the bomb bay.

Wherever this fits in, I really have no idea either.

Once I’d sorted out all of that, I revised my Welsh again and then went for the lesson.

It was another one that, from an educational point of view, went quite well and I was very pleased, but from every other point of view, it was a shambles. I almost fell asleep three times during the lesson and had to fight to stay awake.

What surprised me though was that one of my classmates has noticed that I have been losing weight. I hadn’t realised that it was so obvious.

In the middle of the lesson, the hospital at Rennes ‘phoned me. Apparently Emilie the Cute Consultant had been unable to contact them so they were wondering where I was. I explained the situation to them and they gave me another date – Tuesday next week, to be at Rennes for … gulp … 08:30 – which means leaving here at something like 06:45. I shall be looking forward to that, I don’t think.

While I was at it, I gave Emilie the Cute Consultant a quick ring to check that I would be OK for that date. She seemed to think so. She also seemed to think that I would be recovered by then.

After the lesson finished, I was no longer able to concentrate. I struggled to accomplish something – anything – without any success at all and by 16:00 I was on the bed, under the covers, fast asleep. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … sleep is my cure for all evils.

When I awoke, I found that not only was I still wearing my jacket, but my slippers too. What kind of state am I in just now?

Tea was the other half of the pizza that I had not eaten on Sunday. It didn’t take long, and so now, I’m going back to bed. Tomorrow is an unexpected day with nothing at all planned, so I really need to find some enthusiasm from somewhere to complete some of these outstanding tasks. I can’t go on like this, otherwise I’m just going to drift away.

But seeing as we have been talking about Isabelle the Nurse … "well, one of us has" – ed … when she came this morning, she told me that I was indeed looking extremely.
"That kind of comment is unacceptable" I replied. "I’m going to want a second opinion"
"OK" she replied. "My second opinion is that you are ugly too."

Monday 13th October 2025 – CHEMOTHERAPY IS …

… officially cancelled for tomorrow. Emilie the Cute Consultant seems to think that I’m far too ill to go and that chemotherapy will only make things worse.

Yes, lucky me! I’ve had Emilie the Cute Consultant soothing my fevered brow at dialysis this afternoon, and I reckon that I ought to be ill more often when she’s on duty.

But joking aside, after yesterday, I needed someone to take me in hand and sort me out. The day began awfully and as time advanced, it went from bad to worse. Those of you who saw the half-dozen notes that I posted last night will probably have gathered that I was in bed before 21:00, and it’s a long, long time since that has happened.

Once in bed, I was asleep straight away, which is no surprise. And I stayed asleep too until all of … errr … 00:30.

At that point, I was giving some light-hearted consideration to leaving the bed but in the end I decided against it, and spent several hours drifting in and out of sleep. Round about 05:30, I gave up trying and arose to my feet.

After the bathroom, I had another leisurely period of medication-taking, before coming back in here to restart writing my notes. But not for long, though. At about 07:00 I set the alarm for 08:05 and, something that I don’t recall doing for years, I went back to bed and slept for another hour or so. That’s the kind of state in which I found myself this morning.

Once the nurse had been and gone, I made breakfast and, once more, took my time while I ate it. I was in no real hurry, and I certainly wasn’t in any kind of mood to read my book.

Back in here afterwards, I finished off my notes from yesterday and then had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were in the American Civil War this time (not the Revolutionary War). We were trying to track down the enemy, or the enemy was trying to track us down. I was suffering from fever and having to use my toilet frame to walk around. It was becoming extremely complicated. At one point, I knocked some things off the kitchen worktop, and with my improvised walkframe, I positioned one of the feet on top of two of the spice jars that I have. I thought that it was a good job that I noticed this before I put my weight on it otherwise they would have broken. But I still don’t know what I’m going to do about my health and how I was going to deal with the issue of the enemy, of them looking for us or us looking for him.

If I’m dreaming about a war in the USA, it makes a change not dreaming about the Revolutionary War. But then again, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, when I was in Eastern USA in 2005 for Rhys’s wedding, I VISITED SEVERAL SITES CONNECTED WITH THE CIVIL WAR.

Later on, there were three ships, the Ateb Harry, the Ateb something else and a third one. The Ateb Harry was coming back from the USA to Europe as a passenger liner, and was intercepted by the contraband patrol. The patrol found, underneath the coal, a pile of shells and ammunition. The captain tried to argue that it was for his own self-defence but they saw that it had been manufactured in Germany and was of a German calibre rater than an Imperial one so they decided that they would take the ship and intern it.

This relates to something else about which I’ve been reading recently – the British blockade of Germany in World War I. They set up plenty of barrages across the North Sea and intercepted as many of the vessels that they possibly could that were heading east, in an attempt to stop supplies reaching Germany. They were quite successful too and by the end of the war, there were shortages of every kind of imported goods over there.

At some point though, I had my Welsh lesson to do and I was parked in a car park. There was a lorry in front of me and its rear door was open. A policeman told me to close it so I closed it as best as I could and explained to the driver that there was only one of the two catches was working. He replied in a foreign accent “never mind” – to leave it with him and he’d sort it out. I went back to my van, which was a dark blue Sherpa long wheelbase towing an enclosed trailer that looked like the rear of a Sherpa. I climbed in, and could see on the laptop that my Welsh class had started. I took off all my excess clothes and found my sleeping bag. But my sleeping bag was inside-out so I had to turn it the other way, and then I could climb into the sleeping bag and begin to attend the lesson.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I had a Sherpa for a couple of years. It was quite nice when I bought it but it rotted quickly and ended up being unsafe. Furthermore, trying to find spare parts for it in Belgium was impossible in the end and it became a liability.

Next task was to finish off my Welsh homework and send it off, and the rest of the morning was spent revising.

At one point though, I could no longer stand the cold in here and so I switched on the heating for the first time. It’s not like me, and it shows just how ill I am right now.

My faithful cleaner turned up to apply my anaesthetic and then I had a long wait for the taxi. Not that I minded, because it was one of my favourite drivers. However, rather regrettably, I wasn’t in the mood for chatting.

Once again, we were late arriving, but for a change I was seen quite quickly. Because of my health, they put me into a private room and then spent half an hour examining me, including a Covid test (I was negative). I wasn’t too keen, but Emilie the Cute Consultant insisted on it being done, and I noticed that there seems to be no argument or discussion with her when she makes up her mind.

Having been wired up and plugged in, they left me alone pretty much. That was just as well because I slept through most of the session. All that I seem to be doing right now is sleeping.

At the end of the session, Emilie the Cute Consultant gave me another thorough going-over, and wanted me to spit into a container so that it can be analysed. She is of the opinion that I have a pulmonary infection. I can’t go to chemotherapy like that so she’s going to cancel it.

One thing that was nice though was that she patted my shoulder, and as I said earlier, I’m going to be ill again when she’s on duty if that’s the reward.

The poor taxi driver had to wait hours for me, and then we had to find a chemist’s that was open so that we could buy some medication that was prescribed. There was someone else to fetch too, so I ended up being the latest back here that I have ever been.

After my cleaner had sorted me out, I made tea. Burger with pasta and even though it was a small portion, some of it still ended up in the bin.

So I shall be at my Welsh lesson tomorrow then. In that case I’d better go to bed. It’s already later than I would like.

But seeing as we have been talking about spitting into a container … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember taking my niece to see my premises in Canada, situated as they are with one border of my land being the international border with the USA.
"Blimey!" she said. "You could spit into the USA from here!"
"I know" I replied. "Now ask me how I know."

Sunday 12th October 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone again this morning.

But then what do you expect? If you don’t go to bed until 23:30 and you are wide awake again at 01:30, you don’t really have time to go very far.

As you might expect, it was a horrible night last night – one of the worst that I have ever had. Having noted how much better I was feeling over the last couple of evenings, last night saw the collapse and I was back to where I had been earlier last week, struggling desperately (and sometimes unsuccessfully) to stay awake.

It was definitely one of those nights where I could have done with being in bed much earlier but as usual, I couldn’t concentrate on anything and the time simply drifted away to nothing.

Once in bed though, I don’t even remember being awake for a minute. I was out like a light, only to be awoken a couple of hours later by a dreadful attack of cramp in my thighs, an awful cough and a powerful urge to vomit. These sensations kept on coming and going, making things most uncomfortable for me and the pain and inconvenience was such that I abandoned all hope of going back to sleep.

For the last couple of nights, I’d been awake quite early but had gone back to sleep again without very much effort. But I tried – oh, how I tried – this morning and nothing would seem to work … "he was very trying" – ed … . So round about 05:30 I gave up the ghost and left the bed.

After a good wash, I went for the medication, and it was a very leisurely medication too. I wasn’t in any rush at all this morning, what with feeling as ill as I was. In fact, it was quite a struggle to keep the medication down.

Back in here, with nothing on the dictaphone to transcribe, I started my little footfest.

First match up was at the top of the JD Cymru League – TNS, who are leading, against Penybont who are second. It should have had all the air of being an exciting game, but quite frankly, Penybont were abysmal. The TNS attackers were going through the static Penybont defence like a knife through hot butter and the final score – 6-2 to TNS – didn’t do TNS any justice.

If Penybont are serious about mounting a challenge for the title, they are going to have to organise themselves much better and play much better than this.

In the middle of all of this, the nurse turned up. He sorted out my feet and then helped me fit these foot supports that the Centre de Ré-education gave me. But he didn’t really have much of an idea how to fit them, and neither did I, so after he left, I removed them.

After breakfast, which I really didn’t feel like eating, I came back in here to watch the highlights of the rest of the games, not that there was anything of interest to report.

All of this was followed by Stranraer v Queen of the South in the Scottish League Cup, and Stranraer ground out a very respectable draw against a team that is comfortably in mid-table in the league above.

What was interesting ABOUT THIS GAME was that we had another one of these exciting “let’s play it out from the back” moments that so entertain the crowd.

This afternoon, I’ve had a whole raft of exciting things to do, such as to sort out my tax affairs which are proving to be more complicated than I could ever imagine.

There was my Welsh homework to do too, and that’s almost finished. Half an hour on that tomorrow will see it ready to go off.

The printer needed a good overhaul too, as some of the stuff that I’ve been printing just recently isn’t as it is supposed to be. In the end, I changed a couple of ink cartridges and it seems to be working a little better, although the Magenta is still being troublesome.

And that reminds me – I need to order some more ink cartridges.

This afternoon was beautiful and sunny, so seeing as I didn’t have my shower last week and I shan’t be having one for a couple of weeks with all of these medical appointments, my faithful cleaner came down and helped me organise the shower. At least, now I smell nice and sweet for Emilie the Cute Consultant tomorrow, although how long it will last, I really have no idea.

There was bread to make, and pizza to make too. I really didn’t feel like doing anything, but it has to be done. I was in total agony while I was making it, but I forced myself to carry on, and in the end I managed to produce an excellent loaf and an excellent pizza.

In the middle of all of this, Rosemary rang me for a chat. She’s had her car serviced just recently and she didn’t understand a few things on the bill.

It wasn’t one of our usual chats though – my voice was giving out and in the end, I had to terminate the chat as I couldn’t keep on going.

Throughout the whole of the day, I could feel myself becoming worse and worse. By teatime, I was feeling totally dreadful. I don’t think that I’ve ever felt as bad as I was feeling just then. In fact, halfway through my pizza, I just couldn’t go on any longer.

The pizza was abandoned on the table. And even though I hate waking up to dirty dishes all over the kitchen, so was the washing-up. I came back into the bedroom and simply climbed into bed, probably the best decision I had ever made.

But seeing as we have been talking about the difficulties in going to sleep … "well, one of us has" – ed …, apparently one of the best ways to fall asleep is to try counting sheep.
I asked one of my friends if this were true.
He replied "I’m not sure. I tried it the other night, starting off with one sheep. By the time that I had to leave the bed to go to work, I had ten thousand sheep, a huge farm in Australia and I was busy constructing a meat-packing factory"

Saturday 11th October 2025 – MY LUCK WAS …

… in today, for once – or, rather, for twice. I had my favourite taxi driver today, not just for the outward bound trip to Avranches but the return journey home too.

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

My good luck certainly wasn’t there last night. As usual, it was another horribly late night where I couldn’t seem to push on with any kind of urgency.

It was long after 23:00 when I finally crawled into bed, without realising that I’d forgotten to switch on the water again last night. And regardless of whatever time it was when I went to bed, I was wide-awake again at 04:10.

The pattern of the last few mornings repeated itself yet again though. After tossing and turning in bed for what seemed like a week trying to go back to sleep and miserably failing, the next thing that I knew was the alarm going off at 06:29. So once again, I’d managed to go back to sleep at some point.

It took an age to leave the bed, and in the bathroom I found out that I’d forgotten to switch the water back on. That was rather a shock, and it certainly served to awaken me properly, although not in a fashion that I appreciated all that much.

After the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone. I was with TOTGA last night. She was telling me that she was leaving school and was going to college in Wrexham. I told her to let me know where she was going to be in Wrexham because I go to Wrexham quite often. We had quite a chat and we set off back to my house. As we turned into Davenport Avenue and slowed down in front of my house, I suddenly shouted “stop!”. I asked the driver to reverse again and go forward again, but I couldn’t see my Minerva. It wasn’t in the drive. There was another vehicle at the entrance to the drive so we piled out and went down past this first vehicle. The second vehicle was a Vanden Plas 4-litre R. There were a few bits missing off it and it was quite rough. We were having a look at it and we noticed that the front wing was rotten. One of my friends said that he would obtain another wing for me if I wanted one, but I said that I knew where I could find hundreds of these wings. I also noticed that the floor was rotten as well and needed replacing. But I found my Minerva. It had been put on one side at the end of the driveway before the garage, heaped over with things like old bits of wiring harness and I didn’t recognise it for a while. But while we had been reversing up and down the street in front of the garage, someone was looking out of the front window to see what we were doing. Anyway, we knocked on the back door of the house and went in.

So hello, TOTGA! Long time no see!

That dream though is one that is full of interest. TOTGA leaving school and going to college (she didn’t go to Wrexham, by the way) must have been a very young TOTGA. However, seeing as I was naught but a pup myself when I lived in Davenport Avenue for about three years in the very early seventies, it’s not too bad I suppose.

But what is the fixation these days with Davenport Avenue? I’ve lived in a lot of places for a lot longer than three years but I don’t dream about them half as much as I do about the aforementioned. It’s not as if the house meant anything significant to me either.

And there was a Vanden Plas 4 litre R at our house for a long while. They were based on the big Austin Westminster A105 but the difference was that they had a slimline all-alloy Rolls-Royce engine and, their Achilles heel, hydraulic tappets in an “over-under” valve configuration.

The tappets were absolute swines to adjust and my father sweated for weeks trying to set them correctly. Helping my father in the garage, I learned a lot of words that I never knew before.

My car in the drive last night wasn’t actually the Minerva. It was in fact the Lomax kit car that I owned for several months after I moved to Belgium. There’s a long story about this car, but here and now is not the time and place to discuss it.

Later on, I was going on holiday with a group of people from work. We’d stayed overnight at someone’s house in the area of Manchester Airport and the next morning, we were all preparing to leave. I asked if I had time to wash myself, but they said that we were leaving immediately. So I went and had a quick wash but the others were just about leaving the house when I came out, so I had to run after them. Then we reached the airport, and this big group of us were standing in the middle of the reception area having checked in. I needed to use the bathroom so I went. When I came out, they had all disappeared except for one person who was looking at the departures. I went over there but he headed off into a corner where I imagined that everyone would be waiting. I had a wander over there and when I arrived, I found that it was the exit door. They had all left. There were the shuttle buses outside waiting to run the people to the ‘planes. I had to find out which bus was going to my ‘plane but none of the drivers seemed to know which was which. Suddenly, they all drove off and left me standing on the apron. My immediate thought was to go to find a taxi to take me there but there were no taxis about so I began to walk to where the ‘plane might be. I ended up walking through the top end of Crewe. There were several girls there chatting away but no-one paid any attention. A couple of taxis drove past with their “for hire” signs lit but none of them stopped for me. I was beginning to think that I could see me going back to work on Monday instead of being on holiday with everyone else.

Whyever a dream like this has appeared, I really have no idea because nothing as far as I am concerned could be worse than going on holiday with my colleagues from work. Mind you, their opinion of me was probably the same as my opinion of them, so being abandoned in an airport terminal while they made good their escape would not come as any surprise to anyone.

The nurse was early yet again, and his good humour seems to be continuing. He didn’t take long to sort me out and then he cleared off. Whether his good humour will continue tomorrow after he’s helped me fit these foot supports that the Centre de Ré-education wants me to wear remains to be seen.

While I ate my breakfast, I finished the final part of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Although the surrender of New York was not actually as a result of a battle, I’m still surprised that he doesn’t mention it except very, very briefly in passing.

The next book on the list, which I shall start to read tomorrow, is AB-SA-RA-KA, LAND OF MASSACRE. When Colonel Carrington set out to Indian Territory to build the forts to protect the Bozeman Trail, his commanding officer, General Sheridan, asked Mrs Carrington to keep "a daily record of the events of a peculiarly eventful journey, " and this is the story of the book.

It will doubtless (I hope) contain much more colourful information than the terse military reports of her husband, and provide me with much more information for when I (finally) make a start on writing the full notes of the area that I visited in 2019.

Back in here, I carried on with the radio programme, sorting out all of the music, and that took me up to the time that my faithful cleaner arrived to sort out my anaesthetic.

My taxi driver came round bang on time to pick me up and we had a lovely, long chat all the way to Avranches. And it was a long chat too because we had to go via Champeaux to pick up another passenger.

Even though I arrived on time, I was still the last to be coupled up today. but once the machine was working, they left me pretty much alone. I wasn’t in the mood to do any work today, which is no surprise seeing as the blood pressure was dropping rapidly. At one point it dropped as low as 6.8, which is way below the critical level.

For a change, I wasn’t last to be uncoupled, although there wasn’t all that much in it. My favourite taxi driver and I had another nice long chat on the way back to where my cleaner was awaiting me.

After a rest of half an hour, I managed to find the strength to make some baked potato, vegan salad and one of these breaded quorn burgers that I like. However, I wasn’t (yet again!) in much of a mood to eat very much.

But now, I’m off to bed. there’s a footfest (I hope) tomorrow and then a Day of Rest while I summon up the energy for chemotherapy on Tuesday and Wednesday. In fact, I have six consecutive days of medical appointments, and that’s too much for anyone.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about being abandoned and unwanted … "well, one of us has" – ed … it’s not a new feeling for me at all.
One day, when we were kids, we had alphabetti spaghetti for tea. My mother carefully dished out the meal to each of us, and I noticed that the letters that I had been given were "C F F F K O U"

Friday 10th October 2025 – I AM TOTALLY …

… exhausted.

Today, I have been to the Centre de Ré-education and they have put me through the mill. I don’t think that I have ever worked as hard in recent times as I have today.

And seeing as we have been talking about being tired … "well, one of us has" – ed … last night, I was totally dead to the World. I’ve been extremely tired late in the evening on a few occasions just recently, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but last night’s beats just about everything that I’ve ever had before.

In fact, I was asleep long before I finished writing my notes, sagging face-down over my desk on a couple of occasions before wrestling myself upright again with a few Herculean efforts. It’s a mystery how I managed to carry on and finish.

Once I’d sorted myself out, I was in bed quite quickly, flat out asleep in an instant, and there I lay without moving until all of … err … 04:10.

At that point, I was again wide-awake, and for quite a while too, but just like the other morning, the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29. Either I’d gone back to sleep or else I must have been dreaming that I was awake.

Being awake at 06:29 is one thing – being up and about is something completely different, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And especially after yesterday evening. Consequently, it was a very slow start to the day today.

After the bathroom and the medication, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I didn’t honestly expect there to be anything on it, but there we are. We were back in the State of New York during the American Revolution and the commandant of a group of forces was cornered and was obliged to surrender to the British, where he was taken as prisoner in a barge and imprisoned in one of the forts in New York. But the food there was terrible and the conditions were terrible. It was easy to dodge the British controls so he had been out and about several times during his imprisonment, trying to line up strength of supporters ready to oppose General Carleton, and General Carleton was just as careful not make sure that he would lose his numerical advantage if things began to go wrong for him in New York.

Later on, I was back in the American Revolution. The Americans had been besieging a British fort in the interior and after a while, they had finally captured it. Then there were all kinds of discussions about expelling the British garrison etc and what happened to the fort afterwards but I can’t remember very much more about this particular dream unfortunately.

My book, BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, is really getting to me right now. I’ve been having quite a few dreams about it just recently, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. What am I going to dream about when I’ve finished this book and moved on to the next one?

The nurse turned up, early as usual these days, and sorted me out. He asked me a few strange questions, presumably out of curiosity, before he left. which took me by surprise … "with asking the questions, not leaving" – ed.

Breakfast was next, and some more of my book. The British Army has now surrendered at Yorktown after putting up only a token resistance.

And that is perplexing. Reading the stories of Lord Cornwallis, his total lack of aggression, his insipid retreat and how he allowed himself to be trapped with his back to the sea, I can’t help feeling that his heart was never in this campaign from the beginning. I reckon that his whole aim was to extricate himself out of the Southern States without a care as to how he did it, what the fate of his army would be, and without a thought about how it would affect his country.

The politicians in Britain were no better. They prevaricated and prevaricated, refusing to send to the British Army the supplies and reinforcements that they needed to fight a decent campaign, and in the end, abandoned the army to its fate.

Maybe I’m being unkind – I dunno. Perhaps there are a lot of issues hidden much deeper than I realise that influenced the conduct of the war.

One thing of which I am sure is the partisan nature of our author, Colonel Henry Carrington. He writes pages and pages about the reprehensible conduct of the British, looting, pillaging and plundering as they go around. However, in George Washington’s diary, which I know that Carrington has seen, Washington talks about the lack of supplies, arms, ammunition and clothing for his troops "and in all that business, or a great part of it, being done by military impressment, we are daily and hourly oppressing the people, souring their tempers and alienating their affections"

A while ago, I mentioned something like this, but whatever – it shows that irony is not Colonel Carrington’s strong point.

Back in here, I began to work on the next radio programme and, after a while, I decided that what I was doing was in rather poor taste, so it all went into the bin and I decided to start again.

After a disgusting drink break, I waited for the taxi. And waited. It finally turned up, fifteen minutes late, and I barely arrived at the Centre de Ré-education on time.

There were three sessions today – the first being weightlifting. The monitor had me lifting weights, using my arms only, from a sitting position, and I’m disappointed with how much force and strength I seem to have lost. Long-gone are the days when I could lift a Ford Cortina engine out of a car without an engine hoist.

There was half an hour before my next session, so the monitor had me sitting on a bench practising how to raise myself up. As if I don’t do enough of that during the day when I’m here, but it’s free, I suppose, and I may as well do something while I’m waiting.

With my physiotherapist, it was pretty much more of the same – lifting myself in and out of a chair, and then exercising my legs. And there’s no doubt – all the force has gone from my lower legs and she doesn’t think that it will come back. That’s really bad news.

After a half-hour pause, it was back into the gym for group therapy – involving standing up and sitting down once again. I wonder if someone is trying to tell me something.

By the time that I had finished, I was exhausted and my head was spinning round. It was really difficult to walk down to the car. It’s the very first time that I have felt that maybe I’m doing too much, but if it’s not stretching me and causing me discomfort, then it’s not doing any good at all.

My faithful cleaner helped me into the apartment and I collapsed into a chair with a disgusting drink to cheer me up. I was there for well over half an hour trying to recover, before I could find the strength to come back in here.

Until teatime, I worked on the radio programme and then went to make myself some salad, chips and some of those vegan nuggets. And I’m still off my food. This is no good at all.

But now, I’m off to bed. I have dialysis tomorrow, just by way of a change. And then Sunday is a Day of Rest while I prepare for chemotherapy. I have a medical appointment of some description every day (including Saturday) next week. All I need now is one for Sunday to complete the week.

And there is some exciting news about yesterday, in that I set a new record as far as readership went. We had one thousand and six readers, which is the very first time that I have ever had a four-figure readership in one twenty-four-hour period. Well done to all of you.

Anyway, before I go, seeing as we have been talking about being awake … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of the old Tommy Cooper joke –
"I once knew a man who dreamed that he was awake. And when he woke up – he was!"

Thursday 9th October 2025 – IT WAS HARD …

… today at dialysis.

The weight to be taken out was exactly on the maximum for a period of three and a half hours, so they wound the machine up to full speed.

During the session though, my blood pressure dropped to 7.5 and I was riddled with cramps and pains. I was all set to push on, but they refused to countenance it and wound the machine back somewhat.

That wasn’t at all what I had planned, because it means that for the following session, the one on Saturday afternoon, there will be correspondingly more to take out so that I (hopefully) will be back at my target weight. And it better had all be taken out on Saturday too because with chemotherapy on Tuesday and Wednesday next week, they will be pumping even more fluid into me than I usually take on board.

Yes, it’s been a right tale of woe today

This really sad day started off yesterday evening, to be precise. Once more, being totally unable to concentrate yet again, it was another horribly late night when I finally crawled into bed. It may not have been midnight, but it wasn’t all that far off.

It was another night where I couldn’t go to sleep very quickly. I ended up tossing and turning around in bed for quite some considerable time before I fell into the arms of Morpheus.

Even worse, I was wide awake at 04:20, without (so it seemed) very much prospect of going back to sleep. In fact, I tried very hard without success, but just as I was on the point oof giving it up as a bad job and leaving the bed, the alarm sounded and awoke me.

So whether I’d been dreaming that I was awake, or whether I really had been awake and had gone back to sleep, I really don’t know.

Something else that seems to be quite usual these days is that it took an age to leave the bed to sort myself out. And what with the washing to do and the medication to take, it was really late by the time that I came back in here.

To my surprise, there was something on the dictaphone from the night. Not a lot, it has to be said, but there we are. This was something to do with having some kind of naval base in the middle of the Atlantic somewhere. Various ships and submarines would go out on patrol to try to keep the area clear of the enemy but I can’t remember very much at all about this unfortunately.

This is the kind of dream that you have when you spend most of your free time reading about commerce raider, submarines and the like.

The nurse was early again today. As well as the usual procedure, we discussed the question of these foot supports. He’s agreed to help me fit them on Sunday, so that shall be interesting.

Then it was time for breakfast and more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

The British army has now all but given up the struggle and I reckon that the next few pages will see the Fall of Yorktown and the end of British resistance – the very end of a sad, sorry campaign of delay, inaction and lack of aggressiveness.

Back in here, I had to ring up to book my taxi for Rennes next week, and then I had things to do. Finally, I carried on with my radio programme.

My cleaner arrived as usual and sorted me out, followed by the taxi, that was on time for once.

Well, the taxi might have called here on time and my arrival at the dialysis centre might also have been on time, but as usual these days, I was the last to be connected up. I’ve no idea why that might be, but it’s becoming far too frequent for my liking.

As I said a little earlier, it was a very painful session and I didn’t enjoy it at all. I couldn’t concentrate on doing any work which was a shame because I have plenty to do these days and it’s not being done.

After all of the confusion, they finally let me out – late as usual – and then I had to await the taxi which had not arrived. And what with having to drop off someone else, I was horribly late returning here, yet again. And here I found a pile of tax bills awaiting me. I told you that it was a bad day today.

After a little while to recover, I made tea – a leftover curry. And once more, I left a pile of food on the plate. I’m really not doing too well these days.

But right now, I’m off to bed. I can’t keep on going any longer. Whatever happened to the days (and nights) when I’d be still awake at 04:00 and 05:00?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about how hard it is … "well, one of us has" – ed … I remember talking to an Australian friend of mine about my illness and how fed up I was of the whole situation.
"It seems to be really hard to die" I told him.
"Too right" he replied "but it’s not as hard as it was yester-die"

Wednesday 8th October 2025 – WASN’T IT LOVELY …

… to wake up this morning and see, in the mirror hanging on one of the wardrobe doors, a reflection of the full moon over the roof of the high school across the car park, and the moonlight streaming brightly into the bedroom?

It’s been a long time since I’ve had such a spectacular awakening, and how I wish that I could wake up like that every morning.

Well, not exactly, because the downside of all of this was that I actually awoke at about 05:20 this morning. And, having not gone to bed until about midnight last night, I hadn’t had very much sleep at all.

But yesterday evening was something rather different from the normal. Apart from a little wobble round about 17:00, that I mentioned yesterday, I kept on going for a surprisingly long time and wasn’t tired at all later in the evening. That was just as well because RENAISSANCE LIVE AT CARNEGIE HALL came round onto the playlist and it’s not possible to go to bed while an album as brilliant as that is playing.

Another thing too was that for the first time since I don’t know when, I managed to eat a proper full-sized meal without feeling full or feeling sick. And that’s an improvement over the last few months. However, I shall have to watch my weight, as I don’t want it ballooning up again.

So there I was, crawling into bed a few minutes after midnight, not in the least bit tired and, as a third major change to how things have been just recently, it took an absolute age to go off to sleep. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that these days I have been in the habit of going to sleep almost as soon as my head touches the pillow.

So wide-awake at 05:20, but it took a good while to summon up the force to leave the bed in order to have a good wash. And afterwards, I went into the kitchen for the medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone but to my dismay, there was nothing on there. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … whatever happens in the nighttime is the only excitement that I seem to have these days and I really could do with as much as I could possibly have.

Instead, I decided to have a footfest. Last night, there had been a full programme of matches in the JD Cymru League. The live match was Llanelli v Cardiff Metropolitan and, having refrained from checking the scores last night, I settled down to watch it this morning.

If ever there was a game of two halves, this was certainly it. In the first half, Llanelli had the lion’s share of the play and went in at half-time 1-0 up. And we had another magical LET’S PLAY IT OUT FROM THE BACK, BOYS moment.

But whatever Ryan Jenkins put in the Met’s half-time cuppa, I could do with a pint of that myself. The Met were a different team after the break and ran out rather comfortable 3–1 winners. Tough luck on Llanelli, who looked really good in the first half.

The nurse turned up in mid-match so I had to pause it to go to have my legs seen too. And after he left, I am made my breakfast and dashed through it all so that I could come back in here and watch the rest of the game.

There were also the highlights of all the other games to watch, so I had a very relaxing half an hour or so in front of the computer, doing nothing at all.

When the football was finished, I attacked the radio programme, editing the rest of the notes. That’s now complete and the programme is ready to go. And I do have to say that it’s all worked out very well.

My cleaner put in an appearance as usual to do her stuff, and then the taxi turned up to take me to the Centre de Ré-education. My physiotherapist had me walking up and down between two parallel bars – clinging on grimly in an effort not to fall down.

And then she tried some foot supports. They were weird but she thinks that I need to practise. I told her that I’d wear them all day Sunday so that I would (hopefully) master them calmly at home before I venture out in them.

The second session was with a weight trainer who wanted me to use the force in my legs to move some weights. That was a dismal failure because I couldn’t lift myself out of the seat afterwards. I don’t think that we’ll try that again.

Back here, my faithful cleaner was waiting to help me back into the apartment. And once she’d gone, I crashed out for half an hour in the kitchen. It really had been hard work just now in the Centre de Ré-education and I have to go back on Friday too.

With the time that was left, I made a start on the next radio programme, sorting out the music, editing and remixing it. This is going to be another one of these marathon programmes that I seem to be doing right now, and it’ll probably take me a while to complete it.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice, and once more, I managed to eat it all with no discomfort. This could begin to become dangerous if I’m not careful. I’ve enjoyed these last four months when I’ve lost over six kilos in weight. This new slimline me is looking quite healthy, although the rest of me isn’t.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the moon … "well, one of us has" – ed … the American President was talking the other day to several American astronauts at Cape Canaveral who were planning to go to colonise the moon and live there.
"But surely you don’t want to live in such a hostile, cruel and cold environment where there’s just a barren landscape but no food and no security? " he asked
"No we don’t" replied the astronauts. "That’s why we want to go to the moon."

Tuesday 7th October 2025 – AS I HAVE …

… said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … it’s totally pointless breaking my neck in order to go to bed early, because all it means is that I awaken correspondingly early the following morning.

So there I was, rushing to finish everything as early as possible, given how ill I was feeling last night, and eventually managing to be in bed before 22:30 for once, and there I was, wide awake at 03:30.

What finished it off was that I’d fallen asleep quite quickly too, so I could reasonably have expected to have had a really good sleep. That would have been really nice for once to have managed to have still been asleep at 06:29 when the alarm should be going off.

Having said that, however, I did in the end manage to go back to sleep, although it took a good ninety minutes of tossing and turning. And even then, I was once more awake at 06:10, feeling even more tired than I had been at 03:30.

It took a good few minutes to summon up the courage to leave the bed and head off into the bathroom for a good wash. And then it was into the kitchen as usual for the medication.

Back in here, there were tons of stuff on the dictaphone so I must have had a decent sleep at some point. There was some kind of camp set up – a campsite for nomadic people. I was one who turned up there with my caravan. I settled down for something like a temporary home for a while. But I’d built some kind of weird contraption something like one of these switchbacks on a fairground – I’d built it out of planks of wood. The aim was for kids to climb up into it and roll or otherwise descend down to the bottom. It looked really good but it was really rickety and the first wind would blow it down but the kids were going to enjoy themselves and make good use of it.

These days, with half of the roads out of town closed for repair, we’ve been going past the camp site for the nomads so I’ve seen quite a lot of it. Although the nomadic life appeals to me (or, at lest, it did until I was taken ill), the idea of having a camp defeats the whole purpose of it.

The “weird contraption” however reminds me of the industrial log-chutes that we have encountered on our travels in the past, at PLACES SUCH AS FORESTVILLE

And later, during one period of hostilities in the USA they caught a girl who was a bunny girl. Although she was dressed in civilian clothes, she had her uniform with her so the authorities obliged her by using force to march through the city in her bunny girl outfit. This is against the rules of War of course, but she was obliged to march like this through the city.

This is another one of those really strange, meaningless dreams that I have every now and again. And as far as I can tell, it has no relevance to anything.

Some time later, I had Percy Penguin in the car. I’d picked her up in Shavington and there was someone else with us too, a youngish guy. We’d been loading up some furniture to take and we’d put it in my car and set off. We drove through into Belgium and then we reached the coast. We had a lovely drive out on the coast road and then over a kind of ramp and onto an island. We drove all the way to the far end of this island where there was a huge bridge. We drove over this huge bridge and ended up on a smaller island with a canal, and all around this island were cruise ships etc. Then, we ended up having to go over a third bridge, and on the island at the end of the third bridge were all these skyscrapers. It looked so impressive. That was the head office of the European Union. We pulled up outside and we had to unload all of these pieces of furniture. I asked Percy Penguin what she thought, and she thought that it was really nice. Then she decided that she would like us to go for a walk in the park. I said we could but we couldn’t stay long because they know what time I’d delivered this furniture and I’d be expected to be at my desk a few minutes later than this. So if she wanted to go for a walk, it would have to be quick.

The islands, the ships, the bridges and the buildings in this dream, I can still see them now and they were all really quite impressive. It was like something from a science fiction film. But how nice it was to see Percy Penguin again. I haven’t seen her for years and I do sometimes wonder how she is doing these days. I’m not even sure if she’s still alive after Covid, what with working in a high-risk environment.

But there was something somewhere in the middle of all of this about me going for breakfast. However, I’d turned up really late after a series of meetings and there was very little breakfast left. I had to scratch around for some cornflakes and some muesli, and it looked like a mess. Someone actually asked me what it was. And then trying to find the soya milk, and with the water, I almost ended up tipping it out of someone’s glass because it was all that I could find. Generally speaking, this breakfast was turning into a total disaster, seeing as it was so late being taken.

The breakfast is something that I can still see too. And it looks disgusting, I do have to say. It must have been even more frightening in the dream. But at one point, I did use to have muesli for breakfast – I made it myself by mixing all of the ingredients. However, one winter I went onto porridge and there I seem to have stayed.

The nurse was early today, and he’s still the cheerful, happy person that he became after he returned from his holiday. We had a nice chat about musical instruments and then he cleared off on the rest of his rounds.

Once he’d gone, I made breakfast and, instead of my book, I read some articles about German commerce raiders in the two World Wars. These were fast freighters that could, with plenty of canvas and wood, easily be disguised as many other different types of freighter, usually of neutral countries.

They had several heavy guns, well-hidden and disguised. Their rôle was to sidle up to innocent freighters belonging to the allied countries, lull them into a false sense of security, and then capture them, remove their freight and their fuel, and then either sink them or send them with a skeleton crew back to Germany.

It was all quite a lucrative operation for a while but the counter-measures adopted by the Royal Navy put an end to it.

Back in here, I revised my Welsh and then went to the lesson. It was another one that passed quite well, and although I wasn’t quite as confident as I had been last week, I was still very satisfied. It makes a great deal of difference being thoroughly prepared, but it would be even better if I could remember it all later once the lesson has ended.

This afternoon, I began to dictate the notes for the radio programme on which I’ve been working for the past few weeks. They are all done and I’m about half-way through editing them. It should be finished tomorrow and then I can push on.

It should have been finished today but, apart from a little wobble at some point, I was interrupted by the letting agent for my previous apartment. They came to inspect it to make sure that it’s in good order so that they can refund my deposit.

Thanks to my faithful cleaner, the agent was completely satisfied. Once they’ve worked out all of the accounts, they will send me the money, which will be quite nice. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it because I can’t think of anything that I actually need right now or am likely to need in the future.

For some reason, tea seemed to take hours to make. It was a stuffed pepper with pasta tonight, tasty as usual, but now I’m running horribly late – again! So I’m not going to hang around. I’m going to clear off and go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about the nomadic life … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a couple of lines in David Bowie’s THE LAUGHING GNOME
"Haven’t you got a gnome to go to?"
"No, we are gnome-ads"
Presumably, David Bowie came across them in Gnome-man’s land.

Monday 6th October 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

… the dictaphone this morning.

Mind you, that’s no surprise at all. The storm that had been raging for a couple of days had died down by the end of the evening and for once, it was as quiet as the grave outside.

Once I was in bed, I went to sleep quite quickly and with two days’ worth of sleep to recover, there I lay without moving, all through the night.

How I was looking forward to it too. Once more I rushed through the work that I needed to do before going to bed and by the time that I crawled in underneath the covers, it was 23:02 – past my ideal curfew time of 23:00 but I’m not complaining.

After that, I remember nothing whatever until I awoke with another one of these “sitting bolt-upright” awakenings at 06:20 precisely. It took a couple of minutes to summon up the courage to haul myself off into the bathroom, and then I went into the kitchen to take my medication.

With nothing on the dictaphone, I took the opportunity to do something that I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while, and that is to tidy up the freezer.

During the move, the freezer was filled in any kind of order and I had real difficulty finding anything that I needed. Now, though, a couple of the drawers are sorted out and there remains just one more to do. Everything that needs to be in there is in there, but it needs to be tidied.

Isabelle the Nurse turned up a little later. It’s her last day before her week’s break so she was quite naturally in a good mood. We had a good chat about her Breton grandmother and how sad she … "the nurse, not the grandmother" – ed … was that her grandmother hadn’t taught her to speak Breton.

That’s just how I felt too. My grandmother never taught my father to speak Welsh because it was considered to be shameful back in the 1930s. Consequently, I had to learn by other methods. My grandmother did say a few words in Welsh to us when we were very small but she never explained that it was Welsh. We thought that it was just meaningless speech.

After Isabelle left, I could make breakfast and read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

By now, it’s Spring 1781 and the British have all-but given up hope of retaking the United States. A few inconclusive battles have seen the British Army retreat, even when they have had the upper hand. I think that Cornwallis is retreating towards the coast in the hope that he’ll meet a British ship that will whisk him out of the mess that the politicians have created.

Back in here, I had the radio notes to check for this week’s programme and to carry out a little judicious editing. I was also chatting to my friend in Munich and my friend in Telford while I was at it.

With the time that was left, I spent doing my Welsh homework. It’s not finished yet but it won’t take very long. Then I can concentrate on the next unit.

My cleaner turned up as usual to apply my anaesthetic and then I had to await my taxi. Although he was on tie, there was someone else to pick up and for that, we had to wait around for a while. I had to sit in the back seat too, which was uncomfortable.

And so we were late arriving at dialysis and, as usual, even though I wasn’t the last to arrive, I was last to be plugged in.

For some reason that I don’t understand, my weight had ballooned since Saturday. The amount that needed to be removed was over the threshold for three and a half hours, so I expected to be there for four hours. However, the nurse failed to notice and I wasn’t going to say anything. The quicker that I’m out of there the better.

And jamais deux sans trois as they say around here. My niece’s second daughter contacted me for a chat while I was at dialysis.

Despite the fact that I was finished after three and a half hours today, I may as well have stayed because the taxi was late coming to fetch me. I didn’t complain because it was one of my favourite drivers so we had a good chat all the way home. With plenty of traffic on the roads, her driving was suitably restrained today.

Horribly late back home again, and totally exhausted because when the dialysis machine is going flat-out, it takes a lot out of me, I didn’t faal like eating anything. However, I can’t starve myself to death, so I made some pasta and veg with a vegan burger. That will do me for now.

Anyway, I’m going to bed, hoping to sleep for a week because I am so exhausted right now. I’m really beginning to worry about my health.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my favourite taxi driver … "well, one of us has" – ed … she’s one of the “old school” of taxi drivers who has her own way of doing things that wouldn’t fit in with modern ideas.
The first time that she took me to Paris, I remember it vividly.
Being someone who is famous for his very low blood pressure, I was surprised when at the hospital there, they told me that my blood pressure had gone through the roof.
"Well, you go for a long drive through the Paris rush-hour with my driver" I retorted "and see what yours is like when you come back!"

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: eric hall

Monday 20th October 2025 – I HAVE LEFT …

Sunday 19th October 2025 – JUST FOR ONCE …

Saturday 18th October 2025 – I WENT TO …

Friday 17th October 2025 – I AM COMPLETELY …

Thursday 16th October 2025 – HAVING JUST FALLEN …

Wednesday 15th October 2025 – I AM FEELING …

Tuesday 14th October 2025 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

Monday 13th October 2025 – CHEMOTHERAPY IS …

Sunday 12th October 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

Saturday 11th October 2025 – MY LUCK WAS …

Friday 10th October 2025 – I AM TOTALLY …

Thursday 9th October 2025 – IT WAS HARD …

Wednesday 8th October 2025 – WASN’T IT LOVELY …

Tuesday 7th October 2025 – AS I HAVE …

Monday 6th October 2025 – I HAD NOTHING ON …

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